Fear + Hate = Power

Peace be upon you, fellow digital wanderer.

“f + h = p (fear plus hate equals power)” was the marketing tagline for Eugene Burdick’s 1956 novel titled, ‘The Ninth Wave’. He was a political scientist interested in the psychology of mass persuasion, political marketing, and how fear and emotion can be engineered to manipulate democratic societies.

The Ninth Wave is a political novel about a charismatic, ruthless political strategist that uses the “fear + hate” formula to gain power. The same formula has been applied again and again, in global politics and more prominently in Western politics.

Historically, political mobilisation often relies on external threats, moral panic, and outgroup construction. They construct a group, and use that group as a reference that is closely related to, but not a member of, the group being targeted. For example, the terrorist group ISIS is an outgroup constructed to reference the larger Islamic demographic, thus making the bigger group, in this case muslims, as the target. They made muslims and the religion Islam, as something to fear and something to hate, all for political milage.

This “fear + hate” has been going on for years and years. In the U.S. it appears that there is always something to ‘fear’, and for that reason, there is always something to ‘hate’, both of them together gives them ‘power’. It could be Islam, or communism, or socialism, or China, or Russia, or Iran and so on, every day there is something new for the U.S. citizens to fear, and something new to hate.

Fear keeps them obedient; hate gives them a target.

This is not the 1984 Orwellian world, it’s Huxley’s Brave New World.

Just like in the novel Brave New World, they have been kept walled up in their perfect ‘World State’. Controlled and conditioned in their caste-based society. Everyone is given Soma, the pleasure drug, to keep them distracted all the time. In the novel, they refer to the rest of the outside world as ‘Savage Reservations’, which to them, it’s exotic, uncontrolled, traditional, and primitive.

For the longest time, this was the case. The ‘powers that be’ walled up their people in their cultural enclosure, creating a wall separating from the outside world. The wall is not physical, it's psychological, informational, and cultural. Built out of hate and fear of the unfamiliar. Behind their walled fortress, their people are constantly being told that the “barbarians” are at the gates. “We can protect you, as long as we are in power you’ll be safe.” they keep saying.

Things have changed today. The internet’s global interconnectedness had torn down the wall, breaking down the information silos that once made fear propaganda sustainable. A total context collapse. It is more difficult now to keep an isolated, one-sided political narrative.

We used to sit at different tables. One table can talk bad, invent false narratives, and frame the group on the other table in a bad light just so that they could create something to fear, something to hate. The groups from the other table know nothing about it.

Today, we all sit at the same table. You can’t talk bad about the other group without the other group calling it out. This is why the “fear + hate” formula is cracking.

Before the Internet, access to information is being monopolised. People rely on broadcast news and published newspapers that are all being controlled and filtered. There were less peer-to-peer information exchange. Sure, during the industrial era, transportation allows people to travel far, but not everyone travels. Transportation carries people and goods, but ideas and information, not much.

The Internet, in its pure protocol and distributed nature, allows peer-to-peer information exchange. You can know something directly from the source.

For example, Western politicians might ramp up the anti-Islam agenda by flooding fake narratives about Islam, inventing an external threat, planting false ideas of what Islam is, all with the goal to create fear that would lead to hate, thus giving them power. Today, with the global interconnectedness of the Internet, muslim from other parts of the world can refute their narrative. Non-muslim social influencers read the Quran, and debunking all their false claims about the religion live on social media platforms.

The internet had allowed the chance for a counter-narrative to compete. When information is high asymmetry, centralise controlled, being gatekeep, is easier to manipulate for “fear + hate”. In a distributed access model, with lower asymmetry of information, truth becomes accessible directly, reducing the effectiveness of propaganda.

The “fear + hate = power” formula is cracking, and the powers that be know this.

The new formula for the digital age

While the old wall of ignorance is falling, the new digital wall is being built. A wall made algorithmically, creating new information silos and echo chambers.

They can’t stop the internet. What they’ll do is to controlled what you see on the internet. This is not censorship, you can still say what you want online, but the chances that your content reaches the audience you wanted to reach is not in your control. Your content is at the mercy of the algorithm. It is no longer about content control, it's about distribution control.

The powers that be, and their tight hold on the owners of the algorithm, they decide what the people see and what the people should not see. Algorithm that create fear, uncertainty, and doubt pushes content that amplifies outrage in their enclosed echo-chamber.

The new formula becomes;

fear + hate = outrage engagement
outrage engagement = algorithmic amplification
amplification = power

They have found a way to scale the formula in the digital age.

We have to resist this. We have to be more intentional and conscious in consuming informational media. Do not sit passively scrolling your feed, letting the algorithm fed you the things they want you to be fed. Consciously choose what enters your mind. Go out and seek the information actively, and consciously.

In future Code & Codex newsletters, I’ll break down what active information-seeking actually look like against algorithmic walls specifically designed to distract you. Check out the new Code & Codex manifesto

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Stay glitched, stay human.
Jibone.