The idealized nemesis, constructed by the collective psychology of a nation, takes many forms: from the barbarous hordes storming the gate to the cunning opponent scheming across a global chessboard. Perhaps the most insidious of these nemeses is the enemy within. Characterized as a “fifth column,” viral infection, or spreading cancer, the enemy within generates a range of psychological reactions on the national scale, including an inward-focused aggression fixated on “rooting out” the enemy by emphasizing and mythologizing a standard of health linked to collective self-identity. The enemy, in turn, is a negative composite of oppositional, undesirable, and grotesque qualities that are uniquely configured to infiltrate, contaminate, and potentially transform the national body. Many did not doubt that what McCarthy declared about the Communist threat was true; that there were Reds everywhere, prepared to debilitate the country in advance of nuclear war. On both the individual and collective level, the Shadow—momentarily dissipated following WWII—resolved into another shape, painted with advancing degrees of boldness by McCarthy’s rhetoric. The fears shared among members of the American collective coalesced into a “Red menace,” a new bogeyman that “could be everywhere.” Coworkers, neighbors, associates, and friends—no one was exempt from suspicion. Antipathy towards tyranny runs deep in the fiber of the American psyche. Any severe curtailment of civil liberties (or imagined or perceived curtailment) neutralizes the heroic projection of American identity. When the enemy’s qualities begin to resemble those associated with the heroic Self, there is a moment of schism or rupturing, when the Self and Nemesis are both revealed as creations of the collective psyche. Their purpose is to enact symbolic dramas of validation. Behind McCarthy, and far more influential, was J. Edgar Hoover. As Director of the newly minted Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover directed considerable energy towards the identification and investigation of suspected communists. For Hoover, domestic communism was an enemy of apocalyptic proportions: It stands for the destruction of our American form of government; the destruction of American Democracy; the destruction of free enterprise; and it stands for the creation of a ‘Soviet of the United States’ and ultimate world revolution (1947). The author of two books on the subject—Masters of Deceit (1958) and A Study of Communism (1962)—as well as numerous pamphlets and articles, Hoover’s rhetoric is a striking example of how the enemy within is ideated. Identity matrices are composed in relation to what is believed foreign or antithetical to them. Identity is shaped around dynamic interfaces with forces that exist “outside” the assumed boundaries of the Self. Some of these interfaces may be aggressive, confrontational, or combative; others may be friendly or supportive; others neutral, convenient, necessary, or obligatory. In order for the enemy within to exist, competing narratives must be recognized and accorded a position relative to the interface between virus and antibody; the magnitude of the response is commensurate with the assumed threat. When there is a disjunction between threat and response, when the response far exceeds the presumed danger, the consensus necessary to perpetuate the purgative or curative strategy is lost. J. Edgar Hoover’s view of communism substantiated the viral metaphor: Victory will be assured once communists are identified and exposed because the public will take the first step of quarantining them so they can do no harm. Communism, in reality, is not a political party. It is a way of life–an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic; and like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting the nation (1947).
|
