The politics of fear after 9/11.(Part VI: the politics of fear after 9/11: can the past inform the future?)

INTRODUCTION: KENNETH PREWITT

OUR TOPIC, THE POLITICAL USES OF FEAR, HAS MANY FACETS. IT IS THE strength of this concluding panel that its participants bring these multiple facets to the surface. It is not a concluding consensus that we search for--it is a many dimensional reflection and extension of themes already encountered. And this we get. Eric Alterman draws on his role as a journalist to make a general point that being in a position to do something about your political fears is liberating, even though you often will not be able to rid the world of what it is that you fear--a proposition that works whether it is terrorism you fear or the political manipulation of fears about terrorism.

Andrew Arato, from the vantage point of political sociology, draws attention to what he describes as the "institutional fear" on which the social contract in liberal theory is based, citing the fear of Hobbes' state of nature as that which binds us together in the modern state. Arato worries that American liberalism has produced a weak state tradition that has a poor record at regulating emergency powers, and that the "emergency regime" now being constructed largely outside the Constitution is itself something to be feared.

Tom Pyszczynski, writing in a social-psychological tradition, takes up 9/11 to discuss how, in the presence of death, people retreat to and intensify cultural worldviews that provide reassurance. This management of trauma is to be expected. What is troubling is that the collective trauma of 9/11 can lead to demands for vengeance, which set in motion processes of retaliation by those at whom the vengeance is directed, especially if they see themselves as innocent victims of vengeful war. They also act to protect their worldviews, no less culturally reassuring to them than ours are to us.

Cory Robin broadens the discussion by turning to political history. The fear of terrorism is the fear of an outside force, and presumes a community with a shared identity and set of interests. This overlooks how much "political" fear there is that internally divides the nation, when blacks fear whites or workers fear their bosses. What Robin describes as vertical, repressive fear is no less consequential for the working of our democracy as is the need to protect against external threats, and he worries that there is an unseen cost to the preoccupation with the fear of terrorism. It pushes other issues off the political agenda.

Jessica Stern, drawing on her detailed study of terrorism, forcefully reminds us that fear in the political life of a nation is both cause--there are real things to fear, and terrorism is one of them--and tool--it is used, often appropriately so, to mobilize collective action. To describe the political manipulation of fear in narrowly partisan terms is to rob it of its analytic usefulness, which of course is counter to the purpose of the conference in the first place.

On the testimony of this panel, and the conference it concludes, there is rational and imaginary fear; there is fear that paralyzes and fear that excites active retaliation; there is fear that is hardwired and fear that is induced by specific historic circumstances; there is fear that threatens to displace the constitutional regime with an emergency regime; there is fear that serves the powerful and fear that mobilizes against the powerful. These many ways of looking at fear are sometimes but not always in tension with each other, and there is much to be gained by appreciating how many facets there are to our issue.

Our central theme--the political uses of fear--is current but it is also, of course, ancient. The prophetic tradition in the Old Testament calls upon the people of Moses to worship the lord else they will suffer plague, pestilence, floods and famine, and then eternal damnation. This is political fear brought to a fine pitch, as it has been in all world religions that posit a fearful afterlife.

The analytic challenge is to sort out the rational from the irrational, the fear that is grounded in real threats from that which is manipulated by those in power for reasons less connected with objective conditions than private goals, such as holding on to power. This analytic task matters. The conference presentations, including this panel, tell us again and again that political fear misplaced has pernicious consequences for our political culture and institutions. But then so might the absence of a fear warranted by real threats or actual conditions. Lot's wife should not have looked back.

ERIC ALTERMAN

One thing we didn't do that great a job of understanding at this conference is a basic point: that the problem of fear sells very well. It's an attractive proposition from a capitalist point of view.

When I was 14 or so, I saw Jaws on its opening night. When I was 16 years old I saw The Omen on its opening night; I remember because it opened on June 6, 1976. Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, which is a scary album, holds the record for the length of time it was on Billboard's top 100 list. I think it's still there. And to bring the level of discourse down a bit, on The Daily Show, just before the conference was held, Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert showed Janet Jackson's breast in tandem with Madonna kissing Britney Spears and O. J.'s chase in the Bronco. …