In April 1998 three artists—an Israeli Jew, an Israeli Arab, and a Palestinian—came together to paint a mural. The project was entitled The World Wall: A Vision of the Future without Fear. Inspired by a Mexican American muralist, Judith Baca, and financially supported by the Canada Fund for Dialogue and Development, the mural was supposed to stand as a symbol of coexistence in a disputed land. It was a project with noble intentions; however, it ended badly. Covering the story in an article for the New York Times, Ethan Bronner dubbed the artistic discord “the Devil incident.” The incident had occurred, he explained, when the Jewish artist had painted an angelic figure to represent his people. The Palestinian artist, furious at the depiction of the Israelis as the heroes of the story, announced to the audience at the unveiling of the artwork that his colleague’s creation “was a Devil, posing in angel’s dress…like the Israelis themselves.” The Palestinian further explained:
For Palestinians, what Israel is doing is bad…Yet we Palestinians are seen as the bad guys and they are the good guys, the angels. So this is what it reflects. This thing that looks like an angel is not an angel but evil.1
“The Devil incident” between the Israeli and Palestinian artists exemplifies an instance of demonization. This book investigates the phenomenon of demonization in international politics.2 Demonization is one particular narrative-based and psychological dimension of conflict. It frames a polarizing identity of “us” as good and “them” as evil. The book documents demonization in order to lay the foundations for an inquiry into why the phenomenon exists and what implications it has for the actors engaged in it. More specifically, it questions whether this very discursive framing can play a role in shaping attitudes and influencing behaviors between actors. The book asks: why does demonization appear in modern political discourse? Where does this narrative come from? What, if any, are its implications—as one of the factors among many—for conflict and cooperation? How significant is the demonization phenomenon in questions of war and peace? In light of these questions, the book has three main objectives: to introduce “demonization” as a phenomenon in international politics; to understand its origins and purpose; and to assess how it may come to inform political practice in two different contexts—“waging war” (the discursive legitimation of violence) and “waging peace” (the discursive legitimation of negotiating with the enemy). These questions will be explored in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
1 Demonization Defined
Demonization is a speech act used to create an image of the enemy as evil or in league with the Devil. “Demonization,” “demonized,” and “demonizing” are recognizable catchwords in contemporary politics. Politicians, journalists, and academics are familiar with the terms and employ them in their analyses of conflicts. Examples of recent journal articles that have included demonization in their titles are geographically diverse, with topics ranging from Cambodia under Pol Pot,3 China under Mao Zedong,4 Germany during the Third Reich,5 African Americans in the USA,6 Pan-Arabism in the Middle East,7 Chechens in relation to Russia,8 and US-China relations.9 There are also other examples of scholars who employ demonization in their analyses of conflicts.10 Interestingly, however, very few actually define the term. Like many other terms and phenomena, the definition and meaning of demonization are often taken for granted.
In its literal sense “demonization” denotes the personification of the Devil. Related to “dehumanization,” “demonization” occurs when an actor portrays his enemy as being a Devil or in league with the Devil.11 Once rooted in the religious belief of literal diabolic possession, the demonic charge today retains a figurative force: it is a metaphor, a figure of speech, and an externally imposed and symbolic characterization of one’s adversary. Demonization, then, can be understood as an “accusative” process, involving the demonizers—those who accuse—and the demonized—those being accused. “Demonizing” signifies the act of making someone or something into a Devil or demon or their evil collaborators.
The meaning behind the demonic charge is hidden in the word itself. The word-decryption G(o)od–(D)evil illustrates the theological ancestry of the categorical imperatives of morality. “Good” is by definition what God intends and “evil” is the work of the Devil. Thus in politics today the cosmic battle between God and the Devil disguises itself in the rhetoric of good and evil. The use of the term “evil” is therefore implicitly demonizing. Robert Ivie has written extensively on “the rhetoric of evil” and argues that by using the term “evil,” or other words associated with it, the “unconscious projection of this Devil figure is rhetorically triggered.”12
Demonizing involves imposing a moral judgment on one’s adversary and does not necessarily have to include literal characterizations of Devils and demons. This broader and less literal interpretation of demonization opens up the scope of what is considered to be demonic and takes it beyond religious symbolism. For instance, equating one’s adversary with Adolf Hitler also becomes a form of demonizing. The leader of the Third Reich has become the ultimate symbol of evil in the twentieth century and attributing Nazi/Hitlerian features to enemies therefore becomes another demonizing strategy. Other nonhuman beings have also been used to depict the adversary: apocalyptic multiheaded beasts, mythical fire-spewing dragons, and venomous snakes with fangs effectively evoke evil and although some might argue “animalizing” the enemy is distinct from demonizing him, evil is still a common denominator. With frightful appearances and willful intent to harm, these characterizations provoke similar emotional responses of fear and repulsion. Indeed intent—and even desire—to harm is an important criterion of diabolical evil. In Bargaining with the Devil, Robert Mnookin explained that the “Devil” signified “an enemy who has intentionally harmed you in the past or appears willing to harm you in the future.”13
Literature on enemy representations focuses traditionally on “dehumanization.”14 Conceptually dehumanization and demonization are often used interchangeably. As Robert Nevitt Sanford and Craig Comstock wrote: “Dehumanization of others…[involves] the process of defining someone as subhuman (lacking will or feeling)….Whether people are seen as Devils or monsters, germs or vermin, pigs or apes, as robots, or as abstract menaces, they are thus removed from the company of men and exposed to the defenses we employ against those threats.”15 Arguably the two are associated (demonization is itself a form of dehumanization), but there are distinct differences between the two: for instance, while demonizing (e)vilifies, dehumanizing representations are also used to humiliate the adversary (e.g. the enemy as donkey).
“Demonization” is included in Daniel Bar-Tal’s broader conceptual framework of “delegitimization” under the subcategory “dehumanization.”16 “Dehumanization”, as he describes it, is a categorization of an enemy that is portrayed as possessing inhuman traits. These features, he explains, can be either subhuman or suprahuman. It is within this latter subcategory that demonization falls. In this book’s definition of “demonization,” trait characterization of the enemy as “evil” and dehumanization of the enemy in the form of literal Devils or any other being that symbolizes “evil” are grouped together. The book does not make a distinction between them.
Despite the range of enemy representations, demonization appears distinct from other types of adversarial images in terms of intensity: it evokes an extreme evil akin to that of diabolic spirits and exists at the top of the pyramid of possible negative representations of the adversary. Demonization is the ripest testament of the good and evil dichotomy. Rodney Barker calls demonization “the nuclear powered version of enmity.”17 In Barker’s scale of “the narratives of contention,” this phenomenon expresses the highest state of enmity.
Demonization is an extreme form of negative stereotyping and a radical type of “othering.” According to Tom DeLuca and John Buell demonization is “a sustained and illicit effort…to thoroughly stigmatize individuals, types of peoples or groups.”18 To demonize, they say, “is to use language or other symbols in ways that meet two requirements. First, to strongly imply or directly suggest that others have very bad, immoral, or evil qualities, and often that they are capable of quite immoral deeds; or to directly suggest that they have done reprehensible deeds. Second, to do so without sufficient evidence, inquiry, justification or consideration of the consequences.”19 Ralph White defined “demonizing” more broadly as the act of “exaggerating the evil of the enemy.” White identified “demonizing the enemy” as the first of the three major components that lead to misperceptions in war. “Demonizing is practically universal,” he argues in his study of instances of war from the past century and concludes: “I discovered how many of the wars fought over the last 100 years have been significantly influenced by demonizing…one’s enemy.”20
2 Demonization in International Relations: A Constructivist Perspective
Notwithstanding Ralph White’s discovery, the role of demonization in world politics is rarely considered and while enemy images have been analyzed in other academic disciplines, they have received less scholarly attention in International Relations (IR).21 A reason is that mainstream realist IR theory considers ideational factors in international politics epiphenomenal—meaning that they are a by-product of deeper structural causes. It is the relative balance of power between states in an anarchical international system that gives rise to competition and conflict.22 Thus structural realities such as military prowess and economic might determine threat perceptions in the first place. Enemy discourses, images, and perceptions of the enemy, as such, are merely symptomatic of these structural realities. As Alexander Wendt, one of the fathers of constructivist IR theory, pointed out:
A feature of Neorealist structuralism is its materialism. The structure of the international system is defined as the distribution of material capabilities under anarchy. The kinds of ideational attributes or relationships that might constitute a social structure, like patterns of friendship or enmity…are specifically excluded from the definition.23
This book’s focus on demonization falls in line with the constructivist theory of IR, which contends that identities and perceptions matter in international politics. Constructivism can help remedy some of the shortcomings of realist IR theories with regard to their conceptual understanding of enmity.24 It is insightful in that it introduces the idea of enmity as a social construct. Enemies in international politics are real, but perceptions of them are constructed. Moreover, these constructions are necessarily social because there are always at least two actors involved as far as enmity is concerned. Indeed, a prerequisite for demonization ...