Focus on Evil

Richard Nixon, in the throes of Watergate, received a telegram from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin: “If your country does not understand you, come to Papa Amin who loves you. A kiss on both your cheeks.” Amin also dispatched telegrams to Queen Elizabeth— he called her “Liz”—inviting her to visit Uganda “if she wanted to meet a real man.” Perversely, mass murderers often become figures of fun. Who can help but chuckle upon reading, in Riccardo Orizio’s Talk of the Devil, that Jean- Bedel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of Central Africa with a ceremony at the Palais des Sports Jean-Bedel Bokassa, on Bokassa Avenue, next to the Jean-Bedel Bokassa University? Living at a safe distance, we can afford a macabre laugh or two. Such figures even become familiar popular icons. College sophomores and trendy urbanites wear Che Guevara T-shirts and decorate their rooms with Mao posters. Saddam Hussein’s information minister has lately been transformed into a doll that says “There are no American infidels in Baghdad” when you pull the string on his back. It turns out that we experience evil not so much as banality but as kitsch.

Mr. Menashi is associate editor of Policy Review and a public-affairs fellow at the Hoover institution, Stanford University. He coedits theamericanscene.com.

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Steven Menashi

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Richard Nixon, in the throes of Watergate, received a telegram from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin: “If your country does not understand you, come to Papa Amin who loves you. A kiss on both your cheeks.” Amin also dispatched telegrams to Queen Elizabeth— he called her “Liz”—inviting her to visit Uganda “if she wanted to meet a real man.” Perversely, mass murderers often become figures of fun. Who can help but chuckle upon reading, in Riccardo Orizio’s Talk of the Devil, that Jean- Bedel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of Central Africa with a ceremony at the Palais des Sports Jean-Bedel Bokassa, on Bokassa Avenue, next to the Jean-Bedel Bokassa University? Living at a safe distance, we can afford a macabre laugh or two. Such figures even become familiar popular icons. College sophomores and trendy urbanites wear Che Guevara T-shirts and decorate their rooms with Mao posters. Saddam Hussein’s information minister has lately been transformed into a doll that says “There are no American infidels in Baghdad” when you pull the string on his back. It turns out that we experience evil not so much as banality but as kitsch.

Mr. Menashi is associate editor of Policy Review and a public-affairs fellow at the Hoover institution, Stanford University. He coedits theamericanscene.com.