POLITICAL VIOLENCE AS THE DESTRUCTION OF EVIL

By Richard A. Koenigsberg

Online Publication Date: 15-Mar-2006.

"Terrorism" emanates from an ideology that defines particular groups or classes of people as constituting "evil infidels." Violence proceeds on the basis of the fantasy that it is necessary to destroy the source of evil that is acting to destroy the "good object" (one’s God, e. g., Allah).

However, ideologies of terror are only one dimension of the "ideological condition" that is the source of acts of collective or group violence. At the core of political and religious ideologies is the propensity to identify another group as an "enemy" perpetrating evil upon one’s own group. Violence is undertaken as a rescue fantasy: eliminating or destroying the bad object in order to save the (goodness of the) good object.

Violence undertaken in the name of political ideologies is based upon identification of another group or class of people as "evil." Ideologies possess a fundamental structure: a particular group or class of people is imagined to be acting to destroy (the goodness of) one’s own group. If one is to rescue the group (one’s nation or religion), it is necessary to locate and destroy those human beings who embody evil— wherever they may be found.

Hitler believed that "Jews" were the source of the world’s evil. Lenin believed that "capitalists" were destroying the world. Americans in the Fifties believed that Communists were taking over the world. An identical dynamic governs today's political struggles. Acts of war and terror are generated as a response to the perception of an "evil other." The nation or religious group believes that the continued existence on the face of the planet of a particular class of people cannot be tolerated. Anxiety generated by this class of people generates rage, leading to the desire to "kill off" that class of people perceived to be the source of the destruction of the world’s goodness.

Each group that identifies another group as the source of evil "knows" that the other group or class of people really is evil. A paranoid structure of thought governs the construction of social reality. The group believes that it possesses secret or "insider information" that others do not. National and religious groups coalesce around the shared fantasy of who the evil other is. Political behaviors such as terrorism and acts of war build upon—grow out of—this structure of thought.

It is necessary be somewhat apart from ideology in order to analyze ideology: to practice "free floating attention" with regard to one’s own beliefs and those of others. Each of us has our own feelings about who the evil class of people is. This tendency to identify evil and to locate its source at a place outside the self is human-all-too-human. I am not suggesting that we do not honor our feeling or belief that there is evil in the world.

However, rather than responding to this feeling—that generates a painful "war against evil" within ourselves and possibly against a group in the "external" world— I suggest we observe this feeling. What is the psychological source of the belief that there are evil others in the world acting to destroy goodness; and that by destroying evil we can preserve goodness? I’m suggesting that this belief emanates from within. Social or political reality builds upon a shared fantasy. The shared fantasy structuring political ideologies is belief that one is required to rescue a beloved, sacred object.

The other side of the coin of the "evil other" is the beloved or sacred or sublime or omnipotent object. It is the existence of this object that allows collective acts of violence to occur. The psychic and cultural presence of this object transforms killing from a form of criminality to a "necessary" activity performed in a spirit of self-righteousness. This is the "triadic" structure (Ruth Stein) that is the source of societal violence. In order for collective violence to be generated, one needs: (1) A subject (2) who identifies with a sacred or beloved object and believes that (3) there are evil others in the world that need to be destroyed if the sacred or beloved object is going to continue to exist.

Everyone speaks of "violence" and "aggression" when studying societal and group violence (such as terrorism). What often is left out is the "beloved object" to which members of society are attached; the omnipotent object in the name of which killing and dying become "good." Societal violence occurs because of belief in the "goodness" of killing and dying. Collective violence is undertaken in the name of preserving the goodness imagined to be contained within the sacred object. Mass destruction and attachment to a beloved object are two sides of the same coin. They go together like a horse and a carriage. They cannot be separated.

"Our group" or nation designates another group or nation as an enemy. We understand that the preservation of our sacred ideal requires that these people be killed. How easy it is to overlook the fact that the other group operates on the basis of an identical logic: that an enemy is threatening to destroy the sacred ideal; that violence is required in order to rescue the beloved object.

It seems to each group that they are responding to the threat of the other group. Perhaps what actually occurs is that the perception of threat grows out of an underlying logic or myth governing relationships between nations; the fantasy that an evil other is threatening a sacred object. Each nation perpetuates itself based on this fantasy. This shared fantasy constructs the reality that governs international politics.

The enemy or evil other is "hated" because it is imagined to be acting to destroy the beloved object with which the self has become identified. The object that needs to be eliminated is projectively identified with split off destructiveness directed toward the sacred object. The destructiveness that has been split off is the believer’s own hostility toward the object with which he or she identifies; the wish to separate from the object with which one is fused.

What needs to be destroyed in order to maintain the "life" of the object is the perception of the "badness" of the object. The object is perceived as bad to the extent that it is experienced as oppressive or hegemonic. The badness of the object is one’s own experience of the object as oppressive. In order to maintain one’s tie to the object, it is necessary to "split off" perception of the object’s badness. One then struggles to "kill off" one’s perception of the badness of the object; that is, to kill off a class of people into which the perception of the object’s badness has been projected.

The group rises up in the name of defending the ideal that constitutes the basis for its identity—the symbolic object with which group members are identified. The group is held together—one may even say comes into being—based on its capacity to identify an "evil other" that needs to be destroyed so that the good object might be preserved. The idea that someone is trying to destroy goodness gives rise to the idea of the sacred object; the object’s existence is based on belief in its capacity to deflect or conquer evil.

One identifies an evil other in order to maintain the fantasy that the group exists. The fantasy of the group’s existence is dependent upon the idea that there is an "evil other" against which the group has to defend itself. The fear is that if there were no evil other, the group would disintegrate or fall apart. Acts of war and terror and genocide are initiated as part of the process of creating the idea of an evil other; in order to prevent the disintegration of one’s God or nation.