IMAGES OF THE ENEMY. PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ON SELECTED EXAMPLES, A HANDFUL OF REFLECTION

Abstract

The twentieth century was the century in which the extreme versions of nationalisms were awakened, the totalitarian political systems developed, and the century of their associated phenomenon in the mid-twentieth century was called genocide – the methodological destruction of entire human communities for various imaginary reasons. One after the other successive communities, on different continents, fell victim to their extermination attempts: Herero and Nama, Armenians, different nationalities of the USSR before 1956, Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Chinese and Cambodians, Tutsi and Bosnian Muslims. Propaganda was always accompanied by genocide, as a rule it was ahead of genocidal orders, it was a tool that created the ground for the slaughter, showing a distorted picture of future victims, reinforcing the criminal motivations of the perpetrators, indifferent attitudes of witnesses to the massacres. She later allowed her to "blur" the responsibility for crimes. Propaganda constantly improved its methods as the media was developed. It is worth describing its role in a few examples, in each of the reported cases of genocide, initiators, perpetrators, witnesses, were earlier or in the process, through propaganda, "hate speech", ideological utopia, properly formed in their views, the need to eliminateanother human being. Victims were deprived of human characteristics, creating an image of the absolute enemy, who was to be annihilated unscrupulously. Despite the historical context of the article, it is still a valid warning for contemporaries.