Harry Targ
“Scare hell out of the American people.” (attributed to Arthur
Vandenberg, Senator, Michigan, February, 1947)
A basic tactic used by American politicians to marshal support for policies and
politicians that ordinary citizens, given their common sense and self-interest
would never support, is to create a sense of fear. The “politics of fear” has a
long and venal history in American political life. We can point to warnings of
the penetration of foreigners into our public life before the civil war, to
dangerous Reds in the struggle for the eight-hour day in the 1880s, to the Red
scares of the post-World War I and II periods. The politics of fear has always
used class hatred and class envy, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a sense of
the “alien” to create enthusiasm for policies that are backward and inhumane.
After World War II, opinion polls indicated that most Americans hoped for a
period of peace built upon the continued collaboration of the powerful wartime
allies, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and Great Britain. But as
President Truman articulated in a relatively unknown speech to a gathering at
Baylor University on March, 6, 1947, the United States was committed to the
creation of a global economy based upon private enterprise, foreign investment,
and free trade. He alluded to forces in the world that sought to organize
economic life around different principles, national autonomous development and
state directed economies.
What the Truman administration had been discussing in private was not a public
debate on the virtues of free markets versus national planning, but a global
crusade against “communist tyranny.” At an apocryphal meeting of key aides and
politicians in February 1947, before Truman’s famous “Truman Doctrine” speech
of March 13, the formerly isolationist senator from Michigan, Arthur
Vandenberg, reportedly declared that he would support a global policy,
presumably to promote free market capitalism, but he advised that the president
should “scare hell out of the American people.” Why? Because the American
people still thought peace was possible between the East and the West. In
March, Truman warned Congress that the United States was going to be engaged in
a long-term struggle against the forces of tyranny in the world, the
international communist menace.
In the 1950s, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
warned that President Jacob Arbenz, of Guatemala, constituted a threat to the
Central American isthmus, and eventually the United States itself. Since Arbenz
supported the expropriation of unused land owned by the United Fruit Company,
the administration claimed he was moving toward communism.
Candidate John Kennedy framed his campaign for president around the fears of a
“missile gap” that had allegedly opened up between the United States and the
Soviet Union and the spread of communism to 90 miles off our shores on the
island of Cuba.
Ronald Reagan, another presidential candidate, powerfully introduced the idea
of a “the window of vulnerability” to popular discourse on the dangers to
American freedom if the incumbent candidate Jimmy Carter was reelected and the
government did not dramatically increase military spending.
With the end of the Cold War, new enemies needed to be constructed. And indeed
they were. They were more diabolical, less tangible than the Soviet Union and
international communism. These included “failed states,” “rogue states,” and
“terrorists.”
Reflecting on the politics of fear and its long history, we can extrapolate
some core ideas about it and how it works. The politics of fear creates demonic
enemies such as communists, terrorists, foreigners, or people who are defined
as different. The politics of fear require an implied or stated prediction of
doom. If the people do not support what is being advocated, the consequences
for human survival would be in jeopardy. Only clear and total support of the
policies and politicians promoting it can save us from the apocalypse. Finally,
in most instances the politics of fear relates to war and militarism.
The Nixon administration added to the politics of fear the militarization of
domestic policies as well. For example, the US needed to commit to a war on
cancer or a war on drugs. While military images verbally have not been added to
the debate about health care reform today, some opponents have begun to carry
guns to places where debates are occurring, suggesting that this debate is
indeed a prelude to war.
What are some lessons that this argument raises for progressives to consider?
First, we must recognize that the politics of fear undergird much of our
political discourse and it has for a long time. Second, the politics of fear is
based on distortions of other peoples’ thoughts and behaviors and other
countries’ intentions and what their actions might mean for us. Third, we must
be ready to challenge virtually every instance in which the politics of fear is
used to coerce and manipulate people. Fourth, we need to articulate more
vigorously our own public policy proposals and our own vision of how we
can build a society that is based on social and economic justice rather than
fear, enemies, and the prospects of doom.
