The dark secret of how fear works in politics today
Fear has always played a role in politics, but there's a reason that things have gotten extra weird since 9/11.
This fall, in the middle of a long work trip, I found myself reading stories about violence before bed. Specifically, I was deep into the extreme self-help corners of Reddit, where people ask urgent advice about toxic relationships and physical violence, and then share the results to strangers on the internet.
I've always been darkly fascinated by first-person stories of violence, but it wasn't until this moment - run down by days of managing relationships and making decisions - that I realized what drew me back to them, and fostered an uncomfortable sense of longing. I also began to understand a dynamic that has shaped essentially my entire political life.
For me, 9/11 overlapped exactly with a quintessential moment of adolescence: entering high school. I was a freshman in 2001, and the feeling of being caught up suddenly in a bigger world is deeply tied to that morning where news trickled in, and TVs were turned on.
But my most vivid experience of that day is actually about the internet. I took lunch away from my friends to look through news sites - the pre-paywall New York Times, Yahoo News - and returned back to the lunch room with printouts of the stories describing the towers falling, definitive in black and white, to tell them the news.
The connection between the internet and 9/11 for me continued from there: as the US military prepared to invade Afghanistan I spent nights messaging strangers on AOL Instant Messenger to debate them about whether it was a good idea to launch an attack; infamously among my friends, I used a private message board to launch long-winded arguments about why it was a bad idea to invade Iraq (I was right).
Perhaps this feels like ancient history, but I don't think you can overstate the impact that moment has had on America. I have been returning over and over to this graph, published by The Appeal, as I think about the way that fear of crime reshaped the 2022 elections. More than anything else I've ever seen, it's a demonstration of how 9/11 deranged American politics, possibly for good:
The sharp upturn - and then permanent high - for the belief that crime is increasing beginning in 2001 speaks as much as any other single piece of political data I've ever seen. I think the specific culture of fear that permeates middle class, white politics in America is intimately tied to the internet, 9/11, and the way that scaring people simplifies the world.
9/11 is the moment where Americans became permanently aware of the breadth of the world. In a day, Americans were forced to think about places far away, and people who now had the power with video and the internet, to reach them. Not only was al Qaeda harming Americans, they continued to shape our perception of the world with a steady rhythm of video releases about their terror campaigns. We were exposed - in the sense of being introduced for the first time, and in the sense of becoming vulnerable.
When I look at the graph above, I see a country become introduced, and then addicted to, a certain kind of fear. I believe the pervasiveness of fear and division in middle class American politics is a reaction to the overwhelming feeling of exposure that comes with an era that began with extraordinary violence, and now invites uncountable fractured stories into our minds. Of course, it is not the first time that fear has shaped American politics, or been used cynically. But past 'crime wave' narratives were typically orchestrated from above in the context of right wing political campaigns. In the digital news environment, these campaigns can come from the bottom up, embraced and shared by people with no office or political power to gain.
al Qaeda's videos weren't the first digital images to shake the world, but they signaled a time when low-quality videos shared from small groups or individuals in Tottenham, Tahrir, Fergusson, and so many others can generate instant narrative or political upheaval. At the same time, crime panics can arise just as quickly, and more persuasively than before. The clown crime wave. The knockdown game. Punch a teacher day. Everything linked to QAnon.
I can see this dynamic when I drive through Texas and see countless grassroots-funded billboards in the comfortable suburbs making wild accusations about Democrats and crime. The question that worries me isn't "where are they hearing these lies?" I want to ask: "why are these lies so appealing?"
I think the reason they are appealing is the same reason I was reading scary stories before bed. If you are scared, the world is just a lot simpler. A mortal threat is a reason to avoid delving into nuance, and to not consider the voices of others. Fear narrows, and clarifies - which has its own appeal in a world that feels dangerously broad, overwhelming, and murky.
I recently was introduced to the concept of the thought-terminating cliche: the phrase or piece of 'common sense' that can shut down lines of discussion or dissent in one cut. "Fake news." "Boys will be boys." "Be real." And so on.
Thought-terminators play a significant role in cults, serving as a barrier to critical thinking and keeping the emotional walls of the community high. I think the appeal of these kinds of phrases is that they can serve as a kind of 'home base' of conversational safety. Cloaked in homey wisdom, a cliché shields you from dissensus, bringing a troubling conversation, or idea to a halt. In that same way, a new story about crime keeps political walls exclusively high. The idea of danger is easy to accept, easy to spread, and easy to return to as a way to terminate discussions about anything else.
In short, I think many Americans are hooked to fear-driven politics as a way to simplify the world. A story of imminent, ongoing danger is a license to not consider nuance. In a media environment suddenly filled with countless voices of strangers asking for you to consider their stories, fear is a shield from the cacophony. It is a reason to lean into your comfort zone, narrowing the world back down to a set of urgent questions. It's a dangerous habit that we've indulged for over two decades, but may need to break if we're going to start getting something better from our politics.