Under the heel of its most unpopular prime minister in history, the United Kingdom is mired in an epidemic of failure.

The splintering European Union governed by an unelected elite of two presidents and 27 handpicked commissioners faces cataclysmic political, social and economic failure.

The use of fear of a mythical foreign invader is how the self-chosen unrepresentative elites distract voters from economic failure.

KEEP THE PEOPLE DISTRACTED BY FEAR

The West, through its controlled mainstream media, has mastered one art above all others: Manufacturing fear.

Where once it was Covid-19 and other fanciful pandemics, or an imaginary rise in right-wing violence, now the supposed threat from Russia has become Europe’s new epidemic.

By illusionary, fanciful external dangers, Western elites distract from their own economic and social failings, like immigration or right-wing (nationalist pride), in the hope that it will keep the electorate distracted and the electorate in line.

IMAGINARY DRONES

In recent weeks, the authorities and obedient mainstream media in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands have been hysterical about ‘suspicious flying objects’ near airports and military bases.

Fighter jets scrambled, airports shut, balloons mistaken for hostile drones, each incident presented as if Europe stood on the brink of invasion. 

The origins of these drones remain unclear, but accusations flew instantly in one direction: Russia. This reflex has become a habit. Each unexplained event, no matter how trivial, is inflated into a new ‘pandemic of fear’ with Moscow cast as the wrongdoer.

RUSSIA IS ABOUT TO ATTACK OUR DEMOCRACIES

The immediate purpose is transparent: to convince Washington that Europe faces imminent attack, and therefore to secure continued American support. But beneath this is something deeper. In today’s West, fear has become the primary currency of controlled politics.

For at least ten years, Western European elites have perfected the trick of redirecting public discontent by inflating both real and imagined threats, invariably from Russia.

THE METHODS OF DISTRACTION

Migrants, viruses, painting right-wing dissent as terrorism, celebrity gossip, cyber-attacks, Russia, China, the names change, but the method endures.

The media obediently allows the authorities to spin any challenge into an observed emergency, shifting public attention away from economic stagnation and concern about the migrant invasion.

The eurozone debt crisis, which had exposed the EU’s structural economic weakness, faded conveniently from view.

COVID-19 AND MONKEYPOX

Then came Covid-19. Within weeks, European governments had instilled ‘perfect terror’ in their citizens, who accepted sweeping restrictions on their freedoms and forgot their economic grievances. It was, from the standpoint of the elites, an extraordinary success.

And in 2022, Russia’s military operation in Ukraine to rescue ethnic Russians in former territories ceded to Ukraine in 1945 provided the greatest gift of all.

This was not because the EU had the means or will to fully militarize, it doesn’t. But the conflict handed ruling circles a ready-made focus for public anger.

Everything could be blamed on Moscow: Inflation, stagnation, and insecurity. Fear of Russia became the latest pandemic, and a reliable one.

POLITICS AS FEAR MANAGEMENT

The results are visible at the ballot box. In recent elections across Germany, France, and the UK, voters responded not to visions of growth or reform but to imaginary narratives of danger.

European elites, helpless in the face of economic challenges, nonetheless managed to secure the votes of two-thirds of the electorate by manipulating fear.

It is the opposite of the satire in ‘Don’t Look Up’. In the film, citizens deny the asteroid plainly visible above them. In the real West, voters are pressured to look only at external dangers and never at the crises beneath their feet: inflation, inequality, and stagnant growth.

The pattern is clear. Immigrants as a distraction, pandemics. Moscow, cyber-attacks, right-wing terrorism, health emergencies, and Beijing. The threat always comes from elsewhere, never from the real threat of domestic mismanagement. And the response is always the same: A politics of distraction and control.

THE NEXT PERFECT STORM

The cycle shows no sign of ending. If the conflict with Russia de-escalates without catastrophe, another fear will be found.

Artificial intelligence is already a candidate. Discussions of AI replacing humans in every field are exaggerated, but they provide fertile ground for another panic.

One can already imagine the appeals: Switch off your phones, protect your children, obey the experts. Citizens conditioned by years of ‘pandemics of fear’ will likely comply.

This is not necessarily the product of a detailed conspiracy. Western societies have grown accustomed to panic. Fear has become part of their psychological defense system, a way to avoid confronting the reality that elections bring no real change. 

ORWELLIAN MEDIA’S MANIPULATION OF FEAR

RIGHT: WITNESS TO HISTORY. THE FASTEST SELLING REVISIONIST BOOK ON THE TRUTH OF WORLD WAR II. Click Pic for Information.

Compared with the past, revolutions, wars, and mass bloodshed, today’s manipulation of fear might seem benign. It avoids violence, at least for now. But it is no less corrosive.

A citizenry trapped in endless cycles of panic cannot think about solutions, only survival. And ideas suppressed for too long have a way of exploding in ways the elites cannot predict.

Western Europe once styled itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Today, it governs through fear, of migrants, Artificial Intelligence, right-wing extremism, of diseases, of Russia, and of technology itself.

It is a fragile arrangement, masking a deeper decay. And while it may succeed in the short run, the long-term consequences could be far more destabilizing than the crises the elites claim to ward off. You can and should share this story on social media: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

MY LAST TESTAMENT. LET GOD JUDGE ME. Mike Walsh. Forbidden History: First-time published, Adolf Hitler, in his own words, explains the origins of his fight for a workers’ run Germany, his struggle for victory over the Capitalist-Communist hydra, and its downfall. Illustrated. Softcover. 195 pages. https://barnesreview.org/product/adolf-hitler-my-last-testament-let-god-judge-me/