Denigrating outsiders can be used to defend one’s own worldview.

Evidence

These examples of the social and ideological uses of contempt can be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and others who are not specifically interested in the Middle Ages. They show how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one’s own intellectual construction of the world. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 78

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s Orientalism and to the broader literature on how groups construct identity against enemies — the core subject of this book and my whole ‘immodesty’ moral-panics article where dress panics defend group boundaries. — connects to: Ingroup defenses like prejudice function primarily to restore an orderly worldview. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 168