The invention of the enemy
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, May 31, 2024
I believe that many wondered why the West, and in particular the European countries, radically changing the politics they pursued in the last decades, suddenly decided to make Russia their mortal enemy. An answer is indeed certainly possibile. History shows that when, for some reason, the principles that ensure one’s identity fail, the invention of an enemy is the expedient that allows — even if in a precarious and ultimately ruinous manner — to deal with it. This is precisely what is happening under our eyes. It is evident that Europe abandoned everything it has believed in for centuries — or, at least, believed it believed: its God, freedom, equality, democracy, justice. If even priests no longer believe in religion — with which Europe identified itself — politics too has long since lost its ability to guide the lives of individuals and peoples. Economy and science, which have taken their place, are in no way capable of guaranteeing an identity that does not take the form of an algorithm. The invention of an enemy against which to fight with any means is, at this point, the only way to fill the growing anguish in the face of everything in which one no longer believes. And sure it is not a proof of imagination to have chosen as an enemy that one that for forty years, from the foundation of NATO (1949) to the fall of Berlin Wall (1989), enabled to globally wage the so-called cold war, which seemed, at least in Europe, definitively disappeared.
Against those who thus stolidly try to find back somethig to believe in, it must be remmbered that nihilism — the loss of all faith — is the most disquieting of all guests, which not only cannot be tamed with lies, but can only bring destruction to whoever welcomed it into his home.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, May 31, 2024
I believe that many wondered why the West, and in particular the European countries, radically changing the politics they pursued in the last decades, suddenly decided to make Russia their mortal enemy. An answer is indeed certainly possibile. History shows that when, for some reason, the principles that ensure one’s identity fail, the invention of an enemy is the expedient that allows — even if in a precarious and ultimately ruinous manner — to deal with it. This is precisely what is happening under our eyes. It is evident that Europe abandoned everything it has believed in for centuries — or, at least, believed it believed: its God, freedom, equality, democracy, justice. If even priests no longer believe in religion — with which Europe identified itself — politics too has long since lost its ability to guide the lives of individuals and peoples. Economy and science, which have taken their place, are in no way capable of guaranteeing an identity that does not take the form of an algorithm. The invention of an enemy against which to fight with any means is, at this point, the only way to fill the growing anguish in the face of everything in which one no longer believes. And sure it is not a proof of imagination to have chosen as an enemy that one that for forty years, from the foundation of NATO (1949) to the fall of Berlin Wall (1989), enabled to globally wage the so-called cold war, which seemed, at least in Europe, definitively disappeared.
Against those who thus stolidly try to find back somethig to believe in, it must be remmbered that nihilism — the loss of all faith — is the most disquieting of all guests, which not only cannot be tamed with lies, but can only bring destruction to whoever welcomed it into his home.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Edvard Munch, The Kiss, 1897. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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