Project Terror

(Originally published 27 September 2019)

“Project fear” was the derogative name given to the warnings of commentators who talked about the likely negative consequences of leaving the European Union. Now, worried that Supreme Court judges and the sovereign parliament of the UK will prevent Brexit, a government minister has claimed that the country faces a “violent, popular uprising” comparable to the 1992 Los Angeles riots if a second referendum overturns the result. The hypocrisy of those who would employ this sort of strategy while dismissing fears raised by the other side may explain some of the revulsion many of us feel toward this. But we also need to consider whether this sort of political practice is, in itself, morally problematic.

One way of criticizing it is through appealing to Robert E. Goodin’s book What’s Wrong with Terrorism? (2006). While we often think of terrorist acts as, paradigmatically, involving the killing of innocent civilians, Goodin argues that this fails to distinguish terrorism from ordinary murder. For Goodin, the distinctive wrong that terrorists commit is the spreading of fear for political purposes. And although this is often done through acts of murder, terrorist wrongs can be carried out by other means. Cyberterrorism targets computer systems rather than people, for instance.
If we accept this definition of terrorism, as Goodin notes, warnings can count as acts of terrorism. And they can do so even when the warnings are well-founded. A politician who warns the public about an imminent attack by a paramilitary group, and does so because they think that this will help them advance their policy agenda (because, for example, it will lead the public to become more favorable to the heavy-handed policing proposals that the politician favors), is a terrorist, on Goodin’s account. So this might be the way to criticize the sort of fearmongering that is going on in British politics at the moment. Those who warn of civil unrest because this will ensure that Brexit will go ahead commit one of the wrongs that terrorists do, and can be viewed with the same moral disdain.
There are a couple of problems with this line of argument, though. First, it does not give us any practical guidance. If civil unrest is a genuine possibility, then politicians should, it seems, warn people of this. While we can criticize the character of those who only do so because it advances their political agenda, we cannot have anything against the action itself. Second, and more importantly, at a time when political language is becoming highly inflammatory (with talk of “traitors”, “betrayal”, and a “surrender bill” being employed) we would do well not to introduce the term “terrorist” into the mix. As I have suggested elsewhere, it may be a good idea remove the language of terrorism from our political and legal vocabulary altogether because of its tendency to block off peaceful solutions to political conflicts.
But, even if we do not want to call what politicians are doing acts of terrorism, we might at least criticize them for generating terror. And I say “terror”, rather than “fear”, because the term “terror” might have more specific connotations. Someone can have fears about the consequences of a decision that they make while still rationally thinking about the pros and cons of making it in one way or another. But some sorts of threats do not leave the capacity for rational deliberation intact. As Jeremy Waldron notes, someone who is covered in gasoline and told to open a safe or be set on fire is unlikely to think clearly about whether the robbers are likely to follow through with their threat. Their state of terror (rather than mere fear) may lead them to simply do what they are told unreflectively.
In Hannah Arendt’s famous study, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the creation of terror in a population is identified as one of the central means of control of totalitarian regimes. Creating mere fear by threatening punishment for disobedience of laws can only go so far in keeping an authoritarian government in power. But undermining a people’s capacity for thinking for themselves by penetrating all aspects of society and generating a system in which one can never know when they are being watched and why they will be arrested can create a more stable system in which people stop thinking too much about whether it is pragmatic to obey or to resist injustice, and automatically go along with whatever their leaders tell them.
Warning about negative consequences of policies one disagrees with can be a valid political argument. But doing so in certain ways threatens to undermine rational and reasoned discussion of the issues at hand. Those who argue for the necessity of Brexit by the 31st October on any terms, or against a no-deal Brexit, based on the need to avoid civil unrest must tread carefully. They need to make their arguments in a way that does not create terror in a population, and maintains the conditions necessary for a full and measured examination of all evidence at hand.