Thread by @HillelNeuer

"The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in you."

"You can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behavior is morally justified.

Prescient John Cleese:

This is from 1987—two decades before Twitter—yet brilliantly explains the psychology of today's extremists who flourish in the age of social media.

Full text: "We've heard a lot about extremism recently. A nastier, harsher atmosphere everywhere..."

"More abuse and bother boy behavior, less friendliness and tolerance and respect for parents.

Alright, but what we never hear about extremism is its advantages. Well the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good — because it provides you with enemies."

"Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in you.

Attractive isn't it?"

"So if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway—and you therefore enjoy abusing people—then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons. And that if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured..."

"and courteous and rational all the time. So if you want to feel good, become an extremist."

"OK—now you have a choice. If you join the hard left. they'll give you their list of authorized enemies. Almost all kinds of authority, especially the police, the city, Americans, judges, multinational corporations, public schools, various newspaper owners, fox hunters..."

"generals, class traitors and, of course, moderates."

"Or, if you'd rather be an extremist on the hard right, no problem. Fine, you still get a lovely list of enemies, only they're different ones: noisy minority groups, unions, Russia, weirdos, demonstrators, welfare sponges, meddlesome clergy, peaceniks, the BBC, strikers..."

"social workers, communists, and, of course, moderates.

And upstart actors."

"Now once you're armed with one of these super lists of enemies, you can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behavior is morally justified.

So, you can strut around abusing people, and telling them you could eat them for breakfast..."

"and still think of yourself as 'a champion of the truth'—a 'fighter for the greater good'—are not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are."