Reddit reviews Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It

Here is the mobile version of your link

Excerpt from an opinion piece published in USA Today back in 2012:

> I realize, of course, that a dualistic world view is an effective way to rally supporters and get out the vote. As Bill Reidway, a politically astute member of my congregation, said to me, "It's easiest to get votes when you can convince people the stakes are high — that is, that the other side is evil, as opposed to just wrong."

> Since good and responsible people know that they should never compromise with evil, they end up entering the polling place with a battle mentality. But such an approach only makes sense when Satan is running for president — and despite what you might hear in the darkest recesses of the online world, Satan is not running in 2012.

Excerpt from a review published on Slate, of Alan Wolfe's book Political Evil: What It Is and How To Combat It:

> Nothing is gained, and much is lost, if, in seeking to mobilize opinion to stop a massacre, you call it genocide. You debase the coinage of outrage. Next time you cry wolf, no one will believe you.

> We are indiscriminate in our use of the language of evil, Wolfe argues, because we like what the language does to our own moral standing. It makes us self-righteous. To call others wicked is to give us a moral privilege we may not deserve and a moral permission we are likely to misuse. The language of good and evil only seems to create moral clarity: It actually creates moral entitlement.

> Moral clarity mobilizes: Who does not want to enlist on the side of good against absolute evil? But clarity also anaesthetizes. If I am on the side of good, they on the side of evil, what am I not permitted to do? The authors of President Bush's torture memos claimed the privilege of moral superiority after 9/11 and used it to justify torture.

Reducing politics into a righteous struggle of us vs them, good vs evil, is how people like Trump stir supporters into supporting vile policies that really do destroy lives. There's always some villain in the stories they whip up; the immigrants, the Muslims, the democrats, the media, Wall Street, the republicans, the one percent... they're all convincing from a certain point of view. Both sides have their bugbears, both sides have their "Jews that are destroying Germany."

Just be careful. Remember that you can be smart without calling the people you disagree with stupid, that you can be good without calling the people you disagree with evil, and that the most horrific atrocities are rarely the result of mustache-twirling villains who know right and wrong and choose to be bad, but from otherwise decent people engaging in reductionist thinking that allows them to forgive even the most horrific acts against their enemies.