CIVIL WAR

Valery Podoroga

Concept: Figure of the Inner Enemy as the basis for self-legitimization of the totalitarian state and the initial matrix structure of the Civil War

A matrix and a molecule of any civil war is a figure of the inner enemy. The inner enemy is the one who is the closest to you, who is most like you. The extraction of this figure is a painful and tragic operation that the people makes upon itself when faced with some imaginary or real threat. Two most powerful totalitarian regimes used this figure to the utmost. For the Nazi such an enemy was a Jew, for the Soviets it was “the enemy of the people”. For the Nazi a “Jew” was an embodiment of everything non-Arian, too emotional, too human –  that part of their own psychic they would want to get rid off. The same thing could be said of the “enemy of the people” – it is the Man in all his natural instincts untransformed by the new society. And since enemy is just a Wo/Man virtually anybody could fit the bill. For the Totalitarian state uses the figure of the inner enemy to sharpen and refine its own methods of violence and aggression against its population. For any other new characteristic can be declared as a sign of animosity. The outside enemy is much less concrete and controlled. The figure of the inner enemy is important for the unity of the nation issuing alibi for anything the State decides to do. It is through this figure as well that the inner civil war of the two totalitarian giants could and was later transmitted on the World arena.
Besides, this figure is important for the legitimization of the ruling power. Without winning the elections the totalitarian party can justify its right to power only through the necessity for constant struggle for power. Without that struggle it would have to accept the institutes of the civic society, difference of opinion and even the Opposition. Thus Totalitarianism can not do without a constant civil war which underlies its structure, without the secretion of the Enemy. The first who were doomed to perishwere  Stalin’s own “brothers-in-arms”