The Exploitation of Fear in the 2016 Election Year

Terrorism is huge topic during election years and is discussed a lot on what to do to combat it. Kurzman states that although we believe that the US is in danger of terrorist attacks, “terrorism accounts for only a tiny proportion of the world’s violence” (p. 62). The common misconception and stereotype is that all Muslims are terrorists when in reality Kurzman tells us that Muslims oppose terrorist violence, most of the support for Islamist radicalism is soft, Islamist revolutionaries have a very small amount of followers, al Qaeda faces competition from other liberal Islamic movements, and the more that this radical groups target other Muslims, the less support they have amongst this community of people (p. 63). Victor continues and explains how terrorism is a moral panic that works in instilling fear in the American people, propaganda tells the people that they’re in constant danger of attack from the enemy (p. 10).
During this election year we have encountered many of these scare tactics and the exploitation of fear of terrorism by the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. He uses scare tactics and fear to pursue his followers into believing his rhetoric. He makes Muslims out to be the ultimate evil and tells his followers that Muslims have hatred for Americans and want to use their religion to overtake the government. Victor states that “in order for claims about a new kind of danger to be widely regarded as credible, affirmation from sources of legitimate authority is required” (p. 11). Trump does this by using false statistical information (who knows where this came from) and hate speech that makes it seem as if there is an “us versus them” and in order to stop them we have to act.
In order for these scare tactics to be dispelled the population must “seek realistic information and opinion from alternatives” (Victor, p. 13). In order to give in to information heard or read you must become informed on topic in order to make an educated statement on the matter. We are not seeing this in the current election through the great amount of support Trump has gained throughout his campaign. In order to be informed citizens and voters we must take the time to educate ourselves on the things we hear during this election year and not let a fear monger exploit our fears with misinformation.