Ideology as a source of villainy

[Jabrosky]

I was just talking with my parents about my current project, specifically the villain's characterization. I told them I wanted my villain's motivation to have its roots in an imperialistic ideology he had instilled into him by his upbringing. He's not necessarily evil by nature, but he does very evil things even to his own family in the name of this ideology.

My parents didn't seem to buy this characterization. Mom said she would prefer a villain with more self-centered motives since she thought it more realistic. Personally I still don't think I agree with her.

I have a special respect for the power of ideology to turn otherwise decent people into monsters. History is chock full of this. You have large numbers of well-meaning people who commit the most heinous crimes because their instilled ideology taught them that these crimes were morally justified. Take Nazism for instance. The Nazis got millions of German people to carry out their ends because these people grew up believing that Jews and non-Europeans were racially inferior. Most people in Western civilization at that date had internalized such views, Americans and British included.

Don't get me wrong, most evil ideologies probably stem from the self-interest of certain individuals (especially those in power), but once sprouted they take on lives of their own. They spread across the masses like infectious diseases, corrupting their minds and becoming motivations in their own right. Nothing erodes human critical thinking and decency like a toxic ideology.

Worst of all, these people sincerely believe they're in the right.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it's realistic for a villain to have an ideological motivation for his crimes?

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think it goes both ways. People follow an ideology because they believe, but sometimes they really, really want to believe in something that empowers or excuses them. (This is something I think the recent movie of The Lorax actually got right. The Onceler believes in progress, in empowerment of the people through fair trade and fair labor, but the more he personally gains from his corrupt enterprise, the more willing he is to overlook the harm that enterprise is doing.)

 

[CupofJoe]

Very plausible for a Big Bad's motivation to be ideological and I would say that most of them [in the main] start from an ideological point of view and get muddied.
They probably, almost certainly, don't consider themselves to be the Big Bad.
Such ideologies would make them a really big Big Bad... and not just another thug. These people, I would contend, have global ambitions because they think they are right and everyone will follow their opinion eventually even if they disagree at the start - they just need to be convinced... even if that means mass executions and prison camps... the rest will learn that the Big Bad is right... eventually.
They don't think local, they want everything... because they know they are right...
If you want to look at more examples I'd suggest looking at the early life of Mao Zedong for one and Stalin, and I can't really miss out Pol Pot. I don't mean to list just communists [it's just a really strong ideology], the Big Bad can be shared around, Francisco Franco and probably many more.
For a different take, look at the spread of religions. They may not be a Big Bad in the traditional evil sense but they do show how an idea can spread and be accepted by the masses and opposed just as rigorously....

 

[ThinkerX]

I'm working on a tale like this at the moment.

One of the villain's is facilitating horrible things in part because of religious ideology. However, his personal gains have not really increased, and it could be said personal gain doesn't interest him. At the same time, he's extremely intelligent and capable.

 

[SineNomine]

I personally think it can work...to an extent. But a major consideration is that true believers still need to have either a large self-interest or some strong event or people in their lives that tie them tightly to the cause though I'd think. It's easy to overstate the whole "decent people doing awful things". As far as I am aware, the whole "banality of evil" thing, despite being still popular in the public mind, has been mostly debunked. Being raised in an environment where toxic beliefs are present can make an otherwise decent person share those beliefs, but they usually aren't deeply held. The common people in such an environment aren't fanatics, they are people who go with the flow and when confronted with direct evidence of the evil of their views they start to suffer from cognitive dissonance that makes it hard to continue without solid reasons to keep going.

The way harm gets perpetrated is when it is institutionalized to the point that people never have to confront the effects of it...and that's a lot harder when you are dealing with the main villain of a story. An ideology can go far to drive you down the road of evil, but a lot of the most important final steps have to be taken yourself.

 

[Feo Takahari]

The way harm gets perpetrated is when it is institutionalized to the point that people never have to confront the effects of it...and that's a lot harder when you are dealing with the main villain of a story. An ideology can go far to drive you down the road of evil, but a lot of the most important final steps have to be taken yourself.

Does the main villain necessarily need to confront the effects of evil? If you give orders to kill rebels three hundred miles away, your soldiers who march three hundred miles away will need to grapple with it, but you yourself can keep a distance from it.

 

[Penpilot]

I think it can work. Ideologies can unite people, and if they're really committed to an ideology, it can be used as an excuse to be really crappy to others. But I do wonder if an ideology is a reflection of those in the upper echelons of power. There needs to be a voice pushing an ideology in one direction or another, one or many people with the authority to determining what is considered right or wrong according to an ideology.

If you think about it religion is kind of like this. People have used it as an excuse to be really crappy to others, but it has also been used to mobilize people to do some incredibly selfless things.

I think things can go wrong when an ideology becomes inflexible, and there are no checks and balances to make sure an authority figure doesn't abuse their power. There are always exceptions to rules and laws, and when rules and laws aren't tempered with common sense and compassion, it creates a very fertile ground for injustice in the name of justice.

As I've mentioned there can be a voice driving the ideology in one direction or another, but now that I think about it more, I think there's room to create a situation where "The System" is out of control, where nobody is really in command, and everyone just follows the rules to the tee with out question. And those who do question are removed. It can be a situation where nobody is responsible and at the same time every one is.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

It's tricky. Ideology on its own is not usually enough to make people do terrible things. Take naziism as you've mentioned. No it wasn't just ideology that made millions of Germans do those things. It was belief in a charasmatic leader, coming out of a depression caused by the penalties imposed after world war one, cultural aspects relating to the perceived status of Jewish people in Europe, a resurgence of Nationalism vested in Hitler, and of course coercion from authority figures.

And if we look at current skin heads etc we see many of the same factors as well as a sense of disinfranchisement in their own world as migrants settle in their homes, and unemployment playing major roles in their political ideology.

Only a very few would simply base their political activism / criminality purely on an ideological imperitive.

Even Hitler didn't. If you want to be cynical about him as I am want to do, he was an opportunist. Undoubtedly he dislike Jews, but would he have bothered to launch his pogram if it wasn't politically expediant? I doubt it. Primarily he was ambitious. He loved the lime light. He wanted the adulation that came from rising in political circles. And the Jews were unfortunately an expediant means for him to achieve his goals.

There were a few within the nazi party who did hate Jews to the extent that no other factors mattered, but for most I suspect it was a whole raft of motivations that led them to do what they did.

These things are almost never black and white in my view.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[thecoldembrace]

I use Ideology a lot to influence the minor villains in my worlds, and to some extent to influence even my main character. My MC was born as a certain specific user of magic, which through the use of propaganda and false teachings by the major magical community has been deemed an abomination of nature and fit only to be destroyed.

The ideology was spun into creation because of the chief source of it's existence stemming from jealousy, which is a major overarching theme in my novels. The hatred for mankind towards those they do not understand, or are unwilling to understand is a deep ingrained problem of ignorance in the world, mine and the one you and I live in.

I find your use of it justifiable, and are able to relate to it, to where most people can at least understand why it exists.


-Cold

 

[Terry Greer]

Ideology has always done evil things in the name of a belief.
All you need is a cause and an end justifies the means philosophy.

Some of the greatest crimes have been carried out for the common good by people who thought they were doing the best thing.

True 'believers' of all types are to be feared (and I'm not talking about religion here - but the cap fits there as well) - to be genuinely good you have to have self doubt.

A really good example was in the film Serenity. The main bad guy in that was a true ideologist carrying out evil acts for the good of all. He was a true believer - not doing it for personal gain - but an implacable foe because true believers can't be argued with.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Terry,

And yet he was while an excellently scary character, one of the things I found hardest to accept about Serenity. (Apart from the whole wild west thing of course.)

True fanatics are incredibly unusual. Even suicide bombers would not be completely ideologically driven. They are powered by that, desperation and despair.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[monyo]

Strongly agree with the OP's views on it, and think just about any ideology could be a plausible motivation for a villain, even seemingly righteous or altruistic ones. It's the part about:

They spread across the masses [...] becoming motivations in their own right. Nothing erodes human critical thinking and decency like a toxic ideology.

Minus the word "toxic," because at some point I came to the conclusion that all ideologies are toxic, for the reason given in the quote. If you're impartially analyzing the facts without regard to your prejudices and biases (basically impossible, but it's an ideal to strive for) there's no need for an ideology. They basically amount to universal rules that everything must conform to, which even in the best case scenario means you aren't really looking at the facts of each situation on their own merits, but pigeonholing them into some preconceived worldview. I say "best case scenario" because in reality they almost always lead to much worse behavior patterns, like a tribalist sort of us-versus-them mentality, refusing any information sources that don't degree with your ideology as being "propaganda" or "brainwashing", all manner of prejudices and biases (of which the ideology is basically the biggest one), and refusal to consider alternative, possibly superior solutions because they don't fit with the ideology.

To use a particular example of all this, I see a common phenomenon in people who hold political ideologies (any political ideologies), where they start to hate alternative or opposing ideologies because they think the policy proposals of those groups will lead to bad outcomes. After a while though, they hate those groups so much that they begin to hate all policy proposals of those groups simply because they were made by enemy ideologies. It effectively changes from "this ideology is wrong because its imperatives will lead to bad outcomes," to "these imperatives are wrong because they were made by a certain group." This because at some point they've given up on objective analysis and given in to blindly trusting their ideology. As as I said, if you're doing the former all the time (objective, fair, non-prejudicial analysis), you don't need the latter (ideology).

And as far as I know there really aren't any ideas that shouldn't be questioned (at least not by relatively sane, healthy people), though it may be uncomfortable to do so at times. There may be things that almost everyone today would consider so blatantly obvious or correct that to debate them would only be dangerous, but older cultures have taken for granted the complete appropriateness of some things that we probably now wish they would have heavily questioned a long time ago (off the top of my head: slavery, beating your wife, child marriage, frontal lobotomy). I'll plug James Flynn's TED talk on moral progress over the past century here, which isn't really about ideology, but just the way people's view of morality and ethics has changed so much over time. Rigid ideology, no matter how correct it may seem to a large percentage of society at the time, tends to shut down the kind of questioning that leads to this kind of progress.

I could probably go on about this subject for a while, but should stop sooner than later. I'd think just about any ideology, no matter how seemingly benevolent and pure, could be used to create a pretty heinous villain or group of them. There have certainly been enough historical examples of it (consider some of the worse things that have happened in the name of religion). It's that "the path the hell is paved with good intentions" thing. The world just isn't really full of evil Darth Vader's and Sauron's screwing everything up, so much as a lot of problems being emergent from the system as a whole, the various weaknesses and flaws of seemingly decent people. Getting hung up on an ideological way of thinking seems to be a big part of that. Even the idea that "all ideologies are bad" is kind of an ideology, which leads to an interesting kind of paradox about it - how to reject ideologies without having adopted a new one. Would be interesting to have a villain whose destructive ideology was that he'd rejected all ideologies.

 

[Terry Greer]

Hi Terry,

And yet he was while an excellently scary character, one of the things I found hardest to accept about Serenity. (Apart from the whole wild west thing of course.)

True fanatics are incredibly unusual. Even suicide bombers would not be completely ideologically driven. They are powered by that, desperation and despair.

Cheers, Greg.

Hi Gregg
I don't think they need to be 'fanatics' (who I agree are rare).
But ideologies are everywhere, and common.
For a current example (admittedly religious) you only have to look at Apostacy beliefs. Even in the UK over 30% of Muslims believe that the death penalty should apply! That's insane and a dangerous ideology. It's also fairly similar to many of the 'honour' killings that have been in the news lately as well.

You could equally look at privatisation vs public ownership, belief in immigration, global warming, or if you get scientific inflationary theory v string theory.
The list is extensive. What all these have in common is a belief that would 'shut down' all dissenting voices if they could. They are everywhere and in every walk of life. People who just 'know' what should be done. They scare the sh*t out of me.
I could pick dozens of these.

So I have to disagree about the bad guy in serenity - he was so believable to me (especially as being an atheist I get it all the time).

(As for the cowboy thing - I know a lot of people had problems with that - as for me I just looked at it as a way of showing a dialogue structure that was separated in time from the present (to me it automatically distanced the events from now in a way that an invented language would have been hard pressed to do). Though I know that lots of people were tuned off by it.

BTW - Just as a matter of interest - did you come at Serenity cold - or had you watched the Firefly series first?

 

[Feo Takahari]

I dunno about the death penalty or whatnot, but it's been observed that when violent terrorist groups actually win, their members tend to gravitate to unrelated causes. Precisely what they're fighting for doesn't seem to matter as much as the fact of fighting in a common cause. (Max Abrahms has done some interesting research on this.)

 

[psychotick]

Hi Terry,

No I have both Firefly and Serenity. A flawed masterpiece in my view.

And yes ideologies abound. But finding people who will actually follow though violently because of an ideology is much harder. There have been a few. The unabomber for example was an anarchist who not only carried out his acts in the name of his ideology he also lived the life of an anarchist recluse.

And you mentioned religion and honour killings - a true evil in my view. But these are far more culturally driven than religiously, while those who carry them out are usually burdened by poverty, poor education and desperation. And they're fueled by a bunch of preachers who have no alternate ideology such as democracy and people having rights, and have a position of power they are desperate to maintain. Hatred is always a powerful tool that can be used to leverage power, as is its corollary - fear. And exploiting social class instability such as males no longer being the head of the house if they allow females to have freedom, is another.

If you've been watching the news lately about this poor woman in Nigeria due to be stoned to death for switching to her husband's faith - Christianity, you'll see the undercurrants behind this. It's not actually about faith or ideology. This is a power grab. The mullahs cannot allow their religion to become "modern" because they would lose members and therefore power. They see Christianity as a direct threat. (Like democracy and human rights.) And their control is slipping. They have a very clear vested interest in maintaining an age old status quo in which they rule.

This is no different threats to nationalism or aristocratic rule or anything else. When times are easy and no threat to the ruling class is perceived, things are relaxed. Some nobility are happy to be more open with their rule. Country borders are open and immigrants welcomed. But when things suddenly go south, every noble is suddenly a noble, tolerance is forgotten, and migrants are picked on as a minority. It becomes an us and them scenario - probably the best known example being the French revolution.

Consider the scarlett pimpernell etc - busy rescuing French nobility from the mobs. Why? These were his enemies not so long before. But revolution and the common man seizing control - suddenly the aristocracy has to stick together. Or think of the mob. The poor and under-privileged. Every noble had to be killed including the women and children - regardless of whether they'd been good in their roles or harsh. Why? Because they were the enemy. That's not ideology - that's what we would these days call patch protection. If there's a threat, you band together with others you peceive as being of your ilk, and you defend yourselves against the threat, and ideological dreams like democracy and fairness get thrown out the window.

Witness Syria. No one's going to back down there, because everyone believes that if they do they'll die. Witness WWII. Japanese people arrived and settled in the US thinking it the land of opportunity. Along comes Pearl Harbour and suddenly people don't care about human rights or freedom, or even freedom of the press. Instead there were internment camps and people locked away purely on the basis of the colour of their skin - no trial, no evidence even against those who were locked up. Just fear and prejudice.

It's a complex world, and the world of ideology is no different. Ideologies abound and we all ascribe to many. But when the chips are down we throw most of them away as we revert to the state of us versus them.

This is why I find the OP's character a tricky one to pull off. Ideology is not enough on it's own to fuel him. As it was not with the character from Serenity. Especially when he himself could openly acknowledge that the confederacy made mistakes - sometimes terrible mistakes. If he had been a true ideologue that understanding should have shattered him. Instead his loyalty to an ideal remained staunch.

Thus for the OP's character I don't buy a true idealogue as a villain. I buy someone who holds firmly to an ideology because it matches his personal needs and his life experience. And I would buy others joining him for the same reasons.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Helen]

Do you think it's realistic for a villain to have an ideological motivation for his crimes?

It's completely realistic. Tons of stories have a villain who is ideologically motivated. Crassus in Spartacus comes to mind.

If you bring theme vs villain vs antagonist into it, you can argue that it's all about ideological motivation. Because theme is ideology.

 

[Trick]

The only problem I see with an antagonist being driven almost purely by a flawed ideology depends upon his/her level of power in your world. I have a hard time believing that a supreme military or political leader would be motivated this way alone. An underling, yes, since they have a physical embodiment of the ideology to look to, their leader. If the leader/main antagonist are the same character they would at least have to have an advisor feeding them this ideology at some point to keep from having their view change significantly when they come into power. Following an ideology implies you did not invent it, that you view it as greater than yourself and that it has been taught to you. Very few numero unos see something as greater than them without still having a reminder. If this ideology is religious I could see it better or if the antagonist is experiencing mental deterioration.

I guess my point is, IMHO, ideologies may get a person into a position of power for the purpose of furthering the cause but things often change once the power is achieved. If the character doesn't change once they're in charge, there needs to be a reason. Blindly following an ideology needs explanation of some kind when there is no one looking over the character's shoulder.

 

[Steerpike]

I see two potential issues:

1. If the ideology isn't something that is clearly recognized as "evil" by modern readers, you run the real risk of creating a caricature as a tool for lambasting some real-world political group, and readers are savvy enough to see through that sort of thing. It makes the author look unskilled. So, in other words, if the villainous ideology was merely a thinly-veiled Republican or Democrat party line that was being set up as the root of evil in the world, it'll make for a pretty bad book (in my opinion); and

2. It would make sense to do a really good job getting into the villains head and allowing him to justify and rationalize himself, and to do the most thorough and convincing job possible. People caught up in such ideologies don't see themselves as villains. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you can't commit to going into the villains head and really doing your utmost to have him justify himself in his own mind, it again starts to look like a thinly-supported setup of the ideology merely for the purpose of the author knocking it down.

 

[Jabrosky]

I've spent more time brainstorming on how my antagonist ticks. She (it's a girl now) joins this organization which presents itself as persecuted, which attracts her sympathy since she feels alienated herself. However, there's also an element of selfishness for her in that this organization promises a special reward if she brings them to power. Ergo, her motivation is both ideological and self-centered just as some people in this thread suggested.

 

[Ravana]

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it's realistic for a villain to have an ideological motivation for his crimes?

You mean as opposed to simply being psychotic, sociopathic or unexplained, unadulterated randomness? Yeah, kinda.

Yes, that still leaves "self-centered." But self-centered is an oversimplification too often used to avoid depth of characterization. A villain is greedy? Great. Why? What does he want the money for? What does he use the money for? A villain wants power? Again, why? Rarely will either be an end in itself–and if it is, the villain probably falls into the psycho/sociopath category. Anyone who nefariously pursues wealth solely to sit and watch it shine… is nuts. And also boring.

The answer to that "why" can be ideology as readily as anything else.

What I would do is make sure the ideology is not itself entirely "evil." To me, the most interesting ideological villains are probably the ones who not only don't "see themselves as evil" (which few people do), but who actually see themselves as doing good through their ideology–as opposed to simply using it as a reason to commit their self-centered deeds.

Consider the potential for "evil" in an evangelist. Or an imperialist. Or both. You mention Nazism: stack that up against the "White Man's Burden" and tell me which you think caused more damage. And yet, unlike the Nazi power figures–most of whom were psychopaths or kleptocrats–the average European missionary genuinely believed that he was not only doing good, but doing an absolutely essential good: he was saving souls. As well as bringing civilization, education and material advancement, the Euros being "superior" in these. (Anyone who has watched At Play in the Fields of the Lord has a ready visualization for this. Or The Mission… though for present purposes the first is the better example. I highly recommend both movies, even apart from present purposes: both are gorgeous, brilliant films. That both have Aidan Quinn in them is, I assume, largely a coincidence. )

Early socialists and communists absolutely believed what they were trying to do was "good"–no matter how many people had to die in order to bring that good about. Some, I imagine, still do. "The greater good" is the also motivation behind many dystopias, Brave New World probably being the paradigm example.

What makes ideological motivations more interesting is if, to at least some extent, the ideology does have some laudable aspects, ones that any reader might recognize and sympathize with… even if the reader can't sympathize with the package as a whole. Communism, for example, sought to free the lower classes from their serfdom (real or effective)… and in some cases it did just that, even if in most cases it merely transferred the lower classes to a different form of serfdom. Nevertheless, it often improved the lot of the affected. The French Revolution may have been (okay, was) one continuous bloodbath, but it resulted in significant gains for the masses in the long term. The early centuries of Islam saw an increase in religious freedom most places it reached–as well as an increase in scholarship, education and social mobility, the latter especially notable amongst ethnic minorities. Introduce some ambiguities in the impact of the ideology, and you have yourself some true, believable real-world depth… and a villain that readers aren't sure whether or not they ought to in fact be rooting for, at least some of the time.

Even where the villain isn't an ideologue himself, the ideology may provide the lies he tells himself to justify his actions. Sure, he may be an unrepentant money-grubbing plantation owner who in any honest analysis doesn't care about the welfare of his workers (slaves)… but he still tells himself, and anyone else who raises the question, that his workers are "better off" where they are now than where they would be had they been left to their own devices.

Perhaps as importantly, a character's ideology will likely shape the "why" answer to the other questions, whether or not it's the immediate reason behind the "why." While this isn't the direction being inquired about here, it is worth noting. Quick example: in a society which believes that veneration by a person's living relatives determines the fate of the deceased, a "greedy" villain might be after the money to elevate the status of his ancestors–an entirely laudable goal on the face of it. Plus, of course, he probably wishes to spread enough largesse that his descendants will do the same for him. The "evil" part is that he doesn't give a rat's caudal vertebra about anyone who isn't part of his lineage: they're all just competitors for the resources he needs. Even those who might be connected to his line by marriage but not blood. To hell with their souls… more or less literally. Setting aside the strange post-mortem beliefs, you still have "strong family values" as a motivator–and that's an overt part of many human ideologies.