The inherent limits of fear-based rule

It only works so long as the numbers favor you -- and fear rebounds fast

The above chart if from Jakob Bovin, who works with business leaders, but the application to political systems and their citizenry is easily made.

I mean, aren’t we nervously witnessing just about all of these dynamics right now?

Fear-based rule is highly effective and yet it remains subject to the numbers game in a functioning democracy: I need to scare more people than my opponents to sustain my rule. Easier to do if I control the means of government, but the inevitable heavy-handedness of that approach can likewise quickly spread a violent counter-reaction among the oppressed.

So, yeah, there are significant limits that undermine the effectiveness of that approach over time. The public begins to discount your alarmist rhetoric, which is either refuted by good developments or begins to feel less like the correlation of negative developments and more like their genuine cause.

Those citizens not so desensitized succumb eventually to alienation and backlash: You promised better!

Eventually the Schadenfreude among your followers is outpaced by the direct anger of your victims and targets, who begin to realize their strength in numbers. After all, if you truly had a majority backing you, the constant need for fear mongering wouldn’t be there.

Fear-based rule requires state-sanctioned aggression against the identified scapegoats who eventually begin to fight back more desperately, requiring more oppression from above to keep them in their place, thus socializing the injustice among the wider population unable to ignore the spreading repression.

As that resistance grows, state oppression must keep pace to imply inevitability, making the whole cycle that much more vicious and thus labor and resource intensive on the part of the state. Under such conditions, economic activity invariably declines, stressing all sides that much more.

The inherent short-term perspective of the state (its focus on retaining rule at all costs) renders it less competitive with other nations, and that gap has to be folded into the fear narrative, all the time making the list of enemies that much longer and this that much more ludicrous (So now we hate Canada too?).

With no useful political dialogue to be had, problems go unaddressed by the state or made worse, leading both citizens and business to discount future prospects in a self fulfilling cycle of ever rising pessimism, which only forces the fear-based ruler to enlarge his list of enemies and saboteurs.

By prioritizing control over representation, the public increasingly feels out of touch with the decidedly visceral politics (I’d like to punch him in the face!), such as they are increasingly detached from state policies (Who voted for this? What are my representatives doing about this? Can he do that?).

The supremely performative nature of being a regime-friendly politician is thus revealed: they exist not to do but merely to be — as in, theatrical proxies for the people, cheering on the Great Leader as he does what he must to protect them and the nation from descent into hellish nightmare scenarios that dredge up uncomfortable aspects of our share past (Do you want us to end up like South Africa today? Where Whites are hunted down and killed?).

Trump has consistently employed fear as a central tool in his leadership style, using intimidation, threats, and coercion to silence opposition and consolidate power. He has targeted political rivals, independent institutions, and critics, leveraging both formal government mechanisms and informal tactics like online harassment by his very own woke Republican mob to enforce compliance — particularly within the legislative ranks.

The only way to beat a woke ideology is to create a countering one full of even greater fear — Black Lives Matter superseded by White Genocide!

I mean, what do a few Blacks lives matter when we’re talking about the genocide of White Christian Americans?

I get the tactic: the MAGA base fears the inevitable demographic loss of White privilege (numbers game in a democracy), and that legitimate baseline fear has been weaponized to great effect by Trump/MAGA. But, in doing so, the administration is forced to take on all comers who feel that intense fear reflecting throughout their own ranks as they are increasingly targeted for performative repression (for now) by the organs of state control — to wit, the taped snatch off the streets of the Tufts’ grad student by what could easily pass as a government death squad (Why the masks?) in many scary parts of the world.

The Trump administration has actively undermined judicial independence, attacked media outlets, and intensified deportation policies — all to purposefully and overtly instill fear among all targeted communities. At some point, the choice just to lie low seems desperately untenable for an ever widening circle of citizens.

Trump’s fear-based appeals have created a feedback loop where he stirs latent-but-intensely-personal fears and then reassures his base with promises of strength and safety. His rhetoric frames outsiders and dissenters as dangerous threats to American values, reinforcing tribalism and dependence on his leadership (Who but Trump can protect me!). Those same intimidation tactics within the Republican Party have purged dissenters, consolidating power and aligning the party with his agenda.

We’ve been down this path before, just not so comprehensively. Nixon emphasized “law-and-order” to appeal to race-based fears and tensions, while George W. Bush used terrorism fears to justify the Iraq War. It is very easy to go overboard in these things and both presidents triggered corrective responses in subsequent presidencies. Still, the legacies of both are profound: the prison industrial system with Nixon and the rise a surveillance state with Bush.

The difference here is intensity and scope: Trump weaponizes fear on a rather fantastic scale, portraying the US as a dystopian “hellscape” and constantly amplifying such perceived threats (They are coming to murder your children! Even eat your beloved pets!) through social media.

Contrast all this with truly unifying hope-based leadership, which we’ve seen under the last three Democratic presidents: Clinton, the “man from Hope,” Obama with his iconic art, Biden aspiring to be another FDR/LBJ. None could totally subsume the growing political polarization — the cause of which is the fact that the middle class is losing ground while the rich are concentrating ever-more wealth in their hands.

Naturally, the self-preserving rich market race-based fears to deflect any such class consciousness and anger: They are the bigger threat, while I am your salvation! Here’s a million dollars to purchase your loyalty!

See what happens if you fight for your right to be White! You can rub shoulders with the richest man in the world — and he’ll pay you for the privilege. That has got to soothe, am I right?

In George Orwell's novel 1984, the lottery is cruelly depicted as a tool of totalitarian government to falsely spread hope among the population. The large prizes are paid out to nonexistent persons whom the government fabricates to keep the illusion of possibility alive among the people. This tactic distracts and pacifies the masses, ensuring their loyalty and compliance.

Someday, that could be me up there with Elon! Can you imagine?

History — and Marx — say that, eventually, the class consciousness of that shrinking middle class translates into revolutionary anger, and we’ve had that righteous rage growing within our system since the 2008 Crash. It was always going to result in one of two outcomes:

1. Dems succeeding in selling and executing a Progressive Era regrading of the economic (and thus political) landscape — essentially empowering the middle and working classes at the expense of the rich (a process that can be quite palliative)

2. Or the Republicans doing the same, but in this instance merging that middle/working-class fear with the impeding loss of White privilege (back to the numbers game) thanks to the strong immigration flows necessary to avoid our nation’s rapid aging and ultimately our demographic collapse (The problem isn’t not enough babies but not enough White babies!).

Point being, we are transformed either way: if you want a strong, growing America, it necessarily becomes a far less White America. Or, if you want a strong White Christian America, then you accept the notion of withdrawal from the world (autarky) and our demographic diminishment as the price for such purity (easily sanctified by fellow-traveling religions).

That is the point where “diversity” equals danger to some and salvation to the rest.

That is the fork in our national road.

To me, that is America — in today reaching nostalgically for an idealized past — serving as microcosm for a North-South world of tomorrow, or one driven by superior forces (changing climate and demographics) that threaten to recast our planet in new and unsettling ways (the long-feared “death of Western Civilization” being chief among them).

The only question that remains: at what point in our deepening embrace of White Christian Nationalist (WCN) authoritarianism within these United States does that dynamic create more political fear than identity-based fear — that iatrogenic point where the nastiness of the cure (American fascism) outpaces the suffered effects of the disease (the dreaded diversification of our culture).

I mean, look at what the Nazi Party ultimately felt compelled to do — even as they knew they were losing the war?

That one remaining question is thus: What kind of American are you?

Because the push is inevitably moving toward the countering shove.

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