History filled with fear of the other

I have often maintained that the evolutionary pathway that led to the advent of human beings — Homo sapiens — contains horrendous flaws, so that while we display our intellectual prowess in countless ways, we have lost crucial instincts and have a tendency to do all sorts of things that prevent us from living together peaceably.

That includes our fear of the other, which can be triggered with breathtaking rapidity and on the flimsiest, most ridiculous, most fallacious pretexts — often at great cost to the feared as well as those who fear, each of whom is sometimes both at the same time.

Think of the Armenian genocide, when more than a million people were murdered at the hands of Turks between 1915 and 1916. Think of the millions of Jews living in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s who were slaughtered simply because they were Jews. Think of the estimated 100,000 people killed and 2 million forced from their homes when fighting erupted in the 1990s between Serbs and Croats, who lived in harmony for 14 centuries until the collapse of communism in Yugoslavia.

Think of the estimated 800,000 people slain during the armed conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

In none of those instances of almost unimaginable barbarism were the killers or abusers threatened in any significant way by their victims. The otherness of the victims became the justification for killing them.

There seems to be little doubt that fear of the other is part of the DNA of nearly all sentient beings, and for a good reason in many cases. Virtually all prey animals — certainly the ones that live on land — spend much of their waking lives unceasingly vigilant against predators, whom they fear instinctively. That is one sort of fear of the other.

And after all, human beings are animals, too. We share a surprising number of traits with nonhuman species. So fear of the other is part of our biological inheritance, and that is one reason that it can so easily be provoked and, once unleashed, is so difficult to overcome.

The history of what became the United States has been tainted by white people’s fear of the other beginning with Christopher Columbus, who enslaved and massacred many indigenous people. The first white people to settle permanently in the New World treated the native inhabitants abysmally, and most of the Europeans who came later to escape religious persecution proceeded to persecute everyone who didn’t practice their particular brand of religion.

The multitudes of immigrants from the Old World who came to the United States in the mid- to late 19th and early 20th centuries faced widespread hostility, and each ethnic group that arrived usually faced discrimination from people who had come earlier. And then they, too, discriminated against those who came after them.

Of all the atrocious things Trump did as president, one of the worst was his stoking of fear of the other — Muslims, people of color, immigrants, refugees, migrants, and so-called cultural elites — and he succeeded in that endeavor, even among people who had never been injured even remotely by anyone in those groups.

The current vicious targeting of the LGBTQ community is another glaring example of how those in power seek to retain their power and gain more supporters by fostering the belief that those others are not only not like them, but are highly dangerous besides.

Recent research has revealed that what motivates those who fear immigrants is often not concerns about economic repercussions, but alarm that in the not-too-distant future, people of color will constitute the majority of the U.S. population. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and other demagogues stoke such fears by warning their followers — without any evidence — that as the composition of the population changes, they will become victims of ever-expanding anti-white bigotry.

The common definition of xenophobia — animosity toward or prejudice against people from other countries — is too narrow, because the targets of such hostility or prejudice include not only people who have come from elsewhere but people whose traditions, religion, physical appearance, or other characteristics set them apart, usually apart from those in a dominant group in that society who maintain that those others must be feared.

Such differences may be totally divorced from reality, such as Vladimir Putin’s attempt to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by asserting that Ukraine is in the grip of fascists who embody an existential threat to the people of Russia.

What can be done to root out the fear of the other that is so pervasive? There is no easy answer, and no single approach will be sufficient. The solution must involve educators, law-enforcement agencies, every type of mass communication, religious leaders, branches of government at all levels, and, ideally, the occupant of the White House.

Perhaps if all these entities work toward the goal of building a society where otherness is tolerated and even celebrated, the better angels of our nature will prevail.