The fallacy ad metum: how the European mainstream manipulates us with fear

The fallacy ad metum (ie the recourse to "fear") is one of the favorites of European Union enthusiasts to the bitter end: that is, the "union" in spite of popular wishes and regardless of the benefits that derive from it. It consists in appealing not to reasonable and sensible reality data, but rather to the belly or, if you prefer, to the heart of the average citizen. We could also add “to the portfolio” since the economic data is often linked to emotional reactions in general, in the sense that it favors or even determines them. There is nothing, like the terror of misery, capable of guiding the voter in his choices. A people like ours – whose ancestors came up with the famous and successful slogan "Either Franza or Spain as long as if magna" – knows this all too well. But let us return to the fallacy under consideration.

It is a non- argumentation because it involves feelings, emotions and, in particular, the most powerful of them: fear. Think of how many times, as children, we have been persuaded to undergo a detestable experience (from the dentist's tools to the asylum caudine forks) under the threat of the black man or the coal of Santa Claus or who knows what other worse disaster is the fantasy of our reference adults was able to make us imagine.

Do you feel like smiling? You are wrong, because the method used towards you when you wore shorts or sailor dresses was analogous, in all respects, to what we are dealing with. The one known, in the classifications of fallacies, under the name – precisely – of fallacy ad metum .

Frighten someone, frighten them enough, and there will be very few things that the prick will refuse to do for you, as long as you force him to have an alternative less terrible than the effects of disobeying your inputs.

Obviously, the appeal to fear is not necessarily a fallacy. There are cases in which it is based on facts that are realistic and well-founded enough to justify, and even make it logical and rational (therefore not fallacious), its use. If a parent tells a student to practice harder rather than wander around all day, because otherwise the urchin risks failing, we are not faced with an ad metum fallacy, but rather with reasonable and motivated advice. In fact, a systematic inaction in the study can lead to failing the exam. If, on the other hand, the mother tells her little child, in kindergarten age, not to throw a tantrum otherwise the babau could come and take him away, then we are faced with a fallacy. Effective with respect to the suggestible baby, but still fallacious.

In the case of Europe, the meaning of the use of “fear” is: do not listen to those who oppose the euro and the EU, otherwise you could bitterly regret it. The sovereignists must be ignored, and censored, not because they say false or unfounded things, but because – listening to them or even getting involved in them – one risks ending up badly!

In the case of the “test tube” construction of the myth called the European Union, the fallacy ad metum was used especially after the games were over and it was used in the public debate against Eurosceptics, populists and sovereignists, to disqualify them.

At the beginning, in fact, in the phase of construction of the cage, the media and institutions focused above all on the benefits that the EU would have brought to our lives if we had joined it and if we had, one step after another, sold all of them, or almost, our sovereign prerogatives. They were taking us "to the roof" of happiness: do you remember the trick?

Once at the top, however, Italian citizens began to feel – somewhere and for some reason – it smells burnt. They therefore began to toy with the idea of ​​a way out of the community asylum; then the ad metum topic became the establishment's favorite.

The problem, in fact, once the “roof” had been climbed, was no longer to ensure that the various states of the old continent climbed onto the common attic, but rather to prevent them from asking to go down. Thus, from a certain point onwards – we could roughly situate it towards the end of the Zero's, with the outbreak of the great crisis – all the corrupters of conscience engaged in pro-European manipulation have given in with recourse ad metum .

Think of how many times you have heard the future of poverty, misery, decay, inflation, devaluation, unemployment: the one looming on the horizon if – it never is! – the voters listened to the mad and reckless sovereignists who supported the farewell to the euro and the exit from the EU.

They sang them to us in all possible and imaginable ways: the Markets will punish the Italian economy, Italy will end up crushed with its "new" liretta in the era of global competition, public debt will skyrocket, inflation will it will tear down our derelict economy by forcing us to go shopping with wheelbarrows of banknotes like the Germans in the days of the Weimar Republic, we will be marginalized from the world.

Obviously, all these are not logical arguments, but prefigurations of catastrophes and are not intended to make you reflect on a very serious issue such as the exit from the single currency or the European Union, but to make you join, like mussels on a rock, unthinkingly and obtuse, to a given situation. And above all, they get a very specific result: to inhibit any serious debate on the concrete feasibility of a solution that is not aligned with the wishes of the unionists by side.

Thus, restrained by the fear of falling into an incandescent ember, people certainly prefer to remain, in spite of themselves, in the red-hot pan. The crude nature of this rhetorical fallacy is directly proportional to its tremendous effectiveness. Millions and millions of people – even after having witnessed first-hand, and with their own eyes, the failure of pro-European projects – have continued to give their vote, in the ballot box, to compromised parties hands and feet with (not to say succubus of) Brussels. In order not to take a new and different path, just not to take the way out: the famous exit, or at least a shortcut that even vaguely resembled it.

Mind you, the ad metum argument is devious above all because it refers to a historical phenomenon (the exit from the euro, understood as a single currency) that never occurred. Therefore, the "biblical plagues", the "millennial cataclysms" evoked by professional manipulators to the detriment of anyone who dares to question the European Union at twenty-seven, or the monetary constraint for nineteen, are based on nothing. No country has ever left the euro: therefore, we have no counter-proof with respect to the gloomy anathemas of those who threaten showers of blood and tornadoes of grasshoppers on those who try to try their hand.

On the contrary, as well pointed out by various authors, the exit from a monetary partnership has occurred countless times in the course of history without the dramas predicted by the euro fetishists ever taking place. We think of Bangladesh, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia. Of course, you can get out of a monetary union. Nobel prize word. This is how Joseph Stiglitz had the opportunity to express himself in this regard:

“I don't think it's that bad to go back to your old coins. Monetary unions often only last for a short period of time. We try and, it either works or it doesn't. The Bretton Woods regime lasted thirty years. Ireland gained independence from the United Kingdom and created its own currency. When it happens it's a big event, but it happens. And it is possible. The idea that it would be the end of the world is wrong. It would be a very difficult period, but the end of the euro would not be the end of the world ”.

However, the obvious and the logic are two resources that pro-euro publications gladly do without if possible. And certainly it is possible if a fabulous linguistic trap such as the ad metum fallacy can be used in its place, and for one's own benefit and advantage . If you think about it, it has been used mainly on three occasions in recent years, not all connected with European events, however: in the case of Grexit, in the case of Brexit and in the vicinity of the American elections, after which Trump defeated Clinton. . Go find some headlines from our home newspapers and some hilarious editorials from our leading intellectuals. You will then have the opportunity to get a perfect idea of ​​how to use the sophism in question; you will notice which and how many "plagues of Egypt" had been invoked on the peoples concerned if they dared to disobey the will of the international markets and the general media. And such wills

they provided, in order: 1) that Greece would continue to be massacred by the Troika

accepting all the incoming lashes (which, unfortunately, occurred despite the outcome of the referendum); 2) that the British remain in the European Union; 3) that the Americans give themselves a good Clinton mandate after Obama's "exciting" eight years.

There is a further, but no less important, element of the ad metum fallacy. And it concerns the paradoxical accusation that the lovers of austerity, rules, parameters and the European Dream make against the populists. According to them, one of the most serious faults of populism is that it "foments fear", "feeds on fear", "sows fear".

The populist is blamed for the instrumental use of fear to attract consensus and grind votes. Remember how often circles especially close to the "democratic" left or the "progressive" Catholic press have used this sickening stereotype to explain the rise of the movements in the sovereign area.

In an article published on Ilsole24ore.com on March 10, 2018, the professor of contemporary history of the University of Bologna, Riccardo Brizzi, summarizes the concept by talking about the Lega: "The League is a classic right-wing populist party, similar to the Front National in France or AfD in Germany: they are the so-called "entrepreneurs of fear", those who leverage the fears of the electorate dictated by globalization and immigration, and fish in the basin of the so-called "cultural losers" of globalization, the people who they are frightened by the phenomena we have to deal with today ».

The well-known columnist and columnist of the "Corriere della Sera" Sergio Romano, in an article on populism published on the website of the newspaper of the same name, attributes to the populists the fear of the "great threat" represented by the triple revolution constituted by the phenomena of globalization, of computer science and bioethics.

In reality, the fear of the "new" is not a prerogative of the populists, but of man as such. Fear is the most human of feelings and unites everyone, both the populist and the non-populist, both the sovereign in one piece and the Europeanist in love. Especially in the face of the unpredictable and sudden appearance, in the course of history, of phenomena that could not be predicted until a few years ago.

If anything, it might even be noted that – in the quiver of the rhetorical armamentarium of the so-called sovereignists – fear is not the sharpest arrow at all, but rather hope. Those who do not want the European Union almost always refer to the "future" and to eminently positive dimensions and values ​​such as "freedom", "democracy", "Constitution", "sovereignty". This does not mean, mind you, that sovereignists are exempt from the risk of falling into the ad metum fallacy. It is interesting, however, to note that convinced pro-Europeans are much more likely to fall victim to the fascination of this fallacy and to resort to it more often.

In fact, the supporters of the unionist process have twisted a "sin" against the sovereignists – that of being the spreaders of fear – of which they are the first to stain. In summary: fear is not an exclusive weapon of populists and sovereigns, but rather the (preferential) weapon of their bitter, "rational" and "enlightened" enemies.

It is the elites, in fact, that have ridden people's fears in recent years to justify the need for more controls for many, less freedom for each and, it goes without saying, more Europe for all: one goal, the latter. , which is an excellent synthesis of the other two. In this sense, in addition to the terror panic sown around the prospect of exit, we must not forget the other great, indispensable, bugbear agitated like a specter, in recent times, by the establishment: terrorism.

A recent essay by the great jurist Gustavo Zagrebelsky is entitled: How to save democracy from fear . It echoes, in the title and in the contents, exactly what we are talking about: the rhetoric of "fear". Which is one of the most popular catchphrases among the keepers of the single thought.

Perhaps for the sake of synthesis, the title of the last work of the great constitutionalist has actually given undeserved prestige to one of the most abused clichés on the square: that, precisely, according to which populist and sovereign instances foment fear.

Another notable contribution to the cause was given by «La Stampa» which, in collaboration with the « Financial Times», prepared a report which reads:

“Fear is man's best enemy, but also a frequent travel companion and unreliable adviser. It feeds the less reasoned decisions and, in the absence of adequate answers, it is the mother who adds fear to the fears, provoking anger against opponents as often as false as the news they tell them. It is fear that foments populisms; it is the widespread feeling of insecurity and uncertainty that governments and parliaments are struggling to deal with. It is the spring of the revolt: the earthquakes of politics, and of society, arise in the fear that makes us believe in change to be unleashed at any cost, a need that spreads instability because, in the fast and complex world, if you do not look far, it cannot be solved no unknowns ".

As you well understand, we are faced with one of those refrains that, like some coats, are good in any season. And not only among the petty-bourgeois respectable, progressive, democratic and aligned, but also and above all among the intelligentsia of reference of the same. Which, although the expression of a declining social and intellectual class, overflows from all screens and at all hours, spurting out its unbearable nerd arrogance.

But, we repeat, the theme on the table is not so much fear, as its alchemical transformation into a weapon of manipulation and contamination of the discourse and, above all, of the sensible and rational discourse.

In conclusion: what turns a very common (because very human) sentiment like fear into petrol for the fallacy ad metum , is precisely its instrumental, and not logical. And not only with the subtle intention of preventing a free and honest debate on the European Union and the euro; also and above all to discredit an adversary who is much less afraid of how one wants to paint him.

Francesco Carraro

www.francescocarraro.com

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