We’ve seen these scare tactics before, in both the campaigns against Brexit and against Trump.
Project Fear is back, alas, and it threatens to ruin our post-coronavirus politics for years.
That was the name for the strategy Prime Minister David Cameron deployed in his campaign against Brexit during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership. The point was to scare the bejeezus out of moderate voters who might otherwise be tempted to take a chance on leaving the bloc.
“Remain” advocates produced a steady flow of economic analyses warning of dire consequences if the electorate voted for Brexit. The economy would contract and unemployment would spike. Worse, Brexit would diminish Britain’s standing in the world. It would signal a form of spiritual and moral decay. In this way, Project Fear tried to transform the question of Europe from a policy debate into a moral crusade.
Americans have suffered through their own version of this phenomenon in the Trump era. It has never been enough to argue that most of his policy ideas are bad. Much of the media and his opponents on both the left and right present him as a mortal threat to the republic. Whether they’re ascribing to Mr. Trump authoritarian tendencies or accusing him of collusion with Russia, it’s all about stoking fear.
Sure enough, here comes Project Fear 3.0. This column has previously observed that policy makers are letting themselves be guided less by “the science”—which remains preliminary and conflicting—than by a perceived public clamor for a draconian response to the pandemic. The important word is “perceived,” since whatever outcry exists has been filtered through a media eager to hype the fear factor.
Joseph C. Sternberg – The Wall Street Journal – May 7, 2020.
Want More Investigative Content?
