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Delete the word 'enemy'!

Delete the word 'enemy'!

Friend or foe?

Earlier this week, a St Leonards resident told HOT journalist, Zelly Restorick,  about a TV documentary on the subject of Romanians coming over to London to pick the pockets of unsuspecting visitors to the Olympics. “The TV had told them and they were telling me”.

Will the only people with their eyes focussed on our pockets be of a Romanian variety? I doubt it. I imagine there are plenty of people whose sole Olympic goal is to take advantage of the situation for personal gain and profit. However, the message the programme seemed to have given was ‘beware all Romanians… they’re out to get your wallet!’. Or such was the impression I was given.

Would it not be better simply to warn people of pickpockets? Of any variety? Rather than target a specific group?

How powerful the media can be. One must never underestimate its ability to engender and propagate propaganda, paranoia, suspicion, mistrust and fear.

Another person told me this week of their fear of anyone of a Middle Eastern appearance. How sad. A whole spectrum of people dismissed in one fell swoop, not due to any personal incident, but a fear generated by some members of the media industry.

Planting a seed of suspicion to create an enemy. An ‘us’ and a ‘them’ mentality. Yet are we not all human beings, most of us just trying to stay alive and keep our heads above the metaphorical water of life?

Remember Shakespeare’s Iago, planting the seed of suspicion into Othello’s mind, leading to the death of his entirely innocent wife?

Remember Orwell’s ‘1984’, where the enemy regularly changed? The cries of hatred altering from one day to the next. Always the need for an enemy and for someone to tell them who their latest enemy is.

“Here’s who we fear today and their face looks like this.”

In others’ eyes around the world, you – or your race or group – are the face of the enemy. Imagine… people out there on the planet, being filled with hatred of humans of your particular variety. They don’t know you personally, but someone has told them that you are the type of person towards whom they should direct their distrust, hatred and suspicion, based solely on your racial group.

To people in other countries, Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama are despots. After all, one person’s terrorist, is another’s hero. It all depends on who’s doing the judging and labelling.

I attended a course recently on becoming an events steward and the tutor spoke about ‘these dangerous times we live in’. This is a theory I personally choose not to believe.

The Collins English dictionary defines the word ‘enemy’ as follows: ‘a person hostile or opposed to a policy, cause, person or group, especially one who actively tries to do damage’.

Maybe we would all take a giant healing step for humankind, if we all gave up on the concept or idea of an ‘enemy’? If we didn’t allow anyone, whether individual, group, authority figure or media organisation, to plant seeds of mistrust in our minds?

If we choose not to see anyone as an enemy, especially based on someone else’s words and opinions, maybe the dynamics of the world we live in would change?

Another person mentioned to me a recent radio programme, where presenters discussed the meaning of the word ‘terrorist’ and how it specifically dehumanises the person or people being labelled.

Friend or foe? Or just another human being with all the same needs as you and I, with all the same emotions within them and the same desire to stay alive and live a happy existence?

We’re all citizens of the planet and we all have a choice as to how we see one another. We’re lucky enough to live in a multi-cultural hometown. Let’s celebrate our connections rather than our differences.

 

 

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Posted 21:54 Wednesday, Aug 1, 2012 In: The HOT Planet

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