PHOBIA fear scam

this began/neglected as entinememe eg see chemophobiathat fear of chemical is more dangerous than chemicals --> ACSH

MERRI OK

SEE ENTINE

see also Scams fraud con grift

see also hype sensation fear2

see alarmist

i guess i need a separate category for scams in general BUT scams often prey on fear, eg crash coming so prep

see psychology of GOP

but now maybe include fear mongering eg left violent mob rule post kavanagh

https://www.alternet.org/heres-real-reason-conservatives-are-terrified-so-called-left-wing-mob

terrorism islamophobe fear monger, fear of sharia law

build a wall mexican rapists

fear of satanist (child molester pizzagate?)

fear of commie world govt blk helo Agenda 21

fear they will take our guns

war on xmas

see conspiracy theory

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gmail 3 26

Entine

Daily update ⋅ March 10, 2026

Microplastics as a blueprint for health scares: How the "panic pipeline" of activists and ...

Genetic Literacy Project

Jon Entine is the executive director of the Science Literacy Project/Genetic Literacy Project. Henry I. Miller is a physician and molecular ...

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shillenberger on realclear investigations

https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/6/29/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare

no lnx

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

The author in Maranhão, Brazil, 1995]

Lire en français ici. Leer en español aquí.

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level

We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California.In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputationand career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.

:{:{}:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.

And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes,Apocalypse Nevercovers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.

Some highlights from the book:

Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress

The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land

The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium

100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%

We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities

Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%

Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did

“Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions

Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon

The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.

Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop.

The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.

The invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment. Another one has been to the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. "Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.

“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same. Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets. Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

---

aha fear phobia plus indoctrination [ Greta]; proto- CRT?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/2021-fox-news-still-spreading-dangerous-climate-denial

no vids

on a near-daily basis, Fox News hosts, anchors, and guests spew misinformation and false narratives aimed at tanking efforts to address the climate crisis. These tactics to delay climate action or downplay the seriousness of our warming planet have often been referred to as the new climate denial -- since the actual denial of the scientific consensus that climate change is happening has mostly been pushed to the fringes of both politics and the traditional media landscape.

Fox deploys the new denial so often, it’s easy to forget that the network is one of the few highly influential media outlets that still promote one of the most dangerous lies of our time: Human activity is not overheating our climate.

This lie has existed for over five decades and for five decades has been repeatedly debunked. Its origins and merchants have been exposed; those who have continued to perpetuate it have been discredited; and our own experience during each unprecedented storm, historical heat wave, and apocalyptic wildfire has proven again and again what science has told us to expect from a warming world.

But in 2021, you can turn on Fox News and watch prime-time host Tucker Carlson quip that “not even climate experts understand the climate” or watchFox contributor Dagen MacDowell suggest that climate change is a hoax because it is cold in April.

And in 2021, there is still no federal response to the climate crisis on the books, despite decades of warnings from scientists and with mounting support for climate action even among the largest companies and businesses in the U.S.

Fox is still fueling the lie that our planet is not warming

From insisting the science on climate change is not settled to deliberately misconstruing weather with climate, Fox News is still pushing the idea that human-made climate change is not real, despite overwhelming evidence and consensus in the scientific community.

In a segment on the April 28 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, host Tucker Carlson andFox News contributor Sean Duffydiscussed how the “critical environmental movement has infiltrated” schools and colleges, is scaring children about the climate crisis,and is convincing them to not have children. At the end of the segment, Duffy claimed that climate change is a “political movement, not a scientific movement” and that it is wrong to assume “the science is settled in climate”.

the segment aired just a week after Carlson and ultra-conservative political commentator and Fox contributor Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking climate change and racism. (For the record, experts say the two are “inexorably” linked.) Steyn, not satisfied with mocking the relationship between climate and racism, went on to attack the scientific consensus that warming is human-made, by invoking a defamation suit filed against him by climate scientist Michael Mann:

MARK STEYN (GUEST): This is supposed to be science. I've been in a 10-year lawsuit in Washington, D.C., up against the guy who invented the climate change hockey stick, and he is a scientist and his position is that in the last millennium -- nothing happened for nine centuries and then you, Tucker, got into your SUV and fried the planet. And that is a completely idiotic theory. But at least he's not trying to sell the world on the idea that somehow climate change correlates to racism.

[vid]

not to be outdone, the following night, prime-time hostLaura Ingraham focused her April 22 monologue on “the big climate con.” Ingraham’s “climate con” list included misleading arguments against the benefits of climate action like job creation; attempts to discredit the role of -- and the need for -- global cooperation in dealing with the crisis; and false claims that the scientific warnings on climate are not sound or well understood. For good measure, Ingraham closed her monologue by mocking and attacking young climate activists.

in back-to-back shows on April 29 and April 30, Ingraham suggested that the climate crisis along with other pressing issues have been manufactured to “justify the left’s brazen efforts to take more of our money and more of our liberty” and they “only exist in the minds of leftists ideologues who hate America anyway.”

Denial paired with fear-mongering about the “left’s radical agenda” exemplifies the brand of climate denial Fox has peddled for years, and some network figures disingenuously equate weather with climate to push that narrative.

On the April 21 edition ofThe Five, Fox News contributor Dagen McDowell ended a rant against the Paris Climate Agreement by suggesting that abnormally cold April weather from Texas to the Great Lakes somehow disproves that global warming is occurring.

DAGEN MCDOWELL (CO-HOST): Here is your forecast today and why they stopped calling it global warming. April 21, 2021: Freeze warnings from Texas to the Great Lakes. Record low temperatures engulfing the heartland. Oh, and Indians/White Sox game in Cleveland had to be postponed for snow and cold.

This bit by MacDowell is both painfully stupid and reminiscent of a body of tweets by then-President Donald Trump, who conflated weather with global warming while suggesting that the term “climate change” was adopted by scientists and advocates to hide the incongruity between major winter storms and the idea of warming.

Interestingly, the term “climate change” was promoted by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz as part of the infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.

Fox Nation host Lara Logan made the same inane claim on the February 19 edition of Outnumbered, in a segment about the winter storm that caused the deadly power failure in Texas:

“It's time for us to have an honest conversation about renewable energy and about global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it,” said Logan. “This is the first time in Texas’ history that it has had a winter storm warning. So this is — this means that it is not getting warmer and warmer and warmer, simply.”

Fox has long been a platform for climate deniers

Fox News hosts and contributors not only push climate denial but regularly feature discredited deniers on their programs. Notorious climate denier Marc Morano -- who has no scientific background -- and Bjorn Lomborg -- whose spiel is dangerously claiming that climate change is happening, but not a big deal -- have both appeared on Fox for more than a decade. Just this year, both have appeared across Fox programming at least six times from January through April. Notably, Fox hosted both the day after President Joe Biden took office to attack his agenda on climate change.

Larry Kudlow, a long-time climate denier who formerly served as economic adviser to Trump and now hosts a show on Fox Business, has also been one of Fox’s go-to commentators on policies related to climate change across both the network’s so-called “news” and “opinion” programs.

But Morano, Lomborg, and Kudlow are far from the only climate deniers and contrarians on Fox’s roster. Over the past several yearsRush Limbaugh, Joe Bastardi, Steve Milloy, and Patrick Moore all appeared regularly on Fox to push climate denial and misinformation. (In 2019, Moore said on Fox & Friends that “the climate crisis ... is not only fake news, it’s fake science”, and the line was picked up by Trump and tweeted to his millions of followers.)

Importantly, like Morano and Lomborg, none of these commentators are climate scientists, many have strong financial ties to the fossil fuel industry, and all have made a living out of obstructing efforts to address the climate crisis. With the exception of the late Rush Limbaugh, none would have had a megaphone to spread their lies absent Fox News.

Supported by advertisers, Fox runs cover for climate inaction

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that if immediate and bold actions are not taken, then we will face dire climate disruption -- ever-increasing extreme and abnormal weather that threatens our homes, our food, our livelihoods, our economy, and our lives.

The stakes could not be higher.

The purpose of Fox hosts’ and contributors’ climate denial is to maintain an air of doubt about the existence and reality of our dangerously changing climate to provide cover for Republicans, who actively work to do nothing to stop the climate crisis, and the Big Polluters that bankroll their campaigns. This climate denial is also the foundation of the network’s persistent attacks -- across “opinion” and “straight news” programming -- on any proposed actions to reduce our carbon emissions and transition to a clean-energy economy. By extension, companies that advertise on Fox are party to climate inaction.

Publicly, many of these companies that run ads on Fox, including big insurers Allstate and Liberty Mutual have acknowledged the severe threat of the climate crisis. While others like General Motors, which is also among the network’s biggest advertisers, are actively calling for significant reduction in climate pollution. On the same day Dagen McDowell mocked global warming because it was cold in Texas, General Motors, along with 407 other corporations and businesses, issued a press release for an open letter to Biden supporting his goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. By continuing to sponsor Fox, these brands expose the cavern between their words and actions and associate themselves with a dangerous hostility to facts and science.

To be sure, Fox News is an accomplice to the impending climate emergency we face as a country and as part of the global community -- and so are those that support its programming with ads.

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dr dis prep 2011

The Use of Psychology to control Unwitting Minds Through Fear. Jay Lehr,

Ph.D. Dr. Lehr is Heartland Institute Senior Fellow and Science Director. He has

authored more than 400 articles and 12 books.

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12 21 // ingraham agw will be used as pretext for ag21 control, but implies fear?

Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior.Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I'm describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.

Take this example: In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania suggested that Americans had been victimized by President Biden's "one-size-fits-all" COVID-19 "rules that limit our freedom." According to Oz, U.S. citizens "want government to get out of their way to stop scaring them into submission."

If we set aside the sheer stupidity of a doctor suggesting that we need "as many different approaches as possible" to the pandemic, the critical takeaway is Oz's claim that Biden's policy is designed to victimize the public by scaring them, taking away their freedoms, and destroying their dignity. According to this logic, refusing to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or support public health policy is a valid defense, rather than bullying behavior that puts everyone in peril.

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https://www.desmog.com/2021/11/16/four-major-climate-denial-scare-tactics-twitter/

Climate Deniers Are Using These Four Major Scare Tactics to Stop Climate Action

From doomsday scenarios to conspiracies totally removed from reality, a Twitter analysis found the top fear-based narratives that today’s climate deniers are spreading to prevent climate policy.

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CMD Outlined ACSH Tactics in "Panic Attack"

CMD first described ACSH in its 1994 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, about how the corporate PR industry and corporate front groups try to persuade the public to ignore health concerns about corporate products and practices. ACSH is one of the groups discussed in that book by CMD founder John Stauber.

CMD profiled ACSH again in 1998, noting that although ACSH styles itself as a "scientific" organization, it does not carry out any independent primary research. Instead, it specializes in generating media advisories that criticize or praise scientists depending on whether they agree with ACSH's views. It has mastered the modern media sound byte, issuing a regular stream of news releases with catchy, quotable phrases responding to hot-button environmental issues. To read more, see the page Panic Attack: ACSH Fears Nothing but Fear Itself.

Since then, CMD has written numerous stories about ACSH's industry ties, including an expose in 2012 about how ACSH was identified by Syngenta as a vehicle for pushing back about concerns about the weedkiller atrazine. Syngenta has funded ACSH (see below). More information about ACSH and Atrazine is available at CMD's AtrazineExposed.org website.

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acsh

also vaping, J&J powder...

AAAS Runs Dishonest Glyphosate Story, Then Deletes It. Is Politics to Blame?

:{:{}:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the foremost pro-science organizations in the world. Not only does it advocate for good science and science policy, it publishes Science, the prestigious journal read globally by millions. Unfortunately, AAAS has gotten a bit weird in recent months.

UK Parliament Endorses E-Cigarettes to Help Smokers. Will U.S. Follow?

U.S. public health agencies struggle to endorse an obvious solution to a true public health menace. Hopefully, the UK Parliament will provide a much-needed boost to the forces of common sense.

Glyphosateand Pesticides: Et Tu, Live Science?

:{:{}:

Normally a reliable source of information, Live Science published an article that is a dream for anti-pesticide and anti-chemical fearmongers.

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ccdh tox 10 gets two?!

Media Research Center (MRC) is a think tank founded in 1987 by political activist Brent Bozell.54 It bills itself as “America’s Media Watchdog” and attacking “leftist bias in the news media and popular culture”.55 The group has attacked media coverage of climate science.56 MRC’s revenue comes from contributions, gifts, and ad revenue. According to tax documents, it earned over $11 million in revenue in 2019, including $604,000 from ads.57

Between 2010 and 2017, MRC received nearly $19 million from hedge fund billionaire and Republican donor Robert Merceraccording to tax documents.58

In 2017, MRC sponsored a conference by climate denier think tank the Heartland Institute, which was also attended by Robert Mercer.59 Other funders include fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, which has a record of donating to climate sceptic organizations.60

MRC uses its NewsBusters website to criticize media coverage of climate science.61 The site often uses the phrase “climate alarmist” to refer to people who highlight the threat of climate change.62

MRC also operates the media outlets CNSNews.com and MRCTV.63

[eg pix] this NewsBusters article brands climate science as “alarmism” and promotes the suggestion that “so-called ‘hottest year’ claims… are political statementsdesigned to persuade the public that the government needs to take action on man-made climate change.”64 This article has carried Google ads for the tech giant’s own Chrome web browser.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/noam-chomsky-republican-party/

alexh

The United States has had 17 different presidents during Noam Chomsky's lifetime, from Calvin Coolidge to Joe Biden — and the left-wing author, now 92, has lived through major historical events including the Great Depression, Watergate, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chomsky discussed the challenges of the Biden era during a recent interview with author/journalist David Masciotra for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Chomsky discussed his most recent book, "Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance," in the interview with Masciotra, warning that people who are hurting economically can be manipulated by far-right extremists. Chomsky has been a blistering critic of neoliberal economics, which he said continues to fail millions of people in the United States.

"I've seen it over and over," Chomsky told Masciotra. "During the Kennedy and Johnson years, the technocratic and meritocratic elite, my colleagues from Harvard and MIT, were flocking down to Washington to show how the world should be run. Well, in Vietnam, we saw what came of that. It was not unpredictable. Those of us in the streets were warning of it all along. Now, it is the same. Neoliberalism, whatever is in the minds of people who advocate for it — maybe they don't even think about it — is an explicit effort…. to hand power to private institutions, which are dedicated to self-enrichment."

Neoliberalism, Chomsky added, only worsens the divide between the haves and the have-nots in the United States.

"The majority of the population gets by paycheck to paycheck," Chomsky told Masciotra. "Real wages have stagnated for 40 years. The gains of productivity growth concentrate in very few pockets. This leads to…. unfocused anger. Is it surprising? People aren't told what is really robbing them. Instead, they are told that it is immigrants, Blacks, some pedophiles from outer space, if you believe QAnon — anything but what is actually happening."

When economic conditions are unfavorable to the working class, Chomsky noted, Republicans try to distract their voters with "cultural issues."

"The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich, understood in the 1970s that you can't get votes by coming to people and saying, 'I want to rob you, and hand everything you have over to the rich and corporate sector,'" Chomsky explained. "Somehow, that doesn't work. You have to turn to what are called 'cultural issues,' meaning everything but what matters for your life. So, Paul Weyrich, one of the main Republican strategists, by the mid-1970s got a flash of insight and realized that if the Republicans pretend — stress 'pretend'— to be opposed to abortion, they'll pick up the evangelical vote and the northern Catholic vote."

Noting that the Republican Party is becoming "increasingly dangerous and brazenly antidemocratic," Masciotra asked Chomsky to discuss the political climate of 2021. And Chomsky agreed with his description of the modern GOP.

Chomsky said of the Republican Party, "They can mobilize the people they've turned into raging monsters, and get them to attack these communist rats who want the country flooded with rapists and murderers so that the White race suffers genocide. You know the whole story. That's the Republican Party. It's not a political party anymore. It's very dangerous."

The 92-year-old author added that scapegoating is an effective tool of the far right in 2021 just as it was when he was a kid during the 1930s and Jews were targeted by Nazis. He explained:

There are other parts of it that are just as dangerous. For example, just recently, Pew Research Center came out with one of its regular polls on major issues facing the country. They had a choice of 15 major issues, and people were asked to rank them. It was divided between Republicans and Democrats. Take a look at Republicans. At the very bottom — 13 percent — the most important question that has ever arisen in human history:global warming. They don't call it that. They call it "climate change," which is more neutral. But only 13 percent think that is a major problem.It is only the most important problem that's ever arisen — the question of survival. Then you go to the problems they are most concerned about — illegal immigration, the deficit. This is the result of very effective propaganda. Imposing common sense, manufacturing consent, year after year — turning people into the kind of people that supported the Nazis. Going back to my childhood, I remember them right here in the United States. These were the people who wanted to get rid of the Jews, because "the Jews are destroying civilization."

"If people are isolated, atomized, with no support groups, no involvement in constructive activities, they are prey to this attack on their moral and intellectual integrity," Chomsky continued. "Go back to what I said, the Republican leadership is overjoyed at the moves toward some humane behavior on the part of Democrats. They know, especially with (former President Donald) Trump — who is a genius at this —that they can organize and mobilize crazed groups who really believe they need their guns to save the White race from genocide. You can drive people to that."

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http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html

bpa fights back

by Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust of the Journal Sentinel

Published on: 8/22/2009

Bill Carteaux paced the stage with the intensity of a general about to send troops into bloody battle.

He is at war against mounting momentum to ban bisphenol A,a key ingredient in hard, clear plastic products. Studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, testicular cancer, reproductive deformities and neurological defects.

Carteaux, president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, represents manufacturers of thousands of products made with BPA. Sales of that chemical now top $6 billion a year.

For decades, the chemical industry has been able to control the debate on whether BPA is harmful to human health. Now the Food and Drug Administration, which had relied on industry-financed studies to declare the chemical safe, is reconsidering its determination. The decision is expected by Nov. 30.

"We are under attack from all fronts," Carteaux told the audience at the group's annual meeting in June.

And with increasing urgency, the industry is pushing back - hard.

The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics - and people - the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry's arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipediaand YouTube.

A four-month investigation by the Journal Sentinel reveals a highly calibrated campaign by plastics makers to fight federal regulation of BPA, downplay its risks and discredit anyone who characterizes the chemical as a health threat. The newspaper examined thousands of pages of Internal Revenue Service reports, disclosure forms and e-mails between government scientists and lobbyists as well as the industry's own public relations materials.

The documents offer a rare glimpse at the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working the system.

In May, the Journal Sentinel reported e-mails obtained from the FDA showed how federal regulators deferred in recent years to chemical industry lobbyists, allowing them effectively to write public policy on the chemical's safety.

The newly discovered documents show agency scientists have relied on chemical industry lobbyists to help draft public safety standards on BPA for much longer, more than a decade.

Details of meetings between federal regulators and chemical industry lobbyists are found in the archives of the Tobacco Institute, the lobby group of the tobacco industry. A court settlement in 1998 disbanded the institute and opened the records to the public.

Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government's assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.

The Tobacco Institute documents show administrators from the FDA routinely turned to chemical industry scientists to establish the government's safety level for BPA. Government scientists relied on test results performed by industry scientists without independent confirmation.

A 1997 briefing by lawyers for plastics industry executives confirms how government regulators looked to industry scientists to determine how much BPA was safe in food packing. After discussions with government scientists on their conclusions,Jerome Heckman of the Washington, D.C., law firm Keller and Heckman wrote: "We believe FDA relied heavily on original data supplied by (the association)."

'Tipping point'

Carteaux, the industry official who spoke at the June convention, declined to be interviewed. But the urgency of his message is clear in the videotape of his presentation to association members.

"We are at the tipping point," Carteaux said. "Legislation and regulation threaten to fundamentally change our business model."

At another point, he noted: "We can't continue to fight back just at the reactive stage when things are emotionally charged. We have to take the offensive and react quicker."

New public relations materials show how the chemical industry is getting more aggressive about protecting its image as worries about chemicals in plastics mount - often in new and subtle ways.

Chemical makers and plastics industry executives are putting up their own versions of news clips on social media outlets such as YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs. Often, they are disguised as neutral, unbiased information and rarely reveal the source.

So what might look to consumers researching BPA on the Internet as independent information are often stories written by chemical industry public relations writers.

Allegiances are not always explained. The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth, editor of Statistical Assessment Service,also known as STATS. He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.

Butterworth explained his stealth public relations campaign in a 2006 article in Chemical Week magazine.

"Companies need to develop a public information policy that is proactive in educating the public and tackling the claims of activist groups in real time," Butterworth said. "Most of the companies are like a deer in the headlights, and traditional PR is useless in dealing with these problems."

In June, Butterworth authored a 27,000-word review of the media's coverage of BPA that is featured on plastics industry Web sites.

STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.

Media managers for the plastics industry also monitor the Internet for negative stories about chemicals, including BPA. They post their own version of the stories, significantly downplaying any potential danger and dismissing concerns about BPA safety as "e-rumors."

For instance, in April 2008, after Canada announced it was declaring BPA a toxin and moving to ban it from baby bottles, chemical makers launched their own Web site, www.factsonplastic.com. It features nine videos, all posted on YouTube and intended to debunk worries about BPA.

One video shows Liz Weiss, a registered dietitian, discussing how to microwave with plastic.

"If it says 'microwave safe' or 'microwavable,' feel confident that you can use that plastic wrap in the microwave," she says.

The Journal Sentinel reported last year that 10 products labeled "microwave safe" or marketed for children's use actually leached the chemical when heated. The label "microwave safe" is not a government designation or a guarantee the product does not contain BPA.

In the video, Weiss smiles into the camera and says of plastic containers: "You can make beautiful vegetables, high in nutrition."

What's more, her recipes are featured on a Web site, plasticsinfo.org, sponsored by the American Chemistry Council.

In another video, Sharon Kneiss, vice president of the organization's plastics division, criticizes a report that had aired on NBC-TV's "Today" show, advising parents to discontinue using certain plastic food containers.

"That report clearly confused and frightened the public, and they hurt the integrity of the products," she says.

Kneiss says the FDA declared the chemical to be safe for all use - but does not mention that this determination is under review or that another government group, the National Toxicology Program, found some concern for infants and fetuses exposed to BPA.

"Parents should be confident in that affirmation and that we are safely using these products," Kneiss says.

Industry image makers also plan to link to search engines such as Google and Yahoo, so their items will pop up when readers are searching the Internet for information about BPA, public relations materials show.

The group also plans to launch a Web site aimed at helping consumers, particularly young shoppers, find information about plastic products.

"It is a targeted sharpshooter approach as opposed to spray and pay," Tracy Cullen, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the plastics association, told Plastics News Reports, a trade publication.

$10 million campaign

Carteaux's group - the Society of the Plastics Industry - has launched a $10 million campaign to sell the benefits of plastic to people ages 18 to 28 who are the likeliest to be buying baby products in the next decade. The association has committed $400,000 to the effort and hopes to raise the rest in the next few years.

This is running in conjunction with efforts by the group's sister organization, the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical makers that supply the raw materials.

Notes obtained by the Journal Sentinel of a meeting last May by food packaging association executives and chemical industry lobbyists showed how desperately they are trying to downplay concerns about BPA's safety.

The newspaper reported they talked about how to find "the holy grail" - a pregnant woman to serve as spokeswoman for the industry. The plan called for the woman to talk about the benefits of BPA, presumably to undermine concerns about the chemical's damaging effects on fetuses and infants.

Industry executives also discussed scare tactics that they might use to discourage government bans of BPA, such as spreading word of infant formula shortages if the chemical were outlawed in food packaging.

That report led to an ongoing congressional investigation.

In that meeting, lobbyists talked about the importance of "befriending people who are able to manipulate the legislative process."

The Journal Sentinel also has found numerous examples of the plastics industry lobby exaggerating claims of BPA's safety and using outdated studies to support their position.

For instance, the industry's Web site - www.bisphenol-a.org- claims that "potential human exposure to BPA from polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resin food contact applications is minimal and poses no known risk to human health." That statement is based on a 1983 assessment.

The Web site, which is not labeled as being owned and operated by the chemical lobby group, makes no mention of hundreds of studies conducted since 1983 that linked the chemical to harm. In 2007, the Journal Sentinel reviewed 258 scientific studies of BPA and found that the overwhelming majority determined the chemical is harmful.

The chemical industry also typically overstates safety assessments in statements it sends out.

In early July, industry association lobbyists issued a press release about studies done by the Canadian government claiming that they proved BPA to be safe.

"The ACC applauds new data from Health Canada confirming the safety of BPA in bottled water, baby food and infant formula," said Steven Hentges, chief lobbyist for the American Chemical Council.

But Hentges failed to distinguish between these findings and earlier studies that found the concern about BPA is in polycarbonate bottles and in liquid formula stored in cans lined with BPA.

"Those are two very different things," said Philippe Laroche, media relations officer for Health Canada. This study was "not related to polycarbonate, for which we have a proposed ban," he said.

David Rosner, professor of public health and history at Columbia University, watched Carteaux's 52-minute June speech and saw striking similarities between the plastics and tobacco industries. Rosner is the author of several books on industry efforts to control government regulation, including "Deceit and Denial: the History of Industrial Pollution."

"If I hadn't studied how this industry has operated in the past, I would say I was shocked," Rosner said. "But this attempt to deflect and distort public opinion is par for the course. They will ultimately do virtually anything to protect their product, even attack the messengers."

He added: "We're watching a propaganda campaign in the making."

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predictable but still scary? well maybe not phobia exacly?

In Fox Nation flu documentary, Betsy McCaughey says “political venom” over Trump's coronavirus response is “more worrisome” than mass panic

03/16/20 12:13 PM EDT

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long white paper

Fear Profiteers

How E-cigarette Panic Benefits Health Activists

Michelle Minton • December 5, 2018

Trump Fed pick Herman Cain sent scammy sponsored emails promoting gold companies

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see fear/ phobia

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/evangelical-historian-explains-how-christians-came-put-trump-ahead-jesus/

John Fea is an evangelical Christian and a historian. When Donald Trump was elected with 81 percent of the self-described white evangelical vote, Fea was both stunned and surprised. “As a historian studying religion and politics, I should have seen this coming,” he notes. Yet he did not. Which was why Fea ended up writing his new book, “Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.”

On its own terms, the book clearly succeeds in making sense for Fea and others like him, with potential for reaching wavering Trump supporters as well. He identifies and lucidly explores three fundamental flaws in evangelical thinking that have led them to embrace a leader who is wholly unfit by their own once-cherished moral standards, in pursuit of ends they cannot possibly achieve — restoring 1950s America via government action. In a key passage, Fea explains:

For too long, white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and nostalgia for a national past that may never have existed in the first place. Fear. Power. Nostalgia. These ideas are at the heart of this book, and I believe they best explain the 81 percent.

Fear is Fea’s central concern, and the one most directly at odds with the Bible. “The Bible teaches that Christians are to fear God – and only God,” Fea writes. “All other forms of fear reflect a lack of faith, of failure to place one’s trust completely in the providential God who has promised to work all things out for good for those who love him.”

That’s a specific reference to Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” But this teaching seems lost on those who shout about God the loudest and the most, and it’s far from clear how Fea’s book can help change that. What it can perhaps do is help make sense of the evangelical majority for others, like Fea, who are in the minority within that world and already inclined toward finding another path.

“Despite God’s commands to trust him in times of despair, evangelicals have always been very fearful people,” he notes, “and they have built their understanding of political engagement around the anxiety they have felt amid times of social and cultural change.”

Fear is the subject of the first three chapters of “Believe Me.” They’re presented in reverse historical order — first come the 2016 primaries, then the shaping of the Christian-right playbook from the 1970s to the present, then a selective, episodic overview from colonial times to the modern era. The fourth chapter, dealing with power, examines the role of the “court evangelicals” who have come to support Trump, while his chapter exploring nostalgia examines its centrality in Trump’s fatally vague promise to “Make America Great Again.”

Fea’s first chapter is especially riveting for the light it sheds on how evangelicals came to support Trump when they had so many other superficially better-looking options to choose from. He argues convincingly that other GOP candidates did a superior job of courting evangelical voters by traditional means, after eight years of Obama had brought more change than they could handle — Marco Rubio with an impressive advisory council, Mike Huckabee with a track record and issue positions, Ben Carson with an appealing personal story, but most of all Ted Cruz, who “turned fear-mongering into an art form,” which should have trumped everyone else, especially given his father’s history as a popular apocalyptic preacher.

But collectively, Fea writes, they succeeded too well.

Between the summer of2015 and start of the primary season in early 2016, they were able to diagnose the crisis that the United States was facing in a way that brought great anxiety and concern to American evangelicals. But their strategy backfired. … The evangelical candidates stoked fears of a world they seemed unfit to train. Desperate times call for a strongman, and if a strongman was needed, only Donald Trump would fit the bill.

It’s a powerful, convincing explanation — though incomplete, as I’ll return to below. But Fea is not content just reflecting on what has been. “I want to explore alternatives to the fear, the search for power, and in nostalgia,” Fea writes. “How do we reconcile the white evangelical politics of fear with the scriptural command to ‘fear not’?” he asks.

“What would it take to replace fear with Christian hope?” The answer he at least prepares the way for comes from an unlikely source — the black church, as reflected in the history, spirit, and legacy of the civil rights movement, which he turns to in the book’s concluding chapter. They model a contrasting triad of hope, humility and history that Fea highlights as providing a powerful alternative model, a road not taken by white evangelicals.

But because the preceding five chapters have been so insular, concerned with the white evangelical world, this solution has the feeling of deus ex machina. Fea himself provides no model for what it might mean or how it might work, until his seemingly belated epiphany. It’s an effective cri de coeur, though as serious sociological and theological critique, much less so. Toward the book’s end, he writes:

How might hope, humility, and history inform the way we white American evangelicals think about politics and other forms of public engagement? I hope that what I’ve written here might spur conversations and initiatives born out of possible answers to this question.

Yet for the white evangelical community as a whole to arrive where Fea wishes, it will have to confront its own dark shadows that Fea only lightly touches on — most crucially, all the centuries of unspeakable evil they’ve projected onto others, in pursuit of imagining themselves pure. For those outside that community, the definitional issue of race stands out for how gingerly Fea treats it, downplaying even Trump’s crucial conservative reinvention via birtherism. This is, after all, a book about white identity politics, one that skirts the most difficult aspects of that identity’s formation.

Most dramatically, as historian Seth Dowland noted in a recent critical essay for Christian Century, “American evangelicalism and the politics of whiteness,” the Civil War radically reshaped American religious identity. “The center of evangelicalism did not — could not — hold,” he writes. “The sectional crisis and Civil War divided American Protestants regionally and racially into three groups: northern white Protestants, southern white Protestants, and black Protestants. … The near-absence of black believers in white churches was the condition for the development of a distinctly white evangelicalism.”

Like Fea, Dowland admits that his own work didn’t prepare him for the rise of Trump, but he has adjusted his thinking more fundamentally:

What most distinguishes white American evangelicals from other Christians, other religious groups, and nonbelievers is not theology but politics. More than anything else, identifying as an evangelical in the United States denotes certain attitudes about American politics and usually indicates a white racial identity. It’s not that theology isn’t important to white evangelicals; it’s just not the primary thing that distinguishes them from other religious groups.

Fea’s book is about that theology, or rather about how fear, power and nostalgia underlie its faults and distortions. “Believe Me” is extremely compelling in that regard. But it is also cut off from the wider sweep of political history, from which white evangelicals have sought to distance themselves. Race is a submerged subject here, which only emerges distinctively toward the end. Yet, race remains such a central subject, so highly charged, that it’s difficult to fault Fea’s approach — save for his lack of attention to the role of white evangelicals in the abolitionist movement, and subsequent chapters of anti-racist struggle. There are committed anti-racist white evangelicals to this day, whose perspectives, unfortunately, Fea fails to register.

Earlier, I said that Fea’s explanation of Trump’s strong white evangelical support was incomplete. This is true in at least two ways. First, it leaves out the question how Trump became a credible option in the first place, due to his lead role in promoting birtherism, which was equal parts flat-out racism and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. Fea makes no mention of Trump’s 2011 flirtation with running against Obama, which the then-president undercut by releasing his long-form birth certificate, after Trump had spent months building up toward a paranoid crescendo.

Nor does Fea discuss how Republican doubts about Obama’s citizenship actually *increased* by early 2012, despite that documentary proof. Neither Trump’s means of making himself a credible option nor evangelicals’ means of disregarding unwanted evidence receive the attention they deserve. Birtherism is hardly a lone example of fantastical, conspiratorial thinking in the annals of American evangelical or racist history — a theme whose absence should be noted.

More broadly, Trump’s omnipresent conspiracy theories meshed with long-standing evangelical responses to modernism and denigrations of professional expertise— which Christopher Douglas at Religion Dispatches has described accurately as “The Religious Origins of Fake News and ‘Alternative Facts’” — as well as older traditions of confabulation and fear, tracing back to colonial America.

As I discussed here in December 2015, conflicts with Native Americans gave rise to America’s first popular literary genre, the captivity narrative, which the influential Cotton Mather used to connect all his perceived enemies together — including “captivity by specters,” in cases of witchcraft — a master conspiracy-theory prototype. “The Puritans’ captivity fears were in some sense a matter of ‘envious reversal,’” I wrote, “a switching of roles of victim and aggressor. It was, after all, the Puritans who were capturing the Native Americans’ whole world, the entire continent on which they lived.”

These represent darker aspects of American history that Fea mostly downplays in his book, even though his third chapter ably discusses a range of fear-infused episodes since colonial times, while the fifth chapter pointedly highlights how Trump tends to suggest that America was greatest during some of the darkest periods of our history. What’s missing is an analysis of how these things reflect a cultivated set of beliefs and cultural practices that repeatedly produce similar responses.

Fea recognizes repeating patterns, but only vaguely. “Despite God’s commands to trust him in times of despair, evangelicals have always been very fearful people,” he notes, “and they have built their understanding of political engagement around the anxiety they have felt amid times of social and cultural change.” That connection between fear, change and political power-seeking is the crux of Fea’s critique, but it never becomes systematic. True to his evangelical roots, Fea seems far more comfortable expressing this in terms of individual failings, even as he clearly wants to press for more supportive broader norms.

Two sets of examples from his exploration of power are instructive. The first concerns its problematic nature, the second, his overview of who the “court evangelists” are. As Fea describes, the problem with the pursuit of power is both that it distracts from the primary concern of saving souls (“Mixing horse manure and ice cream,” a Baptist saying goes, “doesn’t do much to the manure, but it sure does ruin the ice cream”) and that it fails in what it purportedly sets out to achieve. What’s more, he notes, this view has been repeatedly endorsed by those who’ve learned the hard way. The examples are individually telling, but the movement as a whole never seems to learn — nor does Fea draw any comprehensive lessons.

First came Billy Graham, who Fea notes, “was the official spokesperson for American evangelicalism for more than five decades.” After 1968, “Graham’s relationship with Richard Nixon brought him closer to the world of presidential politics than he had ever been before,” but that ultimately proved disastrous when Nixon’s profanity-laced White House tapes were released — making Graham “physically sick” — after which Nixon resigned in disgrace. “Years later, Graham admitted that his relationship with the disgraced former president had ‘muffled those inner monitors that had warned me for years to stay out of partisan politics.’”

But while Graham may have learned a lesson, he couldn’t stop others from making similar mistakes. “Journalist Cal Thomas and evangelical pastor Ed Dobson were two of the Moral Majority’s most important staff members,” Fea notes, “But in 1999, Dobson and Thomas reflect soberly on their experience with Falwell and the Moral Majority in their book Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?‘ They concluded that the answer to the subtitle’s question was a definite ‘no.'” They didn’t abandon their views, but they “were forced to admit that the strategy they forged in the 1980s had failed.”

Finally, he cites the example of David Kuo, an evangelical political operative and speechwriter who served in George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. “Very early in his tenure at the White House Kuo realized that political power and Christian compassion seemed to not mix very well. His efforts at the office of faith-based and neighborhood partnerships were largely ignored unless they were an immediate benefit to Bush’s political fortunes.” His book of regrets was titled, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.”

The fact that all these individual experiences have not had more of a systemic impact ought to be a matter of major concern for Fea. It underscores how white evangelicals’ individualistic outlook severely limits their capacity to learn wider lessons — a problem, he should note, that has not affected black evangelicals in the same way.

Fea’s overview of the “court evangelists” suffers from a similar analytical shortfall. He divides them into three camps: The old Christian right, preachers of the “prosperity gospel,” and those Fea identifies as “Independent Network Charismatics.” The first includes prominent names such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr., but Fea focuses attention on Robert Jeffers, a Dallas preacher less well known outside evangelical circles, whom Fea once debated on NPR’s “Interfaith Voices.”

During that exchange, Jeffers said, “Look, the godly principle here is that governments have one responsibility, and that is Romans 13 [which] says to avenge evildoers. God gives government the power of the sword, of capital punishment, of executing wrong-doers.” Fea notes what a dramatic shift this marks from Jeffers’ pre-Trump position. That specific example makes his argument concrete, but adds little in the way of broader understanding.

Regarding the prosperity gospel, Fea cites the work of historian Kate Bowler, writing, “Prosperity preachers teach that faith in God combined with positive thinking and an optimistic attitude will ultimately lead to monetary wealth, good health, and victory over the difficult circumstances of life.” His broader background descriptions are adequate, but his focus on one figure, Paula White, who has a long history with Trump, is not fleshed out much.

Fea mentions but does not elaborate on Trump’s youthful experience hearing sermons from Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and never delves into how Trump’s own business practices have reflected the influence of such figures, such as this 2011 New York magazine story about Trump’s multi-level vitamin marketing scheme. The prosperity gospel is the utmost in individualism, while at the same time relying on a powerful and persuasive social environment, which Fea’s analysis does not include.

Then there are the Independent Network Charismatics — apparently this is the new evangelical term for what used to be called the New Apostolic Reformation movement. Sarah Palin was the first nationally prominent Republican to be associated with this movement, which primarily comes out of Pentecostalism, but has a long history of being branded as heretical or even pagan, going back to its post-World War II origins in the “Latter Rain” movement. Their profound theological break with 500 years of orthodox Protestantism — proclaiming themselves “prophets” and “apostles” with authority directly from God — does not make a ripple in Fea’s account.

In short, Fea’s individualist focus truncates his analysis repeatedly throughout his book, despite his clear understanding and concern for the importance of community. This does not detract from his stated intention in writing the book, to “spur conversations and initiatives born out of possible answers” to an important question: “How might hope, humility, and history inform the way we white American evangelicals think about politics and other forms of public engagement?” It merely underscores how much broader those conversations must be in order to bear fruit.

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The politics of fear: How fear goes tribal, allowing us to be manipulated

Arash Javanbakht, Wayne State University

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Fear is arguably as old as life. It is deeply ingrained in the living organisms that have survived extinction through billions of years of evolution. Its roots are deep in our core psychological and biological being, and it is one of our most intimate feelings. Danger and war are as old as human history, and so are politics and religion.

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Demagogues have always used fear for intimidation of the subordinates or enemies, and shepherding the tribe by the leaders. Fear is a very strong tool that can blur humans’ logic and change their behavior.

I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in fear and trauma, and I have some evidence-based thoughts on how fear is abused in politics.

We learn fear from tribe mates

Like other animals, we humans can learn fear from experience, such as being attacked by a predator. We also learn from observation, such as witnessing a predator attacking another human. And, we learn by instructions, such as being told there is a predator nearby.

Learning from our conspecifics – members of the same species – is an evolutionary advantage that has prevented us from repeating dangerous experiences of other humans. We have a tendency to trust our tribe mates and authorities, especially when it comes to danger. It is adaptive: Parents and wise old men told us not to eat a special plant, or not to go to an area in the woods, or we would be hurt. By trusting them, we would not die like a great-grandfather who died eating that plant. This way we accumulated knowledge.

Tribalism has been an inherent part of the human history. There has always been competition between groups of humans in different ways and with different faces, from brutal wartime nationalism to a strong loyalty to a football team. Evidence from cultural neuroscience shows that our brains even respond differently at an unconscious level simply to the view of faces from other races or cultures.

At a tribal level, people are more emotional and consequently less logical: Fans of both teams pray for their team to win, hoping God will take sides in a game. On the other hand, we regress to tribalism when afraid. This is an evolutionary advantage that would lead to the group cohesion and help us fight the other tribes to survive.

Tribalism is the biological loophole that many politicians have banked on for a long time: tapping into our fears and tribal instincts. Some examples are Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, religious wars and the Dark Ages. The typical pattern is to give the other humans a different label than us, and say they are going to harm us or our resources, and to turn the other group into a concept. It does not have to necessarily be race or nationality, which are used very often. It can be any real or imaginary difference: liberals, conservatives, Middle Easterners, white men, the right, the left, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs. The list goes on and on.

When building tribal boundaries between “us” and “them,” some politicians have managed very well to create virtual groups of people that do not communicate and hate without even knowing each other: This is the human animal in action!

Fear is uninformed

During the first year after my arrival in the U.S., one night I entered a public parking lot to turn around. People were leaving a building in Orthodox Jewish dress; it was a temple. For a short second, I noticed a subtle, weird but familiar feeling: fear!

I tried to trace the source of this fear, and here it was: My hometown was almost all Muslims, and I never met a Jew growing up. One day when I was a little child and we were visiting a village, an old lady was telling a crazy story about how Orthodox Jews steal Muslim kids and drink their blood!

Having come from a well-educated family that respects all religions, being an educated doctor and having so many great Jewish friends, I felt embarrassed that still the child within had taken that stupid and obviously false story a bit seriously, only because that child had never met a Jew.

This human tendency is meat to the politicians who want to exploit fear: If you grew up only around people who look like you, only listened to one media outlet and heard from the old uncle that those who look or think differently hate you and are dangerous, the inherent fear and hatred toward those unseen people is an understandable (but flawed) result.

To win us, politicians, sometimes with the media’s help, do their best to keep us separated, to keep the real or imaginary “others” just a “concept.” Because if we spend time with others, talk to them and eat with them, we will learn that they are like us: humans with all the strengths and weaknesses that we possess. Some are strong, some are weak, some are funny, some are dumb, some are nice and some not too nice.

Fear is illogical and often dumb

Some people are afraid of spiders, others of snakes or even cats and dogs. Aris Suwanmalee/Shutterstock.com

Very often my patients with phobias start with: “I know it is stupid, but I am afraid of spiders.” Or it may be dogs or cats, or something else. And I always reply: “It is not stupid, it is illogical.” We humans have different functions in the brain, and fear oftentimes bypasses logic. There are several reasons. One is that logic is slow; fear is fast. In situations of danger, we ought to be fast: First run or kill, then think.

Politicians and the media very often use fear to circumvent our logic. I always say the U.S. media are disaster pornographers – they work too much on triggering their audiences’ emotions. They are kind of political reality shows, surprising to anyone from outside the U.S.

When one person kills a few others in a city of millions, which is of course a tragedy, major networks’ coverage could lead one to perceive the whole city is under siege and unsafe. If one undocumented illegal immigrant murders a U.S. citizen, some politicians use fear with the hope that few will ask: “This is terrible, but how many people were murdered in this country by U.S. citizens just today?” Or: “I know several murders happen every week in this town, but why am I so scared now that this one is being showcased by the media?”

We do not ask these questions, because fear bypasses logic.

Fear can turn violent

Toppled headstones at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia Feb. 27, 2017. A report on the vandalism cited an increase in anti-Semitic bias since the 2016 election. Jaqueline Larma/AP Photo]

There is a reason that the response to fear is called the “fight or flight” response. That response has helped us survive the predators and other tribes that have wanted to kill us. But again, it is another loophole in our biology to be abused. By scaring us, the demagogues turn on our aggression toward “the others,” whether in the form of vandalizing their temples or harassing them on the social media.

When demagogues manage to get hold of our fear circuitry, we often regress to illogical, tribal and aggressive human animals, becoming weapons ourselves – weapons that politicians use for their own agenda.

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hen a U.S. senator asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Can you define hate speech?” it was arguably the most important question that social networks face: how to identify extremism inside their communities.

Hate crimes in the 21st century follow a familiar pattern in which an online tirade escalates into violent actions. Before opening fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the accused gunman had vented over far-right social network Gab about Honduran migrants traveling toward the U.S. border, and the alleged Jewish conspiracy behind it all. Then he declared, “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” The pattern of extremists unloading their intolerance online has been a disturbing feature of some recent hate crimes. But most online hate isn’t that flagrant, or as easy to spot.

As I found in my 2017 study on extremism in social networks and political blogs, rather than overt bigotry, most online hate looks a lot like fear. It’s not expressed in racial slurs or calls for confrontation, but rather in unfounded allegations of Hispanic invaders pouring into the country, black-on-white crime or Sharia law infiltrating American cities. Hysterical narratives such as these have become the preferred vehicle for today’s extremists – and may be more effective at provoking real-world violence than stereotypical hate speech.

Spreading fear on Facebook. Screenshot from Facebook by The Conversation, CC BY-ND

The ease of spreading fear

On Twitter, a popular meme traveling around recently depicts the “Islamic Terrorist Network” spread across a map of the United States, while a Facebook account called “America Under Attack” shares an article with its 17,000 followers about the “Angry Young Men and Gangbangers” marching toward the border. And on Gab, countless profiles talk of Jewish plans to sabotage American culture, sovereignty and the president.

While not overtly antagonistic, these notes play well to an audience that has found in social media a place where they can express their intolerance openly, as long as they color within the lines. They can avoid the exposure that traditional hate speech attracts. Whereas the white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville was high-profile and revealing, social networks can be anonymous and discreet, and therefore liberating for the undeclared racist. That presents a stark challenge to platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Fighting hate

Of course this is not just a challenge for social media companies. The public at large is facing the complex question of how to respond to inflammatory and prejudiced narratives that are stoking racial fears and subsequent hostility. However, social networks have the unique capacity to turn down the volume on intolerance if they determine that a user has in fact breached their terms of service. For instance, in April 2018, Facebook removed two pages associated with white nationalist Richard Spencer. A few months later, Twitter suspended several accounts associated with the far-right group The Proud Boys for violating its policy “prohibiting violent extremist groups.”

Still, some critics argue that the networks are not moving fast enough. There is mounting pressure for these websites to police the extremism that has flourished in their spaces, or else become policed themselves. A recent Huffpost/YouGov survey revealed that two-thirds of Americans wanted social networks to prevent users from posting “hate speech or racist content.”

In response, Facebook has stepped up its anti-extremism efforts, reporting in May that it had removed “2.5 million pieces of hate speech,” over a third of which was identified using artificial intelligence, the rest by human monitors or flagged by users. But even as Zuckerberg promised more action in November 2018, the company acknowledged that teaching its technology to identify hate speech is extremely difficult because of all the contexts and nuances that can drastically alter these meanings.

Moreover, public consensus about what actually constitutes hate speech is ambiguous at best. The libertarian Cato Institute found broad disagreement among Americans about the kind of speech that should qualify as hate, or offensive speech, or fair criticism. And so, these discrepancies raise the obvious question: How can an algorithm identify hate speech if we humans can barely define it ourselves?

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ear lights the fuse

The ambiguity of what constitutes hate speech is providing ample cover for modern extremists to infuse cultural anxieties into popular networks. That presents perhaps the clearest danger: Priming people’s racial paranoia can also be extremely powerful at spurring hostility.

The late communication scholar George Gerbner found that, contrary to popular belief, heavy exposure to media violence did not make people more violent. Rather, it made them more fearful of others doing violence to them, which often leads to corrosive distrust and cultural resentment. That’s precisely what today’s racists are tapping into, and what social networks must learn to spot. [MEF video mean world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtRw-QKb034

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Why do so many people watch violent TV and never commit a violent act?

The posts that speak of Jewish plots to destroy America, or black-on-white crime, are not directly calling for violence, but they are amplifying prejudiced views that can inflame followers to act. That’s precisely what happened in advance of the deadly assaults at a historic black church in Charleston in 2015, and the Pittsburgh synagogue last month.

For social networks, the challenge is two-fold. They must first decide whether to continue hosting non-violent racists like Richard Spencer, who has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” and remains active on Twitter. Or for that matter, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who recently compared Jews to termites, and continues to post to his Facebook page.

When Twitter and Facebook let these profiles remain active, the companies lend the credibility of their online communities to these provocateurs of racism or anti-Semitism. But they also signal that their definitions of hate may be too narrow.

The most dangerous hate speech is apparently no longer broadcast with ethnic slurs or delusional rhetoric about white supremacy. Rather, it’s all over social media, in plain sight, carrying hashtags like #WhiteGenocide, #BlackCrimes, #MigrantInvasion and #AmericaUnderAttack. They create an illusion of imminent threat that radicals thrive on, and to which the violence-inclined among them have responded.

le monde

Rants and recriminations

“Critics,” wrote Reuters, “argue that IARC shouldn’t have allowed him to be involved in the assessment of glyphosate.”Remarkable detail: the news agency—which declined to respond to Le Monde— meanwhile quoted three scientists who castigate the institution, without ever mentioning that all three are widely known to be industry consultants. But who are these nameless “critics”? In reality, the criticism of IARC can be traced back to the blog of David Zaruk, a former lobbyist for the chemical industry, who has worked at some point for the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

In Brusssels, where he is based, Zaruk is infamous for his penchant for insults (the authors of this article have been his targets several times). He was the first to protest against Portier’s conflicts of interest, which he considers undermine IARC’s opinion. And he has persistently flayed the American scientist in the course of no less than twenty long posts around the topic of glyphosate – not to mention his tweets.

Professor Portier is described successively as an “activist”, a “rat”, a “demon”, a “weed”, a “mercenary”, and even a “little shit”, who “wormed his way” into the fruit that is IARC. To him, the agency is like a “scab”, and “the more” he “pick[s] at it”, “the more pus [he sees] coming out” because IARC is “infected by its hubris,” and “infected by politicised activist science” and “infected by anti-industry bias.”

Zaruk says he has had “three contacts” with Monsanto but denies he has been remunerated for his writing. “I did not receive a penny for my blogs on glyphosate,” he stated in an email to Le Monde. In April 2017, he published again a diatribe against NGOs, Christopher Portier and several journalists, which he illustrated with a photograph of Nazis burning books on the Opernplatz in Berlin in 1933.

Zaruk’s ramblings could have been easily checked and invalidated. But the prestigious guarantee of a Reuters’ article gave the go-ahead to their wide dissemination. Within a few weeks, the accusations of conflicts of interest were transmitted and quoted in The Times of London, the daily The Australian, and in the U.S. in National Review and The Hill under the signature of Bruce Chassy, an emeritus professor of the University of Illinois funded by Monsanto—as confidential documents obtained by the association US Right to Know (USRTK) in September 2015 have shown.

Conflicts of interests

Zaruk’s “work” was also cited in Forbes magazine in an op-ed signed by a biologist affiliated with the Hoover Institution, a think tank close to the Republican party. His name appears in declassified archives of the tobacco industry. At that time, this man would offer to write columns or land media appearances to “communicat[e on] risks and science”. Rates between $5,000 and $15,000.

The attacks of the Brussels blogger were also echoed by well-known propaganda websites, such as the American Council on Science and Health and the Genetic Literacy Project.Fed by PR people linked to the pesticides and biotechnology industries, the latter published an article about Christopher Portier and IARC signed by Andrew Porterfield, who describes himself quite simply as a “communications consultant for the biotechnology industry.”

And what about the suggestion that Portier faces conflicts of interest? Did the Environmental Defense Fund—through him—weigh in in favor of IARC’s decision to classify glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen”? “Because he had a link to this organization, Portier had the status of ‘invited specialist’,” explains Kathryn Guyton, IARC’s scientist in charge of Monograph 112. This means that he was consulted by the working group but didn’t contribute to the decision to classify the chemical in one category or the other. Real conflicts of interest however exist—but elsewhere.

In May 2016, while the press and the blogosphere were all out in relaying suspicions of malpractice at IARC, it was the turn of another group of UN experts to release their opinion. The Joint Meeting on Pesticides Residues (JMPR), a joint WHO and UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) organization group that rules on risks related to food (and not to exposure via inhalation, skin contact, etc) cleared glyphosate.

Almost one year earlier, a coalition of NGOs had warned WHO about conflicts of interest in the JMPR. Three of its members collaborate with the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), a scientific lobby organization financed by major agribusiness, biotechnologies and chemical industries—from Mars to Bayer and from Kellogg to Monsanto.

Serious allegations

Toxicologist Alan Boobis (Imperial College, United Kingdom) was serving as copresident of JMPR but also chair of ILSI’s board of trustees. Angelo Moretto (University of Milano, Italy) was rapporteur in the JMPR while acting as an industry consultant and member of the board of trustees of a structure created by ILSI. Vicky Dellarco, also a member of JMPR, was an industry consultant and a member of various ILSI working groups.

JMPR experts are supposedly subjected to the same independence rules—among the strictest in the world—as those applied at IARC, namely the WHO rules. Because it can alter the credibility of the institution and its decisions, an apparent conflict of interest is as serious as an actual conflict of interest. However, questioned by Le Monde, the WHO confirms that “no expert was deemed to have had a conflict of interest preventing their participation in the JMPR.”

This answer left Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak dissatisfied; they are respectively the Special UN Rapporteur on right to food and theSpecial UN Rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes.

“We respectfully call upon WHO to explain how exactly it came to the conclusion that the experts’ ties to industry did not present an apparent or potential conflict of interest under its own rules” is how these two experts reacted when questioned by Le Monde. “Strong, clear and transparent processes for conflicts of interest are essential for the integrity of the system” they said before “encouraging” the organizations of the United Nations to “review” them.

These two experts wrote in their report on the right to food that some “serious claims” exist “of scientists being ‘bought’ to re-state industry talking points.” The report, which was handed over to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2017, also underlined that: “The pesticide industry’s efforts… have obstructed reforms and paralyzed global pesticide restrictions globally.” Throwing discredit on IARC, its working group experts and the quality of the scientific work accomplished—these “efforts” are of strategic importance, even vital necessity, to Monsanto.

Court cases underway in the United States

Close on Monsanto’s heels are several U.S. law firms representing victims or relatives of victims who have died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), a rare cancer that affects white blood cells which they attribute to exposure to glyphosate. For their lawyers, IARC’s Monograph 112 constitutes an essential piece of evidence. For Monsanto, Monograph 112 could weigh heavily on the final verdicts. According to legal documents, the amount of damages and other payments in the U.S. could well amount to billions of dollars for the 800 plaintiffs—a number that will “probably” rise to 2,000 by the end of the year, according to Timothy Litzenburg, a lawyer at The Miller

Firm. Confidential memos, spreadsheets and internal briefs: all in all, ten million pages taken from the boxes in Monsanto’s archives and from entrails of its PCs. This is the amount of documents that the company has been forced to hand over to the court to date. In the U.S., a procedure called “discovery” allows this kind of raid on the adversary’s paperwork.

From the mass of scanned documents, released drip by drip, that are the “Monsanto Papers”, the multinational’s response plan emerges. Take this “confidential” PowerPoint document dated March 11, 2015, with slides that develop a strategy of influence in the form of “Scientific Projects.” Among other ideas, a “comprehensive evaluation of carcinogenic potential” of glyphosate by “credible scientists,” and “possibly via Expert Panel Concept” is mentioned. That will be done.

In September 2016, a series of six articles appeared in the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology. They exonerated glyphosate. But, as the publication was openly “sponsored and supported” by Monsanto, would anything other than this have been possible?

The authors were the sixteen members of the “glyphosate experts panel” to whom Monsanto confided the task to “review the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph on glyphosate.”

Their recruitment was delegated toIntertek, a consultancy specialized in the production of scientific material for companies facing regulatory or legal difficulties related to their products. Monsanto and its allies also called on the services of Exponent and Gradient, two other firms engaged in the business of “product defense.”

“Glyphosate task force”

The crisis management PowerPoint also envisaged the publication of an article about IARC itself: “How it was formed, how it functions, hasn’t evolved over time, they are archaic and not needed now.” The scientist who was suggested as a possible author has published nothing on the issue so far.

However, an article that perfectly matches the hostile specifications was published in a minor journal in October 2016. IARC’s system of classification has “become outmoded” and “serve[s] neither science nor society,” wrote the 10 authors. “This is how eating processed meat can fall into the same category as sulfur mustard gas.” IARC’s approach, they said, is at the origin of “health scares, unnecessary economic costs, loss of beneficial products, adoption of strategies with greater health costs, and the diversion of public funds into unnecessary research.”

It was a very unusual tone for a scientific journal. This is perhaps because Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is a special kind of publication. Not only does its editorial board include numerous industry players and consultants but also its editor in chief, Gio Gori, is a well-known figure in the history of the tobacco industry.

Owned by the powerful scientific publishing group Elsevier, this is the official journal of a supposedly scholarly society, the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology (ISRTP). No significant information about the society is available on its website and neither Gori nor ISRTP nor Elsevier responded to questions from Le Monde. It has therefore not even been possible to identify anyone in charge – let alone its sources of funding. However, last time ISRTP published its sponsors, in 2008, the list of six included Monsanto.

As to the 10 authors of the article, some of them have worked or are currently working for the Swiss group Syngenta, a member of the “glyphosate task force” of the industrial players selling glyphosate products. Some are private consultants. Others are academic scientists and take part in the activities of the scientific lobbying organization, ILSI. Among them are Samuel Cohen, professor of oncology at the university of Nebraska, Alan Boobis, co-president of JMPR, and Angelo Moretto, rapporteur of the same JMPR.

“Shock tactics”

These three scientists pursued the trail. A few months later, they published on the propaganda website called the Genetic Literacy Project, which had relayed the personal attacks against Christopher Portier, a text claiming that IARC “should be abolished.”

The agency was accused of fuelling “chemophobia” among the public. If it is not reformed, they wrote, IARC “should be relegated to the regulatory museum where it belongs, along with other historical artifacts, such as the Model T Ford, the biplane, and the rotary dial telephone.”

In scientific circles, convention holds that the author of the first draft of a text takes responsibility for any modifications up until the very last corrections. Which one of the authors wrote these two texts—published by the scientific journal and on the Genetic Literacy Project website? “I can’t remember,” replied Alan Boobis when asked by Le Monde, explaining “it was a whole process,” and that the writing had “undergone quite a lot of refinement over the year.”

This is “a bit of shock tactic,” acknowledged Boobis. Asked why the article was published on this website, Boobis admitted that the Genetic Literacy Project was not famous for its rigour, but explained that the text was refused by a scientific journal. Their arguments are identical to those of Monsanto and their allies. “This is a very odd position that we’ve reached that any association with industry whatsoever is regarded immediately as an indication of bias, corruption, confounding, distortion or whatever,” answered Boobis.

Is the “abolition” of IARC what Monsanto wants? The corporation did not wish to answer Le Monde’s questions.