Index

Abstract

Nowadays, the politics of fear is frequently visited across the world; such as in Europe (Federici, 2006; Wodak, 2015; Greenhill, 2016). In the US, political figures, and especially presidents, are proved to use fear to justify their denials to welcome refugees (Ben Khalifa, 2017a; 2017b). Being grounded in this course of literature, this paper seeks to determine how Obama and Trump manipulate fear to justify their immigration policies. It focuses on the examination of several speeches that the two presidents delivered on this issue. The critical analysis and evaluation of the arguments they used in these speeches will be based on the use of practical reasoning (Walton, 1996; Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012). To apply this theoretical combination I followed a simple method of research that consists of three successive steps: a) going through the selected speeches to determine the logical components of each argument; b) re-constructing and analyzing the developed arguments; and c) evaluating these arguments and undertaking the logical interpretations. The obtained findings are of two types: theoretical and practical. Theoretically, it is proved that circumstances and values should be considered as essential components in the structure of the fear appeal argument. Practically, it is shown that the speakers used in their rhetoric of fear such discursive strategies like flash-back, narration, meaning-making, and graduation to: persuade the world that the US will not welcome refugees because they harm its home security; convince the Americans that welcoming more refugees will threaten their lives and values; and make their policies the most appropriate choices to save America and its values. So, fear is politically manipulated to serve the speakers’ interests and to justify their public policies.

Keywords: Refugees, Fear, Argumentation, Practical reasoning, Policy Justification and US Politics.

Received: : 23 April 2018 / Revised: 12 July 2018 / Accepted: 18 July 2018 / Published: 23 July 2018

Contribution/ Originality

This study contributes in the existing literature by elaborating a more developed structure of the fear appeal argument and making connection between the rhetoric of fear and the art of policy justification. Also, it highlights the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to determine the goals behind any manipulation of fear.

1. INTRODUCTION

In the time of human crises, it is hard for politicians to express direct claims to refuse welcoming refugees to their states. Indeed, they cannot say that they do not have the will to welcome harmed people because this is un-human and it can open on them and on their policies a wider window of critique. These critiques are not appreciated in that they might have such bad effects on their local agenda, international agenda, and their interests across the globe. Thus, they may resort to the introduction of indirect claims where their refusal is implicitly conveyed. Here, their implicit refusal comes as a result of a long process of justification.

One of the strong arguments that the US presidents resort to in order to justify why they cannot welcome immigrants to their state is the manipulation of the notion of fear. For instance, the notion of fear is rhetorically used to highlight to the public and the international community that the coming refugees do carry with them many sorts of threats like terror (Ben Khalifa, 2017a; 2017b). In reality, the fact whether the immigrants carry with them such threats or not is highly significant. However, what is more significant is the way politicians use such past accidents to generalize the fact that the refugees represent a potential threat to their homeland security. So, once generalizations are being formed, the traces of deception and misleading become obvious. This makes of the produced claims at the center of critique to highlight the real intension behind such generalizations.   

This generalization is, in fact, monitored by the speakers’ political calculations on how to make of their state a safe refuge for the harmed people on the eyes of the world community without sharing the burden with the most affected states. Indeed, to make their receivers believe in what they are saying, politicians are proved to resort to the rhetorical use of such facts from the past. Then, they will re-contextualize these facts in the way that serves to justify their immigration policies. In brief, the scene of fear is being constructed and re-constructed to serve the speaker`s agenda.

In reality, the construction and the re-construction of the scene of fear works at the level of the patterns of language that the speakers build via the linguistic choices they make. In other words, it is a linguistic construction of the meaning of fear. This discursive creation of the meaning of fear is goal-oriented in that it is employed to serve for the defense of the speaker’s migration policies at a given context. This does not mean that it is context dependent. However, it is used to make of the context suitable for the policy the speaker adopts and seeks to convince his public that it is a fruitful one. Thus, it is a re-thinking about a previous situation to remind the public of such facts so that they can justify future policies.   

Moreover, convincing as an end the speaker struggles to achieve requires building such a strong argument that is able to shape and re-shape the public opinions. The fact of using the notion of fear for the sake of argumentation and persuasion makes of the ‘politics of fear’ at the cross roads of researches interested in the study of language in use. This means that the use of ‘fear argument’ for the sake of defending one’s policies should be questioned to show how the scene of fear is being shaped and re-shaped to fit with one’s view on how to act in a given crisis. In this paper, for instance, the ways the US presidents use the ‘politics of fear’ to justify their migration policies will be under debate.

This discussion will be based on the analysis of the speakers’ arguments to show how fear is politically monitored to serve the speakers’ agendas. In reality, this critical analysis aims at answering two main research questions that my literature and my observation on how fear is being used to serve such political purposes have lead to their formulation. These questions are formulated as follows:

1. How is the notion of fear manipulated to serve the speakers’ agendas?
2. To what extent does the manipulation of the notion of fear serve to justify the speakers’ policies?

These problematics will be answered through the scrutiny of the selected texts focusing mainly on how the meaning of fear is being shaped and re-shaped to justify the speakers’ claims. It is via the study of how the diction of fear and the scenes it is used to depict serve to empower the speakers’ arguments that the refugees represent a potential threat to their home land security. The obtained results will be interpreted to give such recommendations.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW  

In this section of the paper, keys concepts, ideas, and theoretical conceptions that are related to study of the use of fear to justify political claims will be reviewed.

1. The Politics of Fear

In this paper, the concept of the ‘politics of fear’ should be understood as the use of the notion of ‘fear’ for the sake of reaching such political ends. In other words, it is not a conceptual study of the meaning of fear; however, it is a study of how the concept of fear is politically used to serve for the justification of such policies. For instance, President Bush used the notion of fear through the manipulation of the concept of ‘terrorism’ to justify his political claims that the US should invade Iraq to stop its support to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda (Gore, 2004). Here, Bush’s justification of his war policies is based on his extension of the notion of terrorism in a time, in which the US citizens were still suffering the evil deeds of 9/11. So, the notion of terrorism is being re-constructed, extended, and re-contextualized to serve a political end: the outbreak of the war against Iraq in 2003.

Using a historical approach, Wodak (2015) argues that it is through the use of fear that such right wing parties in Europe are moving from the margin of the political landscape towards the center. This study shows that the notion of fear is politically monitored to serve politicians’ imaginaries and to build nationalism by using such exclusionary ideologies. These exclusionary ideologies are not used at random, but to serve such political ends manifested mainly in achieving victory in the ongoing political campaigns. In America, the politics of fear is also present in Donald Trump’s campaigning speeches. For instance, Ball (2016) argues that Trump’s candidacy relies on the power of fear and she explains that it may be the only way for him to win. This article explains how fear works in Trump’s campaigning language by analyzing several examples from his speeches. These two sources prove that fear is politically used to serve personal goals. Thus, the use of fear is a ‘goal-oriented’ discursive strategy that the speakers may use to gain control over the public’s minds aiming to reach a well-determined result.

Fear is of different types such as economic fear, the fear of the past, the fear of the future, etc. In reality, all of these sorts are obvious to every one of us and they are discussed in our everyday life without any kind of intension. However, they become of crucial significance when they are associated with such communicative ends like persuasion, manipulation, control, domination, etc. For example, Furedi (2007) argues that fear is rarely considered as a sociological problem by its own and that it is usually examined in relation to specific issues. In other words, once being associated with a given communicative end, the notion of ‘fear’ becomes highly problematic. In fact, this sort of problematisation lies in the relation between the discursive uses of fear and the communicative goals it serves. Thus, our critical study of how fear is politically used to serve such ends should take into consideration the determination of the discursive construction of the notion of fear and the communicative ends it serve. These two tasks are required so that we can reach an insight critique of the issue under question.

As far as the discursive construction of the notion of fear is concerned, we can say that the meaning of fear can be shaped and re-shaped at various levels of text and talk such as semantics, syntax, rhetoric, narration, etc. So, for us to work out how the notion of fear is being constructed, we need to collect all textual data that language users used to draw the scene of fear. Indeed, these textual indices are required in that they help us determine the way such choices are used to involve fear in the justification of such policies. Here, the extent to which the notion of fear is used to justify such policies will be based on the critical examination of the logical connections between the speaker’s claimed policies and his discursive construction of the meaning of fear. This, in fact, entails taking into consideration the context of speaking to determine whether fear is being used to justify or not. However, to work out how speakers use the politics of fear to justify such policies we need to understand the relation between fear, as an emotion, and justification, as a cognitive process, we use while seeking to persuade.

2. Fear and Policy Justification

The question ‘why do politicians use fear to justify such policies?’ is what matters in this section of the paper. In reality, to reach an adequate answer to this question, it is necessary to bring into discussion the nature of the relation between fear and the human mind. In other words, we need to understand the impact of the emotion of fear on the functioning of the mind manifested mainly in the reasoning process. In brief, by highlighting the impact of fear on the functioning of our brains, the reasons why fear is frequently involved in today’s politics will be clear.

Indeed, a brief review of the nature of the relation between the human mind and fear might get its start in the formulation of workable definitions of the two concepts. First, the mind is a complex organ that is composed of a set of faculties such as perception, judgment, thinking, consciousness, etc. Second, fear is a feeling caused by a perceived danger or threat which leads to a change in the functioning of such organs. This change of function is immediately followed by such reactions like fleeing, hiding, etc. Starting from these two definitions, we can notice that fear has such a strong impact on our thinking process as well as on our ways of evaluating things. In other words, fear can change our normal ways of evaluating things into a one way of thinking manifested mainly in our reasoning on how to overcome the coming threat. Thus, the use of fear can be viewed as a wise strategy to prevent people from evaluating the speakers’ decisions by making of them willing to accept any claim that can protect them from the depicted threat.

Gore (2007) argues that fear is reason’s most powerful enemy. While depicting the relations of power between reason and its enemy (fear), he stated that it is an unbalanced one. Then, he explained this unbalance of power by highlighting the domination of fear over reason saying that “reason may sometimes dissipate fear, but fear frequently shuts down reason”. Indeed, this explanation shows that fear can prevent the mind from carrying on its logical process of reasoning. This means that once the logic of critique is not there, rationality will be replaced by irrationality. In reality, the domination of irrationality is the main target that politicians seek to achieve in that it enables them to maintain control over their citizens. Also, it gives them the power to make of their public adhere to their claims and policies. For instance, in the absence of rationality politicians will have the power to push the public to vote for them the day of the election. So, the use of fear becomes politicians’ weapon to spread irrationality, the atmosphere under which they can justify what they want to adopt as public policies.

Moreover, the use of fear serves to obscure the addressee’s mind. For instance, Brzezinski (2005) affirms that the culture of fear obscures the mind, intensifies emotions, and enables demagogues to push the public to defend the policies they want to pursue. By obscuring someone’s mind, the truth might be manipulated in the way that serves the speaker’s goals. For example, Birch (2014) argues that the creation of fear represents the best way to set people up for manipulation. In reality, the fact of setting people up for manipulation gives the speaker’s the occasion to cause the addressee a great kind of stress that will not allow him to reason in such a rational way. Dolinski and Nawrat (1998) show that the “fear-then-relief” technique is highly effective in the production of compliance. Pinola (2012) argues that this technique is one of the easiest ways to get people say yes in that it disarms them from reason by making them less likely to produce mindful and rational decisions. This, in facts, happens through preying on people’s emotions. Thus, the use of fear is a highly effective strategy to justify such policies and to reject others by giving raise to the role of emotions and minimizing the role of reason.

The increase of the presence of emotions and the decrease of the presence of reason represents a shake psychological situation in which people will not have the power to distinguish between what is true and what is wrong. In other words, they become in a situation of loss, in which the speaker’s claim to overwhelm the existing fear will be the best way towards survival that they cannot reject. Using experimental psychology, Jung et al. (2014) proved that emotions can have a significant impact on the ways we think, decide, and solve problems. Being aware of the impact of such horrible facts on their nations, the speakers will prey on their emotions to serve such goals. In addition, the use of these concrete facts to draw the scene of the possible future threats creates the fear of the unknown on the part of the public, which is a mere mental obstacle. This fear of the unknown has a strong effect on humans’ lives and ways of thinking and it is frequently highlighted in the political use of language due to its role in controlling the public opinions. For instance, Lo (2013) argues that the fear of the un-known is “one of the most powerful motivating force of our conscious and subconscious minds” (p 628). In brief, once being created and re-created, fear serves as a powerful tool of control and manipulation.   

To sum up, in the existence of fear, there will be no rationality. This means that once fear is there, the human thinking process will not function in the correct way. So, the mind will not follow a logical process while dealing with ideas and thoughts (receiving the message, decoding its meaning, and evaluating it) in order to select the adequate response. However, its treatment of any claim will be highly emotional, which means that it will take the choice that will serve to avoid that emotion of fear and not the logically convincing choice. Here, the feature (+ logical) of the produced argument should be questioned to see how fear argument is rationally used to deceive and mislead for the sake of reaching such ends. This makes the relation between fear argument and practical reasoning as a framework of argumentation analysis and evaluation under focus in the following section.

3. Fear Argument and Practical Reasoning

The need for practical reason in the critical study of how fear is politically used by Obama and Trump to justify their migration policies makes the discussion of the relation between fear argument and practical reasoning very crucial. This discussion starts from the formulation of two concise and precise definitions of the terms. On the one hand, practical reason refers mainly to the use of reason to decide how to act in a given situation. It is the use of the mind to select the right choice among many alternatives. On the other hand, fear appeal is a fallacy that people use while attempting to support a given idea through the increase of fear towards the alternative idea. It is a deceptive use of the emotions of fear to serve such ends. Thus, the questions – how such a fallacy is politically employed to empower the speaker’s argument for action? – is what matters in this section and the paper in general.

In the 21st century, politicians like Bush are proved to use fear appeal to justify such policies. While they are addressing their public, they are used to highlight danger such as terrorism in order to justify a given action. This analysis can be undertaken within the theoretical frame of practical reasoning that Walton (1996) used to determine the structure of fear appeal arguments. In this work, he outlines that the argument from fear appeal has a structure that is composed of these components: proponent (P), respondent (R), action (A), and danger (D), which is the means used to reach compliance. The formulation of this structure has led to the synthesis that is in the form of:

1.    (P) if you (R) do not bring about (A), then (D) will occur

The structure encapsulated in this synthesis offers the adequate tools that are required for the analysis of the fear appeal argument that the modern leaders use to justify such policies like migration policies. However, I think that these are not sufficient to do so. They are insufficient in that they cannot serve us to undertake an in-depth critique of the developed arguments. Indeed, this theoretical limitation finds its justification in the specificities of the fear appeal arguments that modern political figures in the US used to justify their plans for action. So, we need to develop a more effective theoretical frame that takes into consideration the specificities of the modern fear appeal argument that politicians use to justify such public policies.

The study of the arguments politicians like Bush and Obama used to justify such policies are proved to defend some values and reject others (Murphy, 2003; Barnet, 2016). This, in fact, makes of values/concerns one of the main components that should be added to the structure of the fear appeal argument so that we can understand how these values are being used to support the speakers’ claims for action. Here, we need to take into consideration the relation between the values the speaker defends and the values he rejects. This relation is required in order to clarify how these tow sorts of values work to differentiate us from them and to show the extent to which they serve to exaggerate the degree of harm the other can cause to us. Moreover, it is highlighted that some political leaders are used to manipulate context in the way that serves to justify their public policies (McCrisken, 2012). This means that in order for us to understand how the construction and the re-construction of the context of horror is employed to make the impact of fear on the recipient stronger, it is required to consider context as a main component in the structure of the fear appeal argument. Indeed, the addition of context is required in that it enables us to clarify how the political re-manufacturing of past deeds serves to make of the future threat, that the speaker tries to sensitize its public about, credible. Thus, the discussion of the limitations of Walton (1996)’s frame on the basis of the existing literature on the use of fear to justify public policies highlighted that both context and values should be considered as main parts of the structure of the fear appeal argument.   

In reality, there are other more developed structures of practical reasoning like (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012; Tuomela, 2013; Walton, 2015; 2016). However, these are not sufficient to deal with the examination of the topic under focus. For instance, Fairclough and Fairclough (2012)’s approach offers a frame for the analysis and evaluation of practical arguments. But, it cannot be used in this study though some of its components like context and values are proved to be required for the examination of the corpus under study. Their frame is not useful in that the fear appeal argument is quite different from practical argument. In addition, Walton (2016) shows interest to the notion of circumstances in his framing of intelligent practical reasoning. However, this is not the case since my study requires a structure of practical reasoning that takes into consideration the specificity of the fear appeal argument with the addition of the components of circumstances and values. In brief, a reading the this literature and other works in the field shows that the structure of practical reasoning evolves from one work to another depending on the type of the argument the scholars are interested in like fear appeal argument, practical argument, etc.

To sum up, taking into consideration the specificities of the political argument I want to explore in this paper, I found that a combination between Fairclough and Fairclough (2012)’s frame and Walton (1996)’s frame will be fruitful for the discussion of the issue under study. Indeed, this combination is realized by extracting the two components – circumstances and values – used in the framework of Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) and adding them to the structure of practical reasoning developed in Walton (1996). So, by adding these two components the structure of the fear appeal argument that I cited before from Walton’s work under the notification (1) will be formulated as follows (2):

Figure-1. A developed structure of Walton (1996)’s model of reasoning from a fear appeal perspective.

The obtained structure of practical reasoning (fig.1) will be used in the critical study of how Obama and Trump used fear the appeal argument to justify their migration policies. This study will be carried by using a simple method of research that I will describe in the following section.

3. METHODOLOGY

The corpus to be under focus, in this paper, consists of two speeches that the two US presidents – Obama and Trump – delivered on the issues of refugees and immigration. The first speech is delivered by President Obama in the United Nations in September 20, 2016. This speech is entitled “Remarks by President Obama at Leaders Summit on Refugees”. ¹ The second speech is delivered by president Trump in January 28, 2017. This speech is published under the title “Donald Trump refugee ban: full text of executive order”. ² These two speeches will be analyzed using the framework of practical reasoning from the fear appeal perspective which I established in the section before. The application of the approach formed by combining some components (circumstances and values) from Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) with the structure of the fear appeal practical reasoning developed in Walton (1996) will be based on the method to be described in the following paragraph.

The method of data processing to be used for the critical investigation of the selected texts consists of three successive steps. First, I will be moving across the selected texts aiming to determine the logical components of the fear appeal arguments that the speakers developed to justify their migration policies. Second, I will be focusing on the re-construction and the analysis of the arguments the logical element of which I determined in the first step. Third, I will be interested in the evaluation of the arguments I re-constructed and analyzed in the second step aiming to undertake some logical interpretations. Finally, conclusions will be drawn, limitations will be stated, and doors will be opened for coming researches in the field.

4. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, the methodology depicted before will be used for the analysis of the selected texts. This analytical task will be undertaken to show how the notion of fear is being manipulated by both Obama and Trump to justify their claims that they will not welcome more refugees and immigrants to the US. The fear appeal arguments that they developed to justify their migration policies will be explored in order to formulate good answers to the problematics that I raised at the level of the introduction. This section consists of two sub-sections. The first sub-section will be devoted to the analysis of Obama’s speech. The second sub-section will be interested in the analysis of Trump’s speech.

4.1. Obama’s Speech

In this speech, President Obama used the politics of fear to defend simultaneously two different but complementary claims. In the first claim, he tried to convince the UN committee that the US will not be able to welcome more refugees in the present time. In the second claim, he struggled to persuade the UN committee that it is time for those states that are doing little or nothing to support the affected nations to do their job. It is a direct call for member states in the UN and the world community about the need to share the burden that the refugee crisis caused on the welcoming states by holding refugees and helping the hosting states. These two fear appeal arguments will be dealt with separately. Then, the obtained results will be discussed to show how Obama used the politics of fear to: a) prove to the world community that the US always shows compassion to harmed people; b) highlight to the present guests in the UN that the US is often in a leading position to assume its responsibility to support the affected nations; and c) convince the UN committee that the US could not welcome more refugees for such financial and security reasons.

4.1.1. The First Fear Appeal Argument

In this first fear appeal argument, President Obama resorted to the rhetorical manipulation of the notion of fear to show to the world that the US cannot welcome new refugees to its territories. In fact, this claim is not directly expressed; however, it could be read by means of implication. The claim comes in the form that the US welcomed and resettled a huge number of refugees and that it is the largest single donor of humanitarian aid around the world. But, regarding the alarming indicators of its internal security and its current financial situation, the US will not be able to welcome and resettle more refugees in the present time. Moreover, to make of the claim that the US’s financial situation and its security indicators are the only factors that prevent it from hosting new refugees more credible, President Obama promised to increase the number of refugees by 60 percent over 2015 in the coming fiscal year. Thus, though it is not directly claimed, the refusal to welcome new refugees is conveyed under the pretext of fear.

The pretext of fear is a political atmosphere that President Obama created to justify his migration policy that his administration will not allow more refugees to the US territories in the time of speaking. This atmosphere works via the construction and the re-construction of the meaning of fear, which is the discursive strategy that he used as a strong means to argue while representing his nations in the UN. In reality, this discursive strategy works mainly through shaping and re-shaping the scene of fear (context) as well as through the depiction of the difference between the values that the Americans defend and the values that the others defend.

First, to highlight the danger of welcoming new refugees, Obama resorted to the technique of flashback. He used this technique to re-construct a previous situation in which the disorderly and disproportionate migration has led to the raise of tension in the American society. This situation is re-introduced to highlight to the world community the similarity that exists between the present situation and the previous situation that the Americans lived. Indeed, the introduction of this similarity aims at showing to world that it is proved from past experiences that welcoming more refugees in a time of turmoil will lead to the infiltration of violent refugees, especially those demagogues from countries that skew the US politics. Here, the fact that violent people are proved to infiltrate among refugees gives Obama’s strategy to screen refuges and his claim to welcome refugees based on the US’s security measures and its financial capacity a wide legitimacy among the attendees to this UN summit. So, previous situations are re-shaped for the sake of justifying present migration policies by means of analogy between past and present. This analogy is meant to stress similarity as the main tool through which the future can be read.

Second, while arguing Obama put the emphasis upon the difference of values between the US and the refugees it hosts and, especially the violent ones. The description of the difference in terms of values showed that: on the one hand, the Americans are defending values like pluralism, diversity, helping affected people, giving humanitarian aids, etc. By defending these values the in-group people (the US) are represented as a civilized society who shows compassion to everyone regardless of the existing differences such as religion, ethnicity, etc. On the other, the others (the refugees) are defending values like violence (mentality that allows for violence), terrorism, etc. By associating these values with the out-group people (the refugees), they become a source of threat, instability, terror, etc. They are represented as savages. This implies that there should be an intensive screen in order to move a few number of immigrants, which means that screening a huge number needs time and refugees are in urgent need for humanitarian help. So, the rest of the world community should move forward and assume their responsibilities. In brief, the depiction of the difference of values between the US and the refugees it hosts and it might host played an important role in the justification of Obama’s decision that his state will not be able to welcome more refugees.

To sum up, Obama used the rhetoric of fear to prove to the world that for the US to preserve its values, democracy, stability, and financial equilibrium, it should not welcome more refugees in the present time. This rhetoric of fear finds more legitimacy with the re-manufacturing of previous scenes of fear and the ideological depiction of the difference of values between the in-group and the out-group nations. So, the logical structure of Obama’s fear appeal argument can be re-structured as follows (see Fig. 2).

Figure-2. The structure of Obama’s fear appeal argument ‘not to welcome more refugees to the US’

4.1.2. The Second Fear Appeal Argument

In this second fear appear argument, President Obama used the rhetoric of fear to persuade the world community about the need to share the burden of the refugees with the hosting countries. His claim comes in the form of a direct appeal in which he addressed the states that did nothing or little efforts to support the refugees to move forward and assume their responsibilities. He highlighted that the end of the refugee crisis and the protection of the world peace requires a collective endeavor. Moreover, to emphasize the urgent need for a unified world community and a unified international response to the crisis, he struggled to convince the attendees that the present refugee crisis is the worst refugee crisis in the world since the end of the Second World War. To make of impact of the horror of the present situation he depicted stronger on his public, Obama resorted to the narration of some concrete examples through which he described the grim realities in which some of the refugees he talked to were living. Then, he moved to the narration of the stories of the success of some refugees who were welcomed and resettled in countries like Germany. In order for the stories he narrated to be more credible and to have a stronger impact on the hearers, he used the technique of naming. This technique works through the articulation of the names of people whose experiences where famous in the media. Indeed, the narration of these stories ended with Obama’s emphasis that welcoming new people to our countries serves for the prosperity of our nations. Thus, Obama’s struggle to persuade the attendees to take their part in this refugee crisis using the rhetoric of fear can be summarized in the ‘fear-then-relief’ strategy (Dolinski and Nawrat, 1998).

This ‘fear-then-relief’ strategy is a political technique that Obama used in order to pressure the states who haven’t assumed their responsibilities to advance and share the burden with the states which already have a big number of refugees. Also, he used it to show to the addresses that what makes difference between us (the states who welcomed refugees) and them (the states that did nothing or little to rescue the refugees) is the ways we think about the refugees. So, the difference in terms of each party’s response to the crisis is a matter of values; I mean how do we see the refugees and how do we evaluate them. This difference between the in-group and the out-group is not welcomed in Obama’s speech. In reality, he resorted to its defeat by means of warning. He used warning as a means of raising the addresses’ attention towards the fear of the future manifested mainly in: the fear of the increase of violence across the world and the fear of what history will narrate about their inhuman responses. These fears are motivated mainly by the construction and the re-construction of the scenes of fear and the depiction of the difference of values between the hosting countries and the countries which do not take part in the resolution of the refugee crisis.

On the one hand, Obama used the strategy of constructing and re-constructing past refugee crisis to catch the attendees’ attention to the harsh critique of history if the world community will not get united to end this crisis. Using the technique of flashback, he got back to memories from the American history highlighting that a failure to act in the past of the US (turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany) remained a stain in the American collective history. This is, in reality, a direct warning against the harsh critique of history addressed to the states that will not advance to take part and secure the war torn nations. This direct warning is used once again to create fear on the part of the attendees by highlighting the possibility that one day any one of us, as attendees in the UN, may be in the same case of these refugees and in need for shelter and protection. To show that this possibility is not far away from us, Obama got back to the history of migration in the US. This flashback is used to show to the public that even stable nations can live in such turmoil one day and they become in need for humanitarian support. Indeed, the raising of the possibility that any one of us can be a refugee one day represents the peak of Obama’s rhetoric of fear. It is the top of his political pressure to push the world community to come together and face this refugee crisis as the worst refugee crisis since the end of the Second World War. Here, the top of political pressure culminates in Obama’s claim that you (states who do not share the burden of the refugee crisis) even if you don’t care about the humanity, the peace of the world, and the harsh critique of history think about the day you may become refugees and you will not find support. Thus, President Obama’s construction and re-construction of previous facts by means of flashback is used to make connection between past, present, and future. This connection is made by means of analogy that is used to highlight similarities. The technique of creating similarities has lead to the progress of the rhetoric of fear leading to the top of political pressure the description of which will be more obvious with the examination of Obama is depiction of the difference of values between us and them.

On the other hand, Obama rhetorically manipulated the notion of value to put pressure on the attendees to do more efforts to rescue the harmed nations. This manipulation of values serves to empower the rhetoric of fear in that it serves to create fear. First, Obama shows that we welcome refugees because we believe in pluralism and diversity to create prosperous societies. This implies that the other who do not advance to welcome refugees do not believe in these values. Indeed, the fact of having no values of diversity and pluralism in their tradition raises the fear that these states have the possibility to enter in chaos and instability more than others. So, they need to start working on these values by welcoming people of different back ground before living such horrible scenarios. Second, Obama highlights that we cannot slam the doors because we cannot betray our values, which means that we have a strong faith. This implies that those who slammed their doors do not have the international values we defend. So, they cannot be part of who we are and they are simply part of who the other is. This means that if they are not defenders of human life and dignity, they are defenders of terror and violence. By becoming defenders of these extremist values they represent a threat to world peace. This, in reality reminds me of Bush’s claim “either you are with us or against us”. Third, by claiming that if we refuse welcoming refugees we deny our heritage, Obama might imply that the ones who do not welcome refugees have no heritage of human values. This means that they should reform themselves or they will be reformed by revolutions and wars like what happened in states like Syria, Somalia, Iraq, etc. Fourth, Obama stressed the value of leadership on the part of the hosting countries to highlight the fact that the states which refused to host refugees do not have this value. This means that they should fear the day they will be isolated from the international community. This fear is critical because political isolation will make them weak to face the challenges of their nations. Finally, Obama uses the discursive strategy of drawing the difference between the values we defend and the values they defend to shape and re-shape the meaning of fear in the way that makes his pressure stronger.

To conclude, Obama used the rhetoric of fear to convince the world community to do more to end the crisis. In fact, the analysis of the structure of his fear appeal reasoning proved that he overcame the phase of persuasion to that of pressure. His political pressure works mainly via the construction and the re-construction of historical facts to draw the sad picture of the current situation and to read its future implications as well as via the out-lining of the differences of values between the in-group and the out-group people. These are used to stress the bad effects of having no unified response on the world peace. This pressure culminates in the use of fear to show to the attendees that; if there will be no unified response to the crisis, the world peace will be threatened. Thus, Obama’s fear appeal argument can be re-structured as follows: (see Fig. 3).

Fig-3. The structure of Obama’s fear appeal argument about ‘the need for a unified response to the crisis’

To recapitulate, using the rhetoric of fear President Obama managed to run two simultaneous arguments the main objective behind which is to justify his views on how to deal with the refugee crisis. These arguments complete each others’ objectives. For instance, the policy that Obama sought to justify in the first argument “no more refugees to the US” because of financial and security reasons is empowered by his call for a “unified global response” which is the policy he endeavored to justify in the second argument. Moreover, the second argument completes the first one by highlighting the need for the rest of the world community to advance and assume their responsibilities hence defending the reduction of the number of the refugees to the US.

In reality, Obama’s politics of fear is proved to be based on the re-manufacturing of past deeds to highlight similarities between past and present and to predict the future by means of analogy. Also, it is based on the rhetorical manipulation of the notion of values in the way that highlights the sort of difference which can serve for the realization of the main objectives of the developed argument. Thus, the important role the politics of fear played to empower Obama’s argument to justify his plan on how to end the refugee crisis becomes obvious. However, the way Trump manipulates the notion of fear to empower his argument which aims to justify his migration policy ‘banning refugees to the US’ will be discussed in the coming sub-section.

4.2. Trump’s Speech

In this speech, Trump developed a fear appeal argument to defend his claim banning refugees from several Muslim majority countries to the US. His claim comes in the form of some direct instructions in which he ordered members of his government to stop the entry of nationals from the countries that he determined. To justify his orders he resorted to the rhetoric of fear. His rhetoric is based mainly in the creation and the re-creation of the meaning of fear. He used this strategy so that he can convince his public and the world that his orders came not as an act of bigotry but as an act to protect the US from being harmed by the entry of violent immigrants. In reality, it is predicted that Trump’s intension to manipulate fear will be highly elevated due to the fact of having him accused in person to be a bigot based on the frequent manifestations of the feelings of hatred in his language. Thus, the way he manipulates the notion of fear to justify his new migration policy will be discussed via the re-construction and the analysis of his fear appeal argument.

In this fear appeal argument, Trump used the rhetoric of fear to show to the world that the US will not be able to welcome refugees from the countries that he stated because the US home security will be harmed by the smuggle of terrorist agents. He continued explaining that there should be an intensive screening on the individuals who apply for visa to the US because it is proved that even the people who entered in a legal way after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas were convicted in terrorist crimes. Moreover, to give more credibility to the examples that he gave, Trump argued that even the ones who are protected by the US’s refugee program rewarded its nation by fear and terror. For instance, he gave the example of the refugees who are proved to be involved in such terrorist attacks after they entered to the US through its refugee resettlement program. Indeed, the progress of the rhetoric of fear reached its peak in Trump’s order that the US will not welcome people from war torn countries such as Syria under the pretext that they increase the likelihood that terrorists will smuggle to the US. This order is designated as the peak of Trump’s rhetoric of fear in that people from vulnerable countries are in need for refuge than others due to the disaster they live in. In other words, the strange nature of this order makes of it the top of Trump’s manipulation of the notion of fear to justify the claimed orders. To sum up, the pretext of fear that Trump used to justify his policy to ban refugees to the US will get its in-depth critique in the analysis of how past deeds are re-shaped and how the difference of values is highlighted to give legitimacy to his policy.

First, to make of the impact of his rhetoric stronger on his public, Trump got back to past deeds. He re-visited the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by means of flashback. This technique is used to show to the public that when refugees were not screened intensively, the US lived one of the most horrible moments in its history. In reality, the 9/11 terrorist attacks have a strong impact on the Americans’ psyches. However, to make of this impact stronger Trump used such numbers to re-shape the scene of horror on his public’s minds and shed light on the need to ban refugees to the US. Moreover, Trump re-visited the facts in which the refugees the US welcomed were proved to have ties with such terrorist organization and to commit violence in the US territories. These facts are rhetorically manipulated to show to the public that the Americans can defeat terror in the US only by limiting the number of refugees to its territories. In brief, Trump re-visited past deeds to highlight to his public by means of analogy the similarity between past and present so that they can read the future threat welcoming more refugees will cause to the US peace. This call to read the future based on the similarity between past and present will be more concrete by drawing the difference of values between the in-group and the out-group people.

Second, to shed more light on the great danger the entry of foreigners from war torn countries represents on the US security, Trump resorted to the highlight of the difference between us and them in terms of values. These differences can be summarized in several points. On the one hand, while the US cares about the common good of the humanity by welcoming harmed people, foreigners try to destroy its internal peace through violence and terror. This implies that they do not care about the human values. On the other hand, the Americans are supporters of the law (the constitution). However, the foreigners are supporters of violent ideologies that they place over the law. This means that they are savages and that their existence in the US is a potential threat to its security and peace. Third, the US is struggling harder to defeat practices such bigotry and hatred in contrast the foreign comers are proved to be engaged in acts of bigotry and hatred. This implies that they will not tolerate the American values like freedom, diversity, etc. Finally, the opposition of values between the US and the foreigners who seek to enter to its territories is the main source of violence and terror; that is why we should stop migration to our country.

To sum up, Trump used the feelings of fear to dominate his public so that he can easily convince them that migration to the US from war torn countries threaten its stability. The analysis of his fear appeal argument showed that the feeling of fear is exaggerated via re-visiting past deeds and stressing the opposition of values between us and them. Here, exaggeration is used to warn the US citizens that if savage strangers will continue smuggling to the US territories, an accident like 9/11 attacks might take place in the near future. This implies the immediate ban of migration from war torn countries. Thus, Trump’s fear appeal argument can be re-structured as follows: (see Fig. 4).

Fig-4. The structure of Trump’s fear appeal argument ‘banning refugees to the US’.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The use of practical reasoning to study how the US presidents – Obama and Trump – used the politics of fear to justify their migration policies has led to the formulation of two sorts of conclusions: theoretical and practical.

At the theoretical level, it is proved that both circumstances and values should be considered as two essential components of the logical structure of the fear appeal argument. Indeed, the analysis of the two speakers’ fear appeal arguments showed that the re-shaping of previous situations served to justify the speaker’s prediction of what will happen in the future if we (Americans or world community) will not take the right action. Also, it high-lighted that the speakers’ emphasis on the difference of values served to shed light on the positive representation of the self and the negative representation of the other which is a strategy to convince the public that what we are doing to protect ourselves is legitimate. Thus, circumstances and values are two essential parts of the speakers’ reasoning on how to use fear to justify such policies.

At the practical level, the findings of the analysis of the two speeches under focus showed that the speakers’ manipulative use of fear can be summarized in four main discursive strategies:

Flashback: the speakers used this technique to re-visit previous situations in which violence and terror made their nations live in such horrible moments like 9/11 attacks. By means of analogy the speakers used this technique to highlight similarities between the causes of these past facts and what is going on in the present time. The similarities they draw represent a strategy that they have resorted to in order to highlight to the public that if you will not defend these policies then you might re-live similar horrible moments in the future. In other words, this flashback technique is also a strategy to read the future in the way that serves to convince the public about the coming of some possible threats. So, it is a means to spread the fear of the un-known among the addressees to make them say yes easily.

Meaning-making: this technique works through the creation and the re-creation of the meaning of fear. It is based mainly on the speakers’ continuous resort to fear to defend each of their choices denying the existence of any other reason that may push them to take these decisions except the fact of being in danger. In reality, it is through the creation of the meaning of fear that the speakers struggled to create an atmosphere of horror in the minds of their public to make them believe in what they are saying. In order for this atmosphere to have the required credibility on the part of the public, they made use of real examples manifested mainly in the re-stating of past deeds of violence and terror. Thus, it is a strategy that the speakers used to create a cognitive atmosphere of horror in the minds of the receivers through the semantic construction and re-construction of meaning. The main objective behind this discursive process of creating fear is to shut down people’s mind and to set them up for manipulation.

Narration: the speakers used this technique to narrate real stories that are well-known for the people they are addressing. Their telling of these concrete examples is meant to create a high level of credibility for what they have taken as policies. The restatement of these examples is also a strategy to influence the addressees’ reasoning about the legitimacy of the speakers’ policies by making them fear the un-known (the future) through re-living the past. In brief, it is a technique used to create the culture of fear through such an evolutionary process that aims to reach a public agreement on the legitimacy of the speakers’ policies. 

Graduation: the speakers used this technique to make of the impact of their rhetoric on the public evolves with the progress of their narration of the stories of violence and terror. They used an ascending rate; starting from such real examples to reach the peak of their rhetoric. Indeed, this peak represents the highest level of threat that the speakers used to make his public surrender to their choice. This highest level of threat is reached by means of political exaggeration to draw the gloomiest picture of the future moments that the people might live if they will not defend the speakers’ policies. To sum up, it is a gradual use of rhetoric to make of the impact of fear on the public increases till reaching its top; the moment in which the receivers’ minds become set up for manipulation. It is the moment in which the speakers can legitimize their policies away from the resistance of their followers.

To conclude, the speakers’ use of the politics of fear to justify such policies is a well-organized strategy of argumentation that follows such a complex reasoning process. This complex process of reasoning operates mainly through the creation of a cognitive atmosphere of horror through the re-shaping of such concrete facts. In other words, the fear they create on the minds of their addresses is the one that they elaborated in their minds on the basis of their political calculations on how to act in a given situation. Thus, it is not a real fear that we should think about. However, it is the mental conception of fear that is goal-oriented. As the US President Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Funding: This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

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