PROPAGANDA / A CRAFT BIBLE · CHAPTER 08
Chapter 08 / 16
Fear and the Enemy Image
A fear appeal raises a threat and offers a way out. An enemy image gives the fear a face.
To move a frightened audience toward action, pair a threat they believe with a step they can take, and give the threat a named enemy.
Why it works
Fear moves people only when they believe there is a way out
Kim Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model separates two judgments the audience makes. Threat is how bad it is (severity) and how likely it is to reach them (susceptibility). Efficacy is whether a response would work and whether they can do it. When threat is high and efficacy is high, people act. When threat is high but efficacy is low, they deny, turn away, or freeze. A fear appeal with no workable step backfires.
Sam Keen showed in Faces of the Enemy how nations turn a rival into an image that can be hated without guilt: the enemy as beast, as criminal, as devil, as barbarian. Dehumanization lowers the audience’s hold against harming other people, so the enemy image gets built before the call to act.
Anne Morelli, drawing on Arthur Ponsonby, set out the recurring principles of war propaganda: we did not want war, the enemy alone is to blame, their leader is evil, our cause is noble and sacred, the enemy commits atrocities on purpose while our harms are accidents, and anyone who doubts helps the enemy. These give a maker the ready pattern for building a threat and an enemy at once.
When to use it
Raise fear only with a way out attached
- You need action now against a danger. Raise the threat, then hand the audience a step that works.
- The audience feels the threat but does nothing. Add efficacy: show a response that works and that they can carry out.
- You want the audience to accept harm to a group. Build the enemy image first, over time, before the call to act.
- You are moving people toward a fight. Use the war-propaganda principles: blame the other side, make the cause noble, make the enemy’s harm deliberate.
How to do it
Build the fear appeal and the enemy
- Name the threat in concrete terms: what happens, to whom, and how soon. A vague danger produces worry, not action.
- Raise both parts of the threat: how bad it is, and why it will reach this audience in particular.
- Hand over the way out in the same message: one response that works and that the audience can actually do. Without it, they look away.
- Build the enemy image with a face and a name. Choose the picture the audience already fears and fix it to the target through repeated words and images.
- Assign harm on purpose to the enemy and by accident to your side, following the war-propaganda pattern.
- Close doubt by tying doubt to the enemy: to question the alarm is to help the danger.
What it captures
What fear and the enemy image capture
A fear appeal captures the audience’s alarm and, when it offers a workable step, turns the alarm into action instead of avoidance. The enemy image captures hatred and gives it a target that can be harmed without guilt. The war-propaganda principles capture the audience’s sense of being the wronged, noble side.
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