Free Climate of Fear by Wole Soyinka

of revelation tinged with messianism. Nearly on the other side of the globe, a religious leader whips up his citizens in a frenzy of alarm whose tenor is that the very salvation of their collective soul—and only incidentally the survival of the state—is jeopardized. In the hysterical condition that is aroused in the populace, hundreds of youths are sentenced to be hanged for the crime of being “agents of Satan,” “enemies of God,” and so on. Back again on the other side, wars of dubious justification are launched, humanity is savaged, the globe destabilized, and all rhetoricians of power sleep soundly, until it is time for the next hysterical whip-up. The coupling within “for God and country” is no historic accident.
    Let me, as we proceed, call attention to the fact that hysteria is not always an outwardly expressed abnormality, usually loud and violent. In fact, there is the quiet form of hysteria, as medical experts will testify. Hysteria can also manifest itself as a collective and infectious outbreak, one that cannot always be accurately traced to a logical causative event. At its most affective, it emerges as the product of a one-way communication—a monologue, in short—that succeeds in blinding its followers to the very realities that surround them while sealing them in a community of conviction, even of the unresolved kind. That condition is indifferent to verification of the content of what is being communicated, indifferent to the moralities or justice—if any—of its claims, or the probable consequences of its pursuit. The moment is all, and creates for each affected member a highly solipsistic existence within a charmed circle, whose only reference point is that infinite moment of mass excitation. The rhetorical hysteria that is produced in such circumstances often dissipates soon after, but not always. Numbers promise more than safety, as in “safety in numbers”—they often guarantee certitude and invulnerability. Thus the collective conviction that sustains the individual may be dissipated with the physical dispersal of the crutch of numbers—let us say, after a political or religious rally. In such a case, the pathology of the moment is redressed by a return to reality, and each individual regains his or her whole being—until the next time.
    However, a hard core of the message embedded in that emotive ferment may linger on, resulting in individual recalls, at various levels of consciousness, of the basic tenor of the collective experience, urging on the execution of its embedded message. The core of retention may be beatific, resulting in a resolve to improve the lot of a long-neglected neighbor, make restitution where some illegality has been committed, or an immoral advantage secured. It can lead to a grandiose vision for the betterment or salvation of mankind. The religious variety is prone to generating such an aftermath, a Moral Rearmament longing of one kind or another. On the other hand, alas, it may produce the very opposite, the destructive and apocalyptic. The ideological route is an equally mixed bag, but usually more disruptive, more contradictory, since it lays claim to rational processes yet acts with the dogmatism of pure revelation.
    What I have referred to as rhetorical hysteria may therefore be safely considered the product of a one-way communication; that is, the monologue or public harangue. Dialogue, on the other hand, actually involves exchange, and the circumstances must be very abnormal indeed when it results in the hysterical condition. It is both convenient and relevant to personify, at this point, the difference between these two through the contrasting personalities of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, and others of like temper, and the current, embattled leader of Iran, President Khatami. We shall return to this most instructive pair toward the end.
    It would also help, perhaps, if we advanced our exploration of