Threat

Alerting the audience to a threat (a danger, a harm, any "bad") from a foe or enemy is the first step of a "pep talk." Persuaders are problem-makers intensifying the "bad" of an immediate or a potential threat, danger, or harm.

(Commercial advertising usually emphasizes positive benefits to the individual. To a lesser degree, commercial ads stir up fears, discussed elsewhere as the "scare-and-sell" technique. Political persuasion, however, usually emphasizes negative, social issues, common fears.)

This section presents both some general ways of intensifying words and images (warnings, name-calling, "horror stories","atrocity pictures") and then makes some specific applications to a group of common predictable fears.

People have predictable fears. We can identify in advance a whole cluster of common kinds of fears that most people are likely to have. Persuaders know these and can intensify these fears, stirring us up emotionally to an excited state of readiness: ready to be bonded into a group, channeled and moved to action.

Of the many possible bad things which people fear, and of the many ways of categorizing them, here's a brief list (details, below) of six fears -- Death and Destruction, Invasion, Restriction, Dominance, Injustice, Chaos -- which can be summed up in one sentence:

"We fear that someone stronger will take away our life, our possessions, our territory, our freedom; or that someone else has more, unfairly; or that a human system will break down.

In "Cause" propaganda, (as well as in some political persuasion and some religious rhetoric) intensifying the possibility of a future "bad" is common. Whether saving the nation from an enemy, or saving souls from hellfire, or saving animals from extinction, persuaders know that the greater the threat, the greater the need for a remedy.

Although the threat can often be a vague abstraction (Communism, Capitalism, Terrorism), the threat is usually personified in terms of a specific leader, a specific individual, to be hated. Propagandists often focus attention on a visible, identifiable person as the "scapegoat" to blame. For example, Hitler or Stalin in the 20th century; in the 21st century, Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein would be the evil "devil" figures to be hated -- within western society.

In other cultures, for example, Islamic fundamentalist religious rhetoric would use vague abstractions (Globalization, Materialism, Secularism, Westernization, Americanism, the Great Satan) and specific leaders (President Bush, Prime Minister Blair) as the infidels, their evil "devil figures" to be hated.

Hatred is directed against the specific person as being the symbolic embodiment of all evils. Fist-shaking mobs, chanting the name of the opponents' leader, or burning their effigies, are common sights on television now. Name-calling usually exists in a full context of verbal and nonverbal abuse of the opposition, as in "horror stories" and "atrocity pictures."

In early 2007, Republicans preparing for the 2008 election couldn't decide if Hilliary Clinton would be the "designated devil" or the "wicked witch of the Left" because of her usefulness to them in fund-raising among their base supporters: "Many conservatives still consider Mrs. Clinton the Helen of Troy of direct mail, the face who can launch a thousand donations. "

Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (1966), on the need to recognize the pattern of "militant enthusiasm":

"The first prerequisite for rational control of an instinctive behavior pattern is the knowledge of the stimulus situation which releases it. Militant enthusiasm can be elicited with the predictability of a reflex when the following environmental situations arise.

First of all, a social unit with which the subject identifies himself must appear to be threatened by some danger from the outside.... A second key stimulus which contributes enormously to the releasing of intense militant enthusiasm is the presence of a hated enemy from whom the threat to the above "values" emanates.... A third factor contributing to the environmental situation eliciting the response is an inspiring leader figure.... A fourth, and perhaps the most important, prerequisite for the full eliciting of militant enthusiasm is the presence of many other individuals, all agitated by the same emotion.

from Richard Hofstader, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964):

" The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse....

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy.* Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades" openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.

George Gerbner, Dean, Annenberg School of Communication (in 1981):

"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures."

A Quick Overview of these 6 categories of fears. For more details, click on their links.

Death and Destruction: The feared threat in this broad category includes any physical harm of loss to the person or possessions. Commonly, people fear the active violence of war (bombing, shooting); but, lethal dangers are also present in famine, disease, radiation, water and air pollution. In domestic political rhetoric, this death and destruction theme relates to "crime in the streets" imagery, any fears of attacks against persons (assault, robbery, rape) or property (theft, arson, vandalism, looting).

Invasion: The feared threat is the loss of territory or space to another. Most people have a strong territorial sense of possession or ownership of the area around them, ranging from close personal space ("My room... my house... my seat... my place in line... my parking space...") and privacy issues (government intrusion ) extending outward to their region (neighborhood, hometown, state) to the often artificial boundaries of a nation.

Border wars, disputed boundaries, and conflicting claims of land ownership are common. In addition to border conflicts, invasion fears also occur when new people or "outsiders" enter an area, as in immigration issues or racial integration: "There goes the neighborhood!" Such xenophobia has long existed in the past, and is likely to increase in the future as more people compete for less available land.

Restriction: The feared threat is loss or restraint on our freedom: ranging, at one extreme, from slavery and imprisonment; at the other extreme, to any restriction, any limit, any law, imposed by society. In international politics during the Cold War, the imagery of slavery (Iron Curtain, Berlin Wall, Gulag Archipelago) was common used by those who saw themselves in the "Free World." Libertarians and "Free Enterprise" advocates often use intense slavery imagery to equate any laws or regulations with oppressive bondage.

Dominance: The feared threat is dominance by, or submission to, a stronger Other. We don't fear the weak. Dominance and submission are relative relationships; often, there's a hierarchy, or "pecking order." Degree varies from an absolute domination to a relative co-existence. People differ in their standards of feeling dominated or "humiliated": some take affront at the slightest insult, others don't react. The kinds of dominance vary: physical strength, social status, "moral" dominance. Power, like money, may be a common denominator, or a means to all other ends.

Injustice: The feared threat is that someone else has more, or something better, undeservedly, or that someone is trying to take away our "fair share." In a world of obviously unequal distribution of benefits (money, talent, possessions, skills, health, beauty), there is also a widespread human desire for justice. Everyone seeks, or defends, their "fair share."

The Haves seek to keep the existing order; the Have-Nots seek to change it. When the Haves are challenged that they have more benefits in one category (e.g. money), they respond with a Justice argument that they deserve it because of another related category: they worked harder, or longer; or have more skill, more experience, and so on Injustice threats always involve degree (more good or less bad) which people seek to preserve, or to change, for their own benefit.

Chaos: The feared threat is any breakdown of a system which can affect our well-being. Chaos, here, could be either anarchy -- the total breakdown of law and order, as in riots and mobs -- or any systemic flaws of social, political, or economic systems.

The threat may be direct and tangible (such as traffic gridlocks, widespread power outages, computer network failures, mob riots, food shortages, contamination) or the threat may be indirect and intangible (such as inflation, bank failures, devaluation of currency). But, in both cases, the harmful effects are, nevertheless, real and felt.

In political campaigns, the incumbents usually stress how well the systems work; the opposition party charges that the system should work better, and that there should be change, reform.