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Fear Culture
A frightened man gives up his freedom for the promise of safety.
Fear culture, also culture/climate of fear, hysteria or fearmongering, is a culture driven by pervasive, artificially sustained fear that's used to manipulated masses of people. It is among the most effective political tools of manipulation and so, unsurprisingly, enjoys wide popularity and application in dystopias, currently for example in the USA and other "western countries" where fear culture gets perfected and taken to extremes with never stopping pressure coming mainly from the media (news, social networks, ads, billboards, magazines, ...) -- see for example the "war on terror", anti-immigration, "pedophile hysteria", "computer security hysteria" and countless other modern societal phenomena responsible for the epidemic of depression and suicides. Fear makes people give up their freedom voluntarily (e.g. consent with surveillance, approve of dictatorship, ...), blindly consume what they're given (vaccines, spying devices, body implants, software updates, ...), spend money on bullshit, it makes them resort to desperate behavior such as killing other people (needed e.g. when a nation wants to lead a war), it makes them stop thinking and delegate decisions on others (so called "leaders") etc. Fear also creates great many businesses (guns, insurance, antiviruses, VPNs, home security, drugs, security services, prepping, police, military, news, ...) and is therefore supported by capitalism.
Is it then such a surprise that a westener in 21st century is constantly bombarded by scaremongering messages? This happens wherever he goes, on a daily basis, every minute of his life (thanks to so called "modern" technology that ensures fast speed Internet connection even on a desert island, exactly for this reason) -- he has a device in his pocket that alerts him every few minutes about a new threat ("SCIENCE JUST FOUND THE FOOD YOU EAT CAUSES CANCER!", "NEW HITLER JUST WON THE ELECTIONS!", "YOUR NEIGHBOUR MAY BE A PEDOPHILE RAPING YOUR CHILD RIGHT NOW", ...), when he watches a movie there are news headlines constantly rolling on the bottom of the screen and ads constantly interrupting the movie to not let him relax for a second, there are news coming from speakers in every shop he goes to, there are billboards alongside roads urging him to vote for someone else his family gets murdered by immigrant terrorists, and so on.
TODO