Scare Tactics

Just what is it about the British press and scaremongering?  Everywhere I look on the newsstand these days there's nothing but alarmist headlines, clearly designed to try and scare people.  If it isn't talking up the possibility of World War Three, then it is the imminent prospect of blizzards sweeping Britain, driven by hurricane force winds.  Either that or the threat of some new pandemic involving a new disease that will kill us all, or maybe this week it will be the Chinese technology which has infiltrated our homes rising up and microwaving, vacuuming or air frying us all to death.  Then again, maybe social media is creating a new army of psycho-zombies by brainwashing our kids to rape and kill, but only if the armies of immigrants arriving here on boats don't get there first.  It really is quite exhausting trying to keep up with all the various threats apparently assailing us these days.  Obviously, most of these headlines are derived from misquoting, misrepresenting and deliberately misconstruing statements from politicians, scientists and other experts.  Sometimes, they're created from completely made up 'facts'.  Vladimir Putin has been a real boon for the British press since he invaded Ukraine, with the hacks hanging on his every demented statement and threat, ignoring completely the fact that they are simply desperate propaganda promulgated by a leader and his cronies who can't even achieve victory in Ukraine, begging the question of how he could ever manage to threaten any better prepared and equipped western state.  Now, with the re-election of Trump, they've got another unstable, boastful half-wit on the world stage who will be good for insane quotes and threats with which they can try to whip up some more fear.

Right now, it is those alleged mass drone sightings in New Jersey which seem to be fuelling many of their sensationalist headlines.  The fact that, in reality, these seem to be mass hysteria sparked by a number of possible real drone sightings which have seen people mistake conventional aircraft, constellations and the like for drones, is neither here nor there.  Rational explanations - that, for instance, alleged sightings near a military base are, in actuality, drones being used to try and get illicit goods into an adjacent jail - are batted aside in favour of the demented ramblings of an addled congressman who insists that he's been told by 'insiders' that it is a Chinese spy drone invasion.  (For 'insiders' read 'prank callers' capitalising on the fact that he is a credulous loon who will take any sort of arrant nonsense at face value if told that it is from 'official sources' - 'No, really Senator, I'm definitely from the CIA.  Honestly.  No kidding.  I'm only on a payphone so the call can't be traced...' ). That's where the US really scores over the UK for generating these alarmist stories - so many of their elected representatives seem to be raving lunatics who publicly spout all manner of mad shit.  Sure, we have a few backbench MPs, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss who talk this sort of cobblers, but nobody pays them much attention.  But in the US, a Senator or a Representative coming out with this kind of bollocks seems to lend it some kind of credence and gravitas, even if they are certifiably insane.  

Inevitably, we come back to the question of just why the UK press is so alarmist?  Surely no other advanced democracy boasts such scaremongering media?  It's as if they feel a need to be constantly at war with someone or something.  Or at least give their readers the impression that the UK is constantly facing existential threats that have to be met with blood and sacrifice.  In a way, though, they are at war - most of the UK's media is controlled by right-wing billionaires and corporations pushing their own political agendas, constantly seeking to ensure that 'their' governments are always in power.  A constantly scared population, they think, is more likely to look to authority for protection and reassurance and, in the UK, that has traditionally meant the Tory party (also effectively controlled by billionaires and corporations).  So, when the Tories are in power, the fear mongering is designed to scare the electorate into keeping them in power and maintaining the supposed safety of the status quo.  When Labour governments do get elected, the press go into overdrive with their scare tactics, painting the new administration as a disastrous threat to our security, liberty and wealth, which can only be remedied by electing the Tories next time around.  Which is precisely what we're seeing now: a concerted effort to try and destabilise a democratically elected government (with an unassailable majority in parliamentary terms) through a campaign of fear.  To be absolutely fair, even the few media outlets more sympathetic to Labour aren't above scaremongering, either.  That's the problem, spreading fear and thereby manipulating peoples' perceptions of reality becomes addictive after a while (especially when press regulation is as weak as it is in the UK), regardless of which side of the political fence you are on.