as a means to intimidate and subordinate a racial minority.[iv]

Here I want to focus on the different ways in which illusions—defined as beliefs that fail
to correspond with reality—can bestow meaning on violence. Illusions can have
dangerous side-effects, even when they seem innocuous at first. Sometimes
violence is prompted by relatively mild illusions, which deviate only slightly
from the truth, but sometimes it is inspired by grandiose delusions that are
completely detached from the real world. Sometimes these violence-inspiring
illusions refer to ourselves, and sometimes they concern the world around us.

Moral
illusions

There is one type of illusion that affects virtually
every perpetrator of violence, and which is the primary driving force behind
aggression: the illusion of moral righteousness. This illusion belongs to the
category of positive illusions, which
have been studied extensively by psychologists.[v] They are relatively mild, flatteringthe coming utopia, those forces
had to be eliminated. The ideological need for imaginary saboteurs and traitors
was commensurate with the magnitude of these leaders’ failures.[xi] If necessary, whole populations had to be
exterminated, if they didn’t behave in the way demanded by revolutionary dogma.

Delusions and utopian thinking also played a large
role in the other major politically-motivated catastrophe of violence of the
20th century, namely the one brought about by Nazi Germany. For a variety of
reasons, the leading ideologues of National Socialism had convinced themselves
that the Jews were a blight on humanity, a sort of parasitical life form that
needed to be expunged from the future utopia of the Third Reich. While the
Nazis were drawing from a rich history of Christian demonization of the Jews,
with antisemitism having been rampant throughout Europe for a