The April 5th edition of CBC Sunday Edition included a segment entitled The politics of fear. Certainly worth a Listen (26:03).
The use of fear as a method of swaying public opinion is longstanding and well used. Just as businesses use marketing and advertising to build brands, governments use fear to build support for an agenda or a particular piece of legislation. It is not a stretch to imagine government-sponsored focus groups testing the fear-factor of different messages.
It is hard to say whether there is a threshold of too much fear-based argument. But it can be said that most governments use this tool albeit in varying degrees. It is therefore very important that each person be sensitive to these methods of persuasion and assess information accordingly. It is important to call out a government when we individually feel the threshold has been crossed.
You can Listen (9:44) to my letter starting at 1:58 or read the transcript here.
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