Galway

Not the kind that comes in costumes or flickers in candlelight, but the quieter kind, the one shaping our politics, our conversations, and our sense of each other.

​Halloween is the one night we’re allowed to play with fear. We hang skeletons in windows, light candles in pumpkins, and laugh at the dark. For a few hours, fear feels harmless, even joyful.
​But beyond the bonfires, fear is no longer a game. It has crept into our everyday lives, into headlines, council meetings, group chats, and quiet conversations between neighbours. Fear has become useful. It wins elections, drives clicks, and fills timelines. It is no longer a reaction; it’s a strategy.

​Some politicians use it to rally, brands use it to sell, and algorithms use it to chain our attention. And we, often unknowingly, feed the machine every time we share before checking, scroll without thinking, or choose the comfort of outrage over the work of curiosity.

<h2>​Fear as a Tool</h2>

​Fear is brutally efficient. It bypasses reason and targets emotion. That’s why misinformation spreads so easily, it’s built for speed, not truth. Studies across the world confirm that fear-based posts travel faster and further than facts ever could. Fear keeps us watching, commenting, arguing.

​And it keeps us divided. That is the goal. A fearful community is an easy one to influence. When leaders fear losing votes, they stop telling hard truths. When citizens fear speaking out, they stop asking questions. And when we all retreat into our own corners of the internet, fear becomes the only language we have in common.

<h2>​The Fear of Knowing</h2>

​This manufactured fear breeds a second, more insidious kind: the fear of being wrong. Knowledge once felt like liberation. Now, it can feel risky. To learn something new often means confronting what we believed before, and that discomfort is often enough to make us turn away.
​So we stay in the safe spaces of agreement, scrolling through the familiar. But comfort leads to echo chambers, and echo chambers breed mistrust. When we only hear from those who think like us, we stop seeing the world as it is, and start seeing it as something to defend.

<h2>​Symbols and Shadows</h2>

​Even our most cherished symbols have not escaped. A national flag, once a sign of shared pride, now has sides. In fearful hands, it becomes a wall instead of a bridge, waved not to celebrate, but to separate. The flag hasn't changed; what we project onto it has. In times of fear, symbols become shorthand for purity, loyalty, and suspicion. It’s not patriotism; it’s insecurity, dressed up as pride.

<h2>​The Fear Economy</h2>
​Fear is big business. It sells subscriptions and draws viewers. And as local news fades, replaced by algorithmic outrage, communities lose the quiet balance that truth provides. A trusted local journalist won’t trade accuracy for clicks because they know the faces behind the headlines, the streets behind the story.&nbsp;
That kind of reporting doesn’t fuel fear; it eases it. ​The health of a community can be measured by the strength of its local press. When it disappears, the calm voices that once said, “Here’s what’s actually happening,” are gone. Fear moves into the silence.

<h2>​The Antidote</h2>

​Fear cannot survive contact. It thrives on distance, on silence, on the imagined space between us. The cure, then, isn’t grand speeches or perfect policies. It’s proximity. ​It’s talking to each other again. Asking questions before assuming. Supporting the storytellers who check facts before they publish.
​Courage isn’t loud. It is quiet, curious, and patient. It’s admitting what you don’t know and choosing to understand anyway. It’s remembering that disagreement is not danger, and that most people, when met with honesty, will meet you halfway.

<h2>​Taking Off the Mask</h2>

​This Halloween, we will light fires and tell stories in the dark, as people always have, not to frighten, but to make sense of things. Fear is part of being human. It warns us and protects us.
​But it can also be a cage. Our task is to see the bars. To recognise fear when it’s being used against us, and to decide, every day, if we will let it shape our world, or if we will.

Halloween is near. Let’s talk about fear.

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