Enemy image

The term "Enemy image", promoted by Marshal Rosenberg, refers to a view of a person or people which is influenced by animosity, and as such hampers reconciliation and real communication. The successful manipulation of large groups of people (e.g. the general public) has often been achieved through the nurturing of their prejudices and fear through such images.

Enemy image  (prejudice,  illusion)
A misleading view of a person or people, which hampers reconciliation and real communication

Enemy images are labels people apply to others to justify their own opposition to them. In conflicts between two groups, enemy images are often mutual.

Early history

Worldwide, people have told stories about strangers with incredible and threatening powers, or about dragons or other such monsters, which can be seen as a projection of their fears. In Europe in the middle ages, the drive against witches, Catholics, jews or other perceived enemy groups provides a forceful illustration of the power of enemy images to subvert clear thinking.

20th Century

Post WW2

Post WW2, the USSR was a cogent enemy image for the populations of Western Europe and USA, and may have played a large role in perpetuating the nuclear arms race and cold war. George H. W. Bush used the phrase "New World Order" which was to become a powerful enemy image for many people.

9/11

The administration of George W. Bush used the 9-11 attacks to promote the enemy image of "Islamic terrorism".

“The events of 9/11, we were told, changed everything. The globe was now divided between the forces of good and evil. Bush communicated this quite clearly in an address to the nation just days after 9/11: “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.””
Danny Sjursen (25 October 2017) 

Post 9/11

Protestors gathered outside the 2002 Bilderberg.
In the same way that knowing a spider is harmless does not necessarily reduce fear of it, awareness of the facts about deep politics does not necessarily entail abandoning emotional attachment to the concept of the enemy image.

Many nations which a democratic process in practise have just two large political parties, which are often seen as opposites. These nations' political discourse is often dominated by enemy images, which represent an emotional barrier not only to people's reconciliation, but to more important realisations about the state of society - such as, for example, the role of the deep state in nurturing factionalism. Enemy images hide the fact that the party political system has little real cogency, but this realisation in itself does not necessarily entail rejecting enemy images.

Iraq War

Steven Green, a US soldier who in 2006 took part in a gang rape of a 14 year old girl and the subsequent murder of her and her family, exemplified the impact of enemy images. He stated about Iraqis that "There's not a word that would describe how much I hated these people. I wasn't thinking these people were humans."

Strategy of tension

Full article: Strategy of tension

Arguably, "terrorists", "paedophiles" or in some cases even "Muslims" could be understood as enemy images, in that people do not sympathise with them as fellow human beings. Less arguably, establishment organisations such as the commercially-controlled media nurture people's fear not only to sell copy but as a tool of social control. The complicity of intelligence agencies remains a matter of some conjecture in more modern cases, but it well established in Operation Gladio, where false flag attacks were carried out and falsely blamed on communists. Post 9-11, Gladio/B has substituted Muslims for nationalists.

Non violent communication

Full article: Non violent communication

Marshall Rosenberg created non-violent communication, a system of communication in which removal of enemy images is crucial to enabled dialogue and concensus.

Response

Marshall Rosenberg encouraged people to overcome enemy images by avoiding judgmental language or labels, and by not seeking to punish people.

In Fiction

George Orwell's 1984 features the "Two Minutes Of Hate" in which party members are expected to hate a person named "Emmanuel Goldstein".

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"Alt-right"	A modern term used in US and western CCM-media to define conservative-aligned parts of the population that have strayed away from supporting the classic liberal and classic conservatism parties in favour of (sometimes) more reactive, violent or anti-governmental ideas and concepts, in a way similar to the positioning of Antifa in the political spectrum.
"Anti-vaxxer"	An important enemy image during COVID to demonize resistance to COVID-19 injections.
"Climate change"	the dogma that rise in CO2 levels correspond to a (as of yet non-significant) rise in temperature and that the world is ahead of an apocalyptic disaster
"Conspiracy theorist"	An enemy image used for ad hominem attacks on people as a way of misdirecting attention away from their arguments
"Conspiracy theory"	An enemy image used to equate scepticism of government with craziness. It was developed by the CIA to try to contain doubt about the FBI's "Oswald did it, case closed" approach to the JFK assassination. It is now being associated with dangerous and violent insanity, in an effort to promote internet censorship of free speech.
"Cyberterrorism"	The use of computers by "terrorists" to cause disruption. This is an arena in which the determination of responsibility is particularly difficult, and therefore false flag attacks are that much more easy.
"Denialism"
"Discredited and disproven"	ON affirming phrase.
"Disinformation Dozen"	"anti vaxxer conspiracy theorists" according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate
"Disinformation"	Disinformation is a word used by those in power to malign opinions and people they don't like, and as a scientific-sounding pretext for censorship. Those in power often use projection when accusing others of spreading disinformation, as the official narratives tends to be full of lies and omissions. Can also be a real thing.
"Domestic extremism"	An enemy image used to try to justify repression of alternative ideas
"Enemy combatant"	A legal euphemism to create a category of persons who do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions.
"Extremism"	"Extremism" is used as a more modern replacement for "terrorism", one that is used to facilitate the criminalisation of ideas as well as just actions. It polarises the world into the normal ("mainstream") and the abnormal, unhealthy ("extreme").
"Failed state"	A pejorative label used to describe enemies and minimise opposition to their invasion.
"Far right"	An all-encompassing CCM buzzword.
"Hate crime"	The phrase "hate crime" is a plastic phrase associated with the "hate speech" effort to stifle free speech on the internet.
"Hate group"	An enemy image which appears to be part of the effort to support the ongoing project to criminalize free speech.
"Hate speech"	An enemy image mobilised to facilitate legal restriction of free speech.
"Hate symbols"	A term created by the ADL. An enemy image mobilised to facilitate legal restriction of free speech.
"Islamic terrorism"	A trenchant enemy image, reinforced by the clandestine arming and training of groups under Operation Gladio/B
"Islamic terrorist"	An enemy image called to mind by legislators as they write laws to clamp down on civil liberties and step up mass surveillance.
"Misinformation"
"Narco-state"	An enemy image comparable with "failed state", but particularly suggestive of drug trafficking.
"Non-crime hate incident"	An infringement on freedom of speech.
"Non-violent extremism"	An enemy image used to try to justify violent repression of those who advocate non-violent change.
"Racism"	A prejudice based on individuals superficial physical attributes. People have no "race" in the scientific sense.
"Radicalisation"	Together with "extremism" this word is one of many which deep states are seeking to use to demonize dissent by equating truth telling and earnest inquiry with violence, as a tool to facilitate internet censorship.
"Satanic panic"	A label used to suggest that the widespread reports of satanic child abuse should be dismissed per se.
"Self-hating jew"	Term which is used to describe Jews whose views are perceived as antisemitic, most often by being insufficiently supportive of the more warlike policies of the state of Israel
"Social Justice Warrior"	An enemy image which appears to be part of the effort to support the ongoing project to criminalize free speech.
"Terrorist"	A powerful enemy image, a "terrorist" is someone who commits an act of "terrorism"...
"Useful idiot"	Derogatory term originally against "anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase's user."
"Vaccine hesitancy"	A phrase used to try to minimise opposition to vaccines.
"Violent extremism"	A drop in replacement for "terrorism" that was followed by "non-violent extremism", a term used to frame the justification of violence towards the explicitly non-violent.
"Weapon of mass destruction"	A plastic word and enemy image hyped as part of Operation Mass Appeal
Addict	Someone who has an addiction.
Alternative medicine	There are alternatives to the medical treatments promoted by Big Pharma.
Artificial intelligence	A branch of computer science intended to enable computers to carry out tasks previously made by human beings.
Black legend
Brown-baiting	Harassing an individual or group by making claims of associations with National Socialism and fascism, often as a form of guilt by association and/or ad hominem, no matter how far-fetched.
China	The most populous nation state in the world
Climate change/Dissident	An enemy image used to marginalize and increasingly punish various skeptics of human-caused climate change.
Crime	Legally forbidden behaviours.
Drug cartel	A large business entity in the illegal drug trade
Hamas	"Terrorists" according to the West, largely founded, financed and brought to power by Israel, Hamas has led Palestine into becoming an enemy image to the western world since 2006.
Homelessness	Those without a home. Often scapegoated by those keen to promote capitalism.
Katie Hopkins	UK commentator known for her outspoken views
Identitarianism	A "hate group".
Identity politics	A divide and rule strategy that focuses on superficial issues such as gender, religion or even skin color to promote infighting.
Immigrant
... further results

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Terrorism"	“Terrorism is not really an '-ism'. There's no connection between the Sandinistas who fought the Contras and Al Qaida or Colombia's FARC and fisherman turned pirates in Africa and Asia, yet they are all called "terrorists". That's just a convenient way for your government to convince the world that there is another enemy '-ism' out there, like communism used to be. It diverts attention from the very real problems. Our narrow-minded attitudes and the resultant policies foment violence, rebellion and wars. In the long run, almost noone benefits from attacking the people we label as "terrorists", with one, glaring exception:- the corporatocracy. Those who own and run the companies that build the ships, missiles and armoured vehicles, make guns, uniforms and bulletproof vests, distribute food, soft drinks and ammunition, provide insurance, medicines and toilet paper, constructions ports, airstrips and housing and reconstruct devastated villages, schools, factories and hospitals. They, and only they, are the big winners. The rest of us are hoodwinked by that one, loaded word "terrorist". The current economic collapse has awakened us to the importance of regulating and reining in the people who control the businesses that benefit from the misuse of words like "terrorism" and who perpetrate other scams. We recognize today that white collar executives are not a special, incorruptible breed.”	Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann
9-11/Official narrative	“It turns out, 45 years later, that those who truly hate us for our freedoms are not the array of dehumanised enemies cooked up by the war machine — the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, even the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or ISIS. They are the financiers, bankers, politicians, public intellectuals and pundits, lawyers, journalists and business people, cultivated in the elite universities and business schools who sold us the Utopian dream of neoliberalism. We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism. Capitalists unable to generate profits by expanding markets have, as Karl Marx predicted, begun to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites.”	Chris Hedges	2017
George Carlin	“Now, to balance the scale, I'd like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences. 'Cause that's all you ever hear about in this country. It's our differences. That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about—the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money! Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know? Anything different—that's what they're gonna talk about—race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank! You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.”	George Carlin
George Carlin	“The habits of liberals, their automatic language, their knee-jerk responses to certain issues, deserved the epithets the right wing stuck them with. I'd see how true they often were. Here they were, banding together in packs, so I could predict what they were going to say about some event or conflict and it wasn't even out of their mouths yet. I was very uncomfortable with that. Liberal orthodoxy was as repugnant to me as conservative orthodoxy.””	George Carlin
Corporate media/Logic	“Now, to balance the scale, I'd like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences. 'Cause that's all you ever hear about in this country. It's our differences. That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about—the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money! Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know? Anything different—that's what they're gonna talk about—race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank! You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.”	George Carlin
Craig Murray	“The naive view of the world as “goodies” and “baddies”, with our own ruling class as the good guys, is for the birds. I witnessed personally in Uzbekistan the willingness of the UK and US security services to accept and validate intelligence they knew to be false in order to pursue their policy objectives.”	Craig Murray	13 March 2018
Donald Trump	“We owe China $1.3 trillion. We owe Japan more than that. So they come in, they take our jobs, they take our money, and then they loan us back the money, and we pay them in interest, and then the dollar goes up so their deal's even better. How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these politicians to allow this to happen? How stupid are they?”	Donald Trump	June 2015

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
The Power of Nightmares	film	2004	Adam Curtis	A some-holds-barred look at how fear has come to dominate politics in America, Britain and around the world — which observes that much of that fear is based on an illusion.

 

An official example

Name	Description
"ADHD"	A controversial, increasingly widely-diagnosed psychological disorder that big pharma seems to be using as a pretext for prescribing otherwise-illegal, highly addictive “performance enhancing” stimulants to improve the academic performance of schoolchildren.

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