Stop using the word "evil" to describe those who disagree with you

Whether it’s George Bush referring to Iraqi insurgents as “Evil Doers” or self-identified Progressives airing their grievances against the Harper government, the term “evil” is one that gets thrown around all too often. The term however, doesn’t really mean anything. All it is is a word used by those who prefer to see the world in black and white, rather than shades of gray. Ultimately, “evil” doesn’t exist. There can be injustice, and unjust acts, but evil itself is simply a product of an absolutist world that has no bearing in reality.

Looking back over the 20th century at some of the most horrific acts committed, acts that have simply been written up to the actions of “Evil People; acts that we believe that we could never commit given a reversal of roles, are shown to have more complex causes upon further inspection. Take, for example the Rwandan Genocide. While films such as “Hotel Rwanda” focus on roving kill squads, many of the deaths were the result of individuals with friends in the Tutsi population, who were threatened by Hutu extremists to commit the acts, least their own friends or family fall victim to the massacres. This concept seems to fall in line with Hannah Arendt’s concept of “The Banality of Evil”.

Politicians or activists who use the term evil do so for one of two related reasons: First, to frame a conflict into a case of “us vs. them”, or as George Bush would phrase it, you’re either with us or with the terrorists”, a process that prevents supporters from empathizing with their opponents and think about how their own actions could have played a role in precipitating the conflict. The second reason people use the term is more personal. They seek reassurances that their opponent has a specific quality, an “evilness” that makes them different, and that under similar situations; they could never commit the same acts.

The problem is, no issue is so simple that it can be boiled down to a black or white question, and none of the major conflicts of the past 100 years are the result of a single event. World War 1 didn’t start simply with an assassination in Sarajevo, and the current struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq go back much further than the events of September 11th. In the end, there is no such thing as an ultimate evil, and as long as the term is used, and complex questions are simplified to an either or choice (whether it’s by ardent progressives or conservatives), our ability to find solutions to complex problems will be inhibited.