Political fear generalizes intimate fears into societal threats and loops back.

Evidence

This is how political fear works. It takes fears based in narrow concerns and gives them a more generalized feel: the specific fear that motivates me in this one instance ought to motivate me to be concerned about what matters to us, even if I am in no immediate danger. Intimate fears about encounters with individual black people become broader concerns about a general threat to the very fabric of our society. That threat, in turn, creates and nurtures our most intimate fears. It’s a vicious circle. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 202

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies the mechanism by which private unease becomes public, generalized fear — crucial for distinguishing the value gap’s operation from mere prejudice.
• XREF: connects to: Fear-driven groups become the very threat they fear — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 417; Fear mongering is the key mechanism that sustains vast imperial infrastructure — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 734