There are many demonic and complex villains, both in history and in literature, but Alexander Solzhenitsyn provided a reason for why the villains of the 20th century could reach an unprecedented level of depravity and destruction: ideology.
As memorable, chilling, and realistic as were the villains of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Schiller, there was a sort of villain they did not dream of, Solzhenitsyn argued. The Russian dissident and novelist, who experienced the horrors of the Soviet genocide machine up close in the gulags, argued that it is ideology that allows an evildoer to justify his wickedness and even see it as praiseworthy.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, who was born on this day in 1918. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble—and his conscience devoured him. …The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.”
Solzhenitsyn expatiated on the theme:
Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors…
Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no [Gulag] Archipelago.
He concludes the passage by mentioning a story that the Russian Communist secret police kept the animals at the zoo alive around 1920 by feeding them living prisoners. He imagined the arguments used for justification — were those prisoners not enemies of the established ideology? Were they not going to die anyway? Was it not “expedient” to feed the animals and kill the prisoners at one and the same time?
Read Also: The Massacre in Sudan, Gaza Propaganda, and Western Gullibility
But are we really so different in America now from the mass murdering Nazis and the Soviets and the Communists of the 20th century, in terms of ideology? We too have our arguments for expediency, for compromising on grave moral evils like abortion and homosexuality in order to win elections, make money, or obtain other material benefits.
Democrats rejoice in having the blood of 63 million aborted babies, the permanently damaged bodies of numerous young people who fell for the transgender lie, and the deaths of thousands of victims of illegal migration and Islamic terrorism on their hands. Leftists laughed at the assassination of Charlie Kirk and fantasized about the assassination of Donald Trump and countless other Republicans. They find the suffering of their political opponents amusing. And yet they call themselves the compassionate, virtuous, tolerant ones.
Truly, there is no evildoer so perverse as the one driven by ideology. There are millions of thieves, robbers, killers, fraudsters, abusers, and other criminals in the world, but only someone driven by ideology could do as much damage as a Stalin, a Hitler, a Mao, a Pol Pot, a George Soros — or even a Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
