Terrorism and Threat Inflation: Fear Is the Mind-Killer
W.J. Astore
Over the last ten years in the United States, more than 280,000 Americans (more than 300,000 by some counts) have died because of guns. Over that same period, roughly 350,000 Americans have died on the roads in vehicular accidents. That's roughly 630,000 Americans dying every decade either in road accidents or by gunshots, which is roughly the number of Americans who died in the horrible carnage of the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865, America's bloodiest war.
In other words, at the hands of guns and vehicles, Americans suffer the equivalent of a civil war-like bloodletting each and every decade. Is it time to declare war on guns and cars? (And now roughly 30,000 people each year are dying from drug overdoses related to the abuse of prescription painkillers and other opiates.)
The U.S. media and our leaders prefer to fixate on radical Islamic terrorism, which has accounted for 24 deaths over the same period. Indeed, by the numbers the White supremacist threat to America is twice as serious as threats from ISIS or other external radical groups.
According to the Washington Times,
"In the 14 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, nearly twice as many people have been killed in the United States by white supremacists and anti-government radicals than by Muslim jihadis, according to a new study."
"White supremacists and anti-government radicals have killed 48 Americans ... versus 26 killings by Muslim radicals, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center."
"New America program associate David Sterman said the study shows that white supremacy and anti-government idealists are a major problem, that their growth rate needs to be addressed and that there is an 'ignored threat' woven in the fabric of American society."
Given these numbers and realities, why are America's leaders so fixated on hyping the threat of radical Islamic terrorists? Shouldn't we be focusing on saving lives on our roads? Reducing gun accidents and gun crimes and suicide by guns? On reducing hate-filled radicalism within our own country?
We should be, but we're not. Our leaders prefer threat inflation: They believe in making political hay while the foreign terrorist threat shines. So presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio predictably call for a war on terrorism, for military "boots on the ground" in Syria and Iraq, and (of course) for higher military spending and more surveillance, in the name of protecting America. Threat inflation knows no political party, of course, with Hillary Clinton joining the chorus of the tough-talkers against terror.
Threat inflation sells. And threat inflation pays. This is an important theme in Tom Engelhardt's latest tour de force at TomDispatch.com, "The National Security State's Incestuous Relationship with the Islamic State." As Engelhardt notes, threat inflation drives a dance of death even as it eliminates grey zones -- opportunities for dialog, diplomacy, compromise, forms of accommodation. It enforces a black and white world of crusaders and jihadists bent on killing one another in the name of righteousness.
Here is how Engelhardt puts it:
the officials of [the U.S. national] security state have bet the farm on the preeminence of the terrorist “threat,” which has, not so surprisingly, left them eerily reliant on the Islamic State and other such organizations for the perpetuation of their way of life, their career opportunities, their growing powers, and their relative freedom to infringe on basic rights, as well as for that comfortably all-embracing blanket of secrecy that envelops their activities. Note that, as with so many developments in our world which have caught them by surprise, the officials who run our vast surveillance network and its staggering ranks of intelligence operatives and analysts seemingly hadn’t a clue about the IS plot against Paris (even though intelligence officials in at least one other country evidently did). Nonetheless, whether they see actual threats coming or not, they need Paris-style alarms and nightmares, just as they need local “plots,” even ones semi-engineered by FBI informers or created online by lone idiots, not lone wolves. Otherwise, why would the media keep prattling on about terrorism or presidential candidates keep humming the terror tune, and how, then, would public panic levels remain reasonably high on the subject when so many other dangers are more pressing in American life?
The relationship between that ever-more powerful shadow government in Washington and the Islamic terrorists of our planet is both mutually reinforcing and unnervingly incestuous.
Of course, Engelhardt knows that terrorism must be fought. The point is not to lose our collective heads over the (much exaggerated) threat of it. To cite Frank Herbert's insight in Dune, "Fear is the mind-killer." Yet our media and leaders seem determined to hype fear so as to kill our minds.
As our media and politicians stoke our fear by exaggerating the threat posed by terrorism, ask yourself to what purpose are they attacking your minds.
Hint: It certainly isn't about keeping you safe.