The Politics of Fear in the US Political Discourse about Migration: An Argument- Based Approach

Nowadays, the politics of fear is frequently visited across the world; such as in Europe (Federici, 2006; Wodak, 2015; Greenhill, 2016). In the US, political figures, and especially presidents, are proved to use fear to justify their denials to welcome refugees (Ben Khalifa, 2017a; 2017b). Being grounded in this course of literature, this paper seeks to determine how Obama and Trump manipulate fear to justify their immigration policies. It focuses on the examination of several speeches that the two presidents delivered on this issue. The critical analysis and evaluation of the arguments they used in these speeches will be based on the use of practical reasoning (Walton, 1996; Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012). To apply this theoretical combination I followed a simple method of research that consists of three successive steps: a) going through the selected speeches to determine the logical components of each argument; b) re-constructing and analyzing the developed arguments; and c) evaluating these arguments and undertaking the logical interpretations. The obtained findings are of two types: theoretical and practical. Theoretically, it is proved that circumstances and values should be considered as essential components in the structure of the fear appeal argument. Practically, it is shown that the speakers used in their rhetoric of fear such discursive strategies like flash-back, narration, meaning-making, and graduation to: persuade the world that the US will not welcome refugees because they harm its home security; convince the Americans that welcoming more refugees will threaten their lives and values; and make their policies the most appropriate choices to save America and its values. So, fear is politically manipulated to serve the speakers’ interests and to justify their public policies.