Smokers’ corner: The new Manicheans

Just days before this year’s US presidential election, when I was wrapping up my interviews with a cross-section of voters in some US states for a research project, I was approached by an old white man in Denver, Colorado. The man asked me who I was voting for. I told him I’m not a US citizen so can’t vote. But even before I could complete my sentence, he asked, “Are you voting for Trump?”
He then declared, “Kamala Harris is evil…she is an evil, evil person.”
“Yes,” I replied. “And Trump is an angel.” And that was it. Unable or unwilling to notice the obvious sarcasm in my reply, the gentleman seemed satisfied with my reply and moved on. I had come face-to-face with an example of how ‘Manichaeism’ shapes modern populist politics.
Manichaeism was an ancient religion in Persia. It believed that the universe was dominated by two forces (good and evil) — one represented by light and the other by darkness.
Today, the term ‘Manichean’ is used as a disparaging term to describe someone who disregards shades of grey or who adopts a strong ‘us-versus-them’ mindset. According to the American Professor of Ethics William F May, Manichaeism reduces distinctions to a ‘cosmic struggle’ between two rival powers: good and evil. A form of Manichaeism has been particularly strong in American politics, especially among right-wing groups.
Since Manichaeism was a religion, its modern political manifestation retains much of its original metaphysical essence. For example, when politicians posit an ‘us-versus-them’ position, it is not only about formulating ethnic, racial or nationalistic binaries. Added to a valorised race/ethnicity/nation is also a ‘divinely-ordained’ purpose.
So, a valorised people, though striving to achieve political power, come to see themselves a ‘chosen people’, selected by God to fulfil His purpose. Among right-wing political groups in the US in the early 20th century, this ‘purpose’ was to sustain racial segregation to protect the country’s white races, because they were the ‘chosen people.’
Later, the same chosen people were to fight against ‘international communist conspiracies.’ Communism was explained as an ‘evil.’ For right-wing groups, America’s war against communism (during the Cold War) was a war between good and evil. The former US president Ronald Reagan (1981-88) described the erstwhile Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”
Manichaean rhetoric was also present during the rise of Nazism in Germany. The Nazis enthusiastically indulged in pseudo-history and exotic theology to add to their claims of racial superiority a metaphysical dimension. The rise of Nazi Germany was viewed by the Nazis as an outcome of a battle that they were fighting against shadowy evil powers who were out to corrupt and destroy pure Germanic races, through lowly non-white races and wicked ideologies such as liberalism and communism.
Manichaean rhetoric and mindset make secular ideas seem theological/cosmological in nature. The valorised ideas/people in this context become chosen by God and opposing ideas/people are demonised as evil or driven by satanic forces or by Satan himself. Therefore, to a lot of Trump supporters, Harris is evil.
But Manichaeism is present in modern political-theocratic doctrines as well. It is very much present in Christian nationalism, which Trump constantly evokes. It is present in the Hindutva ideology valorised by India’s right-wing ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It also plays a pivotal role in the rhetoric of Iran’s theocratic regime, especially when addressing the country’s archenemy, the US. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the US has been referred to by the theocracy as ‘the Great Satan’ (Sheytan-i-Buzurg).
In the 1970s, Islamist parties in Pakistan often portrayed the former Pakistani prime minister Z.A. Bhutto and his government as evil because, apparently, he and his ministers were serving Satan by always being drunk and holding wild sexual orgies (‘key parties’).
Such diabolical accusations, often published in right-wing tabloids, became so common that Bhutto once decided to respond to them by announcing to a crowd: “Yes, I drink, but I don’t drink the blood of the people!” Here he was referring to the Islamists who, according to him, were ‘agents’ of rich ‘bloodsucking’ industrialists.
Not all binary thinking in politics is Manichaean, though. Binary thinking in this regard becomes Manichaean only when the ‘us’ begins to describe itself as special people chosen by God to do His work in a wretched world.
This outtake of Manichaeism is present when most populists describe the other side as evil and/or satanic. Pakistani politician Imran Khan and his fans lambasting their opponents as ‘corrupt’ is a classic populist ploy, but it’s not Manichaean as such. However, it does become this when some of his supporters begin to view Khan as an incorruptible messiah, having characteristics of some of Islam’s ancient luminaries.

Binary thinking can stall nuanced political debates. But it becomes far more dangerous when it is used to construct narratives that lead to serious violence. For instance, in the last two decades, Christian nationalists in the West and Islamist militants took Manichaean thinking to an extreme, in a bid to justify terror attacks.
Far-right militants in the West and Islamist terrorists are often swayed by narratives that are largely influenced by Manichaeism — especially by its ‘dualist cosmology’, based on the idea of a primordial conflict between light and darkness, good and evil. Class, ethnicity, nationality or material economic conditions eventually dissolve in this cosmic conflict. But race and faith don’t. The militants in this context explain the conflict as one that has been going on for centuries outside the material realm, and within a spiritual one that the sacred texts supposedly speak of.
In a 2018 essay, the psychologist Karl Umbrasas wrote that terror outfits that kill indiscriminately can be categorised as Manichaeans. According to Umbrasas, such groups operate like “apocalyptic cults” and are not held back by socio-political and moral restraints. They are thus completely unrepentant about targeting even children. To them, the children are also part of the larger problem that they are going to resolve through a ‘cosmic war.’
The moral codes of such terror groups transcend those of the modern world. So, for example, when an Islamist or far-right terrorist kills innocent men, women and children, it is likely they see the victims as part of the ‘evil’ in the cosmic war that they imagine themselves to be fighting. In fact, one can thus suggest that the current government of Israel is also very much Manichaean.
Published in Dawn, EOS, November 10th, 2024