The Utility of Fear

Fearlessness.  We often hear about the condition in relation to independent media:  this journalist is fearless; that outlet produces fearless reporting.  Fearlessness is our mandate; fearlessness depends upon your donation.  It’s a strong claim, but not especially flattering as self-description, being the kind of adjective best left to disinterested parties.  What does it really mean, though?  Is it an empty branding device or does it signify indispensable contributions to public discourse? 

The descriptor mainly functions as a metaphor (though some pundits appear to use it literally) conveying a philosophy of reportage.  The fearless reporter doesn’t necessarily walk in front of bullets, but vigorously pursues truth without regard for negative consequences.  The fearless reporter doesn’t answer to politicians or corporations. The reporter’s mission is truth, wherever it leads, without ulterior motives.  Fearlessness is the taproot of independence.  The fearless reporter, then, is reliable and trustworthy.  Audiences can expect unvarnished reality, and thus worry-free consumption, the discursive version of buying merchandise with a lifetime warranty. 

In fact, the notion of fearlessness in public life is a deception.  It’s easy to dismiss as a silly marketing gimmick, but it facilitates a type of passivity supposedly anathema to the enterprise.  By implying that they’re unconstrained by institutional forces, fearless journalists supposedly elude the coercion that bedevils their peers in corporate media.  The production and dissemination of their work isn’t subject to outside interference or economies of conciliation; that work comes into existence through unwavering principle. 

But nobody cultivates a public brand without social or economic constraints.  Our fearless correspondents will say their constraints are different, stuff of the mundane variety—less oppressive, more conducive to autonomy—but propaganda models don’t stop functioning at a special point on the ideological spectrum.  Anyone who makes a public comment is subject to various disciplinary forces.  We have jobs to worry about.  Families and friends.  Invasions of privacy.  Security apparatuses.  Fearlessness is only as good as the willingness of power to entertain its existence. 

Journalists who promulgate a myth of fearlessness tacitly encourage audiences to suspend critical faculties.  A mindful reader wants to understand the politics of information.  Why this particular issue and not the similar one in a different location?  Why now?  Who has a stake in a particular outcome?  In what way are those stakes evident (or suppressed) in the coverage?  Of what use is the topic to the outlet covering it?  These questions are superfluous if producers of news promise consumers an uncontaminated product. 

No text escapes contamination, however.  (This essay, for example, is influenced by my desire to demystify progressive luminaries in the United States.  I am constrained by anxiety about losing my job, so I avoid saying anything that can be construed as supporting the violent overthrow of the US government.  The readership I imagine is comprised of nobody in particular, but I’m keen to impress colleagues I admire; I don’t care about alienating people in position to confer social capital.  The timing of the piece reflects an urge to exorcise a longstanding pet peeve.  And I worry that if any luminaries feel implicated by my critique they’ll orchestrate a social media pile-on, for unleashing angry followers on critics with less power is a virtue of fearlessness.)  Critical reading nurtures skepticism.  A skeptical reader will always seek to discover structural limits.  

Those who fancy themselves fearless almost uniformly honor a specific constraint:  the leftmost perimeter of the Democratic Party.  Fidelity to Bernie Sanders (and, less frequently, to Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard) provides access to liberal media and to a large constellation of social democratic podcasts, speaking platforms, and publications.  Rejecting the Democratic Party—or, more pointedly, the electoral system altogether—is a surefire way to achieve obscurity.  This constraint never fails to materialize.  To become a leftist thought-leader, it’s essential to advocate voting Democrat.  The cadre is deeply committed to the redemption of a state fashioned by settler colonization; every other possibility is terrifying. 

A distinctive terminology illuminates the commitment.  Something about this particular word, “fearless,” invariably signifies lowkey liberalism dressed in radical affectations.  Maybe it’s because the conceit is based on misapprehension.  Fearlessness isn’t the inverse of obsequiousness; the two postures often coexist within the same personality.  The inverse of obsequiousness is defiance.  Being simultaneously defiant and fearful is no contradiction. 

Fear doesn’t mean inaction and it’s not always the progenitor of cowardice (greed, I’d say, ranks higher).  My point is neither to romanticize fear nor to encourage timidity because of its existence.  Like any emotion, fear can inspire a range of behavior.  We ought to avoid any suggestion, baked into high-minded professions of bravery, that the ruling class will tolerate legitimate threats to its supremacy. Consider the brutal repression of Black revolutionaries, Indigenous nationalists, communists, labor organizers, ecosocialists, anti-Zionists, and so forth.  Fearlessness simply isn’t a realistic sensibility.  As the repressed so beautifully illustrate, fear, properly managed, can generate vigorous resistance. 

If you’re interested in upending rather than accommodating US capitalism, don’t let anyone con you into believing you’re less courageous for possessing a sober view of the activist economy, for suspecting that you’re not destined for praise, but disdain and persecution.  You needn’t be fearless.  The goal is to create a world that doesn’t require fear to celebrate freedom. 

I’ve always thought it prudent to acknowledge the danger of meaningful dissent.  Fear allows us to comprehend the gravity of oppression, to figure out where we’re situated in tenacious conditions of duress and intimidation.  Fear, in short, isn’t some trifling sensation easily discarded on the way to award ceremonies or fundraising excursions; it’s a primal awareness that hostility to power is a goddamn dangerous proposition.