Project Fear
This from a WSJ article by Sternberg:
Project Fear is back, alas, and it threatens to ruin our post-coronavirus politics for years.
That was the name for the strategy Prime Minister David Cameron deployed in his campaign against Brexit during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership. The point was to scare the bejeezus out of moderate voters who might otherwise be tempted to take a chance on leaving the bloc.
“Remain” advocates produced a steady flow of economic analyses warning of dire consequences if the electorate voted for Brexit. The economy would contract and unemployment would spike. Worse, Brexit would diminish Britain’s standing in the world. It would signal a form of spiritual and moral decay. In this way, Project Fear tried to transform the question of Europe from a policy debate into a moral crusade.
Americans have suffered through their own version of this phenomenon in the Trump era. It has never been enough to argue that most of his policy ideas are bad. Much of the media and his opponents on both the left and right present him as a mortal threat to the republic. Whether they’re ascribing to Mr. Trump authoritarian tendencies or accusing him of collusion with Russia, it’s all about stoking fear.
Sure enough, here comes Project Fear 3.0. This column has previously observed that policy makers are letting themselves be guided less by “the science”—which remains preliminary and conflicting—than by a perceived public clamor for a draconian response to the pandemic. The important word is “perceived,” since whatever outcry exists has been filtered through a media eager to hype the fear factor.
.........
A YouGov survey in 2019 found that with the passage of time 2016’s Remain voters had grown only more convinced Brexit would be bad for jobs, would leave the economy worse off, and would put Britain more at risk of a terrorist attack. A separate YouGov poll in January found Remainers making their peace with the referendum but only slowly: 38% of them said they were still angry over, in denial about, or determined to overturn the Brexit vote. Is it any wonder U.K. politics has become unhinged? The losing side of the referendum is only very slowly admitting that what it lost is a policy debate rather than an existential struggle. In the U.S., this is the origin of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Covid-19, a disease that threatens the lives of many vulnerable people, has an existential dimension Brexit and the Trump campaign lacked. But the danger of a similar outcome looms. Once fear infects politics, it tends to linger.
Project Fear is back, alas, and it threatens to ruin our post-coronavirus politics for years.
That was the name for the strategy Prime Minister David Cameron deployed in his campaign against Brexit during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership. The point was to scare the bejeezus out of moderate voters who might otherwise be tempted to take a chance on leaving the bloc.
“Remain” advocates produced a steady flow of economic analyses warning of dire consequences if the electorate voted for Brexit. The economy would contract and unemployment would spike. Worse, Brexit would diminish Britain’s standing in the world. It would signal a form of spiritual and moral decay. In this way, Project Fear tried to transform the question of Europe from a policy debate into a moral crusade.
Americans have suffered through their own version of this phenomenon in the Trump era. It has never been enough to argue that most of his policy ideas are bad. Much of the media and his opponents on both the left and right present him as a mortal threat to the republic. Whether they’re ascribing to Mr. Trump authoritarian tendencies or accusing him of collusion with Russia, it’s all about stoking fear.
Sure enough, here comes Project Fear 3.0. This column has previously observed that policy makers are letting themselves be guided less by “the science”—which remains preliminary and conflicting—than by a perceived public clamor for a draconian response to the pandemic. The important word is “perceived,” since whatever outcry exists has been filtered through a media eager to hype the fear factor.
.........
A YouGov survey in 2019 found that with the passage of time 2016’s Remain voters had grown only more convinced Brexit would be bad for jobs, would leave the economy worse off, and would put Britain more at risk of a terrorist attack. A separate YouGov poll in January found Remainers making their peace with the referendum but only slowly: 38% of them said they were still angry over, in denial about, or determined to overturn the Brexit vote. Is it any wonder U.K. politics has become unhinged? The losing side of the referendum is only very slowly admitting that what it lost is a policy debate rather than an existential struggle. In the U.S., this is the origin of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Covid-19, a disease that threatens the lives of many vulnerable people, has an existential dimension Brexit and the Trump campaign lacked. But the danger of a similar outcome looms. Once fear infects politics, it tends to linger.
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