Anyone who has ever seen a Thriller or a horror movie knows that a “full attack” rarely happens in the first 25 minutes.
The exception is the opener, used as an attention-getter to get the audience hooked.
But normally the first half hour of a movie is used to build dread, to build an intense atmosphere, and to intensify the main tension of the movie. You know something will happen, but most of the time a couple of minor scares appear, fake-outs, or simply annoying noises which make the audience nervous and more attentive. Often these scares, which turn out to have a harmless explanation, make the viewer relax afterwards. Only then do the attacks come with surprise. In a good movie, the attack is not exactly what we expected and tops the expectations. The attack is sometimes a real shock, like a powerful punch in the stomach.
A good example is the thriller The Strangers (2008), where a couple is facing mounting terror: A person knocks at the door, and a stranger plays unsettling mind games before the masked killers launch their attack. There are furthermore frightening sightings. This all happens on an intimate level. But often subtle terror is experienced on a collective level, as in Cloverfield. The horror begins with unsettling news, an earthquake, and then suddenly the head of the Liberty statue is thrown into a street in Manhattan.
In these movies, an evil force is spreading chaos. It makes both the characters in the movies insecure and nervous, and the audience. Sometimes we feel a rising level of panic.
In a movie, the purpose is to entertain the audience, but there are also architects of hybrid warfare who use similar scare tactics in real life. Here the idea is to sow chaos, to destabilise and to irritate.
Examples are the many drone sightings at airports in Europe, which can be attributed to Russia, and, as an escalation, the attack at Leipzig airport against the Ukrainian plane. Furthermore, there are countless incidents such as disruptions of railways with cyber attacks, which add up to a climate of fear and insecurity in Europe.
Citizens in Europe are in a similar state to a movie audience of a horror movie at the end of the first act.
In a movie, the director then takes his audience up for a rollercoaster ride.
In reality, attackers like russia try to completely manipulate the will of their target.
One might argue that hybrid warfare “scare” attacks lead to the opposite – raising awareness among the targeted population, and instead of confusion, it will create more resilience.
This might be true in some cases. However, if someone knows how to press the right button to exploit existing fears and finds the national phobic pressure points. The russian attacker aims not at the rational mind; it aims like a horror movie director, to undermine rational thinking and put the targeted population of a nation state into emotional turmoil.
As Stephen King (Dance Macabre) said: “…the work of horror can be nothing else; it achieves the level of art simply because it is looking for something beyond art, something that predates art: it is looking for what I would call phobic pressure points. The good horror tale will dance its way to the center of your life and find the secret door to the room you believed no one, but you, knew of”.
In real life, the attacker achieves this goal when he succeeds in giving the targeted victims a sense of constant loss of control and undercut its protecting shield of rational reasoning, and furthermore, no one is there to restore control. A person who is feeling the terror of losing control is more vulnerable and easier to manipulate.
Political leaders must be aware of this. They must identify the pattern of scare tactics and communicate very clearly. Often bad communication worsens the problem. One form of bad communication is giving assurance that “everything is under control” when it isn’t. Western societies must overcome the fractures in society and find strength in becoming and acting as a group. Total defense must be exercised.
You know what the fatal mistake is that characters make in a horror movie: Split the group. If somebody says, “Wait here, I’ll find a way out of the forest and come back”, you know we will not come back.
Let’s not make this mistake; let’s face the enemy as a unit.
