Realm of evil
The term evil empire ( Engl. : Evil empire ) is a by former US President Ronald Reagan and US conservatives coined term for the Soviet Union . Reagan first used it in a March 8, 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando , Florida .
Evil Empire Speech
Authorship and first use of the term evil empire
The expression "Evil Empire" is said to have been created by Reagan's speechwriter Anthony R. Dolan for the draft Orlando speech of March 8, 1983 (later known as "Evil Empire Speech"). Dolan had therefore used the expression in the paragraph he had written in the speech that gave the Evil Empire Speech its name. The Evil Empire paragraph of the more than 30-minute Orlando speech was the centerpiece and, with 72 words, represented the longest sentence of the speech.
According to Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz (2003), Reagan's metaphor of the Soviet Union as the Empire of Evil comes from Hal Lindsey , one of Reagan's spiritual advisors.
- Gallery: Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire Speech (National Archives, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum )
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Foreign policy context
At the beginning of 1983, a worldwide peace movement still hoped to prevent the stationing of new American medium-range weapons in Europe. These Pershing II missiles were viewed by the Soviet Union as particularly dangerous because their planned deployment in Europe opened up the possibility of a rapid attack against the Soviet leadership in the form of a so-called " decapitation strike ". Your flight times were erroneously estimated by the Russian intelligence service KGB to be only four to six minutes. Since such a rapid nuclear attack would not have left the Soviet leadership time to immediately initiate a “retaliatory” or counter-attack in accordance with the logic of mutual deterrence , the Soviet leadership feared that it would lose all deterrent capacity.
In this situation, Ronald Reagan, who ended the disarmament talks after taking office as US President, attacked the Soviet Union in his sensational speech two days after the federal elections in March 1983 at a preachers' congress in a dramatic tightening of the tone as the "empire of evil", with which it could not coexist, called for a worldwide " crusade " against communism and announced on March 23, 1983 TV the US SDI program in which one in space installed shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles should establish that the United States would have made possible an unpunished nuclear first strike to end the "balance of horror" and would have challenged the 1972 ABM Treaty and fueled fears of a third world war .
In the Evil Empire paragraph of his March 8, 1983 Orlando speech, Reagan urged evangelical ministers to oppose a "nuclear freeze." The “nuclear freeze” could have prevented the installation of nuclear-armed missiles in western Europe , which Reagan would have wanted to counter Soviet missiles in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, the United States under Reagan supplied weapons to every guerrilla movement that fought against socialism (such as Afghanistan , Angola or Nicaragua ), invaded Grenada in 1983 and Reagan began a kind of psychological warfare against the Soviet Union . The expression "Empire of Evil" is also placed in this context and should be able to be interpreted in the context of the Cold War as part of the propaganda for the purpose of psychological warfare.
Demonizing other states was not a new phenomenon in US politics in the Reagan administration. The designation of the Soviet Union as "evil empire" as well as "totalitarian evil" is however an example that under Reagan foreign policy issues were more clearly viewed as a struggle between " good and evil " in a dichotomous world than under the previous US -Governments had been the case.
Religious-semantic background
American dispensationalism can be seen in the background of the term Empire of Evil . There is a pronounced Armageddon theology, of which Hal Lindsey is one of the representatives. This theology, in which apocalyptic plays a major role, sees signs of an imminent final battle between good and evil in contemporary events. This theology already had an influence on American politics under Ronald Reagan and later under George W. Bush ( Axis of Evil ).
The well-known formulations of the Soviet Union as the realm of evil by Ronald Reagan or of the "axis of evil" and the "enemies of freedom" by George W. Bush are considered evidence that the structure of conspiracy- charged position assignments in good guys and bad guys belongs to the standard repertoire of evangelically influenced US politicians in the context of an obviously violent semantics .
The term Evil Empire used by Reagan can be seen as part of a specific religious semantic that is considered to be primarily responsible for a significant mobilization success within the evangelical camp in the USA. The “ New Christian Right ” in the USA is pursuing the objective of establishing its organizational power in the political culture of the USA and is a prominent example of a religiously motivated, sacrifical enforcement strategy in the political arena. The “New Christian Right” in the USA , which consists of an electoral alliance of four dominant currents of white US evangelicals ( Fundamentals , Pentecostals , Charismatics and Neo-Evangelicals ), mobilized 25 percent of the US electorate as of 2004 and is pursuing a program of action that legitimizes their interests in asserting themselves from a sacrificially constructed argument.
Historical context
In the 1970s a strategic change began from expressive protest to instrumental establishment in the political establishment, the triggering event of which can be seen as the election of the avowed Baptist preacher James Earl (Jimmy) Carter as president of the USA, who as a member of the Democratic Party also for liberal values or interests. The political strategists of the conservatives recognized the mobilization potential of moral issues such as the fight against homosexuality , abortion and pornography , protection of the family , reintroduction of school prayer and strived for electoral success with the help of evangelical electorates.
Already in the 1970s the evangelical preachers succeeded with the help of formulas that are related to the term kingdom of evil , such as “soldiers of God”, “army of moral activists” or “temple expulsion” (meaning the expulsion of liberals from the US government) to mobilize the Christian fundamentalist camp. Open calls for victims called on the “believers” to use their personal resources for the “good fight”. Prostitutes , homosexuals, adulterers , criminals , communists and other “godless” were declared to be punishable by a punishing god. The publications of the fundamentalists made use of a semantic of purity which, according to Franz J. Hinkelammert's judgment, was "unparalleled in primitiveness and slander, in hatred and incitement to violence only in anti-Semitic literature" of the first half of the 20th century. Since the success of the Moral Majority , founded in 1979 , the broad-based Christian end-time preachers in the USA have acted as the political mouthpiece of fundamentalist circles. Their story prophecy aimed at a “last battle for God's kingdom” and rhetorically set a world conspiracy by communists, secular humanists , peace activists , so-called “ perverts ” (especially homosexuals), liberal Christians , Catholics , UNO , Europe or later primarily by the Islam ahead. In the founding manifesto of Moral Majority it was said that the USA should become morally "clean", the "unclean" must therefore be exterminated.
Millienialism , creationism and dispensationalism and the end-time expectations associated with these ideological confessions have achieved great popularity in American culture compared to European standards to this day. The top-selling novels by Hal Lindsay and Timothy LaHaye are considered to be very good examples of how the evangelical elites succeeded in transporting apocalyptic ideas from the churches into popular culture. In the early 1970s, Lindsay distributed his book "The Late Planet Earth" (title in German translation from 1971: "Alter Planet Erde woin? In the run-up to the Third World War"), which appeared in 91 editions until 1990, was available in supermarkets and airports, sold over 28 million copies and exerted influence in the highest ranks of the Reagan administration.
Through their mass media impact, extremely influential television preachers such as Jerry Falwell , Pat Robertson or Timothy LaHaye recognized that the dissatisfaction of their "believers" who were apolitical from religious convictions in Protestantism in the late 1970s with the moral conditions in the USA was so high that one religiously motivated resistance promised success. A policy strategy aimed at effective enforcement came about with a synthesis of operative-professional neoconservatives with their know-how in the legal , campaign and lobbying areas and communicative -professional evangelicals with their know-how in the field of interpretation and recruitment, the from 1979 onwards it created an increasingly potent electoral alliance that made a significant contribution to the presidency of George W. Bush primarily through its religious semantics and thus achieved its greatest success to date.
Ideological background
The power-enforcement discourse used by the evangelical reflection elite was based on the awareness of a deep moral crisis in the USA. The 1960s and 1970s, with advancing socio-cultural liberalization ( upgrading the status of women and the “black” civil rights movement , legalizing abortion , banning school prayer, etc.) were experienced by many conservative Protestants as “trauma”. They perceived their situation as marginalized and used a “ scapegoat mechanism ” in their search for semantic possibilities of crisis management . As a solution to the crisis of the “culture of life” diagnosed by them, they saw the overthrow of the “un-American” liberals, mythicalized as a scapegoat . Liberals and evangelicals no longer fought over the subject of the dispute itself, but raised the conflict to a higher level by placing themselves in a relationship with their opponents and demanding changes on this level. The conspiracy-theoretical scapegoat projection came about, with the help of which the originally very heterogeneous evangelical camp was united on the basis of the sacrificial awareness of crises. The evangelical camp's scapegoat projection suggested that the liberal establishment, especially the Supreme Court and the federal government , public schools , universities , trade unions and the media had conspired to undermine the Christian mission and dissolve it into a humanism .
For the rhetorical and practical willingness to use violence of ideology - despite the different eschatological interpretations of history of the various evangelical currents - the at least favorable influence of the theories of millennialism (acute end-time expectation that uses certain biblical texts as literal interpretation for the political and social present) and the Dispensationalism can be seen as partly responsible. The interpretation of millennialism oriented towards the “end” of the world is combined with ideas of the “beginning” in creationism (the dating of which is also derived from the Bible) and derives the “second coming of Christ” as imminent, supported by dispensationalism which, like millennialism, aims to deduce the “second coming of Christ” by reading signs of the “end” from the immediate present. The purity semantics used in the publications of the fundamentalists with their aggression against the “godless” is legitimized by using historical theological models to “de-historize” (Matthias Sellmann, 2007) the present. With legitimation myths such as millennialism or the figure of the american destiny, they masked the violence of their own actions. The victims of their actions are reinterpreted as victims of the "punishing God". The present is valued as a metaphysical judgment and self-initiated violence as the executive work of "God". They base the ideological confirmation of state power not on the democratic participation of the citizens, but on a metaphysical figurehead. Franz J. Hinkelammert wrote about evangelical demagogues in the USA in 1989 that fundamentalism is "probably the most important form of thinking that can derive a positive meaning from destruction", since "every catastrophe" according to "fundamentalist apocalyptic thinking" is a "sign of the times" will be seen "that announces the return of Christ". Fundamentalism is therefore “probably the only ideology that moves many people and that makes sense of nuclear war. As a nuclear Armageddon, he is taken as a sign of hope in the vision of the future. Where everything is destroyed, everything will be fine. "
The radical apocalyptists are not representative of the entire fundamentalist spectrum, but they play a central role in the politicization of the diverse fundamentalist scene in the service of the republicans or the neoconservatives. Most leaders of the Christian right profess end-time speculation of the Armageddon type. Hal Lindsey's bestseller "The Late Planet Earth" exerted a significant influence on other end-time authors and can be seen in the context of a Schmittian friend-foe logic. According to these ideas, reading the Bible reveals to evangelicals the preliminary stages of the apocalypse: terrorist attacks , environmental disasters or famine crises and their victims are therefore not viewed as humanitarian challenges, but as important confirmations of the interpretation of history. A reproach against this ideology is that the eschatological texts actually pursue the goal of disguising one's own affinity for violence. These ideas also support US messianism . They also propagate a militancy in the enforcement of US interests perceived as “true” and define the US in an experience of chosen triumph , i.e. as the heir to historical, but above all moral winners. One accusation is that this results in a Manichaean dualism that does not develop the ability to reflect on one's own inadequacies, but is a priori convinced of the correctness and feasibility of one's own plans. According to this worldview, the “chosen” face the “bad guys”, while the “chosen” would be defined by whether or how they position themselves in relation to the USA.
After Reagan had identified the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" in front of the evangelical audience in March 1983, the Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the Washington lobbyist Thomas Dine , executive director of one for good relations between the United States and America, at the end of October 1983 under the heading "The Influence of the Prophets" Israel recruiting committee, who said Reagan believes it is entirely possible that the world is drawing near to the Last Judgment and the "decisive battle of Armageddon between good and evil," according to Revelation . Reagan said to him on October 18, 1983: “As you know, I keep going back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and to the signs that heralded Armageddon. I find myself wondering whether we are the generation that is seeing this happening to us. I don't know if you've heard any of these prophecies lately. But believe me, they certainly describe the time we are living now. "
Later developments in US leadership language
The Manichaean-dichotomous language, which divides the world into “good and bad”, uses a simplistic visual language and can generally be understood as an expression of a form of secularized religious language typical for the USA , later represented an essential aspect in concentrated form and clarity the rhetoric of George W. Bush. In this context, Bush's metaphor of the "axis of evil", as presented by Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address, fits in well . By equating Iran , Iraq and North Korea, Bush recalled both the term " Axis powers " from World War II and Reagan's "evil empire".
Bush also spoke of a “conflict between good and evil” and “moral truth” with regard to the “fight against international terrorism” and did not use the term “axis of evil” for geographically or politically coherent states, but for unequivocal clarification who is the enemy to be fought in official US foreign policy. Bush expressed the rhetorical finalization of this fight as the victory of the USA over terrorism with the words: "I believe that good will triumph over evil."
Reactions and further course
Reagan's speech to fundamentalist Christians in Orlando, Florida in March 1983, in which he referred to the Soviet Union as the "empire of evil" in apocalyptic metaphor, aroused worldwide attention and concern.
Reactions in the US and the West
Reagan's simplistic description of the world situation as an eternal struggle between "good and evil" and the SDI plans of the Reagan administration, which leading US scientists regarded as technically impractical, led the public to ridicule and compare them to George Lucas' star war saga Star Wars .
The Nuclear Freeze or Freeze Movement, which emerged in 1980 and whose main demand on the United States and the Soviet Union was to “practice a mutual freeze for the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and missiles, as well as for new aircraft, which are primarily intended are to transport nuclear weapons, ”and which Reagan had intended to counter with his speech, remained popular in 1983. On May 3, 1983, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the United States approved a pastoral letter for a nuclear "freeze" and against the deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in western Europe against the Soviet SS-20s .
Reactions in the Soviet Union
Reagan's pathetic rhetoric is said to have been taken literally by the aged and seriously ill Soviet head of state Yuri Andropov and the CPSU Politburo . Andropov therefore firmly counted on a US surprise attack, which Reagan - as he himself had indicated - should secure a place in the history books as the general of the "Third World War".
In Moscow, the Soviet news agency TASS wrote that the expression "evil empire" shows that the US president can think "only in terms of confrontation and a warlike, mad anti-communism".
Further development in the context of nuclear armaments
On November 20, 1983, the ABC broadcast the television film The Day After about the effects of a fictitious nuclear attack on the American city of Kansas City , which caused emotions in an estimated 100 million American viewers. Two days later, the German Bundestag voted against loud protests by 286 to 226 votes for permission to deploy US Pershing II missiles and cruise missiles in the Federal Republic of Germany . The following day, the Soviet Union broke off arms control negotiations in Geneva . On December 30, 1983, the first rockets were ready for use in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 1984, a year with presidential elections, the debate in the United States was met with heightened excitement. Reagan was re-elected and began his second term in January 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev took over leadership of the Soviet Union on March 11, 1985, arms talks resumed in 1986, stalled in October, and resumed in 1987 after Gorbachev's glasnost (openness ) and perestroika (reconstruction) in the Soviet Union. On December 8, 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Washington to sign an agreement to destroy all medium and short-range missiles in Europe, which was the first agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals.
A year after signing the Treaty on the Elimination of Medium-Range Weapons in December 1987, Reagan declared in Moscow that his description of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” came from another time and world.
Trivia
The American group Rage Against the Machine named their second album after Ronald Reagan's name.
Quotes
“Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness - pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world. [...] So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. [...] So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride – the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. [...] I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free [...]. While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith. [...] ”
“[...] I appeal to you to speak out against those who seek to put the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. [...] I call on you, in your discussions about the proposals for a nuclear freeze, to beware of the temptation to be proud - the temptation to bluntly declare yourself to be above it all and to label both sides as equally guilty to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive driving forces of the realm of evil, to call the arms race simply a gigantic misunderstanding and in this way withdraw from the struggle between right and wrong, between good and evil. [...] I ask you to resist the attempts of those people who are holding you back from our efforts, to support the efforts of this administration to keep America strong and free [...] America's military strength is important. But let me add here: I have always insisted that the fight for the world that is taking place now will never be decided by bombs or missiles, armies or military might. The real crisis we face is a spiritual one. [...] "
See also
Web links
- "Evil Empire" Speech by President Reagan - Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (English), YouTube, uploaded from the ReaganFoundation YouTube channel (video: 30:05 min.) On April 3, 2009.
- Reagan’s March 8, 1983 Orlando speech to the National Association of Evangelicals.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Frank Warner: New Word Order Seventeen Years Ago This Week, Ronald Reagan Called The Soviet Union The Focus Of Evil In The Modern World. The `Evil Empire 'Speech Disturbed The Political Universe, But The Critical Words Almost Went Unsaid (Pages 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5 ; English). In: The Morning Call . March 5, 2000.
- ↑ a b Frank Warner: The Evil Empire Speech: The full story of Reagan's historic address ( English ) In: http://frankwarner.typepad.com . December 4, 2003. Accessed May 31, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Matthias Sellmann: Religion and social order - socio-theoretical analyzes . Campus, Frankfurt / Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38367-5 , p. 186-195 .
- ↑ a b c d Andreas Beckmann: The most dangerous year in the Cold War . In: Deutschlandfunk . May 29, 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Markus Kompa: Stanislaw Petrow and the secret of the red button . In: Telepolis . June 20, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ↑ Michael Ploetz and Hans-Peter Müller: Remote-controlled peace movement? - GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double decision . LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7235-1 , p. 125 , p. 158 .
- ^ A b Solveig Grothe: US Missile Defense - SDI Ronald Skywalker's Nightmare . In: Der Spiegel . March 19, 2008. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Dirk Schmittchen: “Rogue States” - “Rogue States” - A stringent US concept in the fight against terrorism and the proliferation of ABC weapons? . In: Science and Politics Foundation (discussion paper) . February 2006. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d Peter Bürger: Armageddon and the apocalyptic "Holocaust" . In: Telepolis . August 12, 2006. Retrieved June 3, 2015.
- ↑ Ursula Lehmkuhl: The Reagan Years: Back to the "old glory" . In: Federal Center for Political Education . October 11, 2008. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
- ↑ a b "Evil empire" - 30 years ago US President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the "Empire of Evil". His speech was directed against critics of nuclear armament in his own country . In: Junge Welt (here: Version on ag-friedensforschung.de) . University of Maryland, College Park. March 9, 2013. Accessed May 31, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d e Frank Warner: In Nine Years, Soviet Empire Fell * Reagan's Evil Empire Speech Started Got It Started, And The Tide Turned In 1987 With Gorbachev ( English ) In: The Morning Call . March 5, 2000. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
- ↑ Elisabeth Binder: Reagan in Berlin - the enemy of yore . In: Der Tagesspiegel . February 7, 2011. Accessed May 31, 2015.
- ↑ Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (“Evil Empire Speech”) (March 8, 1983) ( English ) In: Voices of Democracy: The US Oratory Project . University of Maryland, College Park . Retrieved May 31, 2015.