The Nomadic Alternative – Page 267

and sort out the objects of its experience into distinct categories, each with an attribute that elicits a specific emotional response - good or bad, edible or inedible, dangerous or harmless. Some animals engender fear, some repulsion, some compassion, some contempt, and others a carnivorous appetite in ourselves. But this mental exchange with our surroundings, intended to affirm our human identity, can be inverted to function in reverse. We can project onto other men attributes proper for species other than ourselves. As we anthropo-morphize animals, we bestialize men.

We need only recall our everyday descriptions of other men to realize that, though the choice of animal varies from language to language, the use of the animal metaphor is something language can hardly do without. For we all know baboons in high places, hen-pecked husbands, their bitchy wives and boorish children. She may be gentle as a lamb or tough as an old boiling-fowl. He may be a dogsbody, a lame-dog, a lone-wolf, a wandervogel or a teddy bear.

Our factories are hives of industry or warrens of inefficiency, our houses comfortable nests or dens of iniquity.

To fight a successful war, the fighter must genuinely mistake his opponent, before and at the moment of killing, for a destructive menace or a sub-human plague. Failing that, if he is the 'aggressor' himself, he must subsume the ferocity of a wild beast or machine of destruction. Only then can he stifle the innate inhibitions which prevent him killing other men.

To kill a man is a horrible crime, but if he can mentally degrade the man to the status of an animal, it becomes praiseworthy - not to say heroic - to kill and kill without remorse. The In-Group (Men) drags the Out-Group down to the level of an edible animal (pig), dangerous animal (wolf), disgusting animal (skunk), reptile (snake), parasite (flea) or a disease, virus or tumour. The political caricaturist highlights some 'animal' feature of his subject and lowers his humanity. The political commentator brands a hostile movement as a disease.