The need for enemies

Authoritarian leaders, like many others, need an enemy. Hitler’s enemy was the Jews (among others); for Netanyahu, it’s been the Palestinians, and for Donald Trump and his MAGA followers, it’s been “immigrants” (among others). For generations in the US, African Americans have been the targeted enemy for “white” people, and for centuries women and girls have been the enemy of patriarchal power.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler characterized the Jew in the following terms:

“The Jew was only and always a parasite in the body of other people. … The Jews are a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering/”

“The spider was slowly beginning to suck the blood out of the people’s pores. … The Jew is a true blood sucker that attaches himself to the body of the unhappy people.”

Netanyahu denies the history of the Palestinians in what is called the “Holy Lands,” insisting that Palestinians only lived in what is now Israel because Jewish settlers in the 19th century created the farms and factories that attracted migrant workers from Arab lands:

“They [Palestinians] reconstructed history and said they’ve been here for centuries – no they haven’t, they weren’t there at all.”

And Trump famously denounced undocumented immigrants as “animals,” insisting:

“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in; we’re stopping a lot of them. And we’re taking people out of the country; you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. … These aren’t people, these are animals.”

The enemy plays an essential role in an authoritarian society – it is the “other” who differentiates the “us” from the “them.” This other is the perfect target to help mobilize and strengthen the “us” group’s sense of self-identity and unity. And the other plays a critical role in legitimizing the power and authority of those like Hitler, Netanyahu, Trump and so many others. Most troubling, the enemy has been part of human civilization since time immemorial.

Turning the other into the enemy turns the other into a thing, a non-person. In this way, the other’s ontological being is dehumanized. Even worse, the dehumanized enemy is rendered a threatening, diabolical and untrustworthy entity. Thus, the enemy can have no – not any – identity other than that which those in power or authority attribute to it. Too often his attributed identity invokes an intense emotional response among the others. This often fuels hatred and violence, sometimes even mass killings, as in Hitler’s Germany and of Palestinians in Gaza.

The enemy will likely play a central role among Trump’s next administration and will be targeted at three distinct categories – individuals, the “deep state” and social groups.

Excerpted: ‘The Need for an Enemy’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org