Rajiv Gandhi

One names diabolisation the process consisting in giving a strong negative connotation to an idea, a group or an individual, so that its only evocation causes a reaction of rejection.

One can note that it acts, in general, of a Conflit between a group “dominating”, guarantor of a Conformisme, and a group “deviating” with this conformism. The diabolisation can be indistinctly the fact of one or the two parts. To long these parts tend to accentuate this polarization and to be defined by their opposition: “we are all the opposite of what they are, i.e. we represent the good because they represent the evil” .

The diabolisation can be intentional or result from social processes like the effects of group. When the diabolisation is organized voluntarily, with an aim of Désinformation, one speaks about countryside of diabolisation.

Historical appearance

In 1486 the inquisiteurs Jacques Sprenger and Henri Institoris make appear with Strasbourg the Malleus maleficarum (the Marteau of the witches ). It is a true change of prospect for the Church: whereas until there the Sorcière S were pursued for Hérésie and that the Church saw their practices like simple superstitions without bases, they will be now regarded as had and an incarnation of the demon. That takes place two years after the bubble Summis desiderantes affectibus of the pope Innocent VIII inviting to intensify the fight against the Sorcellerie. One can see there a will of legitimation of the drives out with the witches . At all events, the word “diabolisation” evokes “the invocation of a relationship with the Diable”.

Techniques

The emotional load induced by the process of diabolisation as well complicates the dialog between the parts in conflict as the objective analysis of the situation. The examples of mechanisms of diabolisation used in this chapter are thus essentially polemical.

That it is voluntary or not, the diabolisation is a process. One can easily identify some of his methods who generally belong to a Désinformation:

Amalgam with a topic usually badly perceived and with which the object of the diabolisation has a common point ( You be vegetarian? How Hitler, then! );
Devalorization ( Which can one hope for of intelligent on behalf of a sportsman? );
opposition to a tradition of the group dominating: the evocation of “natural laws” which are often only extrapolations of more or less old traditions;
semantic slip allowing to associate a word with reflexes of rejection, fear or hatred. For example, by connotation.

The points of view of the two parts being strongly polarized, one will often note the use of the Sophisme:

You do not want to leave with me, it is thus that you are racist (or sexist, if it is about a person of opposite sex)
Your disapproval of the Homosexual marriage proves to your Homophobie

Your criticism of such or such Israeli leader watch your Antisémitisme
You would like annual meetings on the work conditions? Why not Soviet S?
How that, do you find the public services too protected from the Concurrence, you want to thus impose the Ultralibéralisme?

The diabolisation can be seen like the reverse of the Sacralisation or the Victimization.

Formation of taboos

The diabolisation is often related on the use or the creation of Tabou S: a subject which either so negatively considered that its evocation even becomes problematic. The majority of the companies studied by the ethnologists use similar processes to limit deviances compared to the standard being likely to call into question the viability even of the group. In this direction, the diabolisation is anything else only the exploitation more or less conscious of a natural mechanism.

Since the post-war period, the Publicité resorts sometimes to such processes. One can for example evoke a margarine mark of the Années 1950 which spoke, in connection with the consumer's choice for butter, of “a ridiculous prejudice which was expensive”. Today it diaboliserait the Cholestérol rather.

There remains however always delicate to use these negative messages in a publicity campaign, the consumer indeed tends to filter the messages unconsciously too anxiogenes. There is in addition always the risk which the message is taken with misinterpretation, and which the mark is perceived as the cause of the problem instead of in being the solution.

It is thus often preferable not to openly associate a mark with a campaign of diabolisation. An example of this type is the countryside carried out by associations of salmon fishermen of the Pacific, at the beginning of 2004, to promote in the media a study which had detected Dioxine S and PCB in fish of breeding. In this action, the fishermen never appeared openly: they proceeded via the Pew Charitable Trusts and of local relays as the Parisian office of the agency of communication Gavin Anderson for the France.

Dialectical ambiguous

The people using the diabolisation term often state to estimate victims or defend of them of the people who were discredited so much by these practices that they cannot any more make it itself. However, to claim itself diabolized can be also a means of making pass from the legitimate charges for an attempt at destabilization resulting from this hypothetical diabolisation. Once again the strong polarization of diabolisant”/“diabolized” couple the “tends to skew the speeches of the two parts, which some use with their advantage.

Thus one often sees two groups having very different society projects diaboliser mutually or to return charges of diabolisation (what returns to same).

A non-problem?

“Let us calumniate, calumniate, it will remain about it always something! ” , known as Basile in the Barber of Seville, and noted bitterly Francis Bacon in his time (original quotation: Audaciter calomniare semper aliquid haeret , in dignitate and augmentis scientiarum, VIII, 2).

As a whole, the process of diabolisation is so widespread today that its effect somewhat blunted. Its use without understanding now generally starts derision in answer, as with the Point Godwin of the discussion forum on Internet. Remain that like the Pourriel, the diabolisation constitutes a form of obstruction in general not requested these channels of communication.

Some famous examples

George W. Bush often refers “War against the Evil”, “Evil Centers” ( War against Evil , or Axis off evil in English). " Evil" in English, refers to the Diable, the demon.

Ronald Reagan qualified the Soviet Union of “Empire of the Evil”

the Ayatollah Khomeini, taken again by many religious extremists, qualified the United States of “Grand Satan”.

See too

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