An Eternal Enemy...
One thing I noticed about Westerners and Americans in particular, specially this lot, they always need an enemy to function...
Thinking about it deeply, I see it to be a Truth...Historically it is a confirmed truth...from the days of the Christian crusades, till this very day, things have not changed much...the packaging looks different, but what is inside the package has not changed one bit...
Europeans are overall a very racist bunch, I mean deeply racist, and Americans do not fare any better...
Historically for Europe, the first enemy was the Muslims, as far back as the 11th century, they used and still do call them the Mohammedans...
As European colonialism spread along with the slave trade, the main enemy was the black/colored man/woman -- it became the Arabs, the Africans and the Indians....not that it has changed much since...
As for this bastard country called the United States of America, the first settlers embedded the concept of the "Enemy" into the culture, elevating it to a sophisticated logic around which revolves everything that is American...it is the main trigger for domestic and foreign policy, it is the crux around which the whole media is constructed and it is the kernel that gave birth to different specialties in the American "academia", such as the concepts of negotiation, conflict management and resolution, peace processes, deterrence, zero sum games, etc...
Had the West and Americans in particular been a "peace loving" people, you would agree they would not need all the above to "achieve peace", a peace that they try to achieve after they wage, instigate wars...and there has been many of them instigated wars by the West...
For the West and the Americans in particular, it is crucial for their psyche and its survival to have an identifiable enemy..if he does not exist, you can trust these highly neurotic people to invent him...it's as if these Christian cultures cannot live in peace at all....hence their so-called peace movements....
These are societies built on war...and war does not only take place in battlefields...there are all kinds of wars going on....and these are societies whose survival depends on them....
Logically, in order to perpetuate this state of permanent war which is really the state of the Western world and of the USA in particular, it is of absolute necessity to have a permanent enemy...
The enemy may change color or name but he has to remain an enemy....the concept of the Enemy in Western culture is primordial for the functioning of their societies....and obviously the Enemy must be outside of the Kosher group...
Once a enemy is designated and chosen, the whole State machinery and its various institutions will operate in such a way to demonize, vilify, denigrate the chosen one...in other words it will render legal and acceptable its elimination by any means necessary....again, elimination is not only physically liquidating someone...elimination is contriving someone to a specific limited bounded role from which he can no longer escape - it becomes his "destiny, fate "...a more modern version of slavery if you wish...a slavery in all of its ramifications particularly including the cultural/ideological component...
I am not too sure if common theories of imperialism and its dynamics are enough of an explanation for this most "strange" behavior by the White man...again white is a political-cultural construct and not just a color -- tired of repeating myself but some people are very thick...
In any case, whatever the exact causes behind this are, and am sure there are not one but a constellation of many, it is safe to say the Western world and the Americans in particular, are adepts in creating enemies...and by correlation -- animosity and enmity...
A quick review of the short history of this bastard entity called America, shows that the Americans always strove to have an enemy...
At the beginning it was the "Red Indian" the Native American, then it was the Black - the Afro American, then it was the Japanese, the Korean, the Russian, the Communist, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Chicanos (Cubans, Mexicans...) and now it is the Muslim and the Arab...
If the Americans manage to colonize the whole earth, they will still find someone to blame and they will still find someone to be an enemy...
At one point Americans complained of being abducted by UFO's -- trust that if there is no one left to wage a war against here on planet earth, extra terrestrials will be their new enemy...but that is already in the making...well not quite, because you still have paranoid, hysterical, fucked up Americans swearing that they were abducting by the Green men in spaceships...
Now that they have Al-Qaeda, their own invention, it is still Green men but turbaned ones....carrying the Green Islamic Flag...
I mean honestly how can anyone take these people seriously ? These are idiots...I always feel disappointed when people fail to realize the ultimate stupidity of this thing called Americans....and I don't think Americans realize how moronic they are...
The sad part but an expected one -- is that those same "Red Indians", Blacks, Japs, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chicanos even the Commies...have become so part of that moronic culture that they too see the Green turbaned ones as the Enemy....
As for the rest of the Western world, they too are the epitome of stupidity and ignorance...
For the once a month bathing Brits and French it was the Indian, Pakistani, North African, West African, Caribbean, and today it is the Muslim Arab one...for the Germans it was and still is the Turks but you need to add "Muslim", to make it more potent...
For the East Europeans, it was the Turks, and still is the Turks...by the way Eastern Europeans are disgustingly racists, including their so called commies...for them every Muslim is a Turk figuratively speaking...
As for the Scandinavians, they try so hard not to be racist that they end up racist...of course these "extra" Northerners, they too have their enemy...it's the Muslim of course, who else ?! But being so "advanced" in their human rights record, or pretending to be -- the whole discourse revolves around the "Muslim Woman", this becomes "le point d'appui", the starting point for all other ensuing discourses....of course the worst in these icy God forsaken hemisphere are the Fins and the Danes followed by the Swedes...I am told Norwegians are not like that...I don't know and I am not sure I care to find out either...
As for the Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians, it is not much different...their obsession with Muslims and Islam is almost pathological...did you ever hear your average Spaniard, Portuguese or Italian speak of the Muslims and Arabs ? Good Lord, you'd think it is the bloody Catholic inquisition all over again...they've forgotten too quickly how not long ago, they too were denigrated by the White man, as some "cheap greasy labor"...but now that they are in the EU and have attained some respectability in his eyes, they joined the common chorus...am not sure they ever left it...
I think the divide is being clearly set for the future...I think the divide was never bridged to start with...
And while re-reading Amin Maalouf's "The Crusade through Arab eyes" I can tell that the Eternal Enemy will remain Islam and Muslims and that -- for many years to come...unless meanwhile, they manage to capture some green UFO extra-terrestrial, who has been abducting "peace loving" citizens...
Painting : Iraqi artist, Ziad Bakury.
