Adult manipulation and media sensationalism

By Letter to the Editor on October 11, 2019.

If you have not read Arthur Millar’s “The Crucible” perhaps now is the time. St. Greta Thunberg is accusingly crying out “witchery” and the world is ready to burn critics of current climate change theory at the stake. We have dismissed rational debate of how to address apparent climate changes, replacing it with appeals to emotion and beliefs designed to fuel fear. Attacking values has become more compelling than reporting and analyzing competing facts and allowing people to reason for themselves.

In “The Crucible,” Miller’s message is that public hysteria based on fear destroys people’s lives. He uses the Salem witch trials to drive home the folly of trusting perceived innocence as saintly and above question. The theocratic nature of the Salem society means that moral laws and state laws are the same; personal values are matters of public concern as they can threaten the public good. All of this then leads to the other themes of the play, namely hysteria, intolerance and perversion of truth.

In recent history youth have been used very effectively to sway the emotions of the public. In the 1940s Hitler’s propaganda program convinced youth to believe that their society was doomed unless they rose up (even against their parents) to destroy the anti-patriots. A little later in communist countries the indoctrination of children stirred youth passions to reject and replace all traditional values. In the west in the 1950s and ’60s McCarthyism created irrational fears of atomic war that drove schools to practice “hide under desk drills.” Passionate youth demonstrating is not a new phenomenon. Now the emotional image of impassioned young people demonstrating is being used by extremist interests and self-serving media to sway public opinion. In “The Crucible,” Abigail and child cohorts stand as a dire warning of the type of consequences of such tactics. Sadly, Greta Thunberg has risen to saintly influence because of adult manipulation and media sensationalism. They know that images of frantic children trump logic and reason!

Richard Dietrich

Medicine Hat

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