The enemy-in-our-midst threatens identity by blurring boundaries, not controlling territory

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bauman’s ‘enemy in our midst’ concept — the alien whose collectiveness is contested and who threatens to fuse with the native group.
• XREF: This mechanism of boundary-blurring and alleged double loyalty directly maps onto accusations leveled at Muslim minorities in Europe — a key Islamophobia-field concept. — connects to: Iron curtains serve the totalitarian dichotomy of friend and enemy; Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other; The friend-enemy distinction dissolves only through mutual recognition within shared space (+6 more)

Related

• Iron curtains serve the totalitarian dichotomy of friend and enemy (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #expands (0.90)
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #expands (0.85)
• Fear of an internal enemy is manufactured to secure consent for empire #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 491
• The friend-enemy distinction dissolves only through mutual recognition within shared space #responds-to (0.80)
• Co-presence can be unilateral, breaking presumed reciprocity between combatants #expands (0.75)