Last year I wrote in these pages that the politics of fear is deliberate. And quoting Furedi , said handler is a project that attempts to freeze public discontent, so you invented or exaggerated fears as a flu pandemic, global warming and doom that will destroy the planet, obesity or snuff as epidemics that kill a million people, or drug trafficking and terrorism that threaten our daily lives and our peace and tranquility. For Hobbes, noted Furedi, "one of the main objectives of growing fear was neutralize any radical impulse for social experimentation in the future. To accomplish this goal Hobbes argued that people must be persuaded that the less challenging the status quo and power, there will be major benefits for the community and for individuals. That is, the acceptance rather than protest, conformity and not looking for change (because they too scary). In 2006 he used the expression is a danger to Mexico, by reference to López Obrador, with same intent to cause fear, the character and his proposals for change, and to affirm in the population to accept their circumstances (poor but known), ie its conformist conservatism.
The strategy of fear is often used by governments to add support in a perverse logic of national unity. Bush used this strategy as of September 11, 2001 and the fear generated by the terrorist attacks challenged that date might be imposed, with little protest against the Patriot Act, which has declined significantly civil liberties in this country while active discrimination has increased the Arabs and Muslims or those who appear to be.
Calderon in Mexico wanted to use the same strategy to launch a war against a supposedly common enemy of all Mexicans, drug trafficking, and to keep up to Bush, launched its National Security Law (yet not approved by the Congress). But while the U.S. government created an external enemy Calderón magnified an internal enemy. The difference is no less than other nations were invaded and the dead were mostly foreigners in their countries. Here the dead are Mexican and Central American immigrants to our country, and although the Chief Executive and his Secretaries shout themselves hoarse saying that government and society must work together to bring down organized crime and safety concerns all (Blake), large segments of the population do not believe them because the dead are part themselves and are not foreigners in distant lands.
However (and here is the central point), the insistence on national unity has not diminished, nor the politics of fear as a way of distracting for society, if any, protest for their dead and insecurity, but not its structural poverty and lack of expectations.
is diabolical strategy: the more dead there are, the more alive you feel affected in themselves or in their family or friends. Painful, yes, but fear the government estimates, grow, growing, and if there are protests, as there has been, they will be by insecurity, impunity of criminals, corruption of officials, the helplessness of citizens in the streets and even at home, but not for public policies that have favored the growth of poverty and inequality. There seems no coincidence that in the great march has been against the insecurity, since 1997, with the participation of Calderón and his wife with a blue banner that read "Enough!, to the most recent (much less numerous than those of 2004 and 2008, convened by the right), has talked of national unity, a united Mexico and against parties which divide the population. Even Javier Sicilia, which is considered a leftist on certain media, spoke in an interview the need for a candidate of national unity, perhaps citizen ( Millennium 08/05/1911) and acknowledged (elliptically as speculating at the request of the interviewer) to López Obrador to divide the country, as if there were clear differences between the population and verifiable. The necessary changes and a new and distinct national project to benefit the most and not the least, have been central themes in these expressions of protest. A conformist, conservative at heart, is what is behind the protests by the country's insecurity that being real and unbearable, is not the main problem with the Mexicans.
The antidote to fear is the protest. But to be effective it must be distinguished clearly who has led the politics of fear and why. Calderón thought that its policy would stimulate national unity around his illegitimate government that would gain legitimacy by combating organized crime and wiping the back yard (as we see) the United States. If not what distinguishes the politics of fear provoked by Calderón as a strategy for national unity, legitimacy and entertainment, there is a risk of falling into the trap of calling for the resignation of Secretary of Public Safety (García Luna) and not that of Calderon (the former chief and responsible for what they do or not do), as required by hundreds of demonstrators shouted last Sunday and stopped by the very Sicily with the argument that we do not want more hate.
Fear has always been used in power as a means of distraction from the structural problems greater depth and scope, and that many take for normal when they should be the grounds for the protest. Not enough public demand government protection and security, which of course should ensure, but national development policies that reduce inequality, poverty, lack of education and employment, corruption and injustice in general. If Calderon does not want or can not, resign. The problem is political, not hatred or sympathy (if indeed they exist).
http://rodriguezaraujo.unam.mx
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