Are fearful people more dependent and easily controlled?

Question

Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities.
George Gerbner

Answer 1

The Bush administration has used this tactic with amazing results. Keep the public scared with constant talk of bombs, Al Qaeda and terror, put out color-coded terror alerts, mention mushroom clouds, etc., and the scared American public will keep voting for Bush and keep looking the other way while they loot our country, shred our Constitution, sell our economy to China, send our jobs overseas and run our country into a ditch.

Answer 2

Couldn't agree more... Read the following and make a note who said it:

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Hermann Goering, Nazi

and this one:

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it."
General Douglas MacArthur

Fear is the best weapon a tyrant has to control the citizens.

Answer 3

Mistrust goes hand-in-hand with fear and mistrust makes manipulation more difficult. Often, fearful people retreat into a cave and few can influence them (break through the shell).

Answer 4

I hope so.

"My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave"

Answer 5

"When the government fears the people there is liberty, when the people fear the government there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson.

"Make yourselves sheep
and the wolves will eat you." - Benjamin Franklin

"If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom." - Tom Braun

Answer 6

They are fearful we are brave! Is that your message?

Answer 7

I agree.

Answer 8

You don't know what real fear is.