In 1933, in his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt asserted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself …” Fear can paralyze and radicalize. George Creel and Edward Bernays used the Committee on Public Information to prove this fact, cultivating popular consent for World War I among the U.S. population, by using psychological theories to influence an entire population via mass media.

The CPI successfully promoted, in Creel’s own words, “positive values and the encouragement of patriotism,” “while minimizing the influence of those who remained committed to neutrality.” The Nazis later followed suit, using fear to manufacture consent for their fascist war against communism, as well as the social ostracizing of Jews. Herman Goering acknowledged this in his testimony at the Nuremberg Trials: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

Fear directed toward a person, or group of people, invariably spawns hatred. Hatred leads to, or invites, dehumanization: It’s easy to hate someone seen as less-than-human. War propaganda always seeks to demonize, to de-humanize, the “enemy.” However, the real purpose, the real result, is not to make monsters out of the enemy, but out of us. When you reject the humanity of any person or group of people, you forfeit your own humanity. For, as soon as you can accept atrocity being visited upon another, you become the very thing you fear the most.

Theodore Moser, U.S. Army veteran, disabled OEF-Afghanistan

Greenfield