Nicole Dy­er Grif­fith

Over the past few months I have no­ticed the in­creased use of the pol­i­tics of fear per­me­at­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion tac­tics of the Op­po­si­tion.This be­ing said, I has­ten to add that such ap­proach­es have oc­ca­sioned much ben­e­fit to the Op­po­si­tion as their strat­a­gems have been in sync with their tac­tics and as such have pro­duced the de­sired out­comes.The first such oc­ca­sion is what has be­come the now in­fa­mous Cal­cut­ta Ship state­ment.

De­con­struct­ing such an of­fer­ing out­side the realm of ef­fec­tive tar­get-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions sci­ence will mere­ly see an awk­ward and cer­tain­ly un­pleas­ant state­ment be­ing of­fered on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, with the at­ten­dant and ex­pect­ed re­sponse from the pop­u­la­tion of re­pul­sion, but alas, the state­ment of it­self–as sim­ple as it may ap­pear–turned out to be the defin­ing mo­ment of the Op­po­si­tion's cam­paign re­sult­ing in a wave of emo­tions rang­ing from fear to anx­i­ety to dread.

Such a con­cept is ti­tled fear mon­ger­ing or scare mon­ger­ing which, ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, is the use of fear to in­flu­ence the opin­ions and ac­tions of oth­ers to­wards some spe­cif­ic end.The feared ob­ject or sub­ject is some­times ex­ag­ger­at­ed, and the pat­tern of fear mon­ger­ing is usu­al­ly one of rep­e­ti­tion in or­der to con­tin­u­ous­ly re­in­force the in­tend­ed ef­fects of this tac­tic, some­times in the form of a vi­cious cir­cle.

Fear is one of, if not the best, mo­ti­va­tors out there. Most peo­ple, when faced with a re­al or per­ceived threat, will do some­thing to elim­i­nate the threat, ei­ther by fight­ing what has made them fear­ful or by get­ting away from the threat.This is the acute stress re­sponse or, as it is more pop­u­lar­ly known, the fight-or-flight re­sponse. From the com­mu­ni­ca­tions and po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tive, the de­sired out­come is to in­flu­ence the vot­er to act on such a re­sponse.

Many can add their per­spec­tives to the out­come of the elec­tions in To­ba­go; how­ev­er, one must take in­to ac­count the out­come of the mas­ter stroke of in­fus­ing fear in­to the equa­tion.The sec­ond such oc­cur­rence of the in­fu­sion of the pol­i­tics of fear by the Op­po­si­tion was the so-called la­belling of the mem­bers of the De­fence Force as "killing ma­chines."

We re­call the head­lines scream­ing such la­bels dur­ing the re­cent­ly de­ferred par­lia­men­tary de­bates on the De­fence and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Amend­ment Bill (2013).This sim­ple phrase was re­peat­ed at every op­por­tu­ni­ty by those op­posed to the pas­sage and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the bill, and re­gard­less of one's per­son­al feel­ing on the bill, one must agree that if you were to high­light one out­stand­ing point from the de­bates it is ex­act­ly this–sol­ders are killing ma­chines.

Such ex­pres­sions, when al­lowed to mush­room in the psy­che of the pop­u­la­tion, be­come em­bed­ded and chal­leng­ing to erase. This is termed dis­trac­tion by hor­ror, which sim­ply is a method that tries to cre­ate a con­nec­tion be­tween an op­po­nent's pro­pa­gan­da and hor­rif­ic events. (For ex­am­ple, when a mi­nor­i­ty is be­ing ar­rest­ed by the po­lice and one at­tempts to cre­ate a con­nec­tion with past un­just ac­tions).

Again, one notes the Op­po­si­tion's ef­fec­tive com­bi­na­tion of its strat­e­gy and tac­tics work­ing to­geth­er to cre­ate the de­sired out­come. From a com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­spec­tive, the Op­po­si­tion seems to have a very clear com­mu­ni­ca­tions agen­da, with a po­tent and high­ly ef­fec­tive ma­chin­ery de­signed to iden­ti­fy sim­ple, key emo­tive phras­es that evoke the very spec­tre of those things we fear most, or those things we cher­ish the most, be it the fear of Cal­cut­ta ships or the fear of killing ma­chines or pro­tect­ing our democ­ra­cy–they have found the na­tion­al nerve end­ings and have be­come mar­vel­lous at cre­at­ing synap­tic com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

�2 Gail Alexan­der

re­turns next week.