Furedi completely ignores the media's role in getting us to the point where we will accept new anxieties that are fabricated from thin air, and rammed home through repitition.

Politicians use the media as their main means to communicate with voters/public. The media is largely one heavily crafted troll. Politicians have to fit their message into a media which is permanently in troll mode.

Yeah I think its a bit more then conservatives... they all do it. I'm leaning now to the view that playing on people's fears is an essential part of the democratic process. Just as the media do it to sell papers and attract viewers. Why not explore the wider phenomena?

Scott,
it is the conservatives who are pretty gungho about saying that they--the Howard Government --- need extensive new detention and control powers terrorist attacks need to be prevented.It has used to London bombings as justification.

It is the conservatives who are very unclear what problem the new anti-terrorist laws are meant to fix. As Hugh White points out:

The Government seems to imply that under today's laws they cannot detain people who are discovered planning a terrorist attack. It conjures up a scenario of the police and ASIO being powerless to apprehend people who they know to be actively involved in terrorism.

He adds that if that is the situation, it needs to be fixed. But is it?

He argues that it is not so:

If anything, the London bombings showed the opposite. Detention powers like the ones proposed in our new laws would not have helped the British police stop the London bombings, because they had not identified the individuals involved as significant terrorist risks. Their problem was not a lack of powers to detain terrorists, but a lack of information about who to detain.

It is the Conservatives who are pushing the national security state in the direction of Leviathan.

Cameron,
I guess the classic media troll at the moment is one Judy Miller of the New York Times.

She was a Bush administration stooge getting her info about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction program from annoymous White House sources and the leaks 'outing' Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, from Vice President Dick Cheny's office via Scotter Libby.

The New York Times is not looking to good in all of this.

Yes, in Australia the conservatives are pushing this agenda. But they are following closely the template of Britain, where Blair's NuLabour is leading the way.

That's why its not simply enough to bash conservatives to understand how the politics of fear work. I understand your emotional need to do so, but it doesn't really bring a greater understanding of the phenomena.

Hey Scott,
I did link to a text that did anything but 'bash conservatives.'

What you have in the post is a juxtaposition of image and text in the form of a question.

Frank Furedi says:

The narrative of fear has become so widely assimilated that it is now self-consciously expressed in a personalised and privatised way. In previous eras where the politics of fear had a powerful grasp - in Latin American dictatorships, Fascist Italy or Stalin's Soviet Union - people rarely saw fear as an issue in its own right. Rather, they were frightened that what happened to a friend or a neighbour might also happen to them. They were not preoccupied with fear as a problem in an abstract sense.

Today, however, public fears are rarely expressed in response to any specific event. Rather, the politics of fear captures a sensibility towards life in general. The statement 'I am frightened' is rarely focused on something specific, but tends to express a diffuse sense of powerlessness. Or fears are expressed in the form of a complaint about an individual, such as 'Bush really scares me' or 'he's a scary president'. Ironically, in the very act of denouncing Bush's politics of fear, the complainant advances his own version of the same perspective by pointing out how terrifying the president apparently is.

If you read philosophy.com you will find that it has a running theme that gives an account of conservatism from a political philosophy perspective--a conservatism that is clearly distinquished from libertarianism. Check the archives.

Clearly you do not bother to read. Nor are you aware of how you misinterpret texts.

Gary, the problem with media trolls is that there is no substance in their content, it is purely to get eyeballs;

Various users have different motivations for trolling. A common factor to most of them is the desire to draw attention to the troll. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The more attention the troll's activities draw from users, the more persistent the troll's behavior in the forum. This gives rise to the often repeated protocol in internet culture: "Do not feed the trolls."

I think Miller was part of a propaganda machine masquerading as media.

Cameron,
I understand the troll well. I used to get them and their vile on public opinion courtesy of Tim Blair. I've often puzzled about the identity of these nasties in a disembodied virtual community. Their identities were always covered or masked, and their arguments were ad hominem.

They do style themselves as devil's advocates, gadflies or "culture jammers", challenging the dominant liberal discourse in an attempt to break the status quo of groupthink.

I often get the attention seeking trolls on my weblogs without quite knowing who they are.

I reckon that we can talk about a troll culture. The Anderson cartoon is very apt. It is a reworking of the image of the troll as an ugly, obnoxious creature bent on wickedness and mischief.

I was attracted to it because it reminded me of Nietzsche's dwarf, but a better interpretation as a reworking of the image of the troll under the bridge.

Weblogs often make effective springboards for trolls to post their inflammatory comments and the ease with which weblogs can be linked encourages troll propagation and the slandering of opponents in heated debates.

I agree. The troll culture has a more professional tone---the ones in the media---the ones I sometimes call the attack dogs. These are skilled rhetoricians who use humour, emotion and populism to push their partisan political commentary.

Gary, It is not just the writers, it is the editors too. Fox News is one well crafted troll. So rather than culture, it is an economic model for the media.

Cameron,
yes. you are right:

The American cable channels have based their rise on confrontational political shows that are more shouting and arguing than rational debate or political discourse. Due to the need for conflict the antoganists on these shows are overtly partisan and extremely polarised.

And as you point out the combatorial, provocation and partisan style is happening in Australia---mostly in the Murdoch Press. It is encouraged by News Ltd to increase circulation. The cultural wars make good economic sense. It leads to the mass media getting segmented and marginalised.

Does this book explore your thesis about the mass media constructing a politics of fear resulting in the loss of liberties for greater protection.

Gary, Will have to buy the book and see. The problem with the media having trolling as an economic model means the political party that is the most hysterical, trolling and flamebaitish will get more media time. That means in a mass media dominated environment they get the greatest exposure and voter recognition. The MSM is turning our political system into the same quality as a univeristy/college forum board website.

Cameron,
Max Suich writes in The Age:

"It has been both astonishing and dismaying to observe a free press over recent weeks holding out the wrists for the handcuffs contained in the Government's anti-terror legislation.

Astonishing because the sedition provisions in the draft legislation released by ACT chief Minister Jon Stanhope were as intimidating for editors and journalists as for any subversive preacher of violence and murder. Dismaying because the press undermined its own case by only too rarely providing the facts about the legislation upon which a thoughtful citizen could base an informed opinion."
Suich goes on to say that:

"The emphasis by editors now is on finding proactive, if not always thoughtful, opinion. The obligation to inform is satisfied in the eyes of many senior editors by publishing opposing rants.

The news pages are often lost to the absurd tennis match of politics; the meaningless serve and volley of politicians making statements full of spin if not untruths."
Suich affirms the points you are making on this post.