The non-existent dragon's lair
Op-ed: Political movements and ruling parties continually invent enemies from within that threaten the populace so that they can be seen to slay the dragon.
The most important action in the campaign of political movements, be they anti-liberal or Liberal, is the invention of an enemy. Without an invented enemy, they have no substance or ability to mobilize the masses. The invention of an enemy must meet several criteria.
To be clear, I don't mean one person, but rather a group, and that the group does not identify openly as an enemy. On the contrary, it hides its malicious plans; sometimes it even presents itself as a friend of the masses to take control of their minds. The invented enemy must excel at conspiratorial deception, so whoever invented that enemy can excel at revealing its true colors. There's no point in inventing enemies that are weak and embarrassing: Anyone can defeat them. A heroic feat is defeating the dragon hiding in the cave.
Obviously, it is better to concentrate on an invented enemy from within, so much as this is possible. An enemy from within is more familiar, and therefore more frightening. Their machinations threaten our very existence, so it' fairly easy to raise hatred against them. It's harder to hate unknown enemies operating far from the homeland.
Last, but not least: the invented enemy's harm is always the kind that cannot be refuted or denied by conventional methods of rational thinking. Their definition as an enemy is based on lies disguised as ostensible scientific arguments, a mosaic of misinformation, superstition, and “healthy logic." That is, unhealthy and misleading.
This short list does not purport to exhaust all the features of the invention of the enemy; it just sketches an outline and displays a few known examples. The Nazis invented the Jewish enemy, Stalinism invented the Trotskyite and cosmopolitan enemy, fascism invented the elitist enemy, McCarthyism invented the American Communist Party, and Khomeinism invented the Great Satan and the Little Satan: America and Israel.
There are plenty of recent examples. Modern Eastern European populism invented enemies in the form of Middle Eastern refugees and bureaucrats in Brussels. Putinism invented for the Russian people the Ukrainian enemy, and even before that the Georgian enemy.
The current electoral system in the United States invented the Republican candidate Donald Trump and the Democrat Bernie Sanders, the free trade agreements with countries in Asia and Latin America as enemy number one of the American employee (and entrepreneur).
It is all lies. The Jews did not plot to destroy Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union did not have Trotskyite underground movements, American communism was a completely negligible phenomenon, Eastern Europe did not take in refugees from the Middle East in recent years and receive grants for tens of billions of euros from the EU. The US economy, including the working class, benefitted and continues to do so from the free trade agreements in employment and growth.
And us? During last year's election, Likud propaganda specialists invented the Israeli Arabs as the ultimate enemy, setting upon the polls en masse. In parties considered socially oriented, they invented bankers as the bloodsucking public enemy, along with the natural gas companies and food producers. In retrospect, the inventions were not equal in electoral weight: the right's invented enemies helped them win the election; the left's invented enemies helped them lose the election.
Often, the ruling parties need an invented enemy in order to control, especially in situations of national crises, criticism, unrest and dissatisfaction with the government. The populist nationalist party that won the last election in Poland invented the leaders of the "Solidarity" movement, headed by Lech Walesa, as the Polish nation's enemy.
Our culture minister, Miri Regev, invented the creators of Israeli culture, especially "leftist Ashkenazim," as enemies of the people. The ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition invented the reformists seeking—Oh no!— to pray at the Western Wall.
The prime minister and his henchmen in the government, who invented Breaking the Silence as a cruel, well-camouflaged enemy of the state and IDF's security. Not instead but alongside the undisciplined media, which is for them the absolute invented enemy.
The positive lesson from world political history is that, ultimately, the invention of the enemy is revealed as a lie. The negative lesson is that the discovery of truth takes a long time, and civilians are paying the very high price of malicious inventions.
