Iron curtains serve the totalitarian dichotomy of friend and enemy

Evidence

The alien in this case threatens to penetrate the native group and fuse with it – if preventive measures are not set out and vigilantly observed. The alien, therefore, threatens the unity and the identity of the alien group, not so much by confounding its control over a territory or its freedom to act in the familiar way, but by blurring the boundary of the territory itself and effacing the difference between the familiar (right) and the alien (wrong) way of life. This is the ‘enemy in our midst’ case – one that triggers a vehement boundary-drawing bustle, which in its turn generates a thick fall-out of antagonism and hatred to those found or suspected guilty of double loyalty and sitting astride the barricade. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 188 (#expands, via linked claim)

As Clarke puts it, through the perpetuation and provision of meaning, ideology ‘creates a form of order, who we are, or perhaps more precisely who we are not, by the stigmatisation, marginalisation and intolerance associated with this’. Symbolic forms and the meaning made known through them create and sustain the relationships of power and interaction between the ingroup and outgroup: the self and the Other. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The enemy-in-our-midst threatens identity by blurring boundaries, not controlling territory — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 188; Ideology defines the self by stigmatising the Other — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833

Related

• The enemy-in-our-midst threatens identity by blurring boundaries, not controlling territory (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• The enemy-in-our-midst threatens identity by blurring boundaries, not controlling territory #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 188
• Ideology defines the self by stigmatising the Other #expands (0.78) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 833