Ideology and the Construction of the “Enemy”
Ideology and the Construction of the “Enemy”
Ideologies help individuals interpret society, identify shared values, and understand political conflict. They can inspire collective action, resistance to oppression, national independence, religious solidarity, social reform, and movements for justice. However, ideologies can also divide humanity into morally opposing camps. In such narratives, one group represents virtue, order, civilization, faith, progress, or national authenticity, while another is portrayed as corrupt, dangerous, inferior, or evil.
An enemy is not simply an opponent. Political opponents can compete within a shared system while recognizing one another’s legitimacy. An ideological enemy, by contrast, is frequently depicted as an existential threat whose continued presence endangers the nation, religion, race, class, civilization, or political community. Once people are defined in this way, compromise may appear immoral and repression may be presented as necessary self-defense.
Enemy construction has appeared across political systems and historical periods. Fascist regimes identified racial and political enemies; communist governments persecuted alleged class enemies and counterrevolutionaries; colonial powers portrayed subject populations as primitive or dangerous; apartheid authorities invoked racial and communist threats; and contemporary populist movements frequently target immigrants, minorities, political elites, journalists, activists, and opposition parties.
Defining the Ideological Enemy
The political construction of an enemy involves transforming a person or group into a symbolic explanation for social disorder. Complex problems such as economic insecurity, political instability, military defeat, demographic change, crime, inequality, or cultural conflict are attributed to a supposedly hostile population.
Several distinctions commonly structure these narratives:
- The authentic people versus the corrupt elite
- Patriots versus traitors
- Believers versus infidels
- Civilization versus barbarism
- The revolutionary class versus counterrevolutionaries
- The racially pure nation versus allegedly contaminating outsiders
- Law-abiding citizens versus supposed criminals or terrorists
- Traditional families versus perceived agents of cultural decline
- The nation versus foreign powers and their alleged domestic collaborators
These categories are political creations rather than neutral descriptions. Their boundaries can expand or change depending on the needs of leaders and institutions. A government that initially targets armed opponents may eventually apply the same enemy label to journalists, religious dissenters, minorities, labor organizers, academics, humanitarian workers, or ordinary political critics.
Ideology, Identity, and Belonging
Enemy construction is closely connected to the creation of collective identity. Ideologies define not only what a community opposes but also who belongs within it. The promise of unity, security, dignity, or renewal is often accompanied by the exclusion of people who do not fit the preferred national, racial, religious, cultural, or political identity.
Populist ideology commonly divides society between a virtuous people and a corrupt elite. Nationalist movements may portray minorities, immigrants, foreign institutions, or advocates of social change as threats to national continuity. Religious nationalism can present political struggles as conflicts between sacred order and spiritual corruption. Racial ideologies transform cultural and social differences into supposedly permanent biological divisions.
The category of “the people” is therefore rarely universal. It may implicitly exclude people whose ancestry, beliefs, language, sexuality, politics, or social status are considered incompatible with the dominant ideological community.
Propaganda and the Simplification of Conflict
Propaganda helps transform political opponents into recognizable enemies. It reduces complicated events to emotionally powerful stories containing innocent victims, heroic defenders, hidden conspirators, and dangerous outsiders.
Governments and political movements have used newspapers, posters, radio, film, television, education, public ceremonies, religious institutions, and digital media to circulate enemy images. Modern artificial intelligence can intensify this process by producing fabricated photographs, recordings, and videos that appear to document an opponent’s disloyalty or criminality.
Propaganda frequently relies on:
- Repetition of emotionally charged labels
- Selective presentation of facts
- Fabricated or misleading evidence
- Historical myths and collective grievances
- Racial, religious, or cultural stereotypes
- Images of invasion, disease, contamination, or betrayal
- Claims that enemies secretly control institutions
- Assertions that the community faces an immediate existential crisis
These techniques do not necessarily persuade audiences through detailed argument. Their power often comes from repetition, familiarity, fear, and their connection to identities and prejudices already present within society.
Othering and Dehumanization
Othering separates an accepted community from populations characterized as fundamentally different. Outsiders may be depicted as culturally incompatible, morally deficient, politically disloyal, or incapable of peaceful coexistence.
Dehumanization takes this process further by representing people as animals, parasites, diseases, objects, pollutants, or faceless masses. It weakens empathy and removes targeted populations from normal moral consideration. Violence that would otherwise seem cruel can then be described as cleansing, defense, treatment, removal, or protection.
Dehumanization usually develops gradually. It can begin with jokes, insults, stereotypes, rumors, discriminatory rules, or language that denies individual identity. Repetition makes increasingly severe forms of exclusion appear normal. People cease to be understood as individuals and instead become interchangeable representatives of a threatening category.
Restoring names, personal histories, relationships, and moral complexity can counter this process. Recognition of shared humanity does not require denying genuine conflict, but it resists the claim that an opponent’s identity makes that person undeserving of rights or protection.
Hate Speech, Scapegoating, and Social Crisis
Periods of war, economic disruption, migration, public-health emergencies, and political instability provide favorable conditions for scapegoating. Leaders can redirect public anger toward groups with limited power to defend themselves.
Refugees may be blamed for economic insecurity, religious minorities for cultural decline, immigrants for crime, healthcare workers for disease, and political critics for national weakness. Scapegoating offers a simple explanation for problems that actually have numerous historical and institutional causes.
Hate speech can produce real harm even when it does not explicitly order violence. It establishes targets, reinforces discriminatory attitudes, intimidates vulnerable communities, and provides ideological justification for people already prepared to commit violence. In extreme cases, dehumanizing rhetoric becomes part of the progression from social exclusion to organized persecution and genocide.
Political Polarization and Democratic Backsliding
Democracy requires disagreement, opposition, and competition for power. It becomes unstable when political rivals are no longer treated as legitimate participants in a shared political system.
Extreme polarization encourages citizens to interpret elections as battles for survival. If the opposing party is believed to represent tyranny, treason, criminality, or national destruction, supporters may accept political violence or violations of democratic rules to prevent it from taking power.
Enemy-centered politics can contribute to:
- Rejection of legitimate election results
- Harassment of public officials and journalists
- Criminalization of opposition parties
- Political intimidation and violence
- Attacks on independent courts and media
- Restrictions on civil society
- Acceptance of authoritarian leadership
- Refusal to compromise on ordinary policy disputes
Political leaders play an especially important role. Elite rhetoric can either intensify hostility or preserve democratic boundaries by condemning violence, recognizing legitimate opposition, and refusing to portray every political disagreement as an existential emergency.
Conspiracy Theories and the Hidden Enemy
Conspiracy theories construct enemies who supposedly operate invisibly behind public events. These enemies are portrayed as controlling governments, financial institutions, media organizations, universities, elections, immigration, or cultural change.
The fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most influential examples. It falsely described Jews as members of a coordinated international conspiracy. Despite repeated proof that the document was fraudulent, it continued to circulate because it offered extremists a single enemy who could be blamed simultaneously for capitalism, communism, war, revolution, economic crisis, and social change.
Modern conspiracy theories follow similar patterns. They convert institutional complexity into intentional manipulation by a hidden group. Contradictory evidence can be incorporated into the conspiracy because denials are interpreted as additional proof of secrecy. This makes conspiracy-based enemy narratives unusually resistant to correction.
Fascism and the Racial Enemy
Fascist movements combine authoritarianism, militant nationalism, myths of decline and rebirth, hostility toward pluralism, and the identification of internal and external enemies. Their vision of national unity depends on removing or subordinating groups considered incompatible with the nation.
Nazi ideology constructed a racially defined Volksgemeinschaft, or national community. Approved Germans were promised belonging and social benefits, while Jews, Roma, disabled people, gay men, political opponents, religious dissenters, and others were classified as enemies or undesirable outsiders.
Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as both biologically inferior and extraordinarily powerful. Jews were falsely blamed for capitalism, communism, military defeat, cultural change, and international conflict. This contradictory image allowed antisemitism to function as a comprehensive explanation for nearly every perceived national problem.
The Nazi category of “enemies of the state” also expanded beyond racial targets. Communists, social democrats, trade unionists, and other opponents were subjected to surveillance, imprisonment, and murder. Ideological classification became the foundation for bureaucratic persecution and genocide.
Communism, Anticommunism, and Class Enemies
Revolutionary communist governments frequently divided society according to class and political loyalty. Landowners, capitalists, alleged saboteurs, counterrevolutionaries, foreign agents, and “enemies of the people” could be blamed for resistance to revolutionary transformation.
Under Stalin, accusations of conspiracy, espionage, sabotage, and treason contributed to purges that affected party members, military officers, intellectuals, workers, and ordinary citizens. The definition of the enemy continually expanded as political repression generated demands for additional suspects.
Anticommunist movements constructed their own internal enemies. During the American Red Scares, alleged communist influence was identified within government, education, labor unions, entertainment, civil-rights organizations, and civic institutions. Political beliefs, friendships, organizational memberships, or refusal to testify could be treated as evidence of participation in a hostile ideological network.
Civil-rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. were investigated through an anticommunist framework. Demands for racial justice, labor rights, peace, or changes in government policy could be portrayed as products of foreign ideological manipulation rather than legitimate democratic dissent.
Colonialism and the Racialized Enemy
Colonialism depended upon ideological distinctions between civilized rulers and supposedly primitive subject populations. Colonized people were frequently described as childlike, irrational, savage, treacherous, or incapable of governing themselves.
During the Philippine-American War, American rhetoric portrayed Filipinos as racially inferior and resistant to civilization. Such representations helped justify conquest and severe violence as necessary steps toward political development.
Colonial authorities also treated racial mixing and ambiguous identities as threats because they challenged the boundaries separating rulers from the ruled. Administrative racial categories were therefore not merely descriptive; they helped maintain political authority and unequal access to citizenship, property, mobility, and legal protection.
Colonial propaganda could also temporarily present subject populations as allies. During the Second World War, Britain encouraged Nigerians and other colonial subjects to identify Germany as a common enemy, even though those subjects remained excluded from equal citizenship within the British Empire.
Apartheid and the Politics of Racial Fear
Apartheid South Africa constructed Black political participation as a threat to white civilization and national order. The idea of swart gevaar, or “Black danger,” helped unite white voters by presenting demands for equality as evidence of racial hostility.
Apartheid authorities combined Black liberation, communism, neighboring African governments, and international criticism into an image of comprehensive revolutionary assault. Anticommunist propaganda enabled racial repression to be presented as part of a global defense against Soviet expansion.
Liberation movements faced the challenge of opposing apartheid without defining all white people as collective enemies. The African National Congress and Nelson Mandela emphasized that the apartheid system, rather than an entire racial population, was the principal enemy. This distinction sought to prevent resistance to institutional oppression from becoming a racial war.
As the Cold War ended, apartheid leaders found it increasingly difficult to portray racial domination as a necessary barrier against communist expansion. The weakening of this enemy narrative contributed to the political conditions in which negotiations became possible.
Religion, Civilization, and Cosmic Enemies
Religious traditions can support compassion, restraint, reconciliation, and peacebuilding. Religious language can also intensify political conflict when opponents are depicted as enemies of God, faith, or sacred order.
Cosmic enemy narratives make compromise especially difficult because political concessions appear to violate divine obligations. Ordinary territorial, economic, or institutional disputes become battles between good and evil.
Contemporary civilizationist ideologies divide international politics into large cultural blocs. Liberalism, secularism, immigration, Westernization, Islam, Christianity, or rival civilizations may be portrayed as existential threats. These narratives conceal internal diversity and treat millions of people as representatives of unified and hostile cultural forces.
Religious nationalism similarly defines authentic national belonging through a dominant faith. Minorities and secular citizens may be treated as less loyal even when they possess equal legal citizenship.
Nationalism, War, and Foreign Enemies
War encourages governments to simplify foreign societies into unified enemy populations. During the First World War, governments, newspapers, schools, churches, and intellectuals assigned collective guilt to opposing nations. National sacrifice was described as the defense of civilization against barbarism.
Foreign-policy institutions can organize security priorities, military spending, alliances, and national identity around a permanent adversary. Once an enemy image becomes embedded in official doctrine, contradictory information may be ignored and peaceful actions may be interpreted as deceptive.
Describing foreign leaders as uniquely evil can increase public support for punishment and war. Moral outrage may override practical assessments of military costs, diplomatic alternatives, or the distinction between governments and civilians.
International humanitarian law attempts to preserve these distinctions. Even during war, enemy soldiers, detainees, wounded people, and civilians retain legal protection. Rhetoric describing entire populations as subhuman weakens these restraints and encourages unrestricted violence.
Terrorism and National Security
The term “terrorist” can identify specific forms of political violence, but its indiscriminate use can erase distinctions among combatants, civilians, political organizations, and affected communities.
Governments may use the label to delegitimize opponents and deny them legal or humanitarian protections. Apartheid South Africa, for example, characterized the African National Congress as a terrorist enemy while obscuring the institutional violence of apartheid itself.
Nonstate movements also construct broad enemy categories. Extremist organizations may target religious minorities, government employees, democratic participants, or even members of their own faith whose conduct is judged insufficiently pure.
Effective security policy requires attention to genuine threats without assuming that every person associated with a particular religion, ethnicity, region, or political movement shares collective responsibility.
Genocide and the Institutionalization of Enmity
Genocide does not begin with mass killing. It develops through mutually reinforcing processes that may include classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial.
During the Holocaust, Nazi institutions converted racial and political ideology into laws, administrative records, deportations, forced labor, imprisonment, sterilization, and murder. The enemy category became embedded in the machinery of the state.
During the Cambodian genocide, clothing, regional origin, class background, and alleged political affiliation were used to classify and separate targeted populations. During the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, extremists used radio, newspapers, rumors, and local political networks to portray Tutsi civilians as members of a dangerous conspiracy.
Genocidal propaganda eliminates individual distinctions. Children, elderly people, political moderates, and uninvolved civilians are treated as equally threatening because identity itself becomes the alleged crime.
Historical Memory and the Inherited Enemy
Enemy images can survive long after the conflicts that created them. Political movements selectively interpret wars, occupations, revolutions, territorial disputes, and national humiliation to identify contemporary opponents with historical enemies.
Historical memory can promote understanding, but it can also transform inherited trauma into permanent hostility. Nationalist narratives may present current disputes as repetitions of an ancient struggle, implying that reconciliation is naïve or treasonous.
Textbooks, monuments, museums, popular entertainment, political speeches, and commemorations all influence how societies remember conflict. When they present only heroic insiders and evil outsiders, they reproduce enemy categories for new generations.
Responsible historical interpretation recognizes injustice and responsibility while preserving complexity. It distinguishes governments from populations, perpetrators from bystanders, and historical accountability from inherited collective guilt.
Artificial Intelligence, Disinformation, and Digital Enmity
Digital platforms allow enemy narratives to circulate rapidly through ideologically homogeneous networks. Users repeatedly encounter information confirming negative beliefs about opposing groups, while sensational accusations receive more attention than cautious analysis.
Artificial intelligence can generate realistic but false images, voices, and videos. Fabricated evidence may portray political candidates, minorities, activists, or foreign populations as violent, corrupt, disloyal, or secretly controlled by hostile interests.
Disinformation is most effective when it reinforces existing fears. Technical correction alone may therefore be insufficient. Media literacy, trustworthy institutions, transparent journalism, diverse information networks, and accountability for coordinated manipulation are also necessary.
Resisting the Politics of Enemies
Opposing enemy construction does not require abandoning political principles or ignoring genuine injustice. Democratic societies must still confront oppression, violence, corruption, and discrimination. The central challenge is to resist transforming every opponent—or every person associated with an opponent—into an illegitimate or subhuman enemy.
Constructive responses include:
- Distinguishing political opponents from existential enemies
- Challenging dehumanizing labels and collective accusations
- Preserving the individuality of targeted people
- Supporting accurate and independent journalism
- Encouraging contact across ideological divisions
- Condemning political violence consistently
- Protecting minority rights and equal citizenship
- Teaching propaganda recognition and media literacy
- Separating criticism of institutions from hatred of populations
- Addressing legitimate grievances that make scapegoating persuasive
- Preserving humanitarian protections during war
- Promoting historical understanding without collective guilt
Political campaigns can also reject retaliatory polarization. Strategies based on inclusion, shared concerns, restraint, and respect may weaken narratives that depend on constant hostility.
Conclusion
The construction of an enemy is one of ideology’s most powerful and dangerous functions. Enemy narratives simplify complex events, strengthen group identity, mobilize supporters, and provide explanations for fear or social disorder. They can also legitimize discrimination, authoritarianism, political violence, war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Fascism, communism, anticommunism, colonialism, apartheid, religious nationalism, populism, and modern conspiracy movements have all produced distinctive enemy categories. Despite their ideological differences, they often rely on similar mechanisms: moral dualism, propaganda, dehumanization, scapegoating, historical myth, collective blame, and claims of existential danger.
The alternative is not a society without disagreement. It is a political culture capable of confronting injustice without denying the humanity of opponents or assigning collective guilt to entire populations. Democratic pluralism, accurate historical knowledge, independent institutions, responsible media, and meaningful contact across social divisions can help prevent political adversaries from becoming imagined enemies whose exclusion or destruction appears necessary.
Contemporary Enemy Construction and Political Polarization
U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective
Examines democratic backsliding in the United States comparatively, including the authoritarian practice of labeling political opponents, critics, and independent institutions as evil, criminal, or dangerous enemies. The authors explain how such rhetoric creates fear, delegitimizes opposition, and prepares the public to tolerate political retaliation.
The Anatomy of Populist Ideology: How Political Parties Define “The People” and “The Elite”
Investigates how populist parties construct a moral conflict between an honest, virtuous people and a corrupt or evil elite. It shows that the boundaries assigned to these categories vary considerably, helping explain why different populist movements identify different institutions, minorities, and political actors as enemies.
Discourse and Ideologies of the Radical Right
| Teun A. van Dijk | Cambridge University Press | November 30, 2024
Compares radical-right discourse in Chile, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The study explains how ideological distinctions between “us” and “them” are adapted to national histories and social conditions, allowing parties to portray immigrants, minorities, elites, or ideological opponents as threats.
Why Gender Is Central to the Antidemocratic Playbook
| Saskia Brechenmacher and Others | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | November 25, 2024
Explores how authoritarian and antidemocratic movements use opposition to feminism and LGBTQ+ rights to define a supposedly threatening cultural enemy. Gender-based narratives help unite otherwise different ideological groups by presenting social change as an existential danger to families, religion, and national identity.
De-dehumanization: Practicing Humanity
| Andrew Clapham | International Review of the Red Cross | April 1, 2024
Considers how hate speech and hostile narratives transform opponents into enemies who appear undeserving of protection or compassion. It also explores ways of reversing dehumanization by restoring individual identity, moral complexity, empathy, and recognition of shared humanity.
Political Homophobia as a Tool of Creating Crisis Narratives and Ontological Insecurities in Illiberal Populist Contexts
| Didem Unal | New Perspectives on Turkey / Cambridge University Press | 2024
Analyzes how anti-LGBTI+ rhetoric was used during Turkey’s 2023 elections to generate moral panic and portray sexual minorities and political opponents as internal enemies. The article connects enemy construction to nationalism, religious conservatism, gender ideology, and the securitization of cultural disagreements.
Humanizing Dehumanization Research
| Jonathan Leader Maynard and Others | Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology | 2023
Reviews research on dehumanization while arguing that cultural understandings, social relationships, and ideology must be considered alongside psychological mechanisms. The article helps explain how enemy images become socially meaningful and how they can contribute to exclusion, cruelty, and mass violence.
Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy
| Rachel Kleinfeld | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | September 15, 2022
Discusses how severe polarization allows political leaders to divide society into hostile camps and weaken democratic restraints with popular support. The analysis also presents strategies for resisting political violence, authoritarianism, exclusionary identity politics, and zero-sum perceptions of political conflict.
The Rise in Political Violence in the United States and Damage to Our Democracy
| Rachel Kleinfeld | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | March 31, 2022
Examines growing public acceptance of threats, harassment, and violence against political opponents in the United States. It connects political violence to conspiracy theories, partisan identity, elite rhetoric, and the transformation of democratic competitors into enemies believed to pose an existential danger.
Divided Georgia: A Hostage to Polarization
Describes how Georgian political actors have used accusations of treason, abusive rhetoric, humiliation, and partisan media to deny opponents democratic legitimacy. The report illustrates how persistent enemy construction can turn political competition into a struggle between supposedly patriotic and disloyal forces.
Propaganda, Othering, and Dehumanization
Making the “Other”: The Construction of “Otherness”
| Barbara M. Oomen and Others | Cambridge University Press | 2021
Examines the political techniques used to intensify distinctions between an accepted national community and excluded outsiders. Political actors can progressively depict migrants and minorities as culturally incompatible, morally suspect, or existential threats rather than as people with legitimate rights and interests.
"Othering" in Unconcerned Democracies and the Rise of Antiliberal Political Divisions
| Michal Vašečka and Others | Cambridge University Press | 2021
Studies political othering following Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis, particularly in the Czech Republic. It shows how extreme friend-versus-foe divisions can undermine human dignity, minority protections, constitutional principles, and democratic governance.
The U.S. Shows All the Signs of a Country Spiraling Toward Political Violence
| Rachel Kleinfeld | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | September 11, 2020
Explains that political violence is usually preceded by prolonged polarization, segregation, inequality, inflammatory leadership, and narratives that justify abuses committed by one’s own side. Enemy-centered ideologies encourage supporters to interpret violence as necessary self-defense rather than aggression.
Can the Coronavirus Heal Polarization?
| Thomas Carothers | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | May 1, 2020
Examines how political leaders and media organizations interpreted the COVID-19 pandemic through existing ideological conflicts. In several countries, minorities, opposition parties, and regional governments were blamed for the crisis, demonstrating how emergencies can be used to reinforce established enemy images.
Dehumanizing Always Starts with Language
| Brené Brown | Brené Brown | May 17, 2018
Explains how repeated labels, metaphors, and stereotypes gradually place selected groups outside the community of moral concern. Enemy construction frequently begins by reducing diverse human beings to threatening categories, making discrimination or violence appear more acceptable.
Threats to Democracy Here and Abroad
Discusses how populist and authoritarian leaders generate support by identifying external enemies and treating domestic rivals as illegitimate or treasonous. The discussion considers the political benefits leaders receive from polarization, attacks on independent media, and the criminalization of opposition.
Dehumanization
| Michelle Maiese | Beyond Intractability | July 2003
Defines dehumanization as a psychological process through which opponents are viewed as less than human and therefore undeserving of normal moral consideration. The essay connects enemy demonization to protracted conflict, alienation, human-rights violations, war crimes, and genocide.
Historical Case Studies
Volksgemeinschaft: The People’s or National Community
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | September 23, 2024
Explains the Nazi ideal of a racially defined national community whose apparent unity depended upon exclusion. Benefits and belonging were offered to approved Germans, while people classified as racially, politically, biologically, or socially undesirable were isolated and persecuted.
What Groups of People Did the Nazis Target?
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | April 4, 2024
Identifies the numerous populations devalued and persecuted under Nazi racial, antisemitic, nationalist, and ableist ideology. The article demonstrates how an ideological regime can create a hierarchy of enemies and assign different forms of surveillance, exclusion, imprisonment, sterilization, or murder to each.
The Story of Propaganda
| American Historical Association | American Historical Association | 2024
Surveys propaganda across historical periods, including its use in religious struggles, revolutions, national movements, and warfare. It provides historical context for understanding how selective information, emotional symbolism, and simplified enemy images have repeatedly been used to mobilize populations.
The Ten Stages of Genocide
| Gregory H. Stanton | Genocide Watch | 1996
Presents genocide as a set of mutually reinforcing processes that include classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. The framework shows how political and ideological boundaries can evolve into institutionalized enemy categories and organized mass violence.
Blue Scarves and Yellow Stars: Classification and Symbolization in the Cambodian Genocide
| Gregory H. Stanton | Genocide Watch | March 14, 1987
Examines how the Khmer Rouge classified, marked, and separated groups targeted during the Cambodian genocide. Clothing, regional origins, social categories, and ideological labels transformed ordinary people into visible enemies whose supposed political or class identities justified persecution.
Defining the Enemy
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Explains how Nazi ideology promoted an imagined racially unified national community while identifying Jews and other excluded groups as dangerous enemies. Propaganda converted prejudice into a comprehensive worldview in which persecution was presented as necessary protection of the nation.
Nazi Propaganda
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Surveys the Nazis’ use of newspapers, film, radio, education, art, and mass spectacle to spread antisemitism and mobilize support for dictatorship, war, and genocide. Nazi propaganda portrayed Jews, communists, and foreign powers as interconnected enemies conspiring to destroy Germany.
“Enemies of the State”
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Documents how the Nazi regime expanded its category of state enemies beyond Jews to encompass communists, social democrats, trade unionists, Roma, disabled people, gay men, religious dissenters, and other outsiders. The category enabled repression to be presented as the defense of public order.
Ideology, Political Rhetoric, and Contemporary Enemies
The Operational and Humanitarian Consequences of Disregarding International Humanitarian Law
| International Committee of the Red Cross | ICRC | June 18, 2026
Warns that narratives portraying enemies as subhuman help normalize unrestricted warfare and deliberate destruction. When ideological rhetoric erases the humanity of opposing populations, restraints on violence weaken and humanitarian action becomes increasingly difficult.
The Evolution of Palestinian Perceptions in Israeli Soldiers’ Narratives
| Liora Sion | International Political Sociology / Oxford University Press | 2026
Examines changes in how Israeli soldiers perceive Palestinians and how military settings can sever emotional proximity between combatants and civilians. The study relates these perceptions to broader processes through which ideological, institutional, and spatial boundaries construct an enemy population.
Media Disinformation in the Russia–Ukraine Conflict
| Anna D’Andrea and Others | Journal of Information Technology & Politics / Taylor & Francis | 2026
Studies the vocabulary and narratives used in media coverage of the Russia–Ukraine war. Expressions such as “Kiev regime” do more than identify an opponent: they frame Ukraine as illegitimate, hostile, and controlled by dangerous ideological forces.
Populism, Fear, and the Construction of the Enemy
| Osman Furkan Zararsız | Southeast European and Black Sea Studies / Taylor & Francis | 2026
Analyzes Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2023 election campaign to show how political fear can be deliberately attached to opposition parties, minorities, foreign powers, and cultural change. Enemy narratives enable populist leaders to depict themselves as the nation’s indispensable protectors.
War Without Limits: How Sharp War Theory Is a Historical Anomaly
| International Review of the Red Cross | Cambridge University Press and ICRC | June 26, 2025
Challenges theories that treat war as an unrestricted struggle against an absolutely evil enemy. Historical examples demonstrate that degrading language and enemy vilification can eliminate moral restraint, even though many societies have maintained rules limiting violence against opponents.
Preventing Ethnic Genocide: A Policy Guidance Note
Explains how ethnic groups can be transformed into ideological enemies through dehumanization, discrimination, conspiracy narratives, and accusations of disloyalty. The guidance identifies these practices as warning signs that require early preventive action.
Dehumanizing Detention: Degrading Our Collective Humanity
| International Committee of the Red Cross | Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog | November 7, 2024
Explores how detainees are portrayed as animals, objects, diseases, or inherently dangerous enemies. Such representations lower resistance to torture, isolation, denial of services, and exclusion from legal protection.
Rejecting Bad via Externalization
| Hubert J. M. Hermans | Cambridge University Press | March 15, 2024
Compares the worldviews promoted by Hitler and Putin, focusing on purification, internal unity, external division, dehumanization, and enemy construction. The chapter argues that moral dualism allows societies to project everything considered bad onto an opposing population.
Enemy Image? A Comparative Analysis of Russian Security Documents
| Magdalena Góra Bartoszewicz and Others | European Security / Taylor & Francis | 2024
Compares official Russian security documents to examine how states define hostile actors and threats. The article shows how strategic language combines real security concerns with ideological narratives that distinguish a virtuous national self from threatening external and internal others.
The Constitutionalised Image of Enemy in the Hungarian Fundamental Law
| Zoltán Szente | Cambridge University Press | 2024
Examines how enemy images can become embedded in constitutional language rather than remaining limited to speeches or campaign propaganda. The chapter argues that public law may promote political cohesion by defining threatening outsiders through emotionally powerful historical and ideological narratives.
War, Terrorism, and National Security
The First World War
Examines how the First World War accelerated nationalist mobilization and the production of enemy images. Governments, intellectuals, churches, schools, and newspapers assigned collective guilt to opposing nations and depicted wartime sacrifice as a defense of civilization.
Enemy-Based Foreign Policy as a Framework for Understanding International Relations
| César Niño | Canadian Foreign Policy Journal / Taylor & Francis | 2023
Proposes enemy construction as a framework for analyzing foreign policy. States can organize national identity, security priorities, military spending, and diplomatic alliances around an adversary whose danger becomes central to the government’s interpretation of international affairs.
The Impact of Counterterrorism on Public Insecurity in Nigeria
| Adewale Oyawale | Security Dialogue / Oxford University Press | 2022
Explores the insecurity produced by both Boko Haram and state counterterrorism responses in Nigeria. Boko Haram’s ideology expands the category of enemy to include Muslims whose conduct is characterized as un-Islamic, as well as Christians, government supporters, and participants in democratic life.
The Power of Words: The Dangerous Rhetoric of the “Terrorist”
| International Committee of the Red Cross | Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog | March 4, 2020
Examines the consequences of applying the label “terrorist” broadly to individuals, communities, and political movements. The word can collapse distinctions between combatants and civilians, deny adversaries full humanity, and obstruct neutral humanitarian assistance.
The Faces of Enmity in International Relations: An Introduction
| Mathias Delori and Others | European Review of International Studies / Taylor & Francis | 2019
Introduces scholarly approaches to enmity in international relations. The article treats enemies as political and cultural constructions whose identity depends upon historical memories, emotions, institutions, security practices, and narratives about the national self.
An Eye for an Eye: Public Support for War Against Evildoers
| Peter Liberman | International Organization / Cambridge University Press | 2006
Investigates whether depicting foreign adversaries as morally evil increases public support for war and punishment. The research shows how moral outrage and enemy stereotypes can shape judgments about military action independently of calculations about security or material interests.
Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral Model
Reassesses psychological theories of international conflict after the Cold War. The authors examine how leaders interpret rival states through established enemy images and how these images interact with strategic interests, uncertainty, fear, and changing international conditions.
Nationalism, Race, and Historical Memory
"This Battle Started Long Before Our Days": The Russo-Turkish War in Russian Popular Publications
| Kati Parppei | Nationalities Papers / Cambridge University Press | 2021
Examines popular Russian publications about the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Religious, national, and historical narratives depicted Turks through familiar enemy stereotypes while portraying Russia as the defender of Orthodox Christians and Slavic peoples.
Racist Hysteria to Pragmatic Rapprochement? The German Debate About Rhenish Occupation Children, 1920–30
| Julia Roos | Contemporary European History / Cambridge University Press | 2013
Analyzes German reactions to children born to German women and colonial soldiers during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland. Racist propaganda combined images of foreign military enemies with fears of racial contamination, sexual danger, and national humiliation.
Did Ethnic Cleansing Succeed?
| Gerard Toal and Carl Dahlman | Bosnia Remade / Oxford University Press | 2011
Studies the territorial and ideological consequences of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Essentialized images of Bosniak, Croat, and Serb enemies helped define supposedly homogeneous national communities while concealing local histories of coexistence and mixed identity.
"Will You Go to War? Or Will You Stop Being Japanese?" Nationalism and History in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Sensoron
| Rumi Sakamoto | The Asia-Pacific Journal | 2008
Studies a popular Japanese nationalist manga that connects national identity to contested memories of war. Its visual and historical narratives define patriotic belonging partly through opposition to foreign critics, pacifists, and interpretations of history deemed hostile to Japan.
Political Theory and the Logic of Enmity
Ideology
| Robin Celikates and Sally Haslanger | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | March 7, 2025
Reviews competing definitions of ideology as worldview, political doctrine, group identity, legitimating discourse, or distorted belief supporting unequal power. These approaches help explain how enemy categories can appear natural even when they serve particular political institutions or interests.
Carl Schmitt
| Lars Vinx | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | August 7, 2010
Explains Carl Schmitt’s controversial argument that the defining political distinction is between friend and enemy. For Schmitt, linguistic, ethnic, religious, economic, or cultural differences become political when they divide people into potentially hostile collectivities.
Martin Buber
| Sarah Scott | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | April 20, 2004
Discusses Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy and his opposition to the idea that politics must rest on a friend-enemy distinction. Buber’s emphasis on genuine encounter provides an alternative to ideologies that reduce individuals to representatives of hostile groups.
Hate Speech, Scapegoating, and Social Crisis
Study on Preventing and Combating Hate Speech in Times of Crisis
| Council of Europe | Council of Europe | 2023
Examines increases in hate speech during economic, political, public-health, and migration crises. It shows how slogans and simplified accusations turn refugees, migrants, religious minorities, and other vulnerable populations into scapegoats for complex social problems.
"Please, Don’t Tell Anyone!": Healthcare Stigma in the COVID-19 Pandemic
| International Committee of the Red Cross | Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog | November 12, 2020
Explains how military metaphors and fear during the pandemic encouraged an “enemy hunt” directed at infected people and healthcare workers. The article shows how crisis rhetoric can turn illness into a moral identity and suspected carriers into social threats.
Hate Speech and Real Harm
| United Nations | United Nations | No date
Connects hateful rhetoric to discrimination, violence, and atrocity crimes. Historical examples, including the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, demonstrate how rumors and dehumanizing descriptions can transform neighbors into ideological and ethnic enemies.
Contemporary Politics and Enemy Narratives
Comparing Far-Right Frames in Latin America and Europe
| Pascal Lupien and Others | Political Science Quarterly / Oxford University Press | June 2026
Compares how far-right leaders in Europe and Latin America define political and cultural enemies. European rhetoric emphasizes immigration and cultural replacement, while Latin American leaders more frequently target socialism, crime, progressive social policies, “gender ideology,” and allegedly corrupt political establishments.
Addressing Political Violence to Protect American Democracy
| Rashawn Ray and Others | Brookings Institution | August 21, 2025
Examines political violence in the United States and strategies for reducing it. Enemy narratives can turn ordinary disagreements into existential struggles, particularly when leaders portray opponents, government officials, journalists, or minority communities as illegitimate threats.
From Words to Violence: Lives Behind the Fields of Death
Documents how Rwandan extremists used newspapers and radio broadcasts to transform Tutsi civilians into an allegedly dangerous enemy population. The exhibition connects dehumanizing words, individual victims, organized propaganda, and the progression from social exclusion to genocide.
A Survivor’s Call to Counter Hate Speech Before It Is Too Late
Presents the testimony of a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. She recalls how radio broadcasts, neighborhood rumors, schoolyard insults, and repeated dehumanizing language conditioned people to perceive their neighbors as enemies.
The Politics of Enemies
| Michael Ignatieff | Journal of Democracy | 2025
Distinguishes ordinary democratic competition from a politics that seeks to destroy an opponent’s standing and legitimacy. Political rivals become enemies when they are portrayed as traitors, criminals, tyrants, or existential threats against whom compromise would be immoral.
How Artificial Intelligence and Disinformation Impact Elections
| Darrell M. West | Brookings Institution | October 10, 2024
Explains how artificial intelligence can generate convincing false images, audio, and video during elections. These technologies can intensify enemy construction by fabricating evidence that opponents are corrupt, violent, disloyal, or secretly controlled by hostile groups.
Where Conspiracy Theories Come From
| Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead | Journal of Democracy | July 13, 2024
Examines how political competition can escalate from criticism and negative campaigning into conspiracy accusations. Conspiracy narratives construct secret enemies who supposedly control institutions, manipulate events, and operate beyond the reach of normal democratic accountability.
When Democracy Is on the Ballot
| Milan W. Svolik | Journal of Democracy | 2023
Argues that democracy depends on recognizing political opponents as adversaries who may legitimately compete for power. When each side instead labels the other an enemy of democracy, persuasion, cooperation, restraint, and peaceful transfers of power become more difficult.
How to Prevent Political Violence
| Rachel Kleinfeld | Journal of Democracy | 2023
Identifies polarization, extremist parties, democratic disillusionment, and violent rhetoric as important causes of political violence. When opponents are presented as intolerable enemies, supporters may conclude that preventing them from gaining power is more important than observing democratic rules.
Reducing Extreme Polarization Is Key to Stabilizing Democracy
| Chris Meserole and Others | Brookings Institution | January 26, 2022
Explores institutional and social mechanisms that can reduce extreme polarization. Political leaders, legislators, and media organizations can either intensify hostility toward an opposing camp or encourage viewpoints that resist rigid ideological division.
The Rise of Political Violence in the United States
| Rachel Kleinfeld | Journal of Democracy | October 2021
Explains how partisan, racial, religious, geographic, and cultural identities have increasingly aligned in the United States. This alignment creates sharply defined in-groups and out-groups whose members may interpret political defeats as threats to their identity and social survival.
How Partisan Polarization Drives the Spread of Fake News
| Richard Fletcher, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Others | Brookings Institution | May 13, 2021
Shows that exposure to and circulation of false information depend heavily on partisan social networks. Ideologically homogeneous networks repeatedly confirm negative beliefs about outsiders, making fabricated claims about political enemies appear credible.
How Hateful Rhetoric Connects to Real-World Violence
| Fiona Hill and Others | Brookings Institution | April 9, 2021
Reviews evidence that incendiary rhetoric from influential leaders increases the likelihood of political violence. Such rhetoric supplies perpetrators with targets, justification, and a narrative portraying violence as defensive action against a dangerous enemy.
Fascism, Racial Ideology, and War
Racial Colonists in the Nazi East
| Christopher T. Goodwin | Central European History / Cambridge University Press | 2024
Examines disabled German veterans who participated in Nazi colonization projects in occupied eastern Europe. Nazi ideology constructed a world of racial, sexual, political, and biological binaries, although the regime sometimes adjusted these boundaries when doing so served expansionist goals.
Religion, Race, and the Nation in La Tradotta del Fronte Giulio, 1942–1943
| Nicholas G. Virtue | Modern Italy / Cambridge University Press | 2018
Analyzes an Italian military newspaper published during the occupation of Yugoslavia. Fascist nationalism, Catholic anticommunism, and anti-Slavic prejudice combined to depict communist partisans as enemies of religion, family, civilization, and Italian national identity.
Ideology’s Logic: The Evolution of Racial Thought in Germany
| Christian Geulen | Beyond the Racial State / Cambridge University Press | November 10, 2017
Traces German racial thought from the völkisch movement to National Socialism. Racial ideology transformed social differences into permanent biological conflicts and represented racial enemies as existential dangers that could not be converted, assimilated, or peacefully accommodated.
Comparative and Historical Perspectives on the Racial State
Compares different approaches to racial states and racial governance. The volume examines how the Nazi regime identified racial enemies and converted ideological classifications into bureaucratic programs of discrimination, displacement, sterilization, and murder.
When Economics, Strategy, and Racial Ideology Meet
| Rotem Kowner | Journal of Global History / Cambridge University Press | 2017
Examines cooperation among Axis powers in the wartime Indian Ocean. Strategic and economic collaboration intersected with racial ideology, including pressure for harsher policies against Jewish communities and the construction of Allied populations as racial and imperial enemies.
America, Race, and German Expansionism from the Great War to 1945
| Jens-Uwe Guettel | Cambridge University Press | February 5, 2013
Explores the connections among German expansionism, racial segregation, colonial ambitions, and perceptions of the United States. The chapter shows how competing empires borrowed racial practices and propaganda while constructing rival powers and subject populations as threats.
Colonialism and the Racialized Enemy
For King and Country: Nigeria and World War II
| Chima J. Korieh | Cambridge University Press | 2020
Analyzes British efforts to mobilize Nigerians during World War II. Colonial propaganda portrayed Germany as a common enemy and invited colonial subjects to identify with an Allied cause, even though those subjects remained excluded from equal citizenship within the empire.
Racial States in Comparative Perspective
Compares racial policies in European states and colonial empires. French, British, Dutch, and German authorities represented racial mixing and ambiguous identities as threats to colonial order, revealing how enemy categories can emerge from attempts to police social boundaries.
Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire
| Paul A. Kramer | The Asia-Pacific Journal | 2006
Examines the Philippine-American War as a process of racial formation. American military and political rhetoric depicted Filipinos as savage, childlike, treacherous, and incapable of self-government, helping justify conquest and extreme violence as a civilizing mission.
Nationalist Discourses and the Construction of Difference
| Marita Eastmond | Journal of Refugee Studies / Oxford University Press | 1998
Studies Bosnian Muslim refugees in Sweden and the institutional narratives shaping their identities. It demonstrates how nationalist thought links culture, territory, ancestry, and belonging while making displaced or culturally mixed populations appear anomalous or threatening.
Religion, Civilization, and National Belonging
Civilizationism and the Ideological Contestation of the Liberal International Order
Examines civilizationism as an ideology that divides international politics into large cultural communities. Civilizationist narratives promise stability and authenticity while identifying liberalism, secularism, Westernization, immigration, or rival civilizations as threats to collective identity.
Racial, Religious, and Civic Dimensions of Anti-Muslim Sentiment in America
Investigates how Muslims are culturally constructed as incompatible outsiders in the United States. Anti-Muslim attitudes draw simultaneously on racial stereotypes, religious differences, and claims that Muslims reject democratic or civic values.
War and Religion: An Overview
| Jeffrey Haynes | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | March 26, 2019
Reviews the complex relationship among religion, armed conflict, nationalism, military mobilization, and peacebuilding. Religious language can restrain violence, but it can also sanctify political struggles and transform opponents into cosmic enemies of faith or sacred order.
Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election
Finds that Christian nationalism independently predicted support for Donald Trump in 2016. The ideology invokes a mythological Christian national past and encourages supporters to interpret religious, demographic, and cultural changes as threats to America’s authentic identity.
Genocide, Propaganda, and the Manufacture of Ethnic Enemies
The Plan of Action for Media Stakeholders on Addressing Hate Speech
Offers guidance for journalists, media organizations, technology companies, regulators, and civil society. Drawing on genocidal propaganda, it explains how media can spread enemy stereotypes or help prevent incitement by providing context, challenging false claims, and preserving the individuality of targeted people.
What Is Genocide? What Are Risk Factors and Warning Signs?
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Explains that genocide frequently develops where leaders characterize racial, religious, national, or ethnic groups as inferior and dangerous. Dangerous speech, propaganda, earlier discrimination, armed conflict, and authoritarian institutions can condition audiences to accept violence against these groups.
Historical Background: The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda
Describes the political history preceding the genocide and the role of extremist propaganda. Radio broadcasts portrayed Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and United Nations personnel as enemies collaborating in a conspiracy against the Hutu population.
Opposing the Politics of Enemies
The Pushback Against Populism: Running on “Radical Love” in Turkey
| Gülçin Karabağ and Others | Journal of Democracy | 2020
Examines an opposition strategy designed to avoid the moral polarization encouraged by populist leaders. Instead of mirroring enemy rhetoric, the campaign used inclusion, optimism, restraint, and appeals to shared municipal concerns to reach voters across ideological divisions.
My Personal Journey Through Polarized America
| Darrell M. West | Brookings Institution | March 6, 2019
Reflects on political polarization across American communities. Social media and geographically separated networks allow ideological groups to reinforce hostile assumptions without meaningful contact with the people they regard as political or cultural enemies.
How to Fight Polarization
| Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue | Journal of Democracy | 2019
Surveys grassroots projects that bring divided communities into sustained contact. Dialogue, shared activities, local problem-solving, and media committed to social conciliation can weaken stereotypes that portray members of an opposing political camp as uniformly threatening.
Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Imagined Hidden Enemy
An Antisemitic Conspiracy: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | April 23, 2026
Examines the origins and global influence of a fabricated document alleging a secret Jewish conspiracy to control governments, finance, media, and social change. The forgery turned Jews into an imagined hidden enemy capable of being blamed for contradictory political and economic developments.
Antisemitism and Henry Ford’s “The International Jew”
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | March 6, 2026
Documents Henry Ford’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories through his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. Ford’s publications blamed Jews for capitalism, communism, labor unrest, cultural change, and international conflict, influencing antisemitic movements in the United States and Nazi Germany.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Key Dates
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | November 19, 2024
Traces the publication, exposure, translation, and continued circulation of the Protocols. Despite repeated proof that the text was fraudulent, political extremists have continued using it to construct Jews as a unified and secretly coordinated global enemy.
Right-Wing Extremism in the 2022 Primaries
| Anti-Defamation League | ADL | August 4, 2022
Reviews extremist candidates and political narratives appearing during the 2022 American primary elections. Election conspiracies, antisemitism, antigovernment ideology, and scapegoating helped normalize claims that hidden enemies were subverting the country from within.
The Horrific Mass Shooting in Buffalo: How to Talk with Young People
| Anti-Defamation League | ADL | May 15, 2022
Discusses the racist and antisemitic “great replacement” conspiracy theory associated with the Buffalo mass shooting. The ideology portrays immigration and demographic change as a coordinated attack organized by elites against white populations.
Confronting Antisemitism: Myths and Facts
| Anti-Defamation League | ADL | 2006
Explains how stereotypes, prejudice, defamation, discrimination, and scapegoating reinforce one another. Antisemitic myths reduce diverse Jewish communities to a single hostile force and assign collective responsibility for events over which they have no control.
Der Ewige Jude
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Examines the 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew. Through manipulated images, selective footage, racial pseudoscience, and degrading comparisons, the film depicted Jews as parasitic infiltrators threatening German society.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Photographs
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | No date
Presents editions and adaptations of the Protocols distributed across different countries and historical periods. The collection demonstrates how one fabricated enemy narrative can be translated and repackaged to serve changing political, religious, and nationalist movements.
Communism, Anticommunism, and the Enemy Within
Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist
| Robert Justin Goldstein | National Archives | January 26, 2023
Examines the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations, an influential element of the postwar American Red Scare. Organizations placed on the list had limited opportunities to challenge the designation, yet membership or association could be treated as evidence of disloyalty.
Why the FBI Saw Martin Luther King Jr. as a Communist Threat
| Erin Blakemore | History | June 24, 2021
Explains how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI viewed Martin Luther King Jr. through an anticommunist security framework. Civil-rights activism, criticism of government policy, labor organizing, and opposition to war could be reinterpreted as evidence of communist manipulation.
The Great Terror
| History Editors | History | March 15, 2018
Describes Stalin’s campaign to eliminate perceived political opponents during the late 1930s. Party members, military officers, government officials, intellectuals, workers, and ordinary citizens were accused of sabotage, espionage, treason, or membership in imaginary conspiracies.
Red Scare: Definition, Cold War, and Facts
| History Editors | History | June 1, 2010
Surveys the American Red Scares and the widespread fear that communists had infiltrated government, education, entertainment, labor unions, and civic organizations. The category of communist enemy expanded beyond actual party members to encompass reformers, dissenters, and people with suspect associations.
The Hollywood Ten
| History Editors | History | December 16, 2009
Describes the filmmakers who refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Anticommunist investigations treated political beliefs, friendships, organizational memberships, and refusal to testify as evidence that individuals belonged to a hostile ideological network.
Red Scare: Herblock and Fellow Cartoonists Confront the Issues
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Presents editorial cartoons criticizing Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, blacklisting, and intimidation. The exhibit illustrates how fears of an internal communist enemy were challenged by artists who saw anticommunist repression as a danger to democratic freedoms.
Internal Workings of the Soviet Union
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | No date
Uses documents from Soviet archives to examine the Bolshevik consolidation of power, political centralization, collectivization, purges, censorship, and repression. Revolutionary ideology repeatedly identified new class enemies, saboteurs, counterrevolutionaries, and traitors requiring removal.
Apartheid and the Racialized Political Enemy
The Conservative Government and British Sporting Contacts with Apartheid South Africa
| Toby C. Rider | Twentieth Century British History / Oxford University Press | 2025
Examines British political conflicts surrounding sporting ties with apartheid South Africa. Opponents of the 1970 South African cricket tour were portrayed by Enoch Powell and others as an “enemy within” threatening national authority and social order.
Moral Contamination, Emotion, and the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement
| David Manulak | Diplomatic History / Oxford University Press | 2024
Explores the emotions and moral language used by the international anti-apartheid movement. Reports of forced labor, racial violence, and exploitation encouraged activists to treat commercial and political cooperation with apartheid as participation in an immoral system.
Becoming More Informed About Informers
| International Journal of Transitional Justice | Oxford University Press | June 16, 2023
Reviews research on apartheid South Africa’s “Terrorist Album,” which contained thousands of photographs of suspected insurgents and collaborators. Security authorities treated those pictured as enemies and terrorists, often regardless of their actual conduct or organizational role.
Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Wing, 1961–1993
| Thula Simpson | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | December 22, 2021
Surveys the history of the African National Congress’s armed wing. Its early campaign concentrated on sabotage against government installations and symbols of apartheid, reflecting an effort to define the oppressive system rather than South African civilians as the primary enemy.
Communism in South Africa
| Eddy Maloka | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | 2021
Explains the history of South African communism and its alliance with the African National Congress. Apartheid authorities promoted themselves as defenders of civilization against communism, using anticommunist propaganda to justify bans, surveillance, detention, and repression.
Clear the Obstacles and Confront the Enemy
| Nelson Mandela | O’Malley Archives / Nelson Mandela Foundation | 1975
Challenges apartheid propaganda claiming that Black resistance resulted from communist agitation. Mandela argues that racial oppression itself, rather than manipulation by an external ideological enemy, produced resistance.
The End of Apartheid
| Office of the Historian | United States Department of State | No date
Summarizes the internal and international pressures that ended white minority rule. The weakening of Cold War enemy narratives made it increasingly difficult for apartheid leaders to present racial domination as a necessary barrier against communist expansion.
Umkhonto we Sizwe Operations Report
| African National Congress | O’Malley Archives / Nelson Mandela Foundation | No date
Describes the ANC’s attempt to teach its recruits that apartheid was the enemy rather than white people collectively. This distinction sought to prevent a struggle against an oppressive system from becoming a racial war against an entire population.
The Rise of the ANC
| South African History Online | South African History Online | No date
Examines the development of the African National Congress and the National Party’s use of “swart gevaar,” or “Black danger,” propaganda. Racial fear helped unite white voters across class divisions and justified intensified repression of Black political movements.
An Overview of the Conflict
Describes the militarization of apartheid South Africa and the government’s claim that white society faced a comprehensive revolutionary assault. Black liberation, communism, international criticism, and neighboring states were combined into a single image of hostile encirclement.
Imperial Warfare and Propaganda
Seven Acts of Psychological Warfare in History
| Mark Piesing | History | July 23, 2025
Surveys historical military operations designed to manipulate an enemy’s perceptions and emotions. Fear, deception, rumor, symbolic threats, and fabricated information can weaken opposing forces while strengthening ideological confidence within one’s own side.
Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
| National Archives | National Archives | June 6, 2019
Presents American World War II posters intended to mobilize labor, conserve resources, encourage military service, and maintain public morale. Many posters reduced Axis enemies to racialized caricatures or symbols of cruelty and treachery.
The Western News Media and the “War on Terror”
| Rodney Tiffen | Policy and Society / Oxford University Press | 2006
Examines the politically contested label “terrorist” and its treatment in Western news media. Governments frequently apply the label to delegitimize their enemies, as apartheid South Africa did when describing the African National Congress.
The Boer War and the Media, 1899–1902
| Kenneth O. Morgan | Twentieth Century British History / Oxford University Press | 2002
Examines the interaction among war reporting, imperial propaganda, censorship, popular enthusiasm, and criticism during the South African War. The conflict demonstrated the media’s growing ability to shape public images of soldiers, guerrillas, civilians, imperial heroes, and enemies.
Enemy Construction, Classification, and Political Repression
Power of Freedom: Hu Shih’s Political Writings
| Hu Shih, Chih-P’ing Chou, and Others | Library of Congress Collection | 2022
Collects political writings that contrast “Free China” with communist-controlled “Captive China.” The terminology illustrates how Cold War ideology mapped freedom and captivity onto rival governments while dividing Chinese identity into friendly and enemy political camps.
Afterlives of Chinese Communism
Examines the continuing influence of concepts, institutions, campaigns, and memories inherited from Chinese communism. Revolutionary categories such as class enemy, imperialist, counterrevolutionary, and enemy of the people shaped political belonging while legitimizing struggle against designated groups.
How to Combat Fake News and Disinformation
| Darrell M. West | Brookings Institution | December 18, 2017
Discusses the role of journalism, technology platforms, education, and public policy in countering disinformation. False enemy narratives flourish when citizens distrust institutions and receive information primarily from ideologically aligned networks.
The Cold War
Presents the Cold War as an ideological, cultural, military, and political conflict. American and Soviet narratives divided the world into rival camps, each claiming to defend humanity against an expansionist and potentially totalitarian enemy.
Covert Action in Chile, 1963–1973
| United States Intelligence Community Records | National Archives | Declassified document
Documents covert American political and propaganda activities in Chile. Anticommunist campaigns used newspapers, radio, political organizations, and international messaging to depict socialist electoral victories as threats to religion, family, property, and national survival.
