Talk:Politics of fear

Anyone politically savvy out there want to write this?--Waiting for Godot 12:13, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

Heh! I just glanced & thought it was: Politics of beer, there'd be plenty of takers for that, methinks. 12:24, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

We definitely need Fun:Politics of beer, now that you've suggested it. Maybe we could have a serious version, too, about controversies like the legal drinking age and such. I've added some specific topics to the article, though it still needs lots of work. OneForLogic 14:22, 30 July 2008 (EDT)
 * There was actually a political party in Russia in the 90s called the Beer Drinker's Party, or something similar. I remember seeing it on the news a long time ago- they seemed to want Russian politics to lighten up a bit. They didn't seem to accomplish their goal. Corry 14:36, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

Quote from Machiavelli's The Prince on having the population love/fear/hating the ruler? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Obvious Bias is Obvious
It's not the politics of fear when we do it. 69.143.53.7 (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering why you say "continued by the Obama administration," but don't cite any examples.

Safe Spaces

 * Social justice warriors constantly warn about the dangers of different views ("violence"), expressions of disagreement ("harassment") and behaviour on social media that can even cause PTSD. Fortunately, people can find shelter in promoted “Safe Spaces” where the proper Righthink is taught, that feels safe, and which is an ideology of postmodernism and identity politics.

The term sits on the surface of a range of other concepts that are all expressions of a deeper generative (or conceptual metaphor) that revolve around threats to well-being or mental health. Certain speech is considered “inflammatory” for example. The “Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding” for example states (p 473): “that said, community and groups need guidelines for how to navigate these potential inflammatory topics while maintaining a safe space for relationships”. Here's a real world example: ''“We have a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus. There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus.”'' (source) That speaker was Maryam Namazie, posing a risk of an inflamation. People need to be protected from that. Here's the famous Yale case, where the students have a mental breakdown over potentially offensive costumes. The person feels unsafe and wants to have a “home” created (i.e. some place safe, where she isn't challenged). Here's what the literature says about such cases: “For instance, the phrase 'a safe beach' makes one conjure up (most likely unconsciously) a scenario of a beach where bathers are in some fashion threatened, perhaps by sharks, perhaps by a powerful undertow, and then the actual beach and the hypothetical beach are mapped onto each other in order to emphasize their difference.” (Hofstadter & Sander, 2011). I want to stress though that such reverts are done to frustrate efforts to document the mobocracy's beloved totalitarian social justice religion in a critical light. Every tiny sentence is faught, and of course my excersize here is to demonstrate just that, picking an obvious and easy target, no sane person can deny, since it's plastered all over the news and a favourite of social justice warriors. Even when some bits eventually remain, the mob made its case. Of course, nobody should believe they are just rigorous or careful. The bullshit flows freely and easily in any other direction. ~ Aneris 01:30, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * How is this related to politics as the term is used in the article? Jagulard (talk) 01:54, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * "The term politics of fear denotes when leaders (or candidates for leadership) use fear as a driving or motivating factor for the people, [...] It's banking on the fact that presenting people with an alleged threat to their well-being will elicit a powerful emotional response that can override reason and prevent a critical assessment of these policies." It also mentions fear mongering, and the so-called culture war (which is listed here as a social justice article). Why should it not fit? ~ Aneris 02:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Out of pity I'm going to try to help you out. I think some version of the argument that, say, "call-out culture" uses fear of ostracization/embarassment to motivate progressive allies from straying too far from a socially hard-left point of view regardless of the intentions behind what they're saying could have been made (to the point where even leftist activists like Freddie DeBoer are annoyed by it), if it was made clear what you were talking about and left out the dumb jargon, but your ramblings as they are now are just a waste of everyone's time and filled with pointless nonsense. Also you keep bringing up postmodernism but being a postmodernist is not even a requirement to be on the "PC Left", so to speak. Basically tone down the dial 9 notches, quit going on random tangents, abandon the outdated phrases and quasi-conspiracy theories and maybe one day you'll be semi-reasonable. Maybe. ClothCoat (talk) 03:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * "It also mentions fear mongering" - which source does "it" refer to? Please note, I'm not attacking you- I think that the topic of "safe spaces" deserves some attention, as it may in fact be yet another fad of postmodern scholarship, much like "intersectionality" seems to be. But I don't think it belongs here, and I don't think you've made the argument that it should. The term is simply not used in the way that the examples listed in the article have been. Maybe you could find examples of some politicians trying to drum up support using the term? Jagulard (talk) 04:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess you mean Politics of Fear in a narrow or specific way, refering to political candidates and their parties. But under that view, talk radio or Fox News don't count, and the so-called culture war angle has to be cut out. But perhaps the most iconic example, Johnson's ad “Daisy” is not even featured. If you take a wider view, as the article suggests, then you include framing and you pay attention to political language. The article has a language nav, which states half sarcastically “We control what you think with Language” and then lists “buzzwords”. Hence, prima facie, “safe apace” is completely within its scope. ClothCoat is a drone of which many exist here, and they believe postmodernism doesn't exist, is a conspiracy theory, has nothing to with the social justice movement and so forth. That is like saying Republicans don't exist and it was a conspiracy to say George Bush was one. The authors and inventors of all these common “social justice” concepts are from the postmodernist tradition, often times printed right into their biography. Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) mentions it directly and other authors in the CRT framework refer to Derrida, for example. It is also obviously in their assumptions (e.g. “lived experience”). Tumblr-level proponents of this typically don't know this and some “rationalists” are horrified when they find out, then they go into a state of denial. Most “proponents” haven't read their manual, believe in some bastardized version (in fact, that is the case with intersectionality, and it is comical) and in that sense, they aren't really postmodernist in the academical sense. However, the tradition, the concepts they espouse etc are. ~ Aneris  15:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Here's another case, Adria Richards of Donglegate fame: ''“You felt fear?” I asked. “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’” [...] I told Adria that people might consider that an overblown thing to say. She had, after all, been at a tech conference with 2,000 bystanders. “Sure,” she replied. “And those people would probably be white and they would probably be male.”'' (this aspect is called "Lived Experience" coupled with identity politics) ~ Aneris 20:59, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That's personal fear, not the politics of fear. There's no politics involved in that. --76.17.68.100 (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You merely needs to connect some simple dots. Adria Richards is a proponent of this political direction, and here she talks about how she felt fear and danger which are of course resolved in proper safe spaces. Another take, which I just found, can be found here. It also discusses so-called online "violence". Another term that can be researched using such newfangled inventions like Google. Characteristic is that people who are clearly clueless have such strong opinions about this matter. ~ Aneris 21:31, 3 September 2016 (UTC)