Despite a historically unprecedented degree of national security, many Americans are worried about defeat at the hands of a motley group of violent extremists, particularly the so-called Islamic State. This climate of fear has been building steadily since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, which taught many political leaders as well as much of the military and intelligence community that it was safer to overinflate threats than to underestimate them. People are rarely ever held accountable for dire warnings that prove to be wrong, but they often are for failing to prevent an attack. The result, as Michael Cohen has argued in his WPR column, has been the institutionalization of “fear mongering” in official Washington.

Unfortunately, the problem goes beyond official Washington. Since 9/11, an influential “fear industry” has taken root in the media and other opinion-shaping institutions and groups. It has consistently moved toward ever-greater gloom and hysteria, knowing this is the best way to get attention in a crowded marketplace of ideas. In today’s competitive information environment, extreme positions and amplified fear sells more advertising and wins a larger market share than balanced moderation. So far, much of the public has bought in.

In the 2016 presidential race, fear-mongering has reached a fever pitch. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, and his surrogates have built his campaign on the assertion that the United States faces defeat by violent Islamic extremists, particularly the Islamic State. “If we don’t get tough, and if we don’t get smart, and fast,” he has claimed, “we’re not going to have a country anymore.” As journalist Nicholas Confessore noted, the speakers at this week’s GOP convention “presented a United States in danger, threatened from abroad and from within, a once-proud nation on the very brink of chaos and dystopia.” The worse things get, Jacob Heilbrunn pointed out, “the better Trump’s chances become.”

Whether this will prove to be an election-winning formula remains to be seen. Current polling data suggests it will not. But because a major party has now made fear central to its view of the world, and because the fear industry has grown so powerful, even a Trump defeat will not return a sense of balance to America’s world view, at least in the short term. With every new terrorist attack in the United States or elsewhere, fear becomes more ingrained in the American worldview.

Could it be that this is a good thing? Better safe than sorry, after all, and better too much caution and suspicion than too little. What better way to stave off complacency about the world than fear of it? The problem is that when the climate of fear reaches unrealistic levels that do not accurately reflect the threat, it plays into the hands of terrorists.

Consider why groups like the Islamic State use terrorism to begin with. In part it’s because that’s all they can do. They don’t have the resources to mobilize and sustain large armies. Creating or even simply inspiring a violent sociopath or a group of them is cheap and easy. It is no coincidence that the Islamic State has turned increasingly to terrorism as it loses its ability to undertake semi-conventional military operations.

But the Islamic State also uses terrorism because doing so generates strategic effects and attention far beyond what the group’s limited resources would get it otherwise. Because terrorism generates fear that is amplified by today’s interconnected, information-intense environment, groups that use it appear more potent, powerful and fearsome than they actually are. Moreover, terrorism attracts supporters to a group that uses it. The Islamic State now has a steady flow of psychologically unbalanced recruits looking to quell their inner demons, tame their anger, atone for past sins, or find personal identity in an empty life.

Terrorism has another benefit for organizations that use it: It very often provokes such fear and anger from its targets that they blunder into overreaction. This includes treating people who resemble the terrorists as enemies, thus driving them into association with the extremists whether they actually wanted to be or not. This helps the terrorists and validates their claim that only they are fighting for people like them. 

This, then, is the rub: Political leaders and opinion-shapers in the United States who treat the Islamic State as an existential threat or historic danger may not intend to do so, but they amplify that group’s power, influence and appeal. Those who favor treating the conflict with the Islamic State as an actual war, including Donald Trump, elevate its standing among both Muslims and non-Muslims who see themselves as America’s enemies. After all, they might think, if the United States considers it necessary to focus its great resources on the Islamic State, the group must be important indeed.

There is no doubt that most of the organizations, opinion-shapers and political leaders who have stoked this climate of fear are well-intentioned. While a few of them may be in it for personal profit or power, most are motivated by patriotism. But the fact is that they inadvertently help the Islamic States and other terrorists, fueling these groups’ ability to leverage barbaric violence into strategic effects. However well-intentioned, they are the functional equivalent of the Islamic State’s strategic and psychological allies. Until American political leaders and opinion-shapers who portray the Islamic State as a massive, epochal danger recognize that their words are helping that dark organization, and until the fear industry fades away, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups like it will not be defeated.

**Steven Metz is the author of “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.” His weekly WPR column, Strategic Horizons, appears every Friday. You can follow him on Twitter@steven_metz.