Fear Is the Key: How COVID and Eco-Panic Reshaped Irish Society

Fear Is the Key

As a teenager, I read many of Alistair MacLean’s books. One title has stayed with me ever since: Fear Is the Key. Those words encapsulate precisely the strategy of our would-be controllers. And, to be fair, it is a powerful and effective strategy.

Fear is such a primal force that it can make people believe the craziest notions and behave in ways that seem utterly absurd or malicious — as we saw so frequently after March 2020. Every despot knows that frightened people will tolerate almost anything. Even fabricated fear can alter human behaviour to the point that once “normal” people act in ways that appear, in hindsight, imbecilic — yet most seem to believe this nonsense is the “new normal,” or that it was somehow necessary during the so-called deadly plague of Covid.

The Pandemic of Fear

The most graphic and obscene fear-mongering occurred in 2020 and 2021, when the public was told that a lethal virus was sweeping the world and could wipe out huge portions of humanity. The propaganda was relentless: fake imagery, crisis actors, billboards, bus-stop slogans, and incessant daily “updates.” It was unconvincing on the surface — but it had the desired effect: fear.

And so, the gullible masses lined up to take the vaccine — or, as I prefer to call it, the quackcine. As Patrick E. Walsh has long pointed out, excess deaths in Ireland have ballooned since the injections began, not before; yet the compromised media remain silent. The fear-mongers must be delighted with the results.

Keeping Fear Alive

The tactics used to sustain fear are not complicated. Older generations, still trusting what they read and hear in mainstream media, swallow these narratives whole. They accept them as factual and objective. This is disastrous. Such people remain perpetually ignorant of how information is manipulated — and so they are easily controlled.

When the next command comes — “put on your mask” — they will comply without hesitation. They have not grasped that entire industries now depend on creating and maintaining panic. Their stock-in-trade is the gratuitous lie, laced occasionally with a half-truth to give a veneer of credibility. Once you’ve seen through these manipulations, their performances become almost embarrassing.

Manufacturing Fear

As the New York Times proclaimed on February 16, 2019: “The planet is getting warmer in catastrophic ways. And fear may be the only thing that saves us.” David Altheide’s Creating Fear documented how U.S. media dramatically increased use of the word “fear” in just a few years — between 1985 and 1994, the Los Angeles Times increased its use by 64%, and ABC News by 173%.

The UK’s official SAGE group, advising the government during the Covid crisis, revealed the same mindset. In April 2020 they lamented: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.” Their recommendation: “Use media to increase the sense of personal threat.”

If a truly devastating plague were sweeping the planet, would we really need government-sponsored fear campaigns to remind us?

The Next Front: Climate

Having exhausted the Covid panic, the fear-merchants have moved on to their next grand narrative: climate catastrophe. With massive budgets and institutional backing, they push a new wave of hysteria — that humanity is on a path to ecological ruin unless we cull cattle, eat insects, and embrace “net zero.”

As before, the results are embarrassing to anyone paying attention. Not one of the catastrophic predictions has materialised: the oceans have not swallowed cities, polar bears have not vanished, and the air is not poisoned by fossil fuels. Yet the apocalyptic rhetoric continues.

In 2019, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared, “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” The Washington Post solemnly endorsed her claim: “She is absolutely right.” In 2018, Forbes quoted Harvard’s James Anderson claiming, “The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.” Yet today, there are over 5.6 million square miles of Arctic sea ice.

The climate crusaders, backed by immense wealth, dominate academia, media, and political discourse. Their most ridiculous slogan, “net zero,” is treated as gospel. But CO₂ — the great villain of this creed — is a life-giving gas, vital for photosynthesis and plant growth. It is pumped into greenhouses to boost yields. To declare it toxic is not science but superstition — astrology dressed in lab coats.

The Tragic Cost of Manufactured Panic

The real tragedy lies not in the absurdity of the propaganda but in its human consequences. Increasing numbers of young couples now choose not to have children, convinced that the planet is dying. The fear campaign has robbed them of hope — fewer children born because of a manufactured panic.

Faith in Fear

The climate cult cannot be reasoned with. No amount of contrary data will sway its believers. When their predictions fail, they simply move the goalposts, hold more press conferences, and issue new prophecies of doom. They are not engaged in science but in a moral crusade — one fuelled by fear and enforced through faith.

Fear, indeed, remains the key.