Controlling Threats

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 offers an account of what too often happens to the nonstatistical threats that come to serve as proxies. Drawing on examples of actions taken against perceived threats (e.g., imprisonment, policing, vaccine hesitancy, anti-migration policies, and colonialism), it outlines five controlling strategies that fearers often employ against proxy threats: removal, escape, destruction, assimilation, and overpowering. The chapter contends that the five kinds of controlling strategies outlined are morally unacceptable when used against perceived but not actual threats. Evaluating the moral status of the use of controlling strategies against actual threats is complicated. Great threats cannot be controlled, and attempts to do so regularly result in the morally unacceptable cases of controlling proxy nonstatistical threats. In cases where other actual threats can be controlled, we must employ a fine-grained analysis of whether controlling strategies are the only or morally acceptable responses.