AWOT Essay: Where does the fear come from?

While the ‘politics of fear’ is fast becoming a standard media sound-bite, there is little agreement about what actually constitutes such politics. First and foremost amongst the under-investigated aspects of this phenomenon is the origin of the fear, with a number of diverse hypotheses offered on the topic. Michael Moore, for instance, inserts a rather crude segment into ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, in which he suggests that society’s fears are being manipulated by corporations in order to sell them ridiculous safety gadgetry. Stronger accounts of the phenomenon, such as Barry Glassner’s ‘Culture of Fear’, have put media hype in the spotlight. Meanwhile another documentary, this time the highly sophisticated BBC production by Adam Curtis, ‘The Power of Nightmares’, seems to point the finger at politicians (“now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to deliver us from nightmares…”), accusing them of deliberately stoking up fear to legitimize their rule.

On this blog we have been somewhat critical of the latter account (and, indeed, Adam Curtis has made an effort to present a more nuanced interpretation of his account elsewhere), stressing the fact that politicians are picking up on a wider social anxiety that is firmly rooted in society. So it is with interest that we turn to Jeffrey Rosen’s ‘The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Freedom and Security in an Anxious Age’, a book which addresses the politics of fear almost entirely from the perspective of society, or, in Rosen’s terms, the crowd.

A wide-ranging investigation into the consensus on intrusive surveillance, Rosen’s book is an excellent and thought-provoking read. Despite his legal background, Rosen does not restrict himself to the dry, technocratic, and oft-rehearsed arguments of ‘balancing between liberty and security’, instead drawing together a large array of social issues to describe the problem. The material is diverse, from 19th Century sociology to reportage and interviews with contemporary law-makers and surveillance entrepreneurs. This is a book in the best traditions of Richard Sennett or Christopher Lasch, as Rosen tries to understand the mutually impacting relationship between the individual American psyche and wider social phenomena. At the same time, Rosen produces logical and pithy arguments against many of the innovations which are designed to make us safer (we have previously posted on his cutting analysis of Britain’s CCTV revolution).

Rosen’s central theme relates the public’s broad acquiescence to security measures within a narrative of increasing social isolation and uncertainty. In this he borrows from Anthony Giddens’ account of ‘risk culture’ whereby, as society dictates less and less about a given individual’s future, the resulting uncertainty leads to a heightened preoccupation with risk. That is to say that, as our futures become less clearly determined, we devote a greater degree of energy to thinking about (or worrying about) that future, including above all the attempt to understand the potential risks in any course of action. In a highly creative move, Rosen goes on to use this framework to explain the increasingly ‘confessional’ nature of our culture, looking at the rise in blogs and exhibitionist writing amongst other things. This, he claims, stems from a need to constantly prove ourselves to, and attempt to connect with, a society with whom we have little or no real connection. It is an attempt to overcome the lack of common understanding we described in Monday’s post. This constant desire to lay ourselves bare to the world, to allow and even encourage others to pry into every tiny detail of our personal lives, leaves society very open to government intrusion for the sake of security.

But while it generates a fascinating and substantial critique of contemporary cultural norms, Rosen’s account may show the limits of focusing too hard upon society as the locus for the politics of fear, without taking into account the possible role of political leadership. His descriptions of the crowd can often seem somewhat clichéd stripped as they are of any political context that could make sense of contemporary developments. Thus statements like, “citizens in a modern democracy are not very good at absorbing complicated information from the media” (p.15) or “the crowd, left to its own devices, reacts to threats emotionally rather then analytically,” (p.30) take on a quality of prejudice rather than of reasoned argument.

We should make clear that Rosen has tried to clarify his approach somewhat when discussing his work. In his words, “[t]he goal is not to be contemptuous, but just hard- headed about the rigors of the challenges we face.” And of course, it is always impossible to introduce as much nuance as we would like into any account of human activities. Yet when Rosen ignores the role of politicians in creating a climate of fear, he loses part of the picture. In a situation where no politician challenges the politics of fear, as propagated by governments or other institutions, why would we expect the public to be anything other than fearful? That is to say, if there is no voice in society suggesting an alternative vision, it is inevitable that people will start to accept the accounts of imminent danger that are presented to them. Yes, politicians are partly responding to an anxious public mood, but they are also giving up on the chance to challenge that mood, not to simply reflect the emotional state of society, but to try and shape it.

But, if we take a further step back, perhaps we can start to see a broader problem that embraces both the politicians and the people, alleviating the need to situate the problem in one particular camp. While Giddens’ and Rosen’s descriptions of the crowd in the modern world—atomized, incoherent and emotional—may ring true to us today, they are not the timeless accounts they would have us believe. In fact, since the dawning of modernity, societies have rapidly developed numerous novel ways of understanding both our individual position in society and the nature and direction of that society as a whole. To take one example, class quickly became the dominant mode (in America as well as Europe) of distinguishing between our peers, marking out those who we could trust and those we could not. While there may be forces that push us in that direction, atomization is not the inevitable condition of modernity. Historically it has been assuaged through the development of ideological frameworks that helped us make sense of the world. Thus it is this loss of common narrative that determines the condition of society, its leaders, and their relationship. The only language in which politicians can talk to the people is one that appeals to the basic fact of their alienation. The gap between people, and between people and their leaders, grows.

When we talk about ‘frameworks’ or ‘narratives’ it perhaps suggests something intangible; an identity that might be reestablished in a strictly abstract manner. Yet underlying this conception is a more concrete issue—that such frameworks are ways of explaining and facilitating our control over the direction of society. Without a clear and shared understanding of our world, it is impossible to imagine ourselves directing its progress, and uncertainty dominates. A diminished sense of agency gives rise to social anxiety. Rosen points to this phenomenon at work on an individual level, when he records some statistics as to who in society who feel most at risk from various threats. (p.71-72) Essentially, those who have less control over their lives (impoverished minority groups, women), fear a terrorist attack more than well-off white men. Our fear of terrorism is very directly influenced by our sense of certainty or otherwise about our own lives.

The politics or culture of fear may be the defining characteristic of our era. And anyone who aims to understand that phenomenon would do well to read Rosen’s book. We are still at a very early stage in categorizing this aspect of modern life, yet the ‘Naked Crowd’ will no doubt be an essential tool in enabling us to do so.