Economic uncertainty, crime, terrorism, environmental threat, migrations, free market, pandemics are the many elements that trigger and feed social fear,  to the point of getting out of control in our transitional era marked by the decline of old powers and dominated by pessimism and anxiety in the future. Yet, none of these is sufficient to explain the state of disquiet that began to creep through the Western world in the 1970s, and fully showed up at the beginning of this millennium.

Manlio Graziano,  journalist and university professor goes to the roots of a feeling capable of becoming the spirit of our time and influencing the actions of governments' actions.

He explains that already before 2008, globalization, terrorism, immigrants, Muslims, global warming and epidemics were indicated as the main threats.

The subprime crisis of 2008, the sluggish recovery of the following years and finally the massive exodus of refugees and migrants in 2015 brought fear of those threats to paroxysmal levels, and political repercussions were staggering: not only Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the rise of populism, the discovery of sovereignty and petty-bourgeois jacqueries.

The coronavirus pandemic, in Spring 2020, and the subsequent quarantine, could only give that social fear unprecedented proportions, contributing to aggravate tensions at a local and international level.

A vicious circle of which, according to the author, it is necessary to become aware of, because fear is not rational and often produces more serious effects than the causes that originally generated it,  and it prevents from seeing the real problems.