Inventing the Enemy: Essays Read Online Free Page B

saying: “Go, go to the devil!” and she was immediately transported swiftly into the air to the place of the synagogue. She also confesses that in the aforesaid place they ate bread and meat; they drank wine and danced again; the said demon, their master, having then transformed himself from a man into a black dog, they honored and worshiped him, kissing him on the behind; finally the demon, having doused the fire that was burning there with green flames illuminating the synagogue, exclaimed loudly: “Meclet! Meclet!” and upon that cry the men lay bestially with the women and she with the aforesaid Masset Garin. (quoted in
La civiltà delle streghe
by Giuseppina and Eugenio Battisti, 1964)
     
    This testimony, with its various details about spitting on the cross and kissing the anus, is almost identical to the testimony given in the trial of the Knights Templar, which took place a century and a half before. What is surprising in this fifteenth-century trial is that not only are the inquisitors guided in their lines of questioning by what they have read of the earlier trials, but also, at the end of the interrogation, which seemed fairly summary, the victim is herself convinced of the truth of the accusations made against her. At the witchcraft trials, not only is a picture built up of the enemy, and not only does the victim in the end also admit to doing what she hasn’t done, but through the act of confessing she becomes convinced that what she is saying is true. You will remember how a similar procedure is described in Arthur Koestler’s
Darkness at Noon
(1940)—and how, during the trials under Stalin, a picture was first built up of the enemy and the victims were then persuaded to recognize themselves in that picture.
    Even those who might otherwise hope to be viewed in a favorable light are induced, in this way, to become the enemy. Theater and literature provide us with examples of the “ugly duckling” who, having been scorned by his equals, adapts to the image they have of him. I will quote Shakespeare’s
Richard III
as an example:
     
But I—that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking glass—
I . . . that am curtail’d of this fair portion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—
Why I . . . have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant my own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to be a villain. (act 1, scene 1)
     
    It seems we cannot manage without an enemy. The figure of the enemy cannot be abolished from the processes of civilization. The need is second nature even to a mild man of peace. In his case the image of the enemy is simply shifted from a human object to a natural or social force that in some way threatens us and has to be defeated, whether it be capitalistic exploitation, environmental pollution, or third-world hunger. But though these are “virtuous” cases, even hatred of injustice, as Brecht reminds us, “makes the brow grow stern.”
    Is our moral sense therefore impotent when faced with the age-old need for enemies? I would argue that morality intervenes not when we pretend we have no enemies but when we try to understand them, to put ourselves in their situation. Aeschylus has no resentment toward the Persians, whose tragedy he experiences with them and from their point of view. Caesar treats the Gauls with great respect: at worst, he makes them appear rather wimpish each time they surrender. And Tacitus admires the Germans, crediting them with fine complexions and complaining only about their dirtiness and their reluctance to undertake heavy work as they cannot cope with heat and thirst.
    Trying to understand other people means destroying the stereotype