Dehumanizing the enemy necessary for war

Friday, November 15, 1996

PATRIOTISM:

Propaganda makes us want to kill, to blindly follow orders

By Paul Biery

"And 12 years later, the gatling I’d touched /

That was strapped to the nose of a U.S. A-10/

Separated flesh from bone and honed its skills on ‘lesser
humans’"

– Propagandhi, "I was a Pre-teen McCarthyist"

A few weeks ago, my mom took out a bunch of boxes of old
photographs from the attic and made picture collages of all the
kids. So, the last time I was home, I was looking at the pictures
of myself as a child (I was really cute, by the way), and one of
them absolutely floored me. I must have been about 4 or 5 when the
picture was taken. In the photograph, I’m lying in my bed under the
Superman sheets, fast asleep. The perfect picture of childhood
innocence, except for one thing. As I’m sleeping, I’m embracing,
not a teddy bear, but a toy machine gun.

I was the pre-pubescent defender of democracy on my block. I had
a flat-top haircut, camouflage clothes, dog tags, and lots of toy
guns. My mission in life was to kill all the Commies and make the
world safe for the American way of life. So while my father flew
planes for the Navy, my brother and I constantly practiced how we
were going to fight the Communists if they ever came to America.
And the other kids in the neighborhood joined in, moaning in
protestation if it was their turn to be the Russians. We were ready
for anything.

When I was 8, my brother and I had the opportunity that every
God-fearing American male dreams of. We got to fly to Hawaii, where
we met up with the aircraft carrier my father was stationed on and
rode it all the way back to San Diego. We got to see fighter planes
take off and land. We got to eat real Navy food. We got to see what
was in store for us when we grew up and joined the military. I knew
then and there that my sole purpose in life was to fly into Moscow
and bomb those godless Russians into the stone age.

American pride was everywhere. My favorite movies were "Top Gun"
and "Red Dawn." I was either going to be a fighter pilot who smoked
Russian bandits while making witty jokes, or, if the great war
happened while I was still in school, I’d be the teenage guerrilla
warrior, eating canned soup in the hills and taking out the Soviet
infantry with the rifle I got at the sporting goods store.

I think back to that time and I wonder what was going on. I was
8. I had no grasp of the intricacies of world politics or even what
Communism meant. But I knew that it was wrong and had to be
destroyed whenever possible. I knew that the American way was the
right way and had to be defended at all costs from the "Evil
Empire."

Hell, with Reagan coining phrases like that, it’s no wonder that
I was ready to give my life if it meant that I took a dirty Commie
with me.

But really, how bad were the Communists? Were they hell-bent on
our destruction? I don’t think so. I think they were all just a
little more concerned with whether or not there was going to be
bread at the end of that two hour line. And what’s a child doing
marching around his back yard, playing war so that when the real
thing comes, he’s ready? I was an adolescent war-monger, but there
had to be a reason. I couldn’t have come up with this stuff on my
own.

In truth, I, like almost everyone I knew, was the product of a
propagandistic attempt to completely dehumanize anyone associated
with Communism so that we wouldn’t have any problem killing them.
The fact that my friends and I would chant, "the only good Commie
is a dead Commie" before "killing" one is proof of how effective
this was. They were animals, less than human, and they deserved
nothing less than execution. I was ready to die for an ideology I
knew nothing about. I was ready to kill anyone associated with an
ideology I knew nothing about. But that’s the American way.

But then Communism went away and we had no more enemies to hate.
It was a difficult time to be an American, we didn’t have anybody
to feel better than. We all define ourselves by our enemies (think
about how much Bruin school spirit increases during Beat ‘SC week)
and we didn’t have anybody left to hate. So, we had to find someone
to be our enemy, and quick. But don’t worry, American ingenuity had
no trouble coming up with a new menace; Mañuel Noriega, Saddam
Hussein.

It’s interesting to note that all of the full-scale open armed
conflicts that the United States has been in since the Cold War are
against leaders that we either put there in the first place, or at
least assisted in their rise to power. But we have someone new to
demonize, so it’s alright.

The small conflicts that America has been involved in recently
have been enough to give us something to root for for awhile, but
it’s getting harder and harder to find a consistent group to
demonize, a consistent enemy to rise up against. For a while, I
thought that maybe those days were gone forever and American
children would no longer be trained to fight, but we all know
better than that. As I watch Charlie Sheen in "The Arrival" travel
to Mexico to find the aliens that are infiltrating our society, I
know that it’s not over and probably never will be. So, the
question, as always, is: "Who are we dehumanizing now?"