PoliticalMANIPULATIVE

Enemy Image Construction

What it is

Building a stable, simplified picture of an opposing nation, party, or group as uniformly hostile, deceitful, and monolithic, so that every act it takes reads as confirmation and every act of one's own side reads as defensive.

How it works

Bronfenbrenner, after visiting the Soviet Union in 1960, described the "mirror image": Americans and Soviets each saw the other as the aggressor, its government as unrepresentative of its people, its people as deluded by propaganda, and its policies as untrustworthy — the same beliefs, pointed in opposite directions. Silverstein (1989) reviewed the psychology: an enemy image is a schema, and once formed it drives attribution. The enemy's conciliatory moves are tricks and its hostile moves are its nature, while identical moves by one's own side are explained by circumstance. Keen (1986) catalogued the visual vocabulary that recurs across cultures and centuries — the enemy as barbarian, criminal, rapist, beast, insect, death, and faceless mass. The technique serves political ends because a fixed enemy justifies budgets, unifies coalitions, and makes compromise look like betrayal. It differs from ordinary threat assessment in three ways: it treats the enemy as monolithic (no factions, no internal debate), as motivated only by malice, and as unchangeable. The tell is that no evidence could improve the enemy's image, because the schema reinterprets evidence instead of being tested by it.

Real-world examples

  • •Bronfenbrenner (1961) reported that ordinary Soviet citizens he met in 1960 described the United States in almost exactly the terms Americans used for the USSR: the aggressor, the deceiver, the government that does not represent its people.
  • •British First World War propaganda's "the Hun" and the Bryce Report of 1915, Iran's "Great Satan" (Khomeini, from 1979), and the 2002 State of the Union "axis of evil" grouping Iran, Iraq, and North Korea each compressed heterogeneous states into a single malign will.
  • •Domestic enemy images now run in both directions in the United States: Pew Research Center surveys in 2022 found majorities of both Republicans and Democrats describing members of the other party as more immoral and more dishonest than other Americans, sharply up from 2016.
  • •Serbian state television in 1991–1995 portrayed Croats collectively as Ustaše and Bosniaks as "Turks", reviving Second World War and Ottoman enemy images to frame neighbors as an ancient and unchanging threat, as documented in expert reports before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Ethical guidelines

  • ●Adversaries exist and threat assessment is a duty; what is illegitimate is the claim that an opponent is a single will, moved only by malice, and incapable of change.
  • ●Communicators should distinguish governments from populations and factions from monoliths even when — especially when — the audience finds the distinction unwelcome.
  • ●If you would not accept your opponent's mirror-image account of you, you have a reason to doubt your own account of them.

How to defend against it

  • ►Run Bronfenbrenner's mirror test: write down the things "they" supposedly believe about "us", then check whether your side's account of them has the same shape.
  • ►Ask what evidence would count against the enemy image; if a conciliatory act is read as a trick and a hostile act as proof, the schema is unfalsifiable and you are inside it.
  • ►Seek reporting that disaggregates — named factions, internal debates, dissent within the opposing group; Lees and Cikara (2020) found that correcting exaggerated beliefs about what the other side thinks of you reduces hostility.
  • ►Apply the attribution check: when the other side does something bad, is the explanation their nature, and when your side does the same, the circumstances? That asymmetry is the enemy image operating.

From the Defense Playbook

Steelman Before Refutingminutes

Restate the other side's position in its strongest form, to their satisfaction, before you answer it, so that you respond to the actual argument rather than to the caricature a persuader or your own side handed you.

Moral Reframingtakes practice

When you argue across a political or cultural divide, make your honest case in terms of the values the listener actually holds, not your own, because arguments grounded in the other side's moral vocabulary are heard as arguments while those grounded in yours are heard as noise.

Deep Canvassingtakes practice

A structured ten-to-twenty-minute conversation in which you ask someone's view without judgment, invite a story from their own life, share one of yours, and let them do the reasoning aloud; it is one of the few approaches shown in field experiments to shift attitudes durably.

Perspective-Getting, Not Perspective-Takingminutes

To understand what another person thinks or wants, ask them and listen, instead of imagining yourself in their shoes; imagining feels insightful but in controlled tests does not improve accuracy, while asking does.

Metaperception Correctionminutes

Check what you believe the other side thinks of your side against actual survey data, because partisans in many countries greatly overestimate how much their opponents dislike, dehumanize, and wish to obstruct them, and that exaggerated belief itself drives hostility.

Superordinate Goals and Structured Contacttakes practice

Reduce hostility between groups by having them work together, as equals, toward a goal that both want and neither can reach alone; mere exposure or exhortation does little, but cooperative contact under the right conditions reliably lowers prejudice.

Every playbook entry states how strong its evidence is and when not to use it. Browse the full playbook.

References

  1. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1961). The Mirror Image in Soviet-American Relations: A Social Psychologist's Report. Journal of Social Issues, 17(3), 45–56
    The mirror-image observation that each side held the same hostile beliefs about the other.
  2. Silverstein, B. (1989). Enemy Images: The Psychology of U.S. Attitudes and Cognitions Regarding the Soviet Union. American Psychologist, 44(6), 903–913
    Enemy images as schemas that drive biased attribution of the adversary's behavior.
  3. Keen, S. (1986). Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. Harper & Row
    The recurring visual archetypes of the enemy across cultures and wars.
  4. Lees, J., & Cikara, M. (2020). Inaccurate Group Meta-Perceptions Drive Negative Out-Group Attributions in Competitive Contexts. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 279–286
    Correcting exaggerated beliefs about the other side's hostility reduces negative attributions.
  5. Pew Research Center (2022). As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System. Pew Research Center, August 2022
    Majorities in both parties describing the other party's members as more immoral and dishonest than other Americans.
Last reviewed
Suggest a correction

Detect Enemy Image Construction in any text

Paste any message, email, or article into our free Manipulation Detector to see if Enemy Image Construction or other techniques are being used on you.

Try the Detector FreeCreate Free Account