The Dangers Of Racism: Fear Of The Unknown

HISTORICAL CONTENT Fear of the unknown, also known as xenophobia was prominent throughout Delirium, a dystopian fiction. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, xenophobia was “the fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners of anything that is strange or foreign,” which researchers claim to be generated by common sense. Furthermore, xenophobia was caused by events and people as well as superstition, lack of knowledge, the fear of change in the future, a morbid fear of an illness, and the fear of personality insecurity. To illustrate, after 2001 many people in North America, mainly in the US developed the fear of people who were Muslim following the events of the 9/11 terrorist attack. These event caused large amounts of discrimination that was depicted in the media because, many feared the unknown dangers they believed they would cause. Moreover, such ideas were usually from someone whom the general public trusted, a person of high power. For instance, the person could be of government authority that could easily manipulate the minds of others. Consequently, this posed a problem to humanity as manipulation could cause people to be conditioned into believing to metaphorically stay within a box, and that anything outside of the box was seen as a threat or something unfamiliar. This idea became prominent during World War II and again after 9/11 due to terrorism, discrimination, propaganda and violence. To put into perspective, in 1942 following the Attack on Pearl Harbour,