Threats and Fear across the Spectrum

In criticizing the British government’s fixation on Islamic terrorism, former official Richard Mottram merely downplays the terrorist threat only to highlight other threats. The rhetoric of the 21st Century politician is consistently dominated by talk of threats and the language of fear: global warming, terrorism, rogue states, flu pandemics, weapons proliferation and so on. They have raised the ability to scare the public into voting for political parties with uninspiring and unimaginative platforms and leaders to an art form and when they criticize each other it is generally because some take certain threats as being more serious than others. Fortunately, declining voter turnouts show that more and more people are not fooled by politicians whose main point of disagreement is over whether terrorism or global warming represents a greater threat to Western Civilization.