Groups invoke external enemies to justify the suppression of internal disunity

Evidence

Unity is therefore something that has been consciously and actively promoted by pied-noir associations from the outset. In 1977, the first edition of L’Algérianiste, the monthly magazine of the Cercle Algérianiste, opened with the declaration: ‘We want to maintain our identity, living as we want to, proud of our past and strong because of our fraternal links.’ A decade previously, another pied-noir publication, L’Echo d’Oran, placed a similar stress on the twin themes of ‘solidarity’ and ‘friendship’ in 1965 when it reminded readers of the proverb: ‘Defeated, divided, a country dies. / Defeated, united, a country is reborn.’ Believing that there were plenty of outside forces who would seek to sow disunity for their own gains, maintaining internal unity was advocated by associations as the best way to guarantee the survival of the Pieds-Noirs as a collective entity and the most effective means of ensuring that their demands were taken seriously by the French state. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 649

Categorization

• XREF: This is a strong example for the reader’s core question: belief that ‘outside forces’ seek to sow disunity is deployed precisely to police internal dissent — manufactured enemy rhetorically sustains solidarity. — connects to: Threatened group unity is maintained through a manufactured image of internal subversion — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1244; Framing drove membership in an ascribed conspiratorial enemy, not behaviour or intent. — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 65; Manufactured external enemies alternately take domestic and foreign forms (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• External threat makes groups punish their own deviants harder #corroborates (0.90) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 21
• Demagogues exploit anxious followers by externalizing hatred onto outgroups #exemplifies (0.80)
• Demagogues exploit authoritarian insecurity by externalizing blame onto outgroups #exemplifies (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2434
• Group isolation produces collective misperception and redirected violence against outsiders #qualifies (0.75)
• Group identity formation requires the existence of enemies to define the self against #expands (0.72) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 33