A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

by Laura Dodsworth

this book asks you to think about the ethics of using fear to manage people.

Fear is the most powerful of emotions and, as emotions are stronger than thoughts, fear can overpower the clearest of minds.

perhaps we need to be more afraid of how easily manipulated we can be.

The government, public health bodies and the media used alarmist language throughout the epidemic. Big numbers, steep red lines on graphs, the use of selective information, careful psychological messaging and emotive advertising created a blitzkrieg of daily fear bombs.

The pressing issue is whether and how we permit behavioural psychologists, the government and the media to manipulate our psychology.

It was despicable that the government tried to frighten us. Any other walk of life, you’d be arrested.

There is a complex relationship between the government, the media and the public. Noam Chomsky explained the ‘propaganda model of mass media’ in his book, Manufacturing Consent. One aspect of this is that the proximity of mass media to political and economic power means that the media propagate the world views of the powerful.

You have to work out the risks you want to take. We shouldn’t let fear manipulate us out of proper reasoning.

In 2015 it became a legal duty for public sector institutions to effectively engage in surveillance of the population for signs of extremism and radicalisation. We should remember that extremism and radicalisation are not illegal, and who gets to define them anyway? Let’s not forget that the Suffragettes were considered extremists in their time.

The point about liberties is when you restrict them you don’t just restrict the legal aspect of liberty, you restrict life itself. The reason we are in the situation we are in now is because of the precedents that were set after 9/11.

The legal detention of healthy people is permitted by emergency laws but enabled by a narrative of dehumanisation.

How do you get your population to take heed? Scare them. Fear suppresses rational thinking and they are more likely to do what they are told.

When the Chilcot report published communications between Tony Blair and George Bush and they were talking about 9/11 and attacking various countries, it was obvious that the war on terror was to be used as propaganda to fight different wars for other reasons.

When will political scientists and historians have a clear perspective on the motives and tactics used in the government’s Covid policies, if it took 20 years to understand the war on terror?

It would seem that this live experiment has no ethics committee and no exit plan.

Back in March 2020, Neil Ferguson said that two-thirds of the people who would go on to die from Covid might die anyway during the year because ‘these are people at the end of their lives or have underlying conditions’.

The government tried to democratise the risk of Covid, when in fact it was highly patterned and age-stratified.

He was adamant that teachers and pupils should not wear masks in classrooms, telling me, ‘younger kids’ speech and communication needs are predicted on being able to see an adult’s mouth when they are talking. We take in so much when we interact with people: the non-verbal, eyes and mouth. It’s massive if you take away half of people’s faces.

There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.

didn’t they want to know? They were part of the propaganda engine, so didn’t they want to know where we were being driven and why? ‘It’s in the name of the unit I am in – it’s behaviour. You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do,’

While not as extreme, lockdown and social distancing measures bear more than a passing resemblance to the tactics featured in Biderman’s Chart of Coercion.

The control crept in and the goalposts were moved, again like domestic abuse: ‘Freedom becomes conditional. You wait to be told you are allowed it. And it can be removed from you. The British public are in a coercive control relationship with the government. Most people will say they are not; in fact they will defend the “relationship”. People in an abusive relationship can get very angry when they are called out, if they are not ready to hear what’s going on.’

Perhaps our children were Covid’s sacrificial lambs.

Governments enact controversial policies and businesses profit from the exploitation of natural disasters, while a population is understandably distracted and looking at danger.

The role of the government should be to moderate and contain a psychic epidemic and mass delusion, not to exaggerate and multiply it.

It’s disgraceful that the government tried to frighten us. This is a crime against the people. I can’t understand why the official bodies like the British Psychological Society aren’t talking about the ethics of what has happened.

I definitely know when they are so ill they have a fever. More to the point, they know when they are ill. Pointing temperature guns at our heads before we cross thresholds does not improve public health.

we need to dial down the cortisol. One of the simplest measures the government could take would be to remove the mask mandate. They are not backed up by convincing scientific evidence or medical necessity (at least, the government hasn’t shown us this evidence) and they are primarily a behavioural psychology tool which is a perfect example of unintended consequences.

Humans are intensely social and as Patrick Fagan observed in a comprehensive essay on fear, self-isolation and confinement at home can contribute to many ‘psychopathological outcomes – such as fatigue, sleep disorders, cognitive impairment, delusions, anxiety, depression, hostility, loss of self-esteem, and lower wellbeing – as well as, ironically, a compromised immune system’.

‘disaster capitalism’ – a complex series of networks and influence employed by private companies and governments that allows them to profit from disasters – happens during shock and fear. Governments create fear, then cultivate and exploit it.

If you believe in democracy you must be suspicious of the use of psychology to manipulate you against your will. Nudge is anti-democratic. The use of fear is a sinister form of control.

The kinds of people who populate the advisory panels close to government are very risk-averse. They are focused on the importance of vaccination, and ‘forcing’ their view of good health on to us, and perhaps dismissive of ethical and social considerations.

We may look back and wonder if social contagion was more of a threat than epidemic contagion.

using fear as a means of control is not ethical. What you do as a psychologist is co-construction. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.’

an inquiry should start with a historical literature review of behavioural psychology and the use of it by government to understand its trajectory and to contextualise its use during the pandemic.

politicians are far more likely to advise the public to fear everything, including fear itself.

In the blind global panic of an epidemic we have forgotten how to analyse risk. If you don’t accept that you will die one day, that you can never be safe, then you are a sitting duck for authoritarian policies which purport to be for your safety.

The weaponisation of fear undermines democracy, liberty and humanity.