Climate of Fear

by Wole Soyinka

  I regret to have to inform you—and political correctness can go take a jump—that the nastiest, most obviously power-possessed officials that I have encountered in this manner have all been women, mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty, and—black! Perhaps the perennial war of the sexes is a factor, tied to the additional complication of the history of racism in the United States; I leave it to sociologists to look into this experience for me and offer their own explanations. All I do here is testify from experience—and on oath!

  Let me not fail, simply for reasons of a deep, subjective, murderous loathing, to pay tribute to the creature to whom the modern crown of furtive power rightly belongs: the domination freak whose warped genius creates those invisible, proliferating Frankensteins from his dingy computer den and sends them in virtual space to invade and destroy the work of individuals and institutions. These aberrants are without an ounce of hatred in their veins, with no wrong to avenge, no cause to promote, with no physical or territorial ambition, indeed with no motivation other than the lust for power over unknown millions, both the meek and the powerful, the affluent and the deprived, the professor and the school pupil alike. I refer, of course, to none other than the cybernerd, whose depredations we all must have felt at some time or other, or barely escaped. The most recent of these, like Mr. “I am God” the Maryland sniper, is not without a message for his captive world—“Have the guts to call the name of Jesus” is the subject line of the stalking horse on which his cannibal creation rides to wage his war of destruction on the unsuspecting.

  It takes little imagination to picture this figure at his computer with, literally, the whole world at his fingertips, locked in a competitive lust with unknown others for the power to inflict the maximum injury on humanity. Usually youthful, European or Asian—so report the cybersleuths—and again, PC be damned, this individual is of course impelled by a genuine passion for discovery, but the space between that motion of a technological curiosity and the gesture that launches a virus on the world is the space that separates the explorer from the conqueror, the adventurer from the imperialist, the revolutionary from the dictator: it is the space of pure, unadulterated ecstasy of power.

  Power, alas—even in its comic vein—is neither abstract nor metaphysical in its impact on society. The axis of tension between power and freedom continues to propel the very motions of personality development, social upheaval, and nation conflicts. We must stress yet again that the urge to dominate may be the product of existing realities. Where such realities are not addressed, the political space is left fallow, enabling the calculating hand to fan the winds of fear. Some of these actualities may expand to threaten the peace of the world. Are they new, or are they simply the accentuation of well-known anomalies in nation relations? I began my remarks by deliberately identifying one such contributory breeding ground, Algeria. In forthcoming lectures, we shall touch on others—such as the Middle East—look into causes and effects, and perhaps even venture into speculations over possible solutions. I intend to proceed on the premise—one that I think is easy to agree upon—that humanity would rather work to dispel a climate of fear than live within it, and I assume also that we are equally agreed that, at this moment of speaking, we are well and truly enveloped in it. For now, let me devote the remaining time to taking us on a few turns along the axial relationship between power and freedom.

  Science-fiction literature, of which I used to be an avid fan—I still am, it’s just that I do not have as much time to indulge in it as I once had—is most instructive, as are films in the same genre. Take The Day of the Triffids, where plants attempt to take over human society, or those films of alien body-snatchers, that most subversively imaginative way of taking over the key elements in a community, its government, progressively taking over the nation by assuming the physical shapes of a nation’s ruling cadre. (Can we swear, by the way, that George Bush and Osama are not aliens in human shape?)

  We may ask the question: in such fictions, what is the most basic element that twangs a chord of trepidation in the human viscera? Where does the reader, or viewer, identify most viscerally with the characters in this literary or cinematic genre? What gives that piquant edge to one’s apprehension in much of science-fiction and horror literature? I suggest that it is very simply the notion of coming under the control of another being, of finding oneself dominated by an alien force, an alien bundle of values, sensibilities, tastes, agenda, beliefs, and direction—in short, being robbed of one’s social anchor. Apart from a fear of the loss of identity to those goblins from outer space—with heaven knows what nasty habits—one recognizable source of that repulsion is, very simply, the ancestral adversary of human freedom that we designate “power.” The goblin has taken over control of our existential volition.

  Taking the foregoing together, we find that we need not wait to be visited or infiltrated by beings from outer space to arrive at the same state of fear and loathing that is associated with being manipulated by a force outside our own will. The vector of domination can, and constantly does, assail us in the here and present geographical environment. And we do know that in order to ensure absolute submission, that alien force must first lay a track of fear on which it rolls its juggernaut of domination. Even if the goals are not immediately articulated and may never be fully defined, power revels in first making itself manifest—then other social themes may follow in its wake. May. Or may not. Power is selfsufficient, a replete possession, and must be maintained by whatever agency is required. We have already indicated that the readiest methodology to hand is the inculcation of fear. Ethiopia under Mariam Mengistu and the Dergue, Pinochet in Chile, or Miloševic in former Yugoslavia, or the terror regime of the late General Sanni Abacha of Nigeria, all provide chilling contemporary testimonies of this relationship. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is doing his best to ensure that the African continent remains relevant in the global study of this social phenomenon.

  The mutual dependency of power and freedom has long been recognized, its consummation undertaken throughout the history of human association to the accompaniment of orgies of human sacrifice. Whether we believe in that reproductive miracle or not, it is useful to seize the nature of power as we do that of Immaculate Conception, an autogenous phenomenon—though one that can also be a product of willed imitation—and then we come to recognize more and more that, for its full savoring, power need not burden itself with such banal undertakings as social responsibility or restraints of morality. Every day, atrocities of once unimaginable dimensions remind us of this fact, events that are traceable to that moment when one individual, already in a rarefied existence of his own, salivates over an exquisite moment of fulfillment as he watches his victims, mostly already existing in that half-life of social invalidation—the other half being mortgaged to the fear of the unexpected—squirm in awe of his efficacy of control. Surely it is not a merely fabulous projection that sees such an individual, alone in his or her hermetic world, suffused with an inward smile of satisfaction: “Now, you lot, I have you in my power. At this moment, I, and I alone, know, and am about to decide, your fate.”

  I no longer recall the title of the film that was made of the Red Brigade in Italy, after the abduction and murder of a prime minister, Aldo Moro, who was out of power at the time. If we may leave aside the dubious politics of that assassination, and the movement of which these formed a part, what remains ineluctable is the study in smug self-righteousness of his abductors as they proceeded to decide the fate of their prisoner. Blame the director, if you wish, for failing to extract a sense of ideological necessity, inevitability, in the decision that was taken to eliminate him. What came through instead—perhaps it was the director’s intention anyway—was the sense of a “hallowed space” as the dominant environment of the revolutionary cell, an evocation of the unreal that was accentuated by the real psychological extract, the autonomy of power, conveyed in the demeanor of these mostly young individuals. This all-pervasive extract was, in my view, the exerc
ise of power. These individuals, separated from a world that they genuinely despised, or affected to despise, were lodged in the hermetic enclosure of absolutism. A limited environment, yes, but an environment that they totally controlled, and of which they were the privileged janitors. This was what mattered most. They were not deciding the fate of an individual, not even of a symbol, I felt, but were simply engrossed in the exercise of secretive dominance, and this was what lent that film its bleak and pathetic intensity. One was transported into another world whose basic commodity, evenly shared within the circle of the Chosen and celebrated with all due ritual and solemnity, was simply—power. Unnamed, unacknowledged, power was nonetheless the palpable fetish of worship.

  Well, theorizing apart, the young executioners, imbued with a sense of a “holy mission,” or simply wallowing—albeit with all appearance of deep reflection—in the pure ambience of power, left the Western, capitalist world in no doubt whatsoever about their essential product: a climate of fear that enveloped the moneyed, their relations, the remotely connected, the political class, the middle class, and, occasionally, innocent victims of what military language loves to gloss as “collateral damage.”

  I must continue to insist that we do not underestimate the relevance of a material base—even justification—of the “holy mission” in all of this. However, even the most evidently objectivized base of the “holy mission” is often complicated by the sheer relish that is experienced in the control of others. It is not possible to reject absolutely the notion that one—just one in four, in ten, in two dozen—may be governed by no more than an impulse to secret, furtive dominance, the fulfillment of that individual by a moment of self-abandonment to this mysterious essence of power. I know, because I have met some such individuals. So, I am certain, have others in this audience. For now, I could do worse than attempt to burrow into the core of this commodity, one that has remained a puzzle to psychologists and philosophers—Hegel, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and all—and, as with all riddles of the human condition and social impulses, leaves one with more questions than answers. This is not a matter of obscurantist speculation. Rather, there is an almost obsessive quest for some clarifying clues when one has been a participant in the kind of deadly struggle that ensues when one individual, a single mortal with no discernible exceptional qualities, convinces himself that it is his mission to bludgeon a populace of some millions—ten, twenty, forty, a hundred or more millions—into submission.

  So now, directly to that conundrum—power—just what is that? We know what it does. For a start, power takes away the freedom of the other and replaces it with fear. Still, that does not answer the ontological question. What, we may ask, is the common factor, the ingredient that guarantees a trill of nervous apprehension in, on the one hand, an audience watching Dr. Strangelove and, on the other, the citizens of Maryland with a sniper on the loose? Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasion from outer space or power wielded from a subterranean command post: some alien force is about to take control of us, to dominate—and, if necessary in the process, to terminate our existence. We never stop to think—or, at best, a secondary consideration is whether such a force might be for the good, that humanity might indeed be improved by such a takeover. Volition, to which we desperately cling, is the very definition of our mature completion as social beings. The basis of rejection that registers itself in an audience seated at a theatrical or cinematic representation of the megalomaniac has always been the antithesis of human volition—power!

  We have known it also described as a sexual substitute or an aphrodisiac, but this only begs the question. Victims of rape often take a different position. Next to the horror of bodily violation, a frequent admission by victims is of the humiliation of being totally subjected to another’s control. And the more sadistic the rapist, the greater his urge to exact an acknowledgment from the victim of submission to his dominance. Sexual gratification is of course at the heart of such violations, but pre-eminent is the satisfaction of dominating another, making him or her totally subject to his whims, some of which may not even be sexual in nature. In whatever proportion we choose to present these cravings, there is no question that a sense of power generates its own satisfaction, and is an important element in the drive toward rape. So, once again, back to the question—just what is power?

  Is it perhaps no more than a deadly mutation of ambition, one that may or may not translate into social activity? Any fool, any moron, any psychopath can aspire to the seizure and exercise of power, and of course the more psychopathic, the more efficient: Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sergeant Doe, and the latest in the line of the unconscionably driven, our own lately departed General Sanni Abacha—all have proved that power, as long as you are sufficiently ruthless, amoral, and manipulative, is within the grasp of even the mentally deficient. So, power is really neither efficacy nor a mandatory facilitator of vision or political purpose. Of course the pursuit of power may be impelled by vision, but power in itself is not to be mistaken for vision. On the contrary, true vision may eschew power, may totally repudiate power, seeking to fulfill itself by that hardy, self-sacrificial route that does not lean on the crutch of power. There are individuals in every field of human endeavor who have pursued their vision, and in a multiplicity of fields—to the benefit of millions and tens of millions around the world—without that promiscuous facilitator named power. And power, let us stress just once more, need not be an individual aspiration; it can be no more than mere participation in a collective exercise, a variant that is the intriguing and proliferating arm of hegemonic obsession of a unit within a totality.

  Since I do not believe that we shall ever arrive at a satisfactory explication of power, I have settled for that functional one—that is, a definition that enables us to proceed to the social neutralization of this affliction whenever it rears its head. After all, the manifestation of raw power is an encounter that is inevitable right from infancy, and through the normal course of existence—be it in a rainstorm, the force of lightning, or an earthquake. Even the casual wind that takes down a rotten branch or a roof or two is a manifestation of the hidden force of Nature that suddenly exercises its authority from time to time, and without any intervention from man. Nature, therefore, sometimes reveals herself as a pure expression of power—and it is perhaps somewhat more than an anthropomorphic conceit to suggest that man, in those activities that incline him toward the exercise of dominance, is merely attempting a crude appropriation in response to that elemental attribute that is an expression of the very forces that surround and threaten to overwhelm him, not least of which is mortality.

  In short, power is, paradoxically, the primordial marshland of fear, from which emerges the precipitate of man’s neurotic response to mortality. Therein he proceeds to attempt to match himself with the force of Nature, that agency through which the various apprehensions of God, Super Being, or whatever name— including Death—are filtered. You cannot, however, contain within yourself the elemental force of death, godhead, a thunderstorm, an earthquake, or a volcano, never mind the comparison of some energetic types to a whirlwind. Those who take such metaphors personally are subject matter for traditional psychiatry, and it is for this reason that ancient societies devised a number of ritualized scenarios for the banalization of power. As a dramatist, I have myself experimented with a number of rituals toward that end. Here is one—designed, however, only for the formal, not the shadowy counterpart of manifest power. It takes off from the French play-wright and exorcist Jean Genet.

  A glitzy brothel, most appropriately, is the setting for Jean Genet’s ritualization of the insatiable collaborator—power—in his play The Balcony. There, the power-obsessed come periodically to act out their fantasies. Here now is a summary of my variation on Jean Genet:

  Suppose we modernized Genet’s rather primitive stage mechanics to embrace the very latest in special effects, à la Steven Spielberg. Society would proceed to offer its
ruler a chance to erupt with the earthquake, soar on flues of the thunderstorm, and become virtually one with the convulsion that attends the birth of new planets. Encased in a Virtual Reality capsule, a super Jacuzzi, the Maximum Leader would dominate the universe every day before breakfast. As a finale—and here I must acknowledge the inspiration of the innovation of that late leader Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, who soared with the sunrise and disappeared into the clouds every morning on his nation’s television—the Leader would watch the daily waste of his bodily functions morph into a celestial orb—the sun, no less—rising over the horizon, approving the beginning of a new day for his people.

  After such an immersion in the utter sublimity of galactic power, any mortal must emerge with nothing but contempt for the mere pittance of awe and terror that are the normal dues from his miserable subjects. He would leave them—us—to wallow in our now unappealing state of . . . unbroken freedom, and the absence of fear.