Abstract

In 2016, the resurgence of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party to the Senate has dominated Australian political discourse. Specifically, her statements about Islam and Muslims have sparked discussion about the role of political speech in our democracy. In this thesis, I seek to address the question at the heart of this tension: should politicians’ fear-mongering rhetoric be defended, or does it inflict serious trauma on our societies? I do so by focusing on the nature of fear as a political emotion; its structure, its effects on individuals and democratic society, and its costs. Fear, I argue, is at the heart of our problem with fear-mongering rhetoric. In the first section of this thesis, I contextualise this thesis as a contribution to the recent turn to ethics within liberalism, and as an extension on Martha Nussbaum’s extensive philosophical treatment of political emotions in liberal democracy. In the second section, I set up the cognitive account of political fear that I will use throughout this thesis. I demonstrate its role in perpetuating a range of phenomena incompatible with a pluralist society, including significant epistemic harms. In the third section, I turn to the effects specific to fear-mongering political rhetoric, and in the fourth, I weigh up the effects of fear against our commitment to freedom of speech. My unique contribution to this field is to point out that fear as an emotion is at the root of why fear-mongering speech is objectionable in a liberal democracy. If we do not acknowledge the emotional root and carrying force of this kind of speech, we fail to see what is at stake in debate over fear-mongering political rhetoric: it critically compromises citizens’ capacity to engage in political discourse. I make the following disclaimer at the outset: for much of this thesis, Senator Hanson serves as a token for politicians and political candidates who say discriminatory, fear-mongering things about Islam and Muslims. She is not alone, but she is the most visible. It is for this reason that I tend to use her as a signpost for the broader array of fear-mongering political rhetoric to take place in Australian political discourse of the last few years.