Communities of fear

Where the Angriest Words Can Lead

This is a good reflective article on how political leaders create repetitive messages to reinforce certain stereotypes and simplistic arguments in broader groups of followers. Extremists from the right (e.g. Milosevic, and many others) and left (e.g. Chavez, and many others) have always used this kind of tactic to create fear and reinforce/demonize the ‘otherness’ of ‘people like that’, that aren’t really people, that have ‘inhuman values’, etc., etc. The point is to see these messages for what they are—attempts to turn extremism into common wisdom, and to use fear to create ‘common values’ in support of narrow, exclusionary political agendas.

The author, Colbert King, shows how we are all capable of affecting outcomes and behaviors by participating in this type of practice. Colbert’s reflectiveness and willingness to self-implicate himself seems to me like an honest way of showing how—when we repeat simplistic messages without digging further and without thinking about ‘others’ as people like us, who are doing the same thing, but from different points of view—we also we all contribute to the formation of communities of convenience based on fear.