The most dangerous villains in history never see themselves as monsters—they are the “good guys” who will burn the world to the ground just to save it.
If you look back through the blood-soaked pages of history—past the burning piles of books, the mass graves, and the gulags—you will struggle to find a single villain who thought they were the bad guy.
Hitler didn’t think he was evil; he thought he was purifying a race to save civilization. The Soviet officers starving millions in Ukraine didn’t think they were monsters; they believed they were birthing a glorious worker’s utopia. The Maoist youth beating their teachers to death didn’t see themselves as criminals; they saw themselves as the righteous guardians of the revolution.
They all believed, with every fiber of their being, that they were the “Good Guys.”
And that is exactly what made them so dangerous.
I know this mindset intimately. I lived it.
Years ago, when I was in the USMC, I operated under the delusion that my obedience was a virtue. I was a tool for the state. I was a neocon, literally praying for war, ready to turn my weapon on anyone my superiors pointed a finger at. I didn’t see human beings at the end of that barrel; I saw “targets.” I didn’t see foreign lands; I saw a chessboard for American interests. I was told that what I was doing was honorable—that I was keeping America safe—and I drank that Kool-Aid by the gallon.
My existence as an order-follower required no thought, no moral agency, and no hesitation. I was the “Good Guy,” and because I was on the “right team,” I believed there were no choices to make.
I might have gone to my grave thinking that my participation in the oppression of others was noble, had I not sat down one day and actually listened to someone I was supposed to hate.
Twenty one years ago, I spoke to a man from a country I was helping to occupy. He didn’t scream. He didn’t attack. He simply told me, in plain details, how we had harmed his family. How we had terrorized his neighborhood. How we were the oppressors in his homeland.
Normally, the programming would have kicked in. I would have gotten defensive, angry, perhaps even violent. But for the first time, the glitch in the matrix opened up. I listened. And in his eyes, I saw the reflection of the monster I had become.
I realized then that “Evil” doesn’t look like a cartoon villain. It looks like a clean-shaven young man in a uniform, blindly following orders because he trusts the State more than his own conscience.
The idea that villains are cackling madmen in dark rooms needs to be shattered. Though there certainly are plenty of outliers who likely know they are doing evil, the vast majority do not. And this is the scariest reality—one I lived personally—is that the most effective villains are the ones who go home to their families, pay their taxes, and truly believe they are saving the world while they burn it down.
The State’s Greatest Trick
Even if truly evil men rise to the top, they simply cannot commit atrocities on their own. Politicians and dictators are biologically incapable of mass murder without assistance. They require a mechanism to transfer their will into violence. That mechanism is you.
The State’s greatest trick is convincing peaceful individuals that aggression is necessary for safety. They wrap violence in the flag, baptize it in “patriotism,” and sell it as “law and order.” They convince the police officer that arresting a man for a plant is “public safety.” They convince the drone pilot that vaporizing a wedding party is “national defense.”
They weaponize your desire to be a good person against you.
When you surrender your moral agency to an authority figure—whether it’s a sergeant, a police chief, or a bureaucrat in D.C.—you cease to be a free human being. You become a tool. And tools have no conscience; they only have functions.
The Domestic Battlefield: Red vs. Blue
But this phenomenon isn’t limited to soldiers in foreign lands or dictators in history books. It has infected our cul-de-sacs, our dinner tables, and our social media feeds.
Right now, in America, there is a massive segment of the population on the Left who views everyone on the Right as vile, racist, fascist garbage. They wouldn’t just be indifferent to the suffering of a conservative; some would practically dance on their graves.
Conversely, there are millions on the Right who view the Left as godless, communist, child-grooming demons who want to dismantle the very fabric of reality.
Here is the hard pill to swallow: None of these people go home to their spouses and say, “Honey, I was really evil today.”
They don’t hate you because they are wicked. They hate you because they are afraid. They view their hatred as self-preservation. They have been conditioned by a corporate media apparatus and a political duopoly to believe that the “Other Team” is not just wrong, but an existential threat to their way of life.
They believe they are the Good Guys holding back the tide of darkness. And because they believe they are fighting for their survival, they can justify almost any level of vitriol, dehumanization, or force against you.
But this narrative is a lie.
The vast majority of people—regardless of who they vote for—just want to be left alone. They want to go to work, feed their families, have a beer on the weekend, and live in peace. The “existential threat” is a hallucination manufactured by those who profit from your rage.
The Mirror of Tragedy: Jonathan Ross and Renee Nicole Good
We saw the horrific culmination of this “Good Guy” delusion play out recently in Minneapolis, in the tragic encounter between ICE agent Jonathan Ross and Renee Nicole Good.
To understand this tragedy, you have to look past the headlines and into the minds of the people involved. Jonathan Ross is not a man who wakes up hoping to murder innocent women. By all accounts from his family and supporters, he is a dedicated officer, a “Christian,” and a father who believes he stands on the thin blue line between order and chaos. In his mind, when he surrounded that vehicle, he was the Good Guy enforcing the law against a threat.
Renee Nicole Good, conversely, did not wake up that morning planning to die. When armed agents surrounded her car, she didn’t see “heroes”; she saw a threat to her safety and her freedom. She reacted with the instinct of self-preservation—she tried to flee. In her mind, she was the Good Guy, a free citizen attempting to escape armed aggressors.
Two people. Two diametrically opposed realities. Both believing they were right.
But because one of them had the power of the State behind him, the result was an execution. Ross fired his weapon, putting three bullets into Good’s head. And in that final, horrifying moment, the mask of the “Good Guy” slipped. As she lay dying or dead, Ross didn’t offer a prayer or check for a pulse; he reportedly looked at the woman he had just destroyed and called her a “f*ckin’ b*tch.”
That slur is the sound of a human soul that has been completely rewired by the State. To maintain the illusion that he was the hero, Ross had to dehumanize Renee. He couldn’t see a terrified woman fleeing for her life; he had to see a “bitch” who disobeyed his authority.
This is the end result of the “Us vs. Them” programming. It allows a man to commit a heinous act of violence and stand over the body, not with remorse, but with contempt—all while believing he is the one in the right. Millions of people share his sentiment.
Empathy for the Devil
It is easy to hate the propagandists. It is easy to look at the politicians, the intelligence agencies, and the media moguls who spin these webs of division and see them as inhuman monsters. Their acts are satanic, some of them literally, and the results of them are utterly horrifying.
But call me crazy, I even have empathy for the top-level architects of this chaos.
I don’t like them. I despise their actions. And, given the chance, I would defend myself against them with the deadliest of force. But I understand that even they likely believe they are the heroes of their own twisted story. They have convinced themselves that they are the shepherds and we are the sheep, and that without their heavy-handed manipulation, society would collapse. They have lost their way so thoroughly that they think creating chaos is the only way to maintain order.
We must understand this, not to forgive it, but to defeat it. As Sun Tzu famously wrote in The Art of War:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
If we view them merely as “evil,” we blind ourselves to their motivations. If we empathize with them—if we understand that they are driven by a warped sense of duty or a fear of losing control—we can better dismantle the systems they use to control us.
The Way Out: Resisting the Rage Bait
Make no mistake: if we continue on this current path of dehumanization, it ends in bloodshed. That is the historical default. When you convince half the country that the other half is subhuman, violence is not just possible; it is inevitable.
But I am optimistic. I believe we can beat this.
In the same way that social media has been weaponized to drive a wedge into society, it has the potential to remove it. We are already seeing the cracks in the matrix.
For every viral video of a “Karen” screaming or a political riot, there are quiet trends going viral that show the opposite. We see videos of people from vastly different backgrounds breaking bread, helping strangers, and realizing that their political labels are superficial compared to their shared humanity.
We have to have the power to resist the “rage bait.” When an influencer, a politician, or a news anchor tells you to hate your neighbor, realize what they are doing. They are monetizing your anger. They are selling you a drug that makes you feel righteous while it poisons your soul.
Have empathy for them, too. Realize they are pushing division because it puts food on their table or makes them feel important. But do not buy what they are selling.
The Ultimate Rebellion
The most rebellious thing you can do in an empire of lies is to see the truth in your enemy.
If a leftist and a right-winger simply put down their phones, ignored the cable news chiron, and spoke to each other about their hopes, their fears, and their families, they would realize they have infinitely more in common with each other than they do with the psychopaths in Washington D.C. who claim to represent them.
That realization is the establishment’s greatest fear. Unity is the antidote to their tyranny.
So, the next time you feel that surge of “righteous” anger toward a stranger on the internet or a neighbor with the wrong yard sign, stop. Remember that they think they are the Good Guy, just like you. Remember that they are scared, just like you.
Break the cycle. Refuse to be a tool. That is how we win.
Are you the master of your own conscience, or are you weak enough to become just another drafted soldier in a war you never chose?
The choice is yours.
Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist
