Binding a people against one monolithic other is the cheapest shared story: it gives spectators pride of ownership with no part to play, and because it gets its coherence from exclusion it turns inward on its own minorities once the outside enemy recedes. Ansary's ch. 14: "The more binary the two sides, the stronger the identity shared among Europeans"; "They didn't have to do any actual crusading to feel pride of ownership in the heroic quest"; "Only a minority actually went east to fight." Then "An identity shaped by the otherness of the other gains coherence by eliminating all traces of the other from itself": "the emerging constellation needed witch-hunting to help construct itself," and Spain "required a permanent other against which to rally," so "The Jews could not be allowed to escape their otherness simply by converting." Clay's step: this is the serious objection to P5. An enemy story recruits faster than an open one, and the spectator ownership it offers is exactly the failure P5 exists to avoid; a story held open has to offer a part worth more than that.

Evidence 10 passages

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  The Jews could not be allowed to escape their otherness simply by converting.

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  Spain needed to function as the spearhead of the Catholic cause, which required a permanent other against which to rally.

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  the emerging constellation needed witch-hunting to help construct itself.

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  An identity shaped by the otherness of the other gains coherence by eliminating all traces of the other from itself.

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  Only a minority actually went east to fight, but everyone knew there was an east to go to in a war to fight.

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  They didn't have to do any actual crusading to feel pride of ownership in the heroic quest.

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  The more binary the two sides, the stronger the identity shared among Europeans.

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  fighting for their lives against what might as well have been human-shaped aliens speaking gibberish.

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  a sense of shared history and communal destiny took hold, even as separation from the other hardened.

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  The African slave traders did not see themselves as betraying their fellow Africans in some monolithic war between whites and blacks, because Africa was a continent, not a culture.

Where the agents stand

No agent has recorded a position on this claim.