We need to talk about the Devil

Can we build a mass movement without an enemy?

into the fog in a southern Oregon watershed… seeking belonging

Ten years ago on the eve of Trump’s 2016 election I finished Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. In it he wrote this:

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.

Intuitively it seems that he’s right. And: I’ve found myself resisting that conclusion since I encountered it. The initiative john a. powell and I are launching—A Politics of Belonging—is premised on this radical proposition: can we create an us without a them? Can we build a mass movement… without a Devil?

So today I want to take this question seriously, by asking: why do we believe in the Devil? What does it do for us? And what can Belonging offer instead?

Here’s the TL;DR I’m coming to: The Devil is a useful fiction: a story we tell to make sense of the world, meeting real and important needs. To let go of the Devil, we need new ways to meet those needs. History shows this is possible: movements like Polish Solidarity and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and leaders like Mandela show that we can create transformation without “othering.” We are right to feel that the system isn't working—and that meritocracy and trickle-down economics are lies.

But the deepest lie is the Devil himself. The deepest truth is that it's the logic of the system—domination and separation—that is the real problem. Belonging offers a truer story built on a truer logic: that humans thrive through cooperation, and that the system works when it's designed around everyone’s belonging. Here's the radical proposition: if there is no Devil… might it finally be possible to build a movement for all of us?

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What has the Devil done for you lately?

john and I—and I know we are not alone!—are interested in replacing a politics of “othering.” But before we can transform a thing, we need to understand it. I think invoking the Devil (the idea of naming an enemy, of evil, of a figure responsible for harm) is a powerful move that meets many needs simultaneously. I want to enumerate them as I understand them here:

1. Legibility — explains my suffering: he did this to me!

2. Strategy and agency — provides a target for action: get rid of the Devil! Burn the witch!

3. Emotional satisfaction — gives my rage a home: fuck the police!

4. Innocence — absolves me of complicity: I’m not the Devil

5. Identity consolidation — tells me who I am by naming who I’m not: I’m anti-Devil

6. Permission/urgency — justifies the intensity of my response: if we’re facing the Devil, anything goes

7. Bonding — shared enemy creates sense of community: We are anti-Devil!

8. Cosmic meaning-making — related to legibility but deeper; it explains why bad things happen to good people: this is the Devil’s work

9. Simplicity — reduces the mental load of holding complexity

10. A finish line — related to agency but meeting a deeper need; the promise that there will be an end to suffering: once the Devil is dead, peace will prevail

Turns out: the Devil is meeting a lot of needs. This is its strength, and why it is so hard to replace. It also gets a lot right: it is correct that harm is being perpetrated, that some people are more responsible than others, and that an urgent response is necessary. All of these needs are valid, and important: if we are to let go of our belief in the Devil, we will need to find new strategies to meet these needs.

What I want to do in this post is provide alternative ways to meet these needs that the Devil is meeting, to support people in letting go of the need to believe in the Devil himself. But I feel a need first to explain why we have to let go of the Devil, even as I don’t think this is a matter of persuasion. I believe in the somatic truth my friend Jesse Marshall once articulated:

The body will only let go of the old strategy if it is offered embodied experiences of the safety and efficacy of other strategies.

That is to say: I don’t believe that I can persuade you cognitively if you don’t already agree. The ask is too great, and I want to honor the need for safety that makes us resistant to letting go. So what I want to try instead is to invite curiosity, for you to join me in this inquiry: what would it look like to build a mass movement without an enemy?

Choosing a more honest story

Many of you have probably heard the quote popularized in The Usual Suspects:

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

I want to postulate the opposite: the greatest trick we ever pulled was convincing ourselves that the Devil exists. Believing in the Devil IS the source of his power: it is we who project him into the world.

I believe the Devil is a fiction: a story we make up to help us make sense of the world. Which means that to replace the Devil we have to tell a better story: a “truer” fiction.

First, some definitions. When I say “the Devil” I am bundling several related concepts, each of which I see building on the previous in a slippery slope that ultimately leads us astray.

1. The first is what I call “oppositional” politics (following the brilliant work of AnaLouise Keating, as discussed here). This is the act of defining ourselves in reaction to—and opposition to—an other: we are this because we are not that. This is distinct from “othering” (below). While this rhetorical move is completely understandable—identity formation in human development necessarily begins in opposition—it makes the mistake of allowing the existing reality to define us… which means there is no way out. To accept the terms is to stay imprisoned by their logic: by definition we require the thing we are opposing to exist, and thus can’t transform it. Here’s Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, in my view best-in-class on this:

   It is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counter stance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat… All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against.

   This move accepts the logic of us vs them: the precondition for violence.

2. The second aspect I am referring to is what john powell calls “othering.” This is what I see as the crux of our current politics (as practiced across the political spectrum, albeit in asymmetrical ways with different impacts), and what I am seeking to replace with a Politics of Belonging. My definition is related to but slightly different from what john and OBI use: for me at its core “othering” is about refusing to recognize someone else’s inherent belonging. It is the first step toward dehumanization: it sees them no longer as human first, but “other” first. This move legitimates violence.

3. The final aspect—the invocation of the Devil—is about the creation of an enemy. This completes the three-part move. It is a deeper form of “othering” that sees the “other” not just as not belonging, but as an active threat, as a problem that (implicitly or explicitly) must be eradicated. This is the final step in dehumanization; this move actually necessitates violence (as discussed here).

The Devil is this third step, but it requires the first two. I’m interested in interrupting the story at all three levels, and I think there is a story that can do that: the story of belonging. This is the offering that launched this newsletter back in 2019: the invitation to create an “us” without a “them.” So what’s the alternative?

1. Define what we are for (not only what we are against). It is important to be clear about what we oppose: there is a necessary role for opposition (we should be anti-fascism!) Listening to our resistance is an important clue to what we value: if we oppose injustice… we are drawn to justice. If we oppose coercion, we are drawn to consent. The opposite of oppression is liberation. The invitation is to not let our opposition be the only thing that defines us: what we are for must survive the elimination of the thing we are against. Being anti-fascist is good; but who are we after we defeat fascism? I love John Paul Lederach’s framing:

   How do we create spaces and processes that encourage people to address and articulate a positive sense of identity in relationship to other people and groups, but not in reaction to them?

2. Embrace difference, not domination. As I have written previously: the very act of defining an “us” by definition creates a “them”: “them” who are not “us.” Identities and categories have boundaries, of necessity. The key here is to create an “other” without “othering”: it is refusing to make that difference the source of a power-over relationship, of superiority/inferiority. It is to celebrate difference without domination. Humberto Maturana Romesin and Gerda Verden-Zoller have my favorite articulation of this aspiration in their work on the “biology of love,” where they write:

   Love is a manner of relational behavior through which the other arises as a legitimate other.

3. Bridge, don’t break. This is the hard part: we have defined ourselves, we have acknowledged the other; now we must bridge the difference. The temptation is to engage in what john calls “breaking”; what I would call creating an enemy. It is to start from the truth that others are causing harm, and leap to the fiction that therefore they are the enemy. Instead we are invited to a more difficult truth: that their behavior is harmful and must stop, but their humanity is non-negotiable. The minimum ask here: refuse to “break.” Refuse to take the easy off-ramp of naming the enemy. The harder task, if you have the capacity (and not everyone does at all times, and that’s okay): is what john calls “bridging” to the other.

I want to be clear that there is no symmetry between the “us/them” we are imagining here. There is a massive structural difference in power between the Trump regime dehumanizing trans activists and migrants, and social justice activists naming Trump as an enemy. The former is an existential threat: the explicit threat of state violence targeting minoritized identity for destruction. The second is a response to that threat. They are NOT the same. And yet: they operate from the same logic; they accept the premise that there is an us and a them. We didn’t create the us/them, but we can choose not to go along.

A Politics of Belonging sets as a boundary condition refusing to “other.” Opposition is okay; othering is not. That proscription extends to breaking: we must decline to create an enemy. Those are the boundaries. The invitation goes further: we are invited to self-define based on what we are for (Keating’s invitation to “post-oppositional” politics). And we are invited to bridge: to connect with the other.

What this looks like in practice

Before I go back to the needs the Devil is meeting, I want to weave some case studies drawn from history that I believe offer a counter to Hoffer’s assertion. Specifically: the Solidarity Movement that emerged in Poland in 1980; the U.S. Civil Rights Movement; and the later stages of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I want to draw three key lessons that illustrate the three moves I’m naming above:

1. Poland explicitly organized around an “us,” a positive identity that was NOT framed purely in opposition. They chose Solidarity, not anti-Communism. This shift proved transformational: Solidarity leader Adam Michnik explained that “after years of reference to ‘they,’ Poles could finally visualize ‘us.’”

2. The U.S. Civil Rights Movement—particularly as embodied in the coordinated communication of leaders like Dr. King and John Lewis—repeatedly declined to “other” White people. Instead they named the harms (segregation, racism) while still inviting the “other” to join the Beloved Community: a place where we all belong. Many White people accepted this invitation, marching in solidarity with Black people to demand an end to segregation.

3. Mandela walked the longest bridge, ultimately negotiating directly with the leader of the apartheid regime that had imprisoned him. And though he named De Klerk’s responsibility for harm, he nonetheless chose to engage his humanity, creating the conditions for a negotiated end to apartheid.

The common thread I want to uplift here: the decision not to “other” or name an enemy created the conditions that enabled transformation: it allowed the other side to defect. Polish members of the Communist Party joined Solidarity. White people marched with Black civil rights activists. And De Klerk ended apartheid from atop the regime itself.

This is my counter to Hoffer. THIS is what naming the Devil cannot do. There is an empirical basis for building mass movements—especially SUCCESSFUL mass movements—that decline to anchor on a Devil.

Reclaiming the Devil’s power: refusing to live within the lie

If believing in the Devil is the source of his power, then letting go of that belief is an opportunity to reclaim our alienated power. This was the central insight of Vaclav Havel’s famous The Power of the Powerless (the essay that inspired Polish Solidarity): the power of the system depended on the everyday actions of ordinary people. Havel called this the daily choice to “live within the lie.”

This profound essay had the dual impact of showing the wizard behind the curtain (the system depends on a lie), AND showing people the agency they possessed (if they stop believing in the wizard… the system will collapse). How do you defeat totalitarianism? Not by waging an unwinnable war against Moscow, but by withdrawing consent from the system. By refusing to live within the lie. As the famous line goes:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

I want to walk through what I see happening: the fiction that got us here is no longer serving. This is the good news: increasingly people are refusing to live within the lie.

The breakdown starts with people’s lived experience: people feel viscerally that the system isn’t working; they feel and see the harm, and start looking for answers. They start questioning the story, and begin to realize that the fiction is a lie. That they were set up to fail, that the system isn’t a meritocracy, that the promised gains are not being delivered. And they begin to consider a new conclusion: actually, the system is rigged. And from this insight we reach what seems like a logical conclusion: someone is rigging the system. We create the Devil. This is a better fiction: it’s closer to the truth. The system is rigged; some people are benefiting and are causing harm to others.

Here’s a graphic that tries to illustrate this move. This is an adaptation of the metacrisis image I created in my last post: the key idea is that the top—the results of the system—flow from the foundational logic of that system, and the whole system is made coherent and intelligible through story (the middle layer). I’m deliberately obscuring the foundational logic of “what’s actually happening” because I think that is the lie the Devil is hiding. More on that below.

The paradigm in the left panel is the neoliberal paradigm that is breaking down. It assumes that humans are naturally competitive and individualist; that relying on the market is the best way to meet everyone’s needs; and that if everyone works hard the system will produce good outcomes. On the right is our actual experience: we know the system isn’t working, we begin to realize the story we’ve been told is a lie… and this is the opening.

If we stop here we miss the deeper truth; we miss exposing the foundation layer—the logic that is driving the system. The deeper truth is that the system isn’t being rigged by the Devil (whoever we may think that is). The deeper truth is that the system is working exactly as designed: on a paradigm of separation and domination. The real Devil is not any person or people but rather the underlying logic of the system: the lie that humans are only fundamentally selfish and competitive, and that supremacy and domination are the only ways to stay safe.

This is the fatal flaw of naming an enemy, an external Devil: it doesn’t actually address the root layer driving the crises. If we get rid of one billionaire, the same system logic will produce another. Worse: by naming a Devil—by participating in us/them politics and othering someone we deem an enemy—we are actually participating in the system’s logic. We are engaging in the logic of separation that justifies domination. As Black feminist Audre Lorde wrote:

The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.

Choosing belonging

This is our power. We can make a different choice. We can refuse to live within the lie, and choose to live within the truth. The fatal flaw of the current system is that it is built on a lie: as our current crises so clearly show, the current system is contrary to life. It is destructive and parasitic: of our planet, our relationships, and ultimately our psyches. As the AI arms race aptly illustrates: we are collectively creating outcomes that no one actually wants. That is the inevitable logic of this system. And the overwhelming public backlash to unregulated AI testifies to the widespread yearning for a different system: one that serves life, not profit. That honors our inherent birthright to belonging and significance.

The power of belonging as a system and story is that it is true, and internally coherent. It does not depend on a lie—AND it can deliver the goods. In this story the foundation is a truth of how humans evolved: we are wired for coordination and cooperation, or we would still be stuck in caves. The story reminds us that interdependence and caring for everyone’s needs is the best way to achieve mutual thriving. And acting from foundation belonging through solidarity and interdependence has the benefit of actually creating a system that works for everyone.

We are right that we need to assertively push back on those who are actively causing harm (billionaires, people launching wars, people supporting fascism). What I’m inviting in this post is that we don’t make the mistake of making them the Devil. That we invite them to join us in a world of belonging… without waiting for them to agree. The existence of billionaires like Tom Steyer shows that the so-called Devil can join our side, can support policies that transform the system that created him. Encouraging such defections is important. And: the harmful behavior of billionaires like Elon Musk means we can’t wait for their transformation.

Mandela didn’t wait for De Klerk: he applied pressure, he demanded accountability…. AND he bridged to his humanity. Solidarity didn’t name Brezhnev as the enemy, but nor did they wait for Soviet transformation. Instead they built what Vaclav Havel called the “parallel polis,” reclaiming power to meet their own needs without waiting on a totalitarian state. Dr. King never dehumanized White people, even as he excoriated their behavior and demanded accountability (perhaps most famously in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail).

Our belief in the Devil is the difference between revolution (accepts the logic of us/them and seeks to put new people on top, ultimately perpetuating a cycle of violence) and transformation (changing the conditions so no one is on top: there is no “other”).

Meeting our needs through belonging

I think at some level we know the Devil doesn’t exist; it just meets so many needs that it feels scary to let it go. So let’s revisit our needs; here’s a table with how I see it (thanks to Claude for backstopping my woeful graphic design skills):

I want to be honest that there are some tradeoffs. There are some losses that we have to be honest about: we lose the emotional satisfaction of blaming the other, and the sense of innocence that comes with externalizing the Devil. I think those are compensated for by reclaiming a sense of agency: we’re no longer solely dependent on other people changing, we can start building the world we long for right here right now, by refusing to live within the lie and refusing to continue the logic of us/them and othering.

And we lose the simplicity and seductive belief that if only we defeat the Devil we can finally have peace: that’s a genuine loss. The work we are undertaking is more complex; it feels harder at some level. And: there are some massive wins for Belonging. Primarily because it is the only story that targets the root layer: what it loses in simplicity it makes up for in truth. And therefore it is also the only approach that can lead to transformation. Not the end of all violence and conflict, but the end of systems of domination and supremacy.

I want to close here with my favorite passage from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It’s an exchange between a tenant farmer being evicted from his land, and a tractor driver being paid to bulldoze the property. It’s worth quoting at length:

Tenant: “Who gave you orders? I'll go after him. He's the one to kill.”

Tractor driver: “You're wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told them: 'Clear those people out or it's your job.’”

“Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a Board of Directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank.”

“Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were: 'Make the land show profit or we'll close you up.’”

“But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.’’

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property’s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.’’

“I got to figure,’’ the tenant said. “We all got to figure. There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.”

I love this passage, because you watch the farmer follow the logic of the Devil to its logical conclusion, then it is the tractor driver—himself complicit in the system—who reaches the insight about the logic of the system. Naming that root lie then illuminates the potential for transformation: if the system is manmade, then we can change it.

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I wanted to give this topic a full post, because it is THE hardest thing about a Politics of Belonging. My invitation lands as: “you want me to bridge with the Devil? Are you saying the Devil belongs too?”

And I’m saying: what if there is no Devil? Might that make it possible to build a movement… for all of us?

I want to give the last line here to Ursula Le Guin, one of my favorite artists declining to live within the binary lie. May it be so:

I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated.

In community,

Brian

p.s. I’ll be in public conversation about these topics… next week! Please join me June 9th for an interactive conversation with Humanity in Action Executive Director Azi Khalili (I was a fellow with HIA in Copenhagen in 2004, and served on the board; I’m a big fan of the organization) :