Letters from the Devil: Snodhopper on the Perils of Social Justice Melinda Selmys In the spirit of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. Originally published in Issue VI of Vulgata, April 2002.

I have recently had the misfortune to receive another ill-informed letter from one of our new batch of junior tempters, and, although I did quite enjoy discussing the matter with those in charge of his training, I feel that I should say something on the matters about which he had been so confused. The issue at hand is the rather pesky problem of social justice. On the whole, of course, we all know that it is a bad thing -- if all of the terrible works of peace and good-will that well meaning humans are always babbling about were to actually be instated, well, I hardly need describe the dreadful state of affairs that would be brought about. However, it seems that the education of this particular young devil was somewhat lacking in the techniques which we commonly use in order to transform a human's desire for social justice into a potent weapon in the arsenal of our father below.

There are a number of very useful procedures which can be easily employed on most humans. The first involves the  simple replacement of genuine concern for other human beings with anger at those who are supposed to be the cause of human suffering. So, for example, if your human's mawkish heart is turned to jelly by pictures of children starving in Africa, let his compassion be turned into rage at some local purveyor of footwear. If he is struck with pity for the man sleeping on the street, let him burn with hatred for the mayor who isn't doing enough to solve the problem. Work with this hatred over time and build it up to the point where his concern for the people who have been hurt is entirely eclipsed by his hatred of those responsible.

This will be useful to you in a number of ways. Firstly, it will almost certainly prevent any sort of useful action. Compassion for the poor and the downtrodden has the unfortunate tendency to turn into genuine work to alleviate their sufferings. Hatred for large corporations or governments is likely to turn into nothing more damaging than some flashy newspaper headlines. Remember, the ideal social activism is the modern mass protest: they are almost completely ineffectual in achieving change, there are always enough violent lunatics around to give the activists a bad name, and our agents within the police force will ensure that protesters get a useful taste of persecution in order to pique their anger. Ideally, you should be able to get your human so riled up that they actually become one of the violent lunatics, but if you cannot you will still have scored a significant victory against the development of any real sense of charity.

It should also be noted here that protesters and demonstrators can often be distracted from genuine social concerns by concern over their right to demonstrate. Now, obviously I am not implying that a "right to demonstrate" is a bad thing as far as we are concerned -- there is still a great deal to be said for the government that rounds up activists and has them cleanly shot. However, in a modern democracy, we can still do a great deal with the issue of the right to protest. The simplest, and most productive maneuver, is to send your charge to some protest where they will be badly treated. Following this experience, lead them slowly into a greater and greater sense of outrage over the treatment of demonstrators. Let them become so consumed with anger at the way they were treated that they entirely forget the people who they were originally protesting on behalf of, and let them, instead be primarily concerned with the injustices that they feel they have suffered at the hands of the authorities. This will simultaneously prevent them from any potentially damaging outreach action, and focus their attention on themselves and upon the ways in which they have personally been victimized.

You will also wish to attempt to produce the sort of activist who cares more about the cause than about the people. Let your charge begin by caring about the plight of children in the slums, and end by leaving a child to die in the gutters so that the story will make the press the next day. We have, for example, produced many feminists and development experts who are willing to forcibly subject real third world women to unwanted IUDs, sterilization and abortions for the cause of "improving the quality of life" for third world women. Ideally, these activists may be led to entirely confuse their original intentions with the methods by which they hoped to achieve them. For a particularly fine example of this, examine the efforts of modern population controllers: they originally supported birth control because they felt that overpopulation was causing, or would cause, devastating human suffering. Now over the years it has been demonstrated that this is entirely untrue, but -- and here's where our people have been particularly clever -- we have managed to convince them that population growth is evil in and of itself, regardless of its real effects on real human beings. Thus we have billions of dollars that could go to alleviating hunger and disease, and thousands of people who could be doing genuine charitable work, being expended on an effort that actually causes human suffering!

You will find it useful, once you have gotten your charge angry at some institution, to broaden the target of that anger. If they begin by hating a particular chocolate company, let them come to hate all corporate establishment, and then the entire capitalist system and all of the governments who support it, and finally lead them to hate anyone who holds any visible power. Call this vague collage of miss-matched institutions and people "the establishment" or "the system" or, if your charge is young, simply "the man." This term should be sufficiently ill-defined that it can be easily expanded to include our enemy's Church, the family, legitimate government, and anyone else who holds authority of any kind. Now set your charge upon the mission of "tearing down the system," or "overturning the patriarchy," or some other fool term which, in time, you will bring to mean anything that they don't personally happen to like. The finest examples of this technique are usually to be found amongst the youth: we have managed to so confuse a great many young minds that they actually think that their parents and teachers are in the same category as the most oppressive tyranny or the most unethical corporation, and they actually believe that their basic human rights are being violated when a police officer prevents them from smoking pot.

If you can achieve this, you will have come a long way towards producing exactly the sort of young hooligan that is most beneficial to our cause. He will be disobedient, self-absorbed, self-righteous, perpetually angry, and best of all he will believe that the enemy is merely an invention of all of the forces that he hates most.

If you are finding it difficult to harden your subject's concern into a healthy hatred, you may find that his compassion can instead be dissolved into a mushy cloud. Direct his feelings towards as distant an object as possible -- people suffering on the other side of the globe are always infinitely preferable to people with whom he might actually have to interact. If possible, convince him that he hasn't the time or the money to actually do anything to help those poor people, but none the less let his heart be moved with great sighs of pity. Direct him towards some completely ineffectual and symbolic manifestation of solidarity or compassion -- ringing some local monument with a chain of peace flags or some such rubbish -- and then puff him up with great pride at his accomplishment. If possible, induce in him the greatest disdain for those who do not participate in his particular useless endeavor ("How can you eat meat when poor people in India haven't enough grain to live on?") But most of all, ensure that he never has any genuine contact with those for whom he supposedly has compassion. Indeed, he may be harmlessly induced to feel a great good will, and perhaps even love, for largely imaginary Nigerians, provided he has only disdain and contempt for the real people in his own neighbourhood.

If you follow these guidelines, you should be able to make great progress in preventing any damage that might arise from involvement in social justice issues. Indeed, if you do your work well you may very well turn your budding Good Samaritan into a solid and intractable Pharisee.

With greatest affection,

 Snodhopper

 Tempter's College, Secretary of Propaganda