When one manufactured enemy faded, nationalism simply found a new target form
Evidence
By then anti-radical nativism had indeed shrunk to minor significance. Nevertheless the Post was dead wrong in assuming that the United States had recovered from the distempers of 1915 to 1919. The specific fevers of war and revolution passed; but a hardy virus was still at work. As social conditions changed—different in 1919 than in 1918, and altered again in 1920—they modified the expression of nationalism but preserved its inner spirit. Nothing occurred in 1920 to destroy the ongoing force of 100 per cent Americanism. In spy-hunting and in Red-hunting it assumed only the first of its evolving forms. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1398
Categorization
- XREF: Directly answers the reader’s question: when the radical threat recedes, nativist solidarity does not decay but transfers to new targets — the enemy category pre-exists any particular enemy. This is the central thesis-relevant passage. — connects to: Religious war rhetoric loses force and gives way to nationalism — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1730; 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; Manufactured external enemies alternately take domestic and foreign forms (+7 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: Articulates that nationalist solidarity is a standing disposition whose content gets replaced as threats change — solidarity precedes and outlives its manufactured enemy, bearing on whether the ‘enemy’ is manufactured or the solidarity is primordial.
Broader Connections
- The nationalist ideology needs a manufactured enemy to mobilize
#corroborates(0.95) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 303 - Removing a named external threat intensifies rather than softens dominant-group nationalism.
#corroborates(0.92) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1391