Polemical doctrine about enemies is built from repetition, not from what enemies say.

Evidence

In this way is constituted a body of belief about what another group of people believes. A ‘real truth’ is identified; this is something that contrasts with what the enemy say they believe; they must not be allowed to speak for themselves. This doctrine about doctrine is widely repeated, and confirmed by repetition in slightly varying forms. The experts, perhaps because their proximity to the facts is a constant stimulus to their zeal, contribute most to the process, and they are themselves wholly convinced by it. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the psychology of prejudice and propaganda — how any hostile ‘real truth’ about an out-group gets manufactured and reinforced, echoing Said’s Orientalism and modern misinformation studies.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that experts closest to the facts are most zealously convinced by their own fabricated enemy-doctrine captures a genuinely counterintuitive mechanism worth sitting with.