Only Moderately Evil

Valkyrie's arrival in theaters is only the latest entry in the "Good Nazi" genre, a liberal cinematic preoccupation that is symptomatic of liberalism's inability to come to terms with evil.

On the rare occasions that a film or TV show will depict Muslim Terrorists, there will almost invariably be a "good terrorist" who rejects the way of the "bad terrorists" and turns on them. The "Good Nazi" myth lives on.

Swap Communist for Nazi for Muslim, and you get the same results. When popular culture deals with evil, its creators time and time again think that the most important message to convey, is that evil people are basically good.

There are different sources for this mindset.

First and most basic there is naivete. Many forms of Denial are rooted in a Denial of Evil. If you can't believe that there is really such a thing as evil, the world seems like a much more hopeful place. And all that is required is understanding.

The other side is divided into a large camp of "moderates" who want the same things we do, an SUV, a home in the suburbs and a good job with health benefits. And then there are the unreasonable "extremists" who incite them into all sorts of misbehavior. Naturally the way to deal with the problem is to reach out to the moderates, which will defuse the extremists.

This sort of wishful thinking which was once a bit of fringe liberalism, is now the dominant understanding among the ranks of politicians and diplomats. It has long since become the policy of the Bush Administration.

To gauge just how bad things are now, if WW2 had been fought by 21st century rules, when Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland, instead of locking him up for life, Winston Churchill would have held a joint press conference with him, praised him as a moderate and encouraged Germans to reject the extremism of Hitler, and rally behind Hess.

Second, the perception of evil is colored by a left wing worldview. This worldview views evil within a class context, so that evil is a function of power and wealth held by the capitalist power structure.

Little wonder that in Hollywood's universe, the primary villains are usually wealthy white men. This left wing mindset makes it impossible for its carriers to even envision evil except within a capitalist context, or in someone scarred by the capitalist society into sociopathic behavior, which is why the serial killer remains such a favorite fictional character.

In this narrative, Osama Bin Laden may be evil, but his evil is only a lesser evil that derives from the White Male Capitalist power structure, namely the United States. It is why liberals will typically switch from discussing Osama Bin Laden to attacking America, a move that seems schizophrenic to normal people.

Communists before and after WW2 would follow the same approach, describing Hitler as a product of the Western Capitalist powers in general.

Capitalism is to the left, what Satanism is to certain religious fanatics, and their secular theology places it at the center of all evils. Talking about evil means focusing on individual choices. But the whole structure of the left's ideologies are dedicated to denying individual moral choice, in favor of viewing individual behavior as a subset of class and the larger society.

Third, sympathy for a cause plays a not insignificant role in promoting the myth of a moderate evil.

Liberals may not actually sympathize with the aims of Islamic terrorism, but they empathize with what they believe to be their grievances are. Just as Bush views Muslims as desiring nothing more than the Two Chickens in Every Pot that every idealized American wants-- liberals believe that Islamic terrorists share their Che fantasies and grievances against Western capitalism. Both fallacies confuse the part with the whole, and in doing so put the cart before the horse. Most Muslims want prosperity, but on different terms than Americans. Islamic terrorists want to see the West burn, but aside from a hatred for American military power, their grievances and long term objectives are very different from those of liberals.

Liberals however continue to project their own perceptions on Muslims, struggling to portray them as moderates, because their own extremism causes them to empathize with even Islamic terrorism, seeing them as more akin to Black Panthers, than a conquering force bent to uproot every tenet and premise of a liberal society.

Fourth, when your own cause is evil and brings evil results, pretending that evil doesn't exist is a convenient form of denial.

The people who sang the praises of Communism, and were all too willing to conduct Anti-War rallies against any war with Nazi Germany, and who today sing the praises of Islamism, need a way to hide from their own atrocities and the millions of victims they played a part in murdering.

Western liberalism may not have dug any mass graves, but time and time again they held the shovels for those who did. What exactly is the difference between wearing a T-shirt with Himmler on it and wearing a T-shirt with Che on it?

There really isn't one, except in the minds of liberals, who had Hitler chosen to skew his form of National Socialism, closer to the Socialist than the National, would have been happy to sing his praises, as they did for Koba the Dread, who piled heaps of skulls to match the Butcher of Berlin.But evil doesn't go away. Were the liberals who flew to Iraq to serve as Human Shields for Saddam, sincere and misguided, or was it a case of evil coming to aid evil? In the case of the Dunham Torture Dems , who served as an Iraqi Human Shield, only to be charged with rape and torture back in the states... that question has an answer. But not only in that particular case.

Evil is evil, and it is those who practice evil that have the greatest motive for denying that evil even exists.