Words were originally magic – evil and devil in political discourse

“Words were originally magic” said Freud in his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Words like “evil” and “devil” are becoming commonplace in political rhetoric around the middle east. Biden called the Hamas attack “evil unleashed”. Hezbollah and Hamas routinely refer to Israelis as devils and News24 headlines that Israel has said ZA is assisting the devil by bringing a charge of genocide to the ICC (the actual wording used was “advocate for the devil”).

The magic of these words allows us to disown our own evil (It’s not us doing these things, it’s the devil) and assists in the dehumanising of our enemies because we are not killing people, we are killing the devil.

Another magic trick these words do is imply their opposite. If my enemy is the evil I feel is around me, then I must be the good. Psychologists call this “splitting” – the unconscious act of situating the entirety of the bad in one place and the entirety of the good in another. You are the devil, ergo I am an angel, and an avenging one to boot.

Intelligent religious people who really believe in the devil may point out that he is rubbing his hands with glee while we humans massacre each other.

Here’s Shakespeare on the topic –
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

In my practice I see some people who do heinous things to each other in more local contexts like families. I am often tempted to view evil as the unintended by-product of an inevitable escalation driven by people who find it difficult, as Harari puts it, ” to acknowledge that we can be both victim and perpetrator simultaneously.”

It might be grandiose and little pompous to call myself a social scientist, but I’ll stand on that pulpit for a moment and issue a warning that echoes Nietzsche, Freud and I’m sure a host of others –

Be careful what hell you create when fighting the good fight.