Page 115 [115]
The “sign” is therefore vital, especially if “skin color” cannot be
used as a basis.# The sign separates and holds together at the same
time. The common sign holds together — be it a tricolor, a piece
of clothing, a white cloth tied around an arm, a Nazi badge —
and at the same time distinguishes it. The sign that distinguishes
someone who is different, alien, or enemy, is the enforced sign
that those in the same group would not wear voluntarily. It dis¬
tinguishes as well as holds together. The sign is identity-forming.
The sign indicates that whoever wears a different mark than me is
the other, and who wears the same as me is the same. The radical
alien becomes the enemy.
The same marks itself if the other and the alien cannot be
recognized by external marks; but, if it can, it marks the other so
that it can then be recognized, separated, and destroyed. The same
protects itself from the alien who is now the enemy. It only takes a
sense of an enemy (cf. Two Minutes Hate) to create a community.
A sense of the enemy powerfully reinforces the sense of identity.
According to Plato, the tyrannos also begins by strengthening the
sense of identity (“Isn’t it also the same for the leader of a people
who, taking over a particularly obedient mob.”) (Rep. Book VIII.
565 e.), and he demands a personal guard, so that, ,,all those, then,
whose careers have progressed to this stage now hit upon the noto¬
rious tyrannical request—to ask the people for some bodyguards to
save the people’s defender for them.”), (Ibid. 566.b.) then continues
by defining the other, the alien, and, more precisely, the enemy.
From there on, the two are inseparable, which means the tyrannos
has no choice, only the war.
49 Legend has it that the Danish king himself put on the yellow star that Jews
were forced to wear during the Second World War. The next day the whole
population of Denmark wore a Star of David armband; a day later the Ger¬
mans revoked the order. Some say it is just a legend. From this point of view,
whether it is or not is completely irrelevant, because here, too, the external
“sign” (the yellow star) is key. Vilhjalmur Örn Vilhjälmsson in his book The
King and the Star, Örn Vilhjälmsson calls the story amyth invented by the
Danes. (Jensen, Jensen 2003. p.102.)