Fear is the belief that someone or something is dangerous or likely to cause harm, whether or not that someone or something is actually dangerous or ever causes harm. It is a belief—an emotion—and among the most powerful in the human experience.  Trump exploits this emotion better than any recent political operative in American memory and he does so to great destruction.

Trump has made repeated false claims about terrorism, both on the campaign trail and while President of the United States.  These statements have been found false by multiple fact checking websites.  His White House has repeatedly exaggerated or spread falsehoods about the danger posed by immigrants from countries included in his attempted immigration bans, despite a widely-cited Cato Report which found that immigrants from banned nations have not been responsible for a single death on US soil.

Trump has also attacked the media for not covering such attacks, despite an abundance of coverage.

He even went so far as to reference an attack in Sweden that never happened, later claiming he was only referring to a Fox News report that had aired the night before.

But far more dangerous than verifiable falsehoods is Trump’s use of the threat of terrorist attacks to manipulate American’s emotions.  He repeatedly stokes fear of future attacks with his rhetoric.  Here is a sampling of his tweets on the issue:

Not only does Trump use inflammatory phrasing, such as “before it is too late!” and “Courts must act fast!” but he also insists on using the words Islamic Terrorism to describe attacks by extremist actors, attacks which aren’t even primarily motivated by religious fervor.  Doing so lumps an entire religion together in a single defamatory label.

This is something even Vladimir Putin will not do, who at the opening of a mosque in 2015 stated:

“Terrorists from the so-called Islamic State are compromising a great world religion, compromising Islam, sowing hatred, killing people, including clergy,” adding that “their ideology is built on lies and blatant distortions of Islam.”

However, during the presidential campaign Trump called on Obama to use the phrase at least four times in his tweets alone, as if these words were a magic wand that would eliminate the threat.  Rather, as I believe is his intent, Trump uses this phrase to heighten the fears of Americans, a plurality of whom have not spoken with a Muslim in the past year, have little understanding of the religion, and feel cooler towards Islam than any other religion.

Four people were killed in a recent terrorist attack in London committed by a UK citizen who was radicalized on British soil.  In terms of scale, this attack was far smaller than the attacks in Nice, Paris, Orlando, and San Bernadino. But size rarely matters when considering the toll these attacks exert on the emotions of those living around and through them. They generate visceral fear, which is part of what makes them so such a powerful tool, and one that Trump has exploited time and time again.

I raise the example of London not because Trump tweeted a falsehood or spun a fear-based narrative about the threat of terrorism in the US.  To his credit, beyond claiming “some big news” as word of the attack spread, he did not publicly make any exploitative statements.  Rather, it is to shine a comparative light on how the fear of a potential terrorist attack is used by the US to repeatedly commit atrocities against innocent civilians.  Such brute and indiscriminate force in the name of the fight against terror has been reported on extensively in the media, however two recent examples should not be forgotten.

The day before the London attack a US military coalition airstrike in Syria hit a shelter housing displaced families and killed an estimated 33 civilians, nearly ten times the number of civilian lives lost outside the UK Parliament building. A second strike occurred five days earlier and was likely responsible for at least 200 civilian deaths after the building they were housed in was hit and collapsed.

These strikes, as with the many before them dating back to the start of the war on terror (including and prominently during the Obama years), will be justified as necessary. They will be sold as necessary to keep us safe, the civilian deaths inevitable collateral damage in our effort to root out terrorists and prevent future attacks on our own soil. We must question this narrative as a nation, not because of evidence that drone strikes don’t make us safer, but because scores of innocent human civilians are being killed, and at an unprecedented rate in the Trump era.

There are many healthy and necessary responses to terrorist attacks: confusion, anger, sadness, fear, resolve. These attacks, such as the one in London and the many that came before in our own country, necessitate a coming together in order to heal. This starts with our political leaders recognizing the complexity of the terrorist threat and representing that threat accurately.  We must call out Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, which fans our pre-existing fears, and call on our leaders to promote dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims in America.  We all must avoid labels like Islamic Terrorism that lumps all followers of Islam with the idea of terrorism.

Fear is a powerful and natural emotion.  Precisely because of its power, and the way it is exploited by leaders such as Trump, the emotion of fear demands that we give careful attention to the ways in which the experience of terrorism in our past and the threat of terrorism in the future affects us as individuals and as a society.  Without this self-awareness, fear can drive us to do heinous things in the world, as the recent killings of hundreds of human civilians so sadly demonstrates.  Simply put, as a matter of life and death, we must not allow our leaders to exploit the facts and ultimately our emotions as we all seek to live safely and peacefully in our world.