Fear Franchise
By Omar Rashid Chowdhury
26 December, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Fear is marketed. And, fear makes profit.
Fear is one of the controlling mechanisms of the prevalent global system to reap profit. Fear profiteering of the system exploits both the dominating and the dominated classes. The system acts as a self-consuming monster in its thirst to profit. While the system feeds on fear it also sows seeds of dissention and intensifies class antagonism that can have radical results.
Two courses of fear run within the system: Fear in the dominating propertied classes, and fear in the dominated classes. These two types of fears, it can be said, are class-based: of the rich, and of the poor.
The dominating propertied classes fear loss of properties and assets that includes self, family, as they consider, and social unrest that, they perceive, threatens their properties, assets and privileges while the dominated classes fear destitution, unemployment, hunger, humiliation and extinction (although the propertied classes can't afford extinction of the poor). These two types of fears impact on the respective classes: their individual members and group dynamism, living pattern including survival technique, mobility, etc.
The propertied dominating classes that comprise of a few percents continue to profit, even from their own fear. Fear drives the dominating classes to make them alienated from broader society by themselves. And a section of capital profits from that fear also.
As ABC News reported on May 20, 2013, there has been a soar in bomb shelter sales over the past 15 years. Installations of 100,000 sq. ft. underground dwellings with capacity to hold dozens of individuals for months or years are there in the fear market even. Spartan bomb shelters have developed into futuristic dwellings with all appendages and privileges that money can buy. “‘You can have all your major amenities: TV, high power and high voltage (appliances)... horticulture rooms where you can grow vegetables and gardens, a full shower, all the amenities of your full home. We're not limiting what people can do,' said Brad Roberson, marketing director for Rising S Company, which builds and installs custom shelters.” Of course, the basic requirements remain protection from nuclear, chemical and biological attacks with ventilation and toilet system in blast and fallout proof casing. The only limit is money. [1]
Bunkers with prices ranging from $54,000 to $10 million are out there with secret doors, hidden passageways, panic rooms, bulletproof glass and even basketball courts and hangers holding planes. It has been a good business since 2000 according to Sharon Packer, co-owner of Utah Shelter Systems in Draper, Utah. “‘People were concerned about the very real issue of possible effects on our computers. ‘Y2K' started the upsurge, and for 13 years it's been a good steady business,' Packer said.” “‘After 9/11 we had a big surge in the East, in New York.'” Fears of nuclear fallout or social instability have settled in with a nuclear armed Iran or North Korea. Concerns about government failures and climate changes are also high. All this fear has been efficiently channeled and tuned into a tool to make profit. [2]
The fear-profiteering essentially keeps collective effort and cooperation out of table. “‘The thing about a bomb shelter is it assumes a societal breakdown, and this is one of the great myths that's been propagated since the 19th century, that society will break down and it's every family for himself, which is not what happens in a disaster,'” said Spencer Weart, the author of the ‘The Rise of Nuclear Fear'. [3]
“Only 19 percent of Americans in a Gallup poll last month said they trust government in Washington to do what is right always or most of the time. Eighty-one percent said they rarely, if ever, trust the government.” As trust hits a low, fear settles in, and with that Survivalist Industries training people on survival methods. [4]
Insurance and security industries, stock exchanges, pharmaceuticals, wellness industry, IT industry, gun industry, consulting farms, hospitals all profit from fear, essentially fear of the dominating classes. Thus the dominating classes turn into a monster that even feeds on itself to satiate its thirst for profit.
As the dominating classes run abound with fear, their alienation from the broader society turns stark. They intend to exist alone, inconsiderate to the existence of others. Yet they fail to recognize that their conditions of existence lie within respective broader society, the masses of people whom it subjugates, dominates and feeds on.
The dominating classes forget that in a scenario of apocalypse, even with fortified bunkers ‘adorned' with planes and swimming pools they cannot survive alone. They are dependent on the people whom the classes have alienated themselves from. Without them no one remains to drive and refuel their planes, produce and supply food, clothes and luxuries that they are habituated with. And, without them, certainly there remains none to be deceived, whipped or exploited!
Fear in the dominating propertied classes makes them consider their members' selves as assets. As they set asset value to those selves they are dehumanized. They do not consider their members as humans. The dehumanization of the dominating classes is deeply pervading and erodes their human properties and characteristics.
The threats of apocalypse that the dominating classes fear have been created by the classes themselves. This is a contradiction unto itself. As the dominating classes hunger more for wealth, it carries on more appropriation and expansion that intensifies crises and generates more crises.
And now, the tremors of these crises are felt in that upper echelon of a few. What do they do to survive these crises?
They want to survive alone; they believe they can survive alone! A seeming “strange” phenomenon! They try to live by the wrong philosophy of exclusively individual existence, ignoring the fact that existence itself is innately dependent on cooperation.
Yet there remains stark contrast in the dominated classes. “In the richest economy of the world, 146 million or half the population is in poverty (49 million) and near poor (97 million), 18.4 million homes are empty although there are 842,000 homeless in a given week, 22 empty homes for every homeless person but they can't find homes, wages are stagnant although workers produce more than ever; if McDonald's can afford to pay its CEO $15 million per year it can afford to pay its workers a living wage of $25K, the contradiction that an Occupy Wall Street journal termed, citing LiberationNews.org, ‘The Absurd Contradictions of Capitalism'.” [5]
Contradictions indeed! While for every homeless person 22 empty homes lie around, million-dollar fortified bunkers for survival of a few are constructed only over whimsical fear!
The system uses fear as a part of the profit making process. The dominated classes are exploited subtly, sometimes loudly, with fear. Social insecurity, humiliation, destitution etc. are manifestations of the fear that lead the dominated classes to plunge into a race to serve the system. This is rather a straight forward way to profit.
Fear of the dominated classes is a controlling mechanism of the system. Parallel to greed, a manipulating tool or a driving motive, depending on the related class, of the system, fear is used to control and drive the masses, their actions and psychology. Seeds of fear are sowed deep in society by the system. Fear of unemployment, humiliation, hunger, homelessness, destitution turn reins in the system's claws. The masses are thus driven to serve the system as best they can and tied to the profit-wheel of the system that squeezes out maximum possible profit from them all the while restrained from rising against the system.
The dominated classes are thus made to turn indifferent to the system. Fear is also used to divide the dominated classes and create competitions among them that work as a safety tool for the system.
“Workers comprise the subordinate class. They are normally in the position of having to react to decisions made by others. They are dependent upon employers, and they are at the same time apprehensive of them, since employers hold the power to deny to workers the life-sustaining connection to the means of production. Exploitation, dependence, and insecurity—in a system where workers are bombarded with the message that they and they alone make the decisions that determine their circumstances—make for a toxic brew, which when drunk often enough, creates a personality lacking in self-confidence, afraid to take chances, easily manipulated and shamed (of course, on the bright side, these injuries have given rise to a massive “self-help” industry).” [6]
“Racism/sexism, imperialism, media propaganda, and repression further distort the social matrix and hide its class basis:
• Endless war magnifies and deepens nationalism and promotes both racism and male chauvinism. Wars send workers back to society badly damaged in mind and body.
• Imperialism does the same thing as war and is, of course, the root cause of it.
• Constant Orwellian propaganda by the media, think tanks, politicians, and business leaders denies the class polarization of capitalist society. An important element of this misinformation campaign is the mythology surrounding the “free market” economy.
• As in the earliest stages of capitalism, naked violence ultimately serves to suppress class consciousness and sow seeds of doubt among workers who might otherwise be inclined to mutiny against the system.” [7]
Thus profiteering turns easier with fear imbued within the dominated classes. With the suppression of class consciousness and sowing of doubt-induced-disunity, the dominating classes enjoy an unhindered flow of profit. The profit making process is justified by the media controlled by the system. Fear is propagated and engineered by the media. The propagation of fear is a primal function of the system. Fear destabilizes unity and moral of masses, which in turn helps the system to continue unchecked profit-making.
Fear profiteering increases as crisis deepens. With deepening of crises both fear of the dominating classes and fear of the dominated classes increase. These two lines of fear increase to a breaking point (Fig. 1), where class antagonism turns starkly visible, and quantitative changes turn to qualitative changes. Class antagonism surfaces over the social plane with obvious radical physical and philosophical results.
“The daily debasement heaped upon working men and women breeds anger and rage. Often rage is turned inward and shows itself as depression, addiction, or suicide. Frequently it is directed against children, spouses, lovers, or against some great mass of “others,” like immigrants, women, radical minorities, or gay people. But sometimes it is correctly aimed at the class enemy and takes the form of riots, sabotage, strikes, demonstrations, even revolution. And then the creativity bound and gagged for so long bursts forth as people try to take control of their labor and their lives. This is what I think of as the ‘miracle of class struggle.'” [8]
Figure 1 : Fear Graph
The difference between the two lines of fear to some extent indicates the magnitude of class antagonism (Fig. 1) that increases with increasing fear. At the breaking point the class position of domination can change radically or even abruptly. The “miracle of class struggle” turns the tide and class positions are altered, the dominated turns into a dominating force. Fear acts on a force, a new force unique in quality, a force without fear.
References:
1. ABC News , “Bomb Shelter Boom Sees Underground Pools, Basketball Courts”, 20 May, 2013
2. ibid.
4. ABC News , “ Survivalist Industry Thriving on Debt Default Threat” , 15 Oct., 2013
5. Farooque Chowdhury, “ A Few Numbers In A Capitalist Economy”, Countercurrents.org , 13 Oct., 2013
6. Michael D. Yates, “The Injuries of Class”, Monthly Review , Vol. 59, Issue 8, January, 2008
7. ibid.
8. ibid.
Omar Rashid Chowdhury is a student of Civil Engineering in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka.
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