Organizing for America | The Good Fight: McCain Campaign Linked to Fear-mongering Tactics

McCain Campaign Linked to Fear-mongering Tactics

By Joseph - Jul 1st, 2008 at 1:44 am EDT

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It is important to note that legislation passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks makes it an act of terrorism to spread false information about an attack (a bomb threat, for instance), with the goal of instilling fear in the public. One McCain adviser said he believed a terrorist attack would benefit McCain, then apologized.

Now, after years of the Bush administration treating terrorism as its own preferred mechanism for constant manipulation of public opinion, supporters of John McCain have begun to raise the specter of a possible attack on the US, apparently as a means of scaring people into voting for the older, "more experienced" senator.

Sen. Joe Lieberman says "Our enemies will test the new president early". We have to ask ourselves 1. how he knows this and 2. what is he implying about the two senators? Does he mean that if McCain is elected, our nation's enemies will be less offended, will hold back?

The comments are so reckless and so much in poor taste, that it can only follow that Sen. Lieberman believes terrorism as such is an electoral asset to Sen. McCain, and this shocking perspective can only mean that using fear to dissuade voters' independent thinking is what he has in mind.

We must renounce this politics of fear and terror, as a nation, and we must denounce, as citizens, any politician who uses the logic of terror to intimidate American voters. The mounting urgency apparent in the McCain campaign to talk of terror and to plan for yet another war smacks of traditional intimidation tactics, aimed at provoking fear in order to manipulate voters.

We have an absolute responsibility as citizens to not behave in this way in our civic discourse and to not permit our nation to be dragged into the sort of sham process witnessed in states where opposition parties are treated as a grave threat to the nation's security simply because they disagree on policy issues with the ruling party. McCain should apologize immediately for this ramping up of bellicose rhetoric and this apparent attempt to take advantage of the logic of terror.

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