About Demonize Opposition:

Demonizing the opposition serves to delegitimize contrary views by painting them as not just mistaken, but as malevolent or even evil. By doing so, the person employing this tactic aims to shift the discussion from the realm of ideas to a moral battleground where compromise is seen as capitulation to evil. When one side is painted as immoral or dangerous, it becomes easier to justify extreme measures against them and harder to find common ground.

Demonizing the opposition can serve multiple cognitive functions for the issuer: it simplifies a complex issue into a binary moral conflict and boosts the issuer’s self-esteem by positioning them on the “right” side of that conflict. It’s related to Sanctimony in that both rely on making the other side look unethical or evil. For the target audience, it offers a clear but distorted narrative that is easier to engage with than nuanced debate, but at the expense of factual accuracy and intellectual honesty. It plays on humans’ natural desire for simple solutions and clear differences between sides.

The primary challenge in countering this tactic is that the exaggerated or false portrayal of the opposition often resonates emotionally with people who already hold similar views, making it difficult to dispute the mischaracterization.