Essay Sample on Using Fear to Gain Power and Control

The crowd went silent as the microphone hissed the vile rhetoric of the man standing on the balcony. This right here could be describing an innumerable amount of leaders throughout history that used fear as a tactic to suppress and control a populace. This use of fear has been ever present in history, and unfortunately it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. You can even look at the last two presidential elections, where Donald Trump ran on a platform of the immigrants are scary and are going to take your jobs and bring drugs etc. Whereas Joe Biden ran essentially on the fear of Donald Trump.  Once leaders have the power, it becomes much easier to continue to use fear to control your populace. Think about it, if the president of the United States of America came on your television right now saying that the alien invasion is going to begin soon, and that all citizens are going to have to enlist in the military. Almost all would, and you probably can guess why? Fear. This fear mongering clearly shows how those in power can use the aforementioned fear to construct a society that is too afraid to question how powerful the leader may be. History has seen this before, from Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin,Mussolini, and every other tyrannical dictator, but what do they have in common? Using fear to gain absolute power and in turn control their societies. Understanding how past leaders have used fear to construct their societies and consolidate power, everyone can all be aware of it in their every day lives.Fear has for a long time been synonymous with power, because if a society as a whole is scared, then their leader will use that fear to consolidate power,once this fear is established in a population, than controlling the society becomes a lot easier. 

When a whole population is afraid, then the leader uses that fear to take more and more power from the people.A quote found in “Fear, a Dictators tool”, explains that, “A frightened populace is going to allow the government to take drastic measures to protect them without protest, usually from perceived evil that threatens their society or country externally”.The idea that fear is perceived from an outside threat is paralleled by how jack responds to the beast in Lord of The Flies.In Lord of The Flies, when jack splits from Ralph’s group, he needed something to legitimize his rule, so he turned to the beast. “—and then, the beast might try to come in. You remember how he crawled—” The semicircle shuddered and muttered in agreement. “He came—disguised. He may come again even though we gave him the head of our kill to eat. So watch; and be careful.”  Jack is using fear to control his tribe. Be it Jack or  a dictator, both use the tool of fear in a like manner to gain power over their people and keep it. For Jack, he uses the fear of the beast to gain power and with this power he split the group into two tribes and became chief of the second tribe. As chief jack continuously uses the beast as a  . In the same way that both past and present leaders illustrated how outside groups, people, or countries are scary. 

Many believe that governments create and use fear to control their populace  “Over the ages, governments refined their appeals to popular fears, fostering an ideology that emphasizes the people’s vulnerability to a variety of internal and external dangers from which the governors—of all people!—are said to be their protectors. Government, it is claimed, protects the populace from external attackers and from internal disorder, both of which are portrayed as ever-present threats. ...When the government fails to protect the people as promised, it always has a good excuse, often blaming some element of the population—scapegoats such as traders, money lenders, and unpopular ethnic or religious minorities…This philosophical notion that fear is used by governments and leaders alike to control their populace is something that corresponds with what jack does in the novel, Lord of The Flies. Jack uses the beast on the island as a scare tactic that eventually leads to him gaining a chief position and a new tribe. “We’ll hunt. I’m going to be chief.” ...I’m going to get more of the biguns away from the conch and all that. ...“And about the beast. When we kill we’ll leave some of the kill for it. Then it won’t bother us, maybe.”  “Sharpen a stick at both ends.” Presently he stood up, holding the dripping sow’s head in his hands.” Societies are oftentimes controlled by fear, and that fear stems from their leaders using aforementioned scare tactics to make it easier to rule over them without any backlash. This is not new, fear is ever present in history. many leaders throughout history have used fear, interestingly though, one can observe how this fear is reflected in Jack from Lord of the Flies. Jack uses the beast as, you probably guessed it, a fear tactic. But he does so in an interesting way. He deifies it. Which is displayed in history as leaders using religion as another scare tactic, argued by Robert Higgs in “The Foundation of every governments power”, where he says  “Thus, the warrior element of government puts the people in fear for their lives, and the priestly element puts them in fear for their eternal souls.” Whether it be political leaders or jack, both use fear to manipulate and control their societies, resulting in total power. 

Using fear to gain power and control the masses has been utilized by leaders throughout history. Fear affects everybody in a society, but many don't understand that they are being controlled by fear until it's too late. Fear is used by leaders to solicit votes and gain power, and if  society can identify this fear mongering, then the effect of fear would be greatly diminished. If just one person could see beyond party lines, then they could see how current day leaders use fear to control the populace. If just one person could stop to critically think about the past use of fear and how it is still ever present in today’s modern society, then as a whole, the population would be a lot less scared and in turn be harder to manipulate.

Works cited 

Golding, william. Lord of the Flies. Penguin Books,1987.