Reflexmatige Angst

Consensual Paranoia: The War Against Terrorism, McCarthyism, and the Case of US Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich By Carl K. Savich Introduction: Consensual Paranoia What causes mass hysteria, fear, and panic? It is the perception of danger and fear that is the cause. A perception is a sensory or sense impression, or image we create in our own minds. The danger may not be real at all, but illusory. But the perception of danger is what leads to fear, insecurity, and a sense of danger that sets in motion psychological mechanisms.

Fear and panic lead to consensual paranoia, a primordial tribal psychological need to find an enemy or a scapegoat that a tribe seeks to destroy. Invariably, the tribe, society, nation, or government seeks to create a bipolar opposition, that is, a division between US and Them, the Tribe against the Enemy/Other, the Good Us against the Evil Them. This is a primal/fundamental psychological need that is an evolutionary vestige from when man was animalistic in evolutionary development. So while a regressive and infantile orientation, it is nevertheless a basic and primary orientation. We create tribal, societal, and national solidarity by delineating our tribe, the Good Tribe from the Other Tribe, the Evil Tribe, the Tribe of Strangers/Foreigners/Aliens whom we know nothing about.

Ignorance induces fear, xenophobia, induces a sense or perception of danger, induces paranoia, an imaginary or illusory impression of danger or threat. The need to find an Enemy, the need to create a bipolar opposition, Us versus Them, is a primordial animalistic impulse that goes back to when mankind was in a primitive, tribal state. In primeval times, man perceived the unknown and strangers as dangerous and as a threat. This was an almost unthinking reflex or instinct that was motivated by self-preservation. As man evolved, his reasoning faculty evolved to the point where reasoning overrode this primitive reflex.

But governments and political leaders and nations continue to exploit this primitive human psychological orientation to foment war. Aggregations of individuals into crowds, groups, religious groups, nationality and ethnic groups, must be motivated and incited to act. To do this, reason becomes secondary and governments and political leaders resort to the primordial impulses of the herd or tribe or crowd/mob, to a regressive or backward psychological orientation. Fear and insecurity must be engendered in the tribe/clan/nation. Concomitantly to fear and danger and insecurity the impulses of hatred and anger and intolerance are engineered. Governments and political leaders self-induce this irrational fear, paranoia, to advance national objectives. Invariably, a consensual paranoia is fomented and results, creating Outsiders versus Insiders, Us versus Them, the Good versus the Evil, the Free World versus the Communist bloc, “Freedom” versus “the Axis of Evil”, Christians versus Jews versus Muslims versus Hindus. The psychological mechanism is the same/identical in every case, consensual paranoia, a paranoia needed to foment hate, racism, bigotry, intolerance, and war, that is, the killing of others. Reason becomes degraded while a primordial paranoia is self-induced.

A perception of danger and of threat leads to intolerance and racism. The perception is what is needed to induce the paranoid orientation needed to kill. The danger or threat may be illusory or imagined, but it is only the sense of danger that is needed, the danger need not be real or present at all. Projection and transference then allow us to project or impute our worst vices onto a chosen enemy or scapegoat. What is the origin of a scapegoat? The term “scapegoat” was coined in 1530 by English religious reformer William Tyndale for a primal worldwide psychological mechanism for expiation of sin and crime. A scapegoat is a group, individual, nation, ethnic group, or religious group upon whom the crimes, sins, mistakes, or guilt of others is placed upon or imputed to. The term is derived from Late Latin caper emissaries, emissary goat, which is a translation of the Hebrew word azazel, name of a desert demon, or ezozel, a goat that escapes or leaves. In Leviticus 16:7-26, the Jewish high priest Aaron confessed the sins of the people of Israel over the head of a goat which was then let loose into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Transference or projection whether unto a goat, onto a nation, people, or religious group, or individual, thus serves a psychological function, a primordial and universal function.

The War against Terrorism

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the subsequent Anthrax attacks created a panic and hysteria in the US not seen since the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The 9/11 attacks resulted in approximately 3,000 deaths and the destruction of the twin World Trade Center Towers and outlying buildings and areas and considerable damage to the Pentagon building and the downing of a third hijacked plane in Pennsylvania with the loss of all life on board. The attack was an unprecedented assault on the US mainland, perceived as impregnable and immune to attack. The shock the attack caused was massive and deep, resulting in panic and hysteria. The impact was psychological. An emphasis on national security emerged as an overriding focus. A “war on terror” or “war against terrorism” was declared by President George W. Bush. Invariably, individual rights and liberties were sacrificed for national security.

Throughout American history, during times of crisis and perceived threats or dangers from outside the country, a patriotic/nationalist hysteria or panic emerged. During the Civil War, Edward Everett Hale published “The Man Without a Country”, whose protagonist was Philip Nolan, a man who had forsaken his country. The story extolled the virtues of unity over secession and patriotism over independence. The story was reissued during the Spanish-American War in 1898 to stir up patriotic fervor. Waves of ultra-patriotism and ultra-nationalism were engendered which were manifested in flag waving, the singing of the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the display of the symbolic colors of red, white, and blue of the American flag. This was a crude form of jingoism. Following 9/11, Irving Berlin’s anthem “God Bless America” from 1938 and the World War II period was revived. Moreover, moral superiority was maintained by claiming that justice and morality was on our side and by invoking the slogan that “In God We Trust”, that God too was on our side. It was a fight between good, us, and evil, them, between Freedom, and the “Evil” or the “Evil Doers” or “the Axis of Evil”. The dichotomy is a primordial archetype of the psychology of enmity. Every nation, people, and country seeks to gain the moral high ground by invoking God. German soldiers, for instance, wore on their belt buckles the slogan “Gott mit uns”, God is with us. In all wars, all combatants claim moral superiority over the others.

Fear and insecurity results in consensual paranoia. The Salem Witch Trials resulted from the consensual paranoia and panic caused by fears of a French and Indian attack. Salem was settled by Puritans, who had a rigid and austere moral code. The Salem witch-hunt hysteria began when a slave and two other women were accused of witchcraft. In the ensuing panic and hysteria, hundreds of persons were arrested. Many accused were tried using “spectral evidence”, evidence gleaned from voices which the accused and accusers heard. Nineteen were hanged as witches. Then there was the Red Scare of the 1920s, following the establishment of Bolshevik Russia in 1917 and the spread of Marxist/Communist/Socialist movements to the United States. In the North there was legalized racial discrimination and segregation, “separate but equal”, as established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In the South, there was Jim Crow and KKK terror enforced by lynchings. There were race riots in Detroit in 1943 and 1967 and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. In 1921 a race riot erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma in “The Negro Wall Street” whereby 35 districts were burned and looted by white vigilantes and police and National Guard troops which resulted in 36 to 300 people killed and 800 injured. Over 6,000 blacks were interned/held for eight days due to the “Negro uprising”. The Tulsa Riots were covered up by the media and government. In times of perceived threat, there have been eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance and violence.

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