Tyranny of Fear

February 2004

Fear is tyranny’s greatest weapon. Tyrants treat a few especially brutally, counting on fear to keep others docile and compliant, afraid of the fate that would befall them should they challenge those in power.

History is replete with examples of fear used to magnify political power. And one need not be a totalitarian despot such as Hitler or Stalin to utilize fear in this way. Joseph McCarthy, the crusading anti-Communist US Senator, routinely bullied politicians, journalists, and artists by intimating that should anyone cross him, they would end up on his ever-lengthening list of suspects. Since such a designation as a communist sympathizer often meant losing one’s job (and worse), many who recognized McCarthy’s self-aggrandizing deceit nonetheless remained silent, cowed by fear.

Using fear as political terrorism is, of course, an age-old tactic. That is precisely why the founders of the American republic enshrined in our constitution the Bill of Rights– protections against arbitrary and brutal practices by those in power. Our founders recognized that civil liberties were the antidote to tyranny’s poisonous fear. Such civil liberties include both positive rights (freedoms of expression and assembly and petition) and constraints on the government (no capricious searches, no arrests without charges, no detention without trial). The Bill of Rights was designed to prevent tyranny from taking root by freeing people from fear.

As gay people, we know a thing or two about fear from our personal lives. Heterosexual tyranny tries to keep people afraid of their homosexual selves; indeed, many people go through much– sometimes all– of their lives afraid to enjoy homosex, fearful of being labeled– like McCarthy’s targets– as perverted or sinful.

Happily, though, many others have discovered how much better life is once we’ve decided not to be afraid. Most of us have a debt of gratitude to gay pioneers, who, like our country’s founders, demanded that people should not be terrorized by fear of what would happen to them should they question prevailing norms. We know that sexual freedom can conquer fear, leading to people who are happier, more productive, and better able to love.

Thus, as we watch our government officials attempt to instill universal fear with their “Level Orange” alerts and pronouncements about the need for “pre-emptive” and “perpetual” wars, gay people– harnessing their own experience with anti-gay tyranny– should be good at leading people to a saner, less fearful way of looking at the world. And we understand that erosions of civil liberties inevitably breed fear and lead to tyranny.

Right now, for example, the Bush administration continues to hold– without charges, without any mechanism for those incarcerated to assert their innocence, without any timeline for release– hundreds of men and teenagers at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. Arrested during the Afghan war, they are kept in cages and denied access to outsiders. The administration knows that almost none of them has any link to Al-Qaeda. The prisoners are meant to provoke fear: “Look at the massive threat we face!” their inflated numbers are intended to proclaim; and they also serve to intimidate anyone who questions the current administration. Indeed, legislation proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft would make any US citizen subject to such “preventive detention.”

Guantanamo’s concentration camps may not seem a “gay issue” to some naive sorts, but wiser folk know different. Anytime the government is emboldened to so maltreat human beings, fear is the result. And fear is our real enemy.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=DC8D956C-4B98-4EE5-9DC4ED4DAA7F50CF>