The enemy is constituted by choice before perception, not perceived first

Evidence

This is why the enemy participates in a seeming tautology: the enemy is the enemy, or, as Adorno and Horkheimer put it in their own version of “Anti- Semite and Jew,” “the person chosen as enemy is already perceived as enemy” (Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, I54/GI68). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1057

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the core mechanism of enemy-constitution: chosen-before-perceived, a tautology that grounds the entire Jew/Arab-as-enemy genealogy.