Dark Side

Why are people fascinated with evil, but find good to be bland?




So the War Against Terror rumbles on into the New Year and, just as in WWI, promises of it being all over by Christmas have proved empty. Though the Taliban is a spent force and Al Quaida are broken and running only a hopeless optimist would say that it is all over. Yet it has been worth it; in the last few weeks a thoroughly corrupt regime has been exposed for what it was. The words and promises of its leaders are being shown to have been hollow and empty. And so a regime that preaches war to those who oppose it's will and by it's own admission cares not a bit for the basic rights of the men that fought against it is facing extremely tough times. No, I don't mean the Taliban but the US Government which is facing it's own problems involving the Enron Energy Scandal.

To briefly summarise; Enron's accountants lied about the profits the company could expect to make, thus the share prices went up. When the stench of cooked books began to give the game away Enron's share price plummeted (they have lost 99% of their share value since the revelations; that amounts to about $60 billion). The company executives have also been busy little beavers; salting away debts in offshore funds to conceal them from prying eyes and destroying thousands of documents that may or may not have been incriminating. This was all found out during an independent audit. An audit, which Enron, with the help and connivance of its friends in government, had done, it's utmost to avoid. Indeed, it had avoided it for a long time so who knows how long 20 or 30 people have been making money out of these lies (lies which have now cost Enron Employees their pensions; the pension fund invested heavily in now worthless Enron stock).

Of course, I'm overstating my case somewhat here. Although one of the biggest corporate bodies in the world is being shown to have been run in a corrupt and inept manner, and although many members of the US government have been party to that corruption (up to and including George W. Bush who received numerous campaign contributions from Enron when he was the Governor of Texas) it is doubtful that that any of the main political players will suffer much. And as there is a still a war going on, who is really going to notice that their Government is in the pocket of big business? By the time the next election rolls around, will anyone remember the revelations that the men and women elected to represent the interests of the people are in fact lining their own pockets at the expense of those they serve? Or will they remember September 11th and the subsequent war that saw the evil upstarts of Al Quaida humbled by the might of the USA?

Doesn't it strike you as odd that one President almost loses his job for getting sucked off by a porker in the White House whilst another changes laws and amends taxes so that his rich friends can become mega rich whilst the taxpayers bear the burden, and yet will almost certainly remain unchallenged in his current office? After all, the things that Clinton made the press for were trivial on the grand scale of things whilst Bush is demonstratably behaving in a corrupt manner. But he won't make the mainstream press in quite the same way. Is this because Clinton made the mistake of telling little white lies whilst Bush delivers whoppers that would make Baron Munchausen blush?

I suspect that he's going to get away with it because of one of those little quirks of humanity that makes us such a thoroughly unpredictable bunch. We tend to like bastards. And the bigger the bastard, the worse the crime, and the more likely it is that the person will have a group of people (large of small) who admire what they did. Even the rest of us will almost certain feel a guilty stab of awe at what was done whilst we heartily condemn their actions. As a group we seem to be fascinated with evil, with the darker side of human nature. Although we do our best to distance ourselves from the evil that men do (we use such phrases as "Inhuman" or "He was like an animal" or "Depraved and bestial") our continuing interest in the crimes committed by some people (not to mention the fact the crimes keep on being committed) shows that evil is a most human quality indeed.

Let us take, for example, Adolf Hitler. Here is a man who still to this day is venerated by many hundreds of people. He has had more books written about his life than Mother Theresa. He has been the subject of films, TV programs, comedy, drama, and horror. He is the object of repeated and vigorous academic study. Yet this man is one of the most evil and hateful men ever to have walked the earth. And people admire him. Even those who don't will know more about the life of this profoundly malignant man than they will of, say, William Morton (the man who first used anaesthetic in a medical procedure in order to alleviate pain; without him medical science would have not been able to advance at the same rate and so many hundreds of thousands of people indirectly owe their lives to him).

It's not as if those apologists and revisionists of Hitler's Reich are trying to repaint the man as an innocent duped by those who served him, or a colossus of compassion whom history has misunderstood. If someone says that they admire what Hitler achieved, do you think that they admire the early years of his Winter Aid scheme which sought to ensure that Germans did not go hungry in Winter months by use of scheme's such as asking every comfortably off family to contribute the ingredients of one meal a week to give to the Nazi Party soup kitchens? Are they professing their desire to implement Hitler's vision of a meritocracy where everyone, regardless of background or social status (though not race and religion; Jew's and Christians were automatically excluded from this promised land), will get the same opportunities to better himself or herself throughout life? Of course not. They are invariably referring to the murder of 6 million Jews, the slaughter of the mentally and physically handicapped, the abandonment of the older generation to die, and of course the war-mongering and general hatred and contempt shown by Hitler to anyone who was not "Aryan". This is what has these shaven headed cheerleaders dancing for joy.

Now I accept that those worshippers of Hitler are a marginal group in this country. But they aren't so marginal in France (where the National Front is a powerful force in politics) or Austria (where Jorge Haider leads a semi fascistic party in government). So despite the fact that Hitler was a crank and madmen who engineered the most horrific atrocity in world history, large numbers of people still model themselves on his ideals.

Just look at recent history; there seem to be any number of young Moslem men who are willing to die for Bin Laden. What was it that attracted them to his cause? Was it the spiritual peace promised by Islam? Or was it the promise of inflicting humiliation on the US and of course Israel together with the opportunity for violence and bloodshed? They admire Bin Laden because he dares to commit horrific acts on a grand scale. And lest we sneer at them for being uneducated fanatics bear in mind that Time Magazine gave serious thought to naming Bin Laden their Man of the Year.

In closing I want to make it clear that I don't condemn or criticise our fascination with darkness (lord knows I would be the worst kind of hypocrite if I did; I've read about the deeds of countless serial killers, tyrants, and dictators) but I wish that we'd at least try to understand why it is that we are like that. There is something peculiar about a race of people that remember all of the horrors of WW2 but who forget almost entirely forget about the generosity of the US immediately afterwards (they loaned money to Germany, Japan, Britain, and Italy thus ensuring that all of those countries could afford to rebuild themselves. To the best of my knowledge we haven't repaid it all and America are not pressing us for it). I'll bet you've heard of Ted Bundy, Harold Shipman, and Jeffrey Dahmer, but who has heard of Kimberly Leach, Kathleen Grundy, or Raymond Smith? The former killed all of the latter, but who's memory will live on. If we are a sick society for venerating these people, wouldn't it be best to find out why so that we can perhaps cure the social disease?