Keen - Faces of the enemy : reflections of the hostile imagination

Keen, Sam

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What stirs ordinary people to commit murder? How do we bring ourselves to kill when the pressures of war demand it? How do we stand by and countenance violence? Who are our enemies? How and why do we transform them into monsters?

These are some of the questions the philosopher Sam Keen explores in this provocative new book. A compelling study of aggression, Faces of the Enemy reveals the process through which we are manipulated intoor work ourselves up tosuch hatred for an "enemy" that we can kill other human beings or consider the extermination of entire groups or nations.

"In the beginning we create the enemy," Keen writes, by projecting our own fears, inadequacies, and self-hatred onto others. "Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missile with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology."

The tendency to dehumanize the enemy is universal, he says. Using political posters, editorial cartoons, and other examples of propaganda, he shows how Americans at various times have viewed the "bad guys"the Nazis, the Japanese, the Russians, the North Vietnameseand how they have viewed us. "Wars come and go," he writes, "yet the images we use to dehumanize our enemies and justify our killing of them remain strangely the same."

Keen argues eloquently that the distorted pictures we use to legitimize our violence have succeeded too well. We

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7fib

FACES

OF

THE

ENEMY

FACES

OF

THE

ENEMY

Reflections

of

the

Hostile

Imagination

Photo Editor Anne Page

1817

Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco Cambridge, Hagerstown, New York, Philadelphia London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney

Beginnings Without End Apology For Wonder To A Dancing God Voices and Visions The Passionate Life Gabriel Marcel

What to Do When Youre Bored and Blue Telling Your Story with Ann Valley Fox Life Maps with Jim Fowler

Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. Copyright 1986 by Sam Keen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Limited, Toronto.

Cover, page 115 (4.), used by permission of MacMillan, Inc. from Colliers magazine, Dec. 12, 1942. Copyright 1942 by MacMillan, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publkation Data

Keen, Sam.

Faces of the enemy.

Bibliography: p. (TC?)

1. Hostility (Psychology) 2. WarPsychological aspects. 3. PropagandaPsychological aspects.

4. Projection (Psychology) 5. Paranoia. I. Title. BF575.H6K44 1986 303.6'6 85-45358

ISBN 0-06-250471-1

FIRST EDITION

Design: Design Office, Peter Martin

86 87 88 89 90 RRD 10 98 7.654321

INTRODUCTION:

THE ENEMY MAKER 10

PART 1

ARCHETYPES OF THE ENEMY 15

Apparitions off the Hostile Imagination

PART 2

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENMITY 89

PART 3

THE FUTURE OF ENMITY 145

A Potpourri off Possibilities

PART 4

IN THE MEANTIME 179

Compassionate Warriors, Humane Enemies, and Tragic Battles

PARTS

POSTSCRIPT 183

The Education off Homo Amicus A Curriculum for Compassion