Weaponizing Fear: When Journalism Becomes Propaganda

From Revolution to Rhetoric

During my attendance at the 40th annual Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago, I stumbled upon a vendor selling revolutionary books. One that caught my eye—and ultimately inspired this reflection—was Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–1987. At the same booth, a person approached me representing a newspaper called The Militant. Their pitch was simple: “For five dollars, you can sign up for a year of The Militant, it gets delivered every week.” How could I resist?

As the weeks went by and new issues arrived at my doorstep, I began to notice a troubling pattern from a certain writer. On the front page of nearly every edition that landed on my desk contained the same voice: journalist Seth Galinsky. Each title of his work leaving no question into what the body contained, as his writing was unapologetically biased, leaning towards presenting Israel’s military actions as moral absolutes while dismissing Palestinian suffering as the by-product of terrorism. Week after week, I was guaranteed to read how he chose his language to normalize violence and framed empathy as weakness, creating a narrative that excused oppression under the banner of self-defense. The harm in that kind of reporting is subtle but profound: it conditions readers to see domination as protection and silence as virtue.

Many people might ask why I would spend time writing a reflection like this instead of simply letting The Militant keep arriving. The answer goes back to that same day at the festival.

Later that afternoon, I attended a panel titled “Democracy at Stake: Lies, Disinformation, and the Fight for Truth “featuring Bill Adair, founder of PolitiFact; Barbara McQuade, legal analyst and former U.S. attorney; and Jake Sheridan, reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Adair said something that stayed with me: find something in the news you don’t like—and read it. He explained that democracy depends on our willingness to confront discomfort, to seek out perspectives that challenge our worldview instead of confirming it.

That idea stayed with me as I continued reading The Militant each week. What started as curiosity—taking Adair’s advice to engage with what unsettled me—turned into something far more revealing.

In his ongoing series for The Militant, Galinsky frames Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a righteous struggle to prevent a “new Holocaust.” This recurring invocation of Jewish historical trauma turns Israel’s actions into a perpetual act of self-defense that resists moral scrutiny. Yet the same framing that claims to defend against genocide conceals the genocidal nature of Israel’s assault on Palestinians. What results is not journalism but a moral performance: the transformation of fear into virtue and violence into necessity.The question is not whether Galinsky’s reporting is biased; it is whether it qualifies as journalism at all.

Historical Trauma as a Political Shield

The Holocaust remains one of humanity’s deepest moral scars, and its invocation in political rhetoric carries immense emotional weight. Galinsky’s writing continually reanimates this trauma, positioning Israel as a nation forever on the brink of annihilation. This technique, known as catastrophic framing, merges historical persecution with contemporary political critique. Any questioning of Israeli military policy is recoded as complicity in antisemitism or indifference to genocide. This type of thinking leaves no room for understanding, simplifies and divides the world between black and white, with no grey. This only leaves me with a question I was asked in kindergarten after reading Dr. Suess, “How do you take your toast, butter side up or butter side down?

By collapsing past and present, Galinsky places the reader in a constant state of moral emergency. “To defend Israel,” he writes, “is to prevent a new Holocaust.” The implication is clear: refusal to endorse Israeli policy becomes not a political disagreement but a betrayal of humanity itself. In that environment, critical thinking fades beneath moral panic.

The Erasure of the Palestinian Subject

In Galinsky’s accounts, Palestinians appear only as hostages, extremists, or tragic collateral. Rarely are they portrayed as civilians under siege or as a people entitled to sovereignty and dignity. The vocabulary of his articles— “Hamas thugs,” “Nazi-like terrorists,” “Jew-haters”—dehumanizes entire populations by erasing the difference between militants and ordinary people.

This rhetorical flattening is deliberate. It turns Israel's bombing of Gaza from a moral issue into a military need.  The suffering of civilians is lost in a simple fight between good and evil. The result is a discursive genocide, a slow erasure of Palestinian existence from the reader’s moral imagination.

The Genocide Paradox

When Israel’s violence is framed as defense against a Holocaust, genocide becomes a one-sided concept—something that can only happen to Jews, never by them. The genocide paradox in Galinsky's writing is that the state that rises from the ashes of genocide cannot be seen as a perpetrator.

Such framing neutralizes international law, takes away moral responsibility, and makes it hard to tell the difference between protection and persecution. Galinsky transforms remembrance into absolution by perceiving the Holocaust as an everlasting justification rather than a historical admonition. It’s the same moral trap Obi-Wan warned of when he said, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Once everything is framed as all or nothing—good or evil, victim or villain—there is no room left for truth. The trauma that once called humanity to vigilance now grants impunity.

Fear as Political Currency

Galinsky’s articles are driven less by evidence than by emotion. Fear shapes the narrative—fear of annihilation, betrayal, and antisemitic resurgence. His writing triggers collective trauma, which replaces empathy with a focus on power.

Through cathexis, as described by Eric Berne, unbound emotional energy is redirected into an institutional identity. The state of Israel becomes a psychological container for fear and grief, while Palestinians become the projection of that which they fear. The more devastating the violence, the more necessary it seems, because destruction reaffirms the identity that fear sustains.

Adlerian Teleology and the Psychology of Obedience

Using Alfred Adler’s teleology, we can see how Galinsky channels fear toward a predetermined moral goal. Adler argued that human behavior is goal-oriented; we act not because of past causes but toward imagined futures. In this case, the goal is survival at any cost.

By defining the preservation of Israel as the supreme purpose, Galinsky constructs a moral universe where dissent seems purposeless and obedience patriotic. Fear and trauma are used as weapons to control how people feel about their lives. The more people believe that there is an existential threat, the less they question the ethical cost of violence. The more community erodes, the greater authority controls.

Adler’s inferiority complex also helps explain this mechanism. A shared feeling of weakness can turn into a feeling of superiority. When applied to a country, it looks like domination that is meant to hide fear. Galinsky's framing makes the persecution of Jews a reason to subjugate Palestinians into a caste system. The state claims superiority to calm its historical fears. This back-and-forth between fear and control gets people ready to follow "strong" leaders who promise safety, even if those leaders do things that are wrong.

The popular interpretation of Adler’s philosophy in The Courage to Be Disliked expands on this notion. Real bravery is when you choose to take responsibility for yourself instead of playing the victim. It is also when you refuse to let fear or the approval of others guide your moral compass. Galinsky's writing, on the other hand, promotes the opposite by turning collective trauma into a way to fit in instead of a chance to learn more about oneself.

Silence is neither an answer in this situation, another reason I chose to write this reflection. In this context, silence is not neutrality, but complicity born of fear. As Adler warned, the danger of the inferiority complex is social paralysis: people surrender agency to authority because dissent feels like betrayal. Galinsky's articles take advantage of this instinct by turning moral questioning into treason.

Sankara’s Courage, Krishnamurti’s Clarity, and Galinsky’s Fear

The Burkina Faso founder and revolutionary Thomas Sankara believed in liberation requiring courage. It required refusal to let fear dictate conscience, and his words directly challenge the emotional logic of Galinsky’s journalism:

“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from non-conformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.”

Sankara’s call for courage and ingenuity unsurprisingly finds a resemblance in the words of philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, who said, “The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.” Once something is labeled, it stops being truly seen. The name becomes a substitute for perception.

These ideas together expose the danger of labeling in Galinsky’s writing. By naming, defining, and categorizing entire groups— “terrorists,” “Jew-haters,” “defenders of freedom”—he strips reality of nuance. Like the bird Krishnamurti describes, Palestinians are no longer seen; they are symbolically replaced by an idea. Sankara’s “madness” becomes the antidote to this blindness—the courage to look again, without the crutch of labels, and to invent a future grounded in truth rather than fear.

The Collapse of Journalism

At its heart, journalism should give people information through facts that have been checked, context, and different points of view. Galinsky’s work fails all three. His articles neither balance sources nor verify claims, and they echo state talking points while pathologizing dissent.

Neutrality does not mean moral equivalence. Reporters can condemn atrocities without abandoning rigor, yet Galinsky abandons rigor entirely. His writing functions as agitprop: moral messaging dressed as news. By cloaking nationalism in the language of liberation, it turns journalism into ideological warfare.

The damage adds up. Readers not only take in facts, but also a way of looking at the world that normalizes mass death as self-defense and links empathy for Palestinians with antisemitism. Adair warned that this kind of talk makes it harder to disagree and makes democracy weaker.

Sebastian Junger's Tribe looks at this from a different point of view. He writes about how fear, being alone, and losing a common cause can make people in a society turn on each other. Galinsky's words add to that sense of isolation. It convinces readers that safety lies in separation rather than solidarity, reinforcing nationalism where empathy should be.

Restoring the Ethics of Witness

To call Galinsky’s work journalism is to empty the word of meaning. His articles do not seek truth; they seek loyalty. By invoking the Holocaust as a shield against accountability, he replaces reporting with ritual, asking readers not to think but to believe.

Real journalism doesn't believe in moral absolutism. It makes room for grief on all sides, records suffering without putting it in order, and stands up to power even when power hides behind survival. To report under occupation is not to take sides but to refuse erasure.

If the role of the journalist is to bear witness, then the first duty is empathy, and empathy cannot coexist with dehumanization. Galinsky’s writing, in denying that truth, reveals not the strength of Israel’s moral position but the fragility of its narrative. In Adlerian terms, it is the assertion of superiority meant to mask collective fear, a psychological defense mistaken for moral clarity.

Krishnamurti's wisdom and Sankara's bravery come together here: one says that naming things makes us blind to the truth, and the other says that change requires the courage to forget what we think we know. Junger's thoughts remind us that we should feel like we belong because we are all human, not because we are all afraid. Bill Adair's advice closes the loop: read what makes you uncomfortable. We can only tell the difference between truth and propaganda by dealing with what bothers us. When journalists choose obedience over courage, they cease to be witnesses and become instruments. In that moment, the pen no longer defends freedom; it defends control.

Understanding the Terms

This reflection draws from psychology, philosophy, and political thought. The following notes are for readers who want a clearer sense of the ideas behind the language.

Cathexis

A concept from psychoanalyst Eric Berne referring to the emotional energy we invest in people, ideas, or institutions. In this context, it describes how fear and identity can become attached to a nation or cause, shaping loyalty beyond logic.

Teleology

A principle in Alfred Adler’s psychology meaning that human behavior is goal-driven. Rather than being controlled by our past, we act toward imagined futures. Here it explains how the idea of “survival at any cost” becomes a moral destination that justifies violence.

Inferiority Complex

Adler’s idea that feelings of weakness or inadequacy can push people—or entire societies—to overcompensate through control or dominance. A nation fearing persecution can mask that fear through aggression.

Non-Conformity

From Thomas Sankara’s view of revolution, non-conformity is a moral stance: the courage to reject systems that demand silence or obedience in exchange for safety.

Labeling and Perception

Jiddu Krishnamurti warned that naming something often blinds us to its reality—“The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.” To label a person “enemy” or “terrorist” is to stop seeing their humanity.

Fear as Control

Psychologists and philosophers alike have written about fear as a political tool. When fear becomes collective, it can guide entire populations toward obedience, allowing harmful systems to survive under the illusion of protection.

Belonging and Tribe

Sebastian Junger’s Tribe explores how people seek purpose and connection through shared struggle. The book argues that modern isolation makes us cling to identities and ideologies that promise community—even if they divide us further.

Moral Absolutism

A belief that one side is wholly right and the other wholly wrong. Referenced through Obi-Wan Kenobi’s line, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” it serves as a warning that once moral complexity disappears, justice turns into justification.