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Title: Cut Straight to the Fear
Author: Anonymous
Date: Autumn 2019
Language: en
Topics: fear, Sans Détour, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #5
Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 5
Notes: First appeared as Parlons peur mais parlons bien in Sans détour (journal anarchiste apériodique), Issue 2, May 2019

Anonymous

Cut Straight to the Fear

I think it’s important to question ourselves about the sensations and

emotions that this society, that we want to fight against and in which

we live, uses to legitimise itself and to nourish the idea that its

necessity is inescapable.

Capitalist organisation of life – based on exploitation, on the

imprisonment of troublemakers, on the poisoning of the planet and on

techno-scientific ideology – has a well-stocked arsenal of weapons of

mass pacification. To uphold its domination, the eternal rule of the

strongest employs coercion and raw violence as inevitable means. But it

also has elaborated a different set of tricks over time.

Other institutions and tools taking part in the construction of the

subject/model citizen – like culture, religions, family, school, means

of mass communication – work continually towards annihilation and

paralysis of any urge of rebellion and individual destruction by

leveraging the emotional sphere of all of us.

The hand of the state delicately shapes our emotional sphere while

constructing, through this silent operation, the most solid bases of

social peace.

Fear is one of these instruments, sharp and venomous.

“Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack

nothing.” - Psalm 34:9

“For by this authority that has been given to ‘this man’ [the Leviathan]

by every individual man in the commonwealth, he has conferred on him the

use of so much power and strength that people’s fear of it enables him

to harmonize and control the wills of them all, to the end of peace at

home and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.” - T. Hobbes

All powers resort to fear to legitimise their existence and to reproduce

– en masse – the reverence of their subjects. It’s an old, polymorphous

history that deserves to be mentioned to understand certain mechanisms

inherent to domination and power, and to not attach an innovative and

exceptional character to the society of control in which we are living.

Modern Europe, the social structure of which had been destabilised by

serious demographic catastrophes and the plague, is certainly an

indicative example. It seems that the daily life of individuals –

crossed by permanent fears connected to the unknown (like the fear of

the sea, stars, ghosts…) and by contingent fears (like the plague,

passing armies, drought, hunger…) – was populated by a feeling of

permanent anguish. These fears – partly culturally and historically

determined – have been channelled by the ruling class and in particular

by the Church that embodied power at that time. It strove to construct

interpretative frameworks and an imaginary that permits the

identification, naming and representation of these fears. It put in

place a process of normalisation of the emotional sphere in the

religious and moral frame of Christianity, aiming to integrate

populations that were often resistant to the sternness of religious

order. The ruling classes would thus construct an inventory of internal

and external enemies of the constituted order. They would represented as

agents of evil that Satan mobilises to impose his domination (Turks,

Jews, heretics, witches, madmen…). In this manner it would provide the

dominated masses the theological arguments allowing to interpret that

feeling of fear and anguish. While at the same time allowing them to

stigmatise and control those parts of the population that resisted the

constituted order, those living on the fringes of all norms. It is not a

coincidence if the years of the unleashed hunt against heretics

coincides with the fight against vagrancy and with the imprisonment of

the poor, with the goal of reducing the ranks of potentially rebellious

and to clean the cities of possible contaminations.

To dominate through fear. To poison the existence of individuals with a

profound feeling of worry and anguish. For which at the same time is

proposed the sinister moral and security antidote that conceals a

project of total submission. It’s not a matter of making forced

analogies between two completely different times and social contexts,

but of considering propaganda through fear as an instrument

characteristic of all forms of authority. Power – yesterday between the

hands of the Church and today of the state, capitalism and

techno-science – manipulates the weaknesses of its potential subjects to

filter through their conscience its inevitable necessity.

We’re living today in a society of risks, a society used to representing

and considering itself constantly on the brink of disaster. Not only the

individual, but also the entire society is incessantly threatened. And

the risk doesn’t only come from outside – for example natural

catastrophes – but it is produced by society itself on a political,

ecological or public health level. A risk – so concrete that it becomes

banal – that becomes a harrowing mirror of social life for everyone and

transforms into fear. When this fear takes on concrete forms (for

example when an event of extreme seriousness occurs: a terrorist attack,

a nuclear incident, an oil spill, a pandemic), power imposes its ritual

frame to control and channel it. Beyond these moments, it inhabits in a

muted way the miserable existence of the subject. The fear that

threatens, that can appear suddenly from everywhere. And the individual

without any hold on the world and on their emotions, delegates control

to those who are supposed to be in possession of the knowledge and power

to contain it.

Take for example the fear of environmental disasters, which are linked

notably to the consequences of the progress of science, of technique and

of technology. Which continue to provoke unexpected effects and with

great severity. A risk existing in the four corners of the world. Where

capitalism thirsty for energy and primary materials to reproduce itself,

and continues to construct and feed massive and destructive

infrastructures – the source of exploitation and poisoning. Only states

and science can “guarantee” a protection from these infrastructures once

installed (for example electrical and nuclear plants, oil drilling…).

Likewise on the more specifically “political” terrain, where consensus

always prevails over coercion. Collective emotions – being expressed

especially in reaction to unexpected events mobilising the attention of

the media – imprison public space in a network of passions orchestrated

by a rhetorical and institutional device. One that shapes the emotions

of citizens in the narrow grid of identity; national, cultural, ethnic

or religious. And in France during the last years we don’t lack examples

of big collective passions produced and steered by the state.

Like the recent, paradoxical image of thousands of people who with tears

in their eyes comment on the work done by the nice little fire that

transformed the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris into an inferno (one that

didn’t respect the rigid protocol of every temple that respects itself).

Persons who join their rulers in a mystical contemplation, who mourn the

destruction of a sinister symbol while claiming it as “our history” or

“our national identity”. Resounding tears next to a generalised

indifference of those same citizens towards the news on the front pages

that 15 April. Namely that it is French weapons which bomb the

inhabitants of Yemen, weapons and equipment sold by the French

government to Saudi-Arabia and the Emirates.

The emotion that strengthens the Nation, which has traversed French

society after the attacks in 2012 (in Toulouse and Montauban) and in

January and November of 2015. The collective emotion which always

appears at the right time. Which the state doesn’t hesitate to

capitalise support on. Which leverages fear; a feeling that power uses

as cement to build its hierarchical and authoritarian order. A fear of

the unknown, of the unforeseen, of what we cannot dominate. A fear to

which society accustoms us. That fear is not left to its own. But it is

channelled and projected on clearly identifiable objects. It is thus

transformed into a precise fear.

This is the Leviathan at work. This allegory of a monstrous Union, that

of the state, which responds with an organised fear to the fear

unleashed in men. “That mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal

God, our peace and defence”, the only capable of putting an end to the

spectre of the “war of all against all”. A spectre that is supposed to

be engrained in the dominant imaginary and to be the only way of viewing

the absence of the state.

A monster that works tirelessly to manufacture the external enemy (the

legalised or illegalised immigrant, radical Islamism, health emergencies

coming from elsewhere) which is functional for the consolidation of a

feeling of unity and internal coherence, as well as for its home-made

alter ego: the internal enemy. Criminals, rebels, banlieusards, French

jihadists or yellow vests (depending on the season) who spread danger in

the streets of the cities. They are pushed by the rhetoric of power to

an irrational dimension; while on one side exaggerating the real aspects

and on the other side flatting out all conscious and critical

characteristics. An enemy that permeates the social tissue which

contributes to a permanent feeling of distrust and anguish, pushing into

the background other fears for which the state and capitalism are the

sole responsibles (like exploitation, inhumane living conditions, the

proliferation of pollution…).

A fear, perpetually hammered in by all the media, which is instilled in

citizens from their early childhood. It’s enough to think about the

countless anti-terrorist exercises inflicted on students of all ages for

years already in the oh-so-republican French schools. In some cases

consisting of real role-plays of terrorist attacks (explosions, firing

of bullets, assaults) without prior warning for the involuntary

protagonists. And the students – already recorded, controlled and

watched over in different ways in schools – seem to react to these

experiences by developing a profound feeling of anguish. During these

occasions of “exercises” (of securing, of confinement…) the students,

budding citizens, become literally hostages of a state that terrorises.

The strategy is clear. On one side the fear of the other that paralyses

consciences. This contributes to feed the war between the poor,

hindering any urge to revolt against those really responsible for the

profound anxiety that this era of desolation instils in the hearts of

the living. On the other hand power, which shapes the fears of its

subjects, swiftly proposes all kinds of antidote. In a flash the tyrant

transforms in a protector in whose arms individuals – now convinced that

they know nothing and can do nothing – can only surrender.

The path is thus open to all kinds of illusionary protections in a

spiral of security that only tightens the net of control. Through more

generalised measures like the state of emergency (practically permanent

in France since the attacks of 2015) against the terrorist threat, the

lasting militarisation of urban spaces, and first the experimentation

and than the application of technologies that allow for a surveillance

that is increasingly capillary.

The state answers to the fear of terrorism or daily violence by

infesting the cities with surveillance cameras (today called

video-protection; either on the streets or in the pockets of municipal

cops) and all kinds of sensors. There are the continuous experiments

with new tools like the cameras installed in Nice with facial

recognition, the sound recorders in a neighbourhood of Saint-Étienne,

the security applications for smartphones like the one being

experimented with by zealous citizens who want to denounce “antisocial

behaviour” through video calls to the police, or drones – already used

during demonstrations – to control mass events such as festivals or used

daily by municipalities at the forefront who gave it to their local

police force as a mobile means of video surveillance and which maybe

tomorrow will fly en masse over the metropolitan streets. Those are some

of the repressive measures that the state proposes as a remedy to the

insecurity that it had itself cultivated and nourished.

“Only the state can protect us”, repeatedly affirms the decent citizen –

terrorised and atomised in their dispossession. Let’s think about the

fear that pours out of the television interviews after riotous

demonstrations that have coloured many Saturdays. The fear inspired by

the state through its media servants, of the “hooligans”, of the “black

blocs”, of the “ultra-yellows”, basically of all imaginary figures that

are supposed to embody the violence of those that revolt and come out on

the streets.

It is the same citizens – brought to identify themselves, in an

identitarian withdrawal, with the ground on which they trample, work and

consume – who learn to perceive those who come from the outside as a

danger coming from a hostile “elsewhere”. The same who feel reassured by

the multiplication of surveillance and the imprisonment of outsiders, by

the hardening of deportation measures and the strengthening of national

borders.

Individuals who are alienated from their emotions, incapable of living

them, of reflecting them, of acting them. They delegate management to

the state and the bosses. And that doesn’t only concern the most

contingent and historically determined fears like those we have briefly

mentioned. The feeling of insecurity and anguish leveraged by the state

concerns also the more intimate one linked to the fear of physical pain,

psychological suffering, sickness, death.

The state hand in hand with pharmaceutical multinationals and with the

blessing of scientists makes the total medicalisation of every

“dysfunction” of the body into a social diktat. While capital finances

the work of scientists and technicians who seek to conceive of a total,

robotic intelligence. An intelligence imagined as the miracle cure of

all ills. And which will give life to a transhumanist world in which one

doesn’t age and maybe even doesn’t die.

In this ideal society that has been built for us – a society intoxicated

by fear – the inevitability of the domination of the state and

techno-scientific knowledge in all areas of existence, imposed as a

self-evident fact, has reached the most intimate sphere of each

individual. A society that would like to suppress adventure to condemn

us to security; “justice can bury alive whoever holds their head high”.

Because, despite its apparent untouchability, in the silence of its

greatness and the loneliness of its terror, the Leviathan also has fear.

The fear of a moment of rupture. Of that “renunciation of subjection”,

which is to call into question, in words and acts, of the authority of

the sovereign (to which one has originally freely submitted by an

unspoken conclusion of a contract). The fear of a revolt which

represents a constant and latent danger to this political system.

On the contrary, in a movement of rupture the individual capable of

freeing themself and freeing others should push back against the

intrusions into their emotions and their passions. The individual should

learn to live them and hold on to them. Thus to go beyond the obstacles

to which we are confronted in the war against this system.

Those who think that this world can be attacked and destroyed, put all

they have – time, determination and the capacity of identifying the

enemy – at service of the fight against the state, capital and the

techno-scientific system. And instead of the catastrophism of

science-fiction and of despair we should include in this arsenal the

capacity to confront ourselves in our emotional sphere, in the ways we

have of listening to our tensions, to know and go beyond our limits.

Human, All Too Human

We, anarchists, enemies of this order, we who want to destroy it and for

this reason confront it directly; how do we relate to our fears?

Some time ago an episode made me think about this question. It was after

participating in an assembly in solidarity with arrested and imprisoned

anarchist comrades during which an energetic exchange took place. A

young comrade stood up to older comrades because he interpreted their

words as an exhortation to not have fear. A feeling he sensed he was

suspected of having.

For the first time I noticed at what point this feeling is a taboo

between comrades. One shouldn’t have fear, neither mention it nor invoke

it, and watch out for who talks about it. Any more or less voluntary

reference to this common feeling could be perceived as an insult.

Maybe because there is no space for feelings that are commonly and

crudely associated to weakness, passivity and cowardliness in the

self-representation that anarchists who practice direct action forge of

themselves. One prefers displaying confidence, irreverence and

reluctance about introspection.

But it seems to me that the ascetic and combative image of the

anarchist-hero is far removed from reality. Besides, what is a hero? In

the classical mythology it is a half-God to which are attached

phenomenal achievements, taken over as the model for a group who will be

founders of a new order. Anarchists who put or have put themselves at

stake by acting don’t only have nothing divine, but are they not a

fortiori the bearers of disorder? Isn’t that the specificity of their

violence – which is a means of conquering freedom? And don’t anarchists

confront themselves in their emotions and fears by carrying out this

violence?

We put up a wall against fear and anguish, making our passion and rage

artificial and inhuman. As if those who choose to act would be gifted

with a superhuman will. And which by the effect of an inverted mirror,

transforms in a justification for inaction for those who don’t consider

of themselves as disposing of this force.

I think on the contrary that we could think again the beauty of the

anarchist passion that pushes us to act against this world if we succeed

in freeing ourselves from this representation. We all have our fears.

And fighting also means confronting them on our own and with others, to

make them into travel companions, to face them, to defy them, to invert

them.

To know one’s limits, to be able to identify them and to discuss them;

all this allows to have the means of going beyond them.

Because the choice and the decision to act also entails the

transformation of our fears. It could lead to paralysis if we are

subjected to our fears. But they can be surpassed as any other obstacle

in the choice to provoke a rupture with the world that surrounds us, if

we understand them. In a moment of revolt, of destruction that

reintroduces life into our existence.

Because to give up fighting would be like dying.

And it is unthinkable to provoke others to rebel without shattering this

atmosphere charged with fear, without puncturing the individual bubble

of “I don’t know anything, I cannot do anything”. It would be difficult

for the fear to change sides – as one hears often being repeated as a

refrain – if we don’t even know and recognise ours.

And the anarchist fight, far from being a supernatural gift, is a

practice of will, of determination, of effort (and not of sacrifice). By

the individual who leaves behind the comfortable space of certainties.

And who storms the world with the idea of being capable of succeeding

and with the vital energy of someone who is ready to put oneself at

stake, to assume the risks that are part of the fact of thinking and

acting as an enemy of the state, capital and power.

Nothing innate, but the fulfilment of a raging tension.

Nothing more human.

And I’m aware that certain comrades have a similar reaction of paralysis

and frustration when they confront themselves with the exceptional

experiences of anarchists from the past. Anarchists who fought in all

four corners of the world against oppression and domination. As if the

greatness of their exploits and their lives would be a heritage too

heavy to carry or a confrontation too hard to support. Nevertheless if

we manage to free ourselves from this aesthetic distancing which is at

work in the heroic imaginary, we could relish the force of a will that

can only inspire us. And to say it with the words of a comrade who

answered those who considered the will to be a metaphysical trick of

anarchists: “We’re not talking about the abstract and metaphysical will,

the one of Schopenhauer or of Nietzsche; but of the creative and active

will of individuals and of the great mass – of the former more than the

latter. A will that has to be force and action at the same time.”

Anarchy is nothing like the cynicism of the bureaucrat, but continues to

nourish itself with ideals and myths. And this is not because it finds

its strength in a transcendent epic of half-Gods unattainable by fear,

but in the strength of an all-too-human fighting spirit that should be

cultivated.

“If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least

there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For

the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle

moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning

toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of

unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under

his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the

wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see and

who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is

still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always

finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that

negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.

This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile

nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night

filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the

heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus

happy.” - A. Camus