Enemy Images

When there is a war there are enemies. When there are enemies there are enemy images. An enemy image is “a negative perception, usually of a person or group of people, used either consciously or unconsciously to justify or promote discrimination, punishment, and/or violence”, as for instance yourdictionary defines the idea. Implicitly the idea involves that there are good guys and bad guys (and nothing in between). There are we (the good guys) and the others (the bad guys). Or, as sociologists and psychologists say, there is an ingroup (“we”) and an outgroup (“they”, the enemy). Moreover, “the enemy may be seen as stupid, selfish, deceitful, aggressive, hostile, or even evil. This perception remains, even if members of the out-group do nothing more selfish, deceitful, aggressive, or evil than do members of one's own group. However, when they are engaged in a serious conflict, people will normally project their own negative traits onto the other side, ignoring their own shortcomings or misdeeds, while emphasizing the same in the other.” (source) In short, the enemy is stereotyped as evil, or even as the devil. Often enemy images are developed by political leaders and by government-controlled media to prepare the people for a new war and to gain support for this war.
My next observations concern only the western view on the current Ukrainian-Russian War, so the EU and USA. As in all wars, also now enemy images are important. However, the present enemy image of Russia is atypical in some way. Usually, war leads to the development of opposite stereotypes in the heads of the people on both sides (we, the good guys vs. they, the bad guys). This stereotyping is promoted by the political leaders and the media they control, as said, and it is part of the war propaganda. However, in the western countries today political leaders and media just try to prevent such stereotyping. It’s not “the others” as a block who are seen as bad; it’s not Russia as a whole, so the Russian people, who are the culprits of this war; but it is their leaders who are, so those who wage this war, and especially the Russian president Putin and his circle. The Russian people are presented as their victims. So, on TV we see images of anti-war demonstrations in Russia and even images of a state security council whose members are intimidated by Putin.
Nevertheless, enemy images are not absent in this conflict. They are not made by government and media, which, as said, try to prevent that a traditional enemy image of Russia is created. As the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: Not the Russian people are our enemies, but Putin is. Even Vitali Klitschko, the major of Kyiv, said: I have nothing against Russia. My mother is Russian. We see this distinction between Russian leaders and people also in the sanctions imposed by the western countries on Russia: They are meant to hit the political leadership, so Putin and his circle as well as the country as a whole but not the individual citizens (but, as it happens, in reality it is hardly possible to put this distinction into practice). The western sanctions try to avoid demonizing Russia and the Russian people as a whole. However, in this war, the enemy image is not created “at the top” but “at the bottom”, by individual citizens. For instance, in the Netherlands customers avoid “Russian” shops and restaurants, although in most cases the products and food sold there are from Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, plus Russia. “Russian” is merely a label. Moreover, many of these shops and restaurants are owned by Armenians, Ukrainians, etc., and not by Russians. Another case is that the Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam has been plastered by opponents of the war, although the religious leaders of this church have distanced themselves from the war and want to break with the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Moscow. I have penfriends in Russia (and also in Ukraine) and some complain that penfriends have broken with them merely because they are Russian. To my knowledge, all my Russian penfriends are against this war and some have even expressed it openly on the Internet. Nevertheless, as some told me, they receive threats from foreigners and are cursed by them. Isn’t it stupid to blame individual citizens for what political leaders do, even without asking what the individual opinions of these citizens are? Isn’t it a clear case of making an enemy image? But also some Russian speaking Ukrainians begin to hate their mother tongue and switch to using the Ukrainian language instead (although Russian is spoken in many countries; not only in Russia and Ukraine).
Enemy images make the world neatly arranged and surveyable. They are practical to guide our actions and they make decisions simple. But do enemy images help us? They make the world simple, indeed, but they do it in the wrong way. In the end, the world is complicated and cannot be compartmentalized, and false views will lead to false decisions. Moreover, enemy images often hit the wrong people; in the case of the Ukrainian-Russian War, for instance, those who are against Putin and the war. Then, they make it more difficult that power and leadership in Russia are transferred to the right people (from Putin to Navalny, for example) and they make overtures to the enemy in a conflict more difficult. Enemy images lead only to inflexible stereotypes on both sides. We must just strengthen the ties with the right people who can undermine dictatorship and support democracy, for, as I concluded my last blog, democracy enhances the prospects for peace.