The World of Enemies

and it's not just politics

I bought Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng a while back, and yesterday I started to read it.

The book is about Cheng’s experience in Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution starting in 1966 during which Cheng spent 6-1/2 years in jail as “an enemy of the state.”

Hooo boy, did Mao have enemies. Here’s what was said at a struggle session that Cheng was forced to attend:

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is an opportunity… Only then can we truly differentiate between those who are in the ranks of the People and those who are on the side of the Enemy.

The enemies of socialism are cunning…

Cheng’s dead husband managed the Shell Oil office in Shanghai. After his death in 1957 she helped the Brit manager. So the day came when the local CCP guy said:

Now we want you to denounce British imperialism and confess everything you did for Shell as their faithful agent.

Then came the Red Guards to smash and loot and plunder. Shall we say that young people, all over the world, are often only too glad to smash things up for the ruling class. Hello AntiFa.

The neighbor across the street had worked for a Swiss firm. So workers put up a Big Character Poster on his house denouncing him as “a running dog of Swiss imperialism.” Then the Red Guards came to Cheng’s house and smashed everything, putting up a blackboard with a Mao quotation:

When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns stsill remain. We must no belittle these enemies.

See the point? It’s all about the enemy. If you review the rule of Mao Zedong in China it’s all about the enemy.

• Late 1940s, land reform: “large numbers of landlords and rich peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings.”

• 1951 Three-anti campaign against government, industry, party officials.

• 1951 Five-anti campaign, a broad campaign against capitalists.

• 1957 Anti-rightist campaign against intellectuals.

• 1959 Anti-rightist campaign against leaders of the Great Leap Forward.

• 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution “purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society.”

Do you see the point? It’s always a war against the enemy.

On Monday December 9, a New York jury declared Daniel Penny innocent of negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely. But Black Lives Matter was outraged:

"We need some Black vigilantes," New York BLM co-founder Hank Newsome said following the verdict. "People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us?"

Do you see the point? It’s not about some guy on the subway subduing a drug-addled crook. It’s not about trials and jury verdicts. It’s about choking the oppressors. George Floyd dies while under arrest? Put the cop in jail. Running for office as NY State Attorney General Letitia James? Vote for me and Get Trump. The Soros prosecutors are not about chasing criminals but fighting the unjust system.

Then we have the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, victim of a botched spinal surgery. It’s not incompetence; it’s not the government healthcare blob; it’s corporate enemy: greed and claim denial!

When I first encountered Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s notion in The Concept of the Political that

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy

I thought it was cool. But now I realize that almost everything in human interaction is colored by the experience of the enemy. Schmitt separates the political from other distinctions like the moral, the economic, the aesthetic. But I think that the other distinctions are just politics-lite. Do we not think of an evil person as practically an enemy? Do we not think of being in a price war with out business competitor? And as for the creators and purveyors of ugly art, the less said the better.

It’s notable that some religions, some of the time, encourage us to cool our jets and make our lives about something other than fighting the enemy. But witch hunts, inquisitions, and holy wars teach us that the urge to defeat the enemy is never far away.

And the woke religion that we teach our children from K through grad school teaches that there is no higher calling than that of the activist fighting for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressor.