The Demand for Fear: Exploiting fears allows for controlling society in autocracies and leads to polarisation and escalating conflicts in democracies
The world is plunging into a state of neurosis and crisis. In Europe, a war has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. In Russia, a court has sentenced two women to six years in prison, based on a peculiar interpretation of the meaning of a play they staged. Two decades ago, both of these situations seemed inconceivable, lingering as anomalies of the 20th century. How has this dystopian narrative returned to social life and managed to entrench itself?