The Mind-Killer

The uses and misuses of fear

Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th

The biological response provoked by fear is identical to that produced by excitement. The adrenal glands release epinephrine; the heart and breathing rates rise; the brain focus becomes sharper and more alert. Safety dulls your senses, while danger makes you feel alive.

Few Friday the 13th movies fans want to become Jason Voorhees. Even fewer want to be chased by a machete-wielding maniac in a hockey mask. Horror movies let us vicariously enjoy danger. Watching Jason creatively slice and dice campers is fun. Humans have enjoyed the frisson of fear since we first told each other ghost stories around a fire.

Those who aren’t satisfied by vicarious danger can get their thrills in various forms of extreme sports. But those practitioners also take extreme precautions to make sure their stunts succeed. The thrill comes in avoiding serious injury, not in finding it. As Ian Fleming said in a James Bond novel:

You only live twice
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face

Those who do not find outlets for their fear jones sometimes give their lives meaning by creating their own monsters. Often those monsters lurk in the swamp of politics. Donald Trump, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Elon Musk, and, of course, the Jews™ are just some of the many villains who don the hockey mask and run through the collective subconscious of the terminally bored.

Before anybody chimes in to explain that [X] really is a monster, I’m not concerned here with whether or not any of these named parties are guilty or innocent of any crime. I’m simply noting that many attribute near-supernatural powers to these monsters, yet complain constantly about them on public channels. They are objects of fear that allow detractors to star in their personal slasher film. They know deep down that the actor behind the hockey mask will never show up on their doorstep.

But because we’ve come to experience our lives through screens, many have trouble telling the difference between images and reality. Quite a few of social media’s angriest posters believe that their complaints about Donald tRump, Elon Muskrat, or Shlomo Shekelberg are actually blows struck against an Evil Empire. And smart propagandists have used this confusion to maintain their hold on power.

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From 2016 to 2020, we saw a great wave of terror concerning “Fascists” and “White Supremacists.” America was on the verge of a tyrannical takeover, and we were cautioned that we had to be “intolerant of intolerance” lest America become a Nazi Bar from sea to shining sea. Memes and misstatements could sink a career, and those who refused to speak out against the racist racists doing racisms everywhere were reminded that Silence = Complicity.

Unless you’re in prison, you’re not likely to run into an actual White Supremacist gang. The Ku Klux Klan is but a pale shadow of its former self, and most “Nazis” are more skilled at keyboard warfare than at actual bombings. A few spree shooters and 4chan posters notwithstanding, America is less racist than at any time in its history. But pointing that out was simply an exercise in “White Fragility” and a sign of one’s own suppressed (or overt) bigotry.

You might protest that these battles against terrorism were overwrought. If you did, you’re absolutely right. The idea that a “literal HITLER” had risen to power in America was ludicrous. Literal HITLER has as much chance of winning a presidential election as Literal JASON VOORHEES. To paraphrase John Lennon, “If you go wavin’ round swastikas/You ain’t gonna draw nobody to your cause.” Even journalists had a hard time keeping a straight face when they claimed White Supremacist “Boogaloo Boys” were the real culprits behind the George Floyd riots.

But for those promoting the fear, this was a feature, not a bug. Like witches, Nazis were a safe distraction. You could use the label to silence inconvenient critics and keep the rest in line by fear of the danger-haired Inquisition. You needn’t worry that the threat you created might become its own force to be reckoned with. After the fall of Soviet Afghanistan and the former CIA asset Osama bin Laden’s heel turn, American officials have become skittish about such things.

In 2015, Obergefell v Hodges made gay marriage legal throughout the United States. Today, being a homosexual is for most Americans about as shocking and controversial as being a chess player. This was great news for most gay Americans. For organizations that had been fighting against gay persecution since the lavender menace and the AIDS crisis, it was a threat to their bottom line. And so they shifted their focus to transgender persecution, complete with a sage warning that the tranny-haters would soon be coming after the homosexuals too.

Once again, the dangers trans people faced were greatly exaggerated. Most incidents of “transphobia” turned out to be something less than bloody. Misgendering a xe/xem/xit or suggesting that serial rapists shouldn’t be moved to women’s prisons because they identified as female was conflated with literal violence. But this hysteria kept groups like Stonewall and Human Rights Campaign relevant, so it received widespread promotion.

These fears also provided convenient excuses for bending, or even breaking, the rules. Strongmen regularly use real or fabricated threats to seize power and “restore order.” If they succeed in quelling the problem, they become wildly popular. We’re pack primates hard-wired to gravitate toward powerful, effective leaders. When we’re faced with the illusion danger, we’ll happily trade away our rights for the illusion of safety. But while fear can be useful, fear-based campaigns have a limited shelf life.

Image from lifeisforthefun’s Etsy shop

After a while, every audience starts to anticipate the jump scares. What once drew shrieks now inspires a yawn. Even the most bone-chilling slasher film winds up going direct to video sooner or later. Today Jason Voorhees has has joined Frankenstein on the kid’s party circuit. (And let’s not forget that in 1931 Frankenstein had audiences fainting in the aisles).

White Supremacists and Queerphobes, like all the best monsters, are simultaneously scary and entertaining. When you want to be frightened, they’re terrifying beasts out to kill you. When you want to laugh at them, they’re ignorant trailer park hicks. This holds your attention for a while: White Supremacist cops slaughtering Black men will attract a bigger audience than garden variety power-hungry cops beating up suspects. But after a while those monsters become less frightening and more laughable.

Many of these scares were wrought in the shadow of a greater terror, COVID-19. That campaign served as the template by which all those other panics rose and fell. COVID terror drove the battle against “disinformation” and “fake news” to a whole new level, with all the major social media outlets silencing any criticism of the government’s vaccination, lockdown, or masking requirements. COVID critics were fired, debanked, and even jailed while the pro-VAXXers cheered wildly.

But after weeks of lockdown tensions, George Floyd died in a Minneapolis parking lot. As the tensions exploded, many health experts declared that social justice was more important than social distance. When the infection numbers continued to decline even after unmasked crowds marched screaming through the streets, more and more audience members noticed the strings holding the monster up. This fed a wave of skepticism that only got bigger after the 2020 election controversies.

January 6, 2021 put some genuine fear in the hearts of Democrats and Deep Staters alike, and with good reason. Had a few dozen of those protestors arrived with weapons, they might well have snipped off the Legislative Branch. As often happens with frightened people, the new ruling party lashed out. As often happens with politicians, they also used this incident to call for increased control over social and mainstream media.

Alas, people react differently to real threats than they do to phony ones. Those who play-acted the fear used it to bully and browbeat critics. Their targets organized quietly on Discord, Telegram, and other channels. In 2024, they voted. So did many others who had silently grown tired of endless shrieking about the monsters under the bed. And as the curtain fell on the Biden administration, those who had once frightened opponents into silence discovered they were no longer scary.

Affected fears of tyranny fueled a #resistance against Trump. But while that #resistance was happy to don pink pussy hats and Handmaid costumes, few will be willing to face losing jobs and bank accounts. Even fewer will risk lengthy prison sentences. If you’re protesting and nobody is getting shot or arrested, you’re not a rebel, you’re a performer playacting rebellion. As Orange Jason starts drawing blood, there will be much less taste for theatrical lawbreaking. And those who created the monsters for their own purposes may find themselves cornered by a monster they cannot control.

Where strongmen seize the reins of government, faceless organizations would rather grab power one small piece at a time, gaining control in increments and running things behind the scenes. There is a place on the org chart for everybody and accountability for nobody. Alas, this approach has all the problems that come with dictatorship, but none of the benefits. And ultimately every junta degenerates into an empire or a collection of fiefdoms.

Bureaucrats and political hacks can only thrive in a safe environment. Even there they must give their constituents something to worry about. (“Climate change” is their current favorite). And as soon as the threatened floodwaters actually start rising, the PMCs get swept away in favor of a decisive leader. There’s no guarantee that leader will do any better than those bureaucrats, mind you. But the people would prefer facing catastrophe under a king rather than a gray nobody.

Carl Schmitt famously opened Political Theology with “Sovereign is he who defines the exception.” Bureaucrats prefer a world of carefully delineated rules and positions, with power decentralized and discreet. Sovereigns like Trump prefer centralized and flashy power that lets them get things done without worrying about pesky regulations and approvals. It’s not surprising that bureaucrats have the same visceral fear for strongmen that rabbits have for dogs.

But that pesky pack instinct likes power best when it’s centralized and flashy. And so bureaucrats worldwide have come to see the people they purportedly serve as a dangerous mass that is one vote away from turning things over to the next Hitler. They’ve fortified elections, disqualified uncooperative candidates, and isolated populists in a cordon sanitaire. They have taken it upon themselves to go beyond the rules and declare exceptions.

Unfortunately for them, this has led to many citizens realizing their votes no longer count and their voices are being silenced. This sends the populace in search of a savior. The bureaucrats increasingly find themselves forced to use harder forms of power. This, as all revolutionaries know, only radicalizes the people. Throw in an economic downturn and before you know it your bureaucrats are leaving the country or brushing up their resumes for the new regime.

Trump has inspired both these actions. PMCs and plutocrats who remain hostile have lost security clearances and government contracts. Those who have renounced their previous behavior have been generously forgiven. Like Caligula, Trump doesn’t care if they love him or hate him so long as they fear him.

As they find themselves losing ground to the strongman, the Deep State has few weapons to counter him. For years they’ve been warning the world that Trump is a dangerous tyrant. But after years of hysteria, dopamine burnout has set in. It’s hard to get the masses interested when you’re screaming “No, really, this time he really is burning the Constitution.” For their part, Trump’s most ardent supporters are more likely to cheer him on than to turn on him should he start locking up his opponents.

So what happens if the nightmare comes true?

I don’t expect concentration camps, gas chambers, jackbooted militias, or any of the other WW II tropes we’ve come to associate with tyranny. As I noted earlier, “Nazis” is lazy shorthand for “evil people who do evil things.” Anybody who is smart enough to seize and hold power is smart enough to realize they have to look like the good guy to a significant part of the population. And as John Michael Greer has noted, our image of Hollywood Nazis will work against us should a real Adolf Hitler (or should I say “Fred Halliot”?) come to power in a dysfunctional America.

Neither do I expect the resistance to be led by Never Trumpers and Sludgestackers. Protesting, like war, is generally a sport for the young. Today America’s median age is 39.2. Our older activists may bark, but they have no bite. The Boomers who are playacting today at #resistance may make some token marches and comments on Sludegstack. They will be tolerated because they are harmless and can be safely ignored in the name of “protecting free speech.”

The ongoing wave of Tesla attacks appears to be a fiery but mostly peaceful last gasp from Antifa sympathizers who fancy themselves revolutionaries. But where 2020 rioters received kit glove treatment, Trump appears to be taking a sterner line. Once some vandals are sent to prison and a few NGOs are sued into bankruptcy, those protests will end not with a bang but with a whimper. As the Chinese know well, even the most dedicated young warriors can be silenced if you simply apply enough force.

Many will sink into apathy and avoid political discussion altogether. The most enthusiastic anti-fascist doxers will happily switch sides and report dissenters and rebels for wrongthink. Cancellation games were always about power no matter how much the SJWs presented them as a moral crusade. They’ll support any political movement that lets them grind their betters under their heels.

The CCP used force and repression to put down the student protests. But China’s strong economy and rising living standards did more to quell hard feelings than the tanks and guns. No matter who is in power, we’re likely to see a hard economic downturn within the next year or two. As food insecurity grows, so will the unrest and, with it, increasing crackdowns on unrest. This will only make matters worse, as few things help you overcome fear like hunger — especially your child’s hunger.

When we’ve reached this point, the best we can hope for is to replace a bad dictator with a better one. Postwar Americans interpreted “freedom” much differently than frontier Americans did 100 years earlier. Our government rests in Enlightenment ideals and modern technology, both of which passed their apex some time ago. Young Americans have never known their country as anything but a Neoliberal Empire. And while Neoliberalism may die before Fukayama, imperialism has a much longer history.

In a typical authoritarian empire, most local issues are handled by the locals. So long as they pay their taxes and don’t cause trouble, they’re generally free to preserve their customs and their faith and do as they wish. The American Empire, like the Soviet Union it defeated, sought total control over its subjects: it gave them rainbow flags and Coca-Cola instead of hammers and sickles. Like the Soviet Union, it failed.

Out of the ashes of bureaucracy we may see a new emperor arise. Or we may see America divided into a handful of squabbling regions controlled by local strongmen. In each case we will be left to define ourselves in a world where our options are far more constrained. But define ourselves we must and, as any Existentialist will tell you, that is the most frightening thing of all.