Groups reattached war-cultivated solidarity to new enemies after the old one vanished

Evidence

It is hard to explain the tug of wartime passions on the postwar mind except in terms at least partly psychological. The clamor for absolute loyalty, continuing relentlessly into peacetime, spoke, perhaps, an unwillingness to surrender the psychic gratifications the war had offered. Along with death and sacrifice the war had brought the warmth of a common purpose into millions of lives; it had touched them far more heroically than ever before with the moral idealism of the early twentieth century; it had given them catharsis for a host of aggressive impulses. These were experiences to cherish deeply, and. men who had discovered them in the heat of national conflict had little difficulty supposing that the war had not ended, that the adversary had merely assumed another guise and still presented a deadly challenge to loyalty and a summons to hatred. Although other wars, too, had left violent emotional aftermaths, the martial spirit of 1918 could adapt itself to changing issues and fasten itself on changing enemies with unusual flexibility: WAR AND REVOLUTION 223 the new creed of total loyalty outlawed so many kinds of dissent. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1324

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Higham’s psychological account of enemy-transfer — solidarity seeking new targets to preserve its gratifications, with unusual flexibility to fasten on changing guises — is precisely the mechanism the reader hunts for in threat-hardened solidarity.
• XREF: Confirms Girard-style scapegoat transfer and the reader’s thesis that the ‘enemy’ category regenerates rather than being fixed to any identity. — connects to: With the Tamil enemy removed, nationalists manufactured a Muslim threat to sustain group solidarity — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1369; A solidarity crusade collapses when its manufactured threat vanishes — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1579; Immigrant-directed solidarity persisted into peacetime because its psychic satisfactions outlived the war (+10 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the difference between wartime hatred and peacetime manufactured enemies — when does an external threat become a self-sustaining psychological dependency?

Broader Connections

• When one manufactured enemy faded, nationalism simply found a new target form #corroborates (0.95) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1398
• Immigrant-directed solidarity persisted into peacetime because its psychic satisfactions outlived the war #exemplifies (0.92)
• The state recovered lost social direction by constructing a unified internal enemy #exemplifies (0.90)
• Groups internalize external threat as an oath to preserve cohesion after danger recedes #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 509
• War solidarity inspired a proto-fascist national socialism bridging capital and labor #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 80
• Designated enemy groups expand over time beyond their original definition #expands (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3966
• Arab political solidarity dissolved once cold war patrons and external enemies receded. #complicates (0.72) — Youssef Cherif, Neo-pan-Arabism, 39