--- title: Demonization url: https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/ description: 'Demonization casts an enemy as evil or satanic: Reagan''s evil empire, Khomeini''s Great Satan, Bush''s axis of evil, China''s ox-ghosts. Examples and tells.' section: Techniques --- ![Illustration: a dense, generic Cold War intelligence analyst's evidence wall of press photography, redacted reports and aerial reconnaissance imagery.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-evidence-wall.jpg) Techniques · Classical # Demonization 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/) 3. Demonization In brief Demonization is a propaganda technique that casts an enemy as evil, satanic or morally monstrous, so that compromise with it seems sinful and its defeat a duty; the tell is devil, demon, monster or 'axis of evil' language aimed at a whole state, party or class, unlike condemning a documented atrocity by naming the act. On this page - [History and effect of Demonization propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#history-and-effect-of-demonization-propaganda) - [Demonization, dehumanization and name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#demonization-dehumanization-and-name-calling) - [How Demonization propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#how-demonization-propaganda-works) - [Why Demonization propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#why-demonization-propaganda-works) - [Demonization propaganda examples across eras and sides](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#demonization-propaganda-examples-across-eras-and-sides) - [Scale and difference](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#scale-and-difference) - [How to spot Demonization propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#how-to-spot-demonization-propaganda) - [Where Demonization propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#where-demonization-propaganda-ends-edge-cases-and-legitimate-persuasion) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#sources) - [The science](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/demonization/#the-science) Related techniques [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Loaded language](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/loaded-language/) [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/) Also called Diabolization, Enemy-as-evil, Satanization, Manichaean framing Cast an enemy as evil, satanic or morally monstrous, so that talking to it seems like collusion and defeating it seems like a duty. ## How to spot Demonization: the tell Devil, demon, monster or "evil" language applied to a whole state, party, class or movement, with moral purity claimed for the speaker's side. ## What Demonization is not Condemning a specific, documented atrocity as evil by naming the act, the actors and the evidence. On this page ## History and effect of Demonization propaganda Setting an enemy in the role of the devil is much older than propaganda as a profession; a Dutch broadsheet of the *Rampjaar* of 1672 (see below) already draws political rivals as devils. What the twentieth century added was mass reproduction and the idea of the total war: a conflict fought by whole societies needs a reason that every citizen can feel, and "the enemy is evil" is cheaper to print than a strategic case. Harold Lasswell's *Propaganda Technique in the World War* (1927) treated enemy labelling as a central tool of every belligerent, not of one. Explain moreShow less The emotional work is moral, not physical. Dehumanization draws disgust. Demonization draws dread, outrage and a sense of sacred duty. A viewer who believes the opponent is evil does not need to weigh its claims, and anyone who urges moderation can be cast as soft on evil or as an accomplice. In the cold war the formula grew a second function: it let each side describe its own acts as defensive, since resisting evil cannot itself be evil. The research on moral outrage is in [Moral outrage](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/moral-outrage/); this page does not repeat it. Lineage: Wartime enemy-image posters; IPA name-calling (1937); Lasswell (1927) ## Demonization, dehumanization and name-calling Three neighbouring techniques are easy to mix up, and the differences are the point of this page. Explain moreShow less - **Name-calling** is the general device: a loaded label (traitor, thug, tyrant) that is meant to get the target rejected without examination. It can be mild and it can aim at one person. See [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/). - **Dehumanization** takes the target *below* the human: an ape, a rat, a louse, a germ. The target is a pest, so the verb is exterminate. See [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/). - **Demonization** takes the target *above* or *beside* the human: a devil, a fiend, a monster, an agent of evil. The target is still a will with intentions, which is why it is feared and not only despised. The verb is not exterminate but resist, defeat, cast out, exorcise. The distinction has practical effects. A pest has no motive, so a pest image invites removal and nothing else. A demon has a motive, and the motive is malice, so every act of the enemy is read as evil intent, and every offer from it as a trick. That makes demonization strong at closing off negotiation. It also makes it easy to apply to a state or movement whose members are not individually drawn as anything: the "evil" belongs to the regime, the ideology or the leader, and often the people are said to be its victims. The two techniques often appear in one item, and several images below carry both; the test is which image the sheet leans on, a creature to be cleared away or an evil to be fought. ## How Demonization propaganda works 1. **Name the evil.** A figure (the Devil, a demon, a monster, a "fiend") or an abstract word (evil, satanic, criminal, godless) is attached to the enemy. Often a stock image from religion or folklore does the work, so the audience supplies the meaning. 2. **Claim the opposite for your side.** The speaker is the defender of good, justice, civilisation or the faith. The contrast makes the label self-confirming. 3. **Make the malice general.** The enemy's acts are shown as expressions of one evil will, not as separate decisions with separate causes. A defeat or a policy change is read as a mask. Show all 4Show fewer 1. **Close the exits.** Negotiation, doubt and neutrality are recast as complicity. The only honourable action is to fight, give money, produce or denounce. ## Why Demonization propaganda works Moral categories are fast and carry their own urgency. A claim that the enemy "did X" invites a request for evidence; a claim that the enemy "is evil" does not. Folk and religious imagery also arrives with a ready plot (the devil tempts, the hero drives him out), so a single picture can carry a story the audience already knows. The device works for the speaker's own side too: it explains hardship as the work of a hostile will and offers a righteous remedy. Its cost shows later. A population taught that its opponent is evil is poorly prepared for a negotiated end, and a government that has called a rival satanic has less room to make a deal without losing face. ![Illustration: an empty speaker's podium with a cluster of vintage microphones and rows of empty chairs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/empty-podium.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object ## Demonization propaganda examples across eras and sides - **Dutch Republic, 1672.** After the French invasion and the murder of the brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt by a mob at The Hague on 20 August 1672, an etched broadsheet in the pamphlet *Het Ondersoeck der Geesten* ("The Examination of the Spirits") by Jacob de Lambre drew the two statesmen as winged, horned devils flying over a crowd, under the line "test the spirits, whether they are of the devil, or not" (Rijksmuseum RP-P-OB-77.217, dated 1672 to 1675). The target was a political faction, the labelling was religious, and the printed image followed a killing. See [Ondersoeckt de Geesten, ofse van den Duyvel syn, of niet (the De Witt brothers as devils)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ondersoeckt-de-geesten-de-witt-devils-1672/). - **Canada, 1939 to 1945.** A Victory Bonds poster signed by Harold V. Shaw shows a red-skinned devil with Hitler's forelock and moustache beside the line "Save to beat the Devil! Buy Victory Bonds". The target is a named enemy leader, and the remedy is a purchase. See [Save to Beat the Devil! Buy Victory Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/save-to-beat-the-devil-victory-bonds-canada-1939/). - **United States, 1941.** A U.S. production poster signed Bert Yates, *Stop this monster that stops at nothing*, shows one huge monster with German and Japanese headgear gripping the Statue of Liberty, and a hand with a wrench rising to meet it. Two enemy states become a single evil creature and the answer is factory output. See [Stop this monster that stops at nothing... Produce to the limit! This is your war!](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/stop-this-monster-produce-1941/). Show all 13Show fewer - **Manchukuo, 1934 to 1945 (undated leaflet, placed by Wikimedia Commons at 1936).** A text-only leaflet of the Concordia Association's Jinzhou headquarters reads "If the red devils do not die, the great disorder will not stop" and "Japan and Manchukuo join forces; the Communist bandits will destroy themselves". The Concordia Association was the Japanese-sponsored state's official mass organisation, and "red devils" there meant Chinese communists. See [赤魔不死 日滿合力 (Red Devils Not Dead; Japan and Manchukuo United), Concordia Association Jinzhou leaflet](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/concordia-association-jinzhou-leaflet-red-devils-not-dead-1936/). - **United States, 1945.** A Chinese-language New Year door-god print held by the Library of Congress with a U.S. Office of War Information stamp shows a Chinese soldier stamping on a Japanese soldier; its text calls the Japanese "devils" (*riben gui*) and speaks of "the terror of the Japanese devils". It was meant for Chinese in territory occupied by Japan. The sheet names no publisher, and the record does not say who drew it. See [恭賀新禧 (Happy New Year): Chinese soldier as door god, Chinese-language poster stamped Office of War Information](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/owi-new-year-door-god-chinese-poster-1945/). - **Taiwan and the United States, early 1950s.** A colour print distributed by the U.S. Information Agency and credited to a Taitung middle-school student shows a figure in the style of the folk demon-queller Zhong Kui driving a sword into a green demon labelled Zhu-Mao (Zhu De and Mao Zedong) while a second demon, marked as a Korean communist, points a sickle. See [The Last Days of the Devils (Chinese poster distributed in Taiwan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/last-days-of-the-devils-chinese-1950s/). - **Italy and the United States, 1957.** A two-panel Italian poster in the same USIA series draws Stalin with devil's horns, and then with wings, horns and a halo, in a contrast between Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in February 1956 and a New Year 1957 toast. The second panel accuses Khrushchev of hypocrisy; the devil label is on a man who had already been denounced by his own party. See [Khrushchev and Stalin poster (Italian, Milan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/khrushchev-stalin-poster-italian-1957/). - **United States, 1983.** On 8 March 1983, in Orlando, Florida, President Ronald Reagan told the National Association of Evangelicals, speaking of the Soviet Union and communist rule, that "they are the focus of evil in the modern world", and warned against declaring both sides in the arms race equally at fault and ignoring "the aggressive impulses of an evil empire". Earlier in the same passage he asked his audience to "pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness", so the speech separates the people from the system. The phrase "evil empire" became the label for the speech (Reagan, text at the Miller Center). - **Soviet bloc and allies, 1950s.** The record holds the matching vocabulary from the other camp: a Budapest May Day float of 1 May 1953 drew a dollar-throne financier pulling the strings of helmeted "US" war-makers ([May Day parade satire: dollar-throne figure and 'US'-helmeted puppets, Budapest](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/budapest-mayday-dollar-throne-1953/)), and a North Korean radio commentary of 21 August 1986 called the U.S. side "bestial aggressors" and "imperialists" ([FBIS Daily Report: Nodong Sinmun commentary 'Tears of the Instigator' on the 1976 Panmunjom axe incident](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pyongyang-panmunjom-axe-anniversary-fbis-1986/)). "Imperialist aggressors" and "warmongers" were standard Soviet-bloc terms for the West through the cold war. They are the same device as "evil empire": a state characterised by a moral label and an aggressive will, not by a listed act. - **Iran, 1979.** On 5 November 1979, the day after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini, speaking at Qom to employees of an insurance company, said that "the Great Satan, which is the United States, is gathering the devils around himself with a shout" (translation on the Syracuse University Iran Data Portal). "The Great Satan" (*Shaytan-e Bozorg*) became the standard Iranian state term for the United States; sources report that Khomeini paired it with a "Lesser Satan" for the Soviet Union and a "Little Satan" for Israel. The Iranian broadcast of the embassy statement is archived in [FBIS Daily Report: Tehran Domestic Service on the occupation of the U.S. Embassy (5 Nov 1979)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fbis-tehran-embassy-seizure-1979/). - **Iraq, 1991.** The Baghdad Domestic Service on 17 January 1991, the first day of the air war, read a letter from Saddam Husayn to President George H. W. Bush that opens by calling him "enemy of God and colleague of the devil" and describes a war of believers against "an atheist, unbeliever, sinful aggressor". The state's Revolution Command Council statement of the same day used "infidels, idolators, and hypocrites" for the coalition. See [FBIS Daily Report: Baghdad Domestic Service reads Saddam Husayn's letter to Bush (17 Jan 1991)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fbis-baghdad-saddam-letter-to-bush-1991/) and [Baghdad communique and RCC-Ba'th statement, 17 January 1991 (FBIS translation)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/baghdad-communique-3-fbis-1991/). The label is religious and the target was the head of an opposing state. - **China, 1966 to 1976.** On 1 June 1966 the *People's Daily* ran an editorial titled "Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons" (*Hengsao yiqie niugui sheshen*, often rendered "ox-ghosts and snake-spirits"), written by Chen Boda on Mao Zedong's order. The phrase, from Buddhist and folk demonology, was used against scholars, officials and people said to hold entrenched positions in ideology and culture. The same source records that people so labelled were made to wear caps, collars or placards marking them as "evil spirits", were held in improvised "cowsheds" (*niupeng*) without legal procedure for periods running from days to years, and appeared in posters as demons and clowns (Chinese Posters, "Monsters and Demons (1966-1967)"; Dikötter 2016). Here the demon label was aimed inward at fellow citizens, not at a foreign enemy, and it was an administrative category with physical penalties. It is the clearest case on this page of demonization turned into a mechanism of persecution. - **United States, 2002.** In the State of the Union on 29 January 2002, President George W. Bush named North Korea, Iran and Iraq and said: "States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." The speech coupled the label with specific claims: weapons programmes, support for terror and, for Iraq, that it "has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens". Critics at the time questioned whether the three states were linked enough for an "axis" and disputed the label; North Korea's state television called the remark tantamount to a declaration of war, and Iran rejected it (CNN; Arms Control Association). It is cited for the word, and mixes the technique with conduct-based charges, so it is a mixed case. ![Save to Beat the Devil, Canadian Victory Bonds poster, 1939 to 1945](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/save-to-beat-the-devil-victory-bonds-canada-1939.jpg) **Content note:** Political print showing two murdered statesmen as devils, with mutilated bodies hanging beside the title This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The De Witt brothers as devils, Dutch broadsheet, 1672](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/ondersoeckt-de-geesten-de-witt-devils-1672.jpg) ![Stop this monster that stops at nothing, U.S. production poster, 1941](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/stop-this-monster-produce-1941.jpg) ![The Last Days of the Devils, Chinese-language poster, early 1950s](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/last-days-of-the-devils-chinese-1950s.jpg) ![Khrushchev and Stalin, Italian poster distributed by the USIA, 1957](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/khrushchev-stalin-poster-italian-1957.jpg) ![Red Devils Not Dead leaflet, Concordia Association, Jinzhou, Manchukuo](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/concordia-association-jinzhou-leaflet-red-devils-not-dead-1936.jpg) Explain moreShow less *[Save to Beat the Devil! Buy Victory Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/save-to-beat-the-devil-victory-bonds-canada-1939/): "Save to Beat the Devil! Buy Victory Bonds", Dominion of Canada, artist Harold V. Shaw, 1939 to 1945. U.S. National Archives (NAID 44267769). Public domain (Canadian Crown copyright, expired).* *[Ondersoeckt de Geesten, ofse van den Duyvel syn, of niet (the De Witt brothers as devils)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ondersoeckt-de-geesten-de-witt-devils-1672/): "Ondersoeckt de Geesten, ofse van den Duyvel syn, of niet", etching by Jacob de Lambre, 1672 to 1675. Rijksmuseum (RP-P-OB-77.217). Public domain (CC0 per the museum).* *[Stop this monster that stops at nothing... Produce to the limit! This is your war!](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/stop-this-monster-produce-1941/): "Stop this monster that stops at nothing... Produce to the limit!", U.S. wartime production poster signed Bert Yates, 1941 to 1945. U.S. National Archives (NAID 513557). Public domain (U.S. government work).* *[The Last Days of the Devils (Chinese poster distributed in Taiwan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/last-days-of-the-devils-chinese-1950s/): "The Last Days of the Demons", Chinese-language print credited to a Taitung middle-school student, distributed by the U.S. Information Agency, c. 1950 to 1955. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5729982). Public domain (U.S. government work).* *[Khrushchev and Stalin poster (Italian, Milan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/khrushchev-stalin-poster-italian-1957/): two-panel poster printed by Oltrecortina, Milan, 1957, distributed through the U.S. Information Agency. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 6948883). Public domain (U.S. government work).* *[赤魔不死 日滿合力 (Red Devils Not Dead; Japan and Manchukuo United), Concordia Association Jinzhou leaflet](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/concordia-association-jinzhou-leaflet-red-devils-not-dead-1936/): "Red Devils Not Dead; Japan and Manchukuo United", Concordia Association Jinzhou Provincial Headquarters, undated (Commons gives 1936). Via the National Tsing Hua University Library and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain per Commons ({{PD-Manchukuo}}).* ## Scale and difference The cases above do not carry the same weight, and the differences are worth stating plainly. Explain moreShow less - **Medium and audience.** The Canadian and U.S. posters (1939 to 1945) were fund-raising and production appeals to citizens of democracies, with a free press alongside them. The Manchukuo leaflet came from the mass organisation of an occupation state. The Chinese-language USIA and OWI prints targeted foreign audiences in wartime or the Cold War. The Iranian, Iraqi and Chinese items are state broadcasts or editorials from governments that controlled the press. - **Target.** The Dutch, Canadian, American, Italian and Iraqi cases target heads of state or a named faction. The Manchukuo, Taiwanese and Chinese cases target an entire movement or a class of citizens. The Cultural Revolution editorial named a category that anyone could be placed in, and its penalties fell on people inside the country. - **Effect on the record.** The Dutch image followed a lynching. The 1966 Chinese label opened a campaign of detentions and public humiliations. The Cold War uses of "evil empire", "Great Satan" and "imperialist aggressor" belonged to rhetorical contests between governments; this page does not document a campaign of detentions inside the speaker's own country built on any of them, though the Iranian phrase was used beside the embassy seizure and a long confrontation. - **Mixing with fact.** Some uses stand on documented conduct. The 2002 speech cited poison gas used by Iraq on its own people, which is a recorded event; the Soviet-bloc "aggressor" language answered real wars. That does not make the label evidence, and does not make the claim of evil a proven one, but it does separate those uses from a pure label. ## How to spot Demonization propaganda - **Check the vocabulary.** Does the item use devil, Satan, demon, monster, "evil", "axis", "empire of", "the forces of darkness", "infidel" or "godless" for a state, party or class? - **Check for the matching claim.** Does the speaker claim the opposite role (champion of light, civilisation, the faithful)? Demonization nearly always comes with a flattering self-description. - **Check whether the evil is explained.** Is the label followed by specific acts, dates and sources, or does it stand in for them? Show all 6Show fewer - **Check the exits.** Are negotiation, doubt or neutrality treated as complicity or as the work of the demon's agents? - **Check the remedy.** A call to "defeat", "cast out" or "sweep away" a category is the technique at work; a call to prosecute named people for named acts is not. - **Ask for the opposite.** Reverse the sides. If the same sentence, said by the opponent about your own government, would strike you as hysteria, the framing is doing more than describing conduct. ## Where Demonization propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion 6 items · Condemning documented atrocity. Calling a recorded massacre, a genocide or a use of… - **Condemning documented atrocity.** Calling a recorded massacre, a genocide or a use of poison gas on civilians "evil" is a moral judgement attached to evidence, and a court or a historian can check the evidence. It becomes demonization when the label is stretched from those acts to a whole people or to everything a government does. - **Religious and ritual language.** A sermon on evil, or a church poster using the devil, is about the believers' own scheme of meaning. It is propaganda when it is aimed at a named political rival or a foreign state. - **Satire and folk art.** A Zhong Kui exorcism print or a *Punch* devil is part of a long visual tradition. Whether it is propaganda depends on who commissioned it, who it targets and what action it asks for. The USIA print above borrowed a folk figure for a political target; the folk figure alone is not the technique. - **Strong rhetoric about a leader's record.** "He ordered the killing of civilians" is a claim. "He is the devil" is a label. The first can be checked; the second cannot. - **Scholarly use.** Quoting these images to explain them, as this archive does, is not the technique. - **Anger is not proof.** A government may have committed grave wrongs and still be demonized in the telling, when "evil" replaces the evidence, or when the label covers its people. Sources and further reading ## Sources 10 items · Lasswell, Harold D. Propaganda Technique in the World War . Kegan Paul, 1927. - Lasswell, Harold D. *Propaganda Technique in the World War*. Kegan Paul, 1927. - Reagan, Ronald. Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals, Orlando, Florida, 8 March 1983. Text at the Miller Center, University of Virginia. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-8-1983-evil-empire-speech ; also Voices of Democracy, University of Maryland. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/ - Bush, George W. State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002. Text at the Miller Center. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-29-2002-state-union-address ; Arms Control Association, "Bush Labels North Korea, Iran, Iraq an 'Axis of Evil'", March 2002. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002-03/press-releases/bush-labels-north-korea-iran-iraq-axis-evil - Khomeini, Ruhollah. Speech of 14 Aban 1358 (5 November 1979), Qom, English translation, "Speech (on American conspiracies)". Syracuse University Iran Data Portal. https://irandataportal.syr.edu/speech-on-american-conspiracies/ ; Wikipedia, "Great Satan" (for the "Lesser" and "Little Satan" usages, a secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Satan - Chinese Posters (chineseposters.net). "Monsters and Demons (1966-1967)." https://chineseposters.net/themes/monsters-demons - Dikötter, Frank. *The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976*. Bloomsbury, 2016 (preface). http://www.frankdikotter.com/the-cultural-revolution/from-the-preface.html - MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. *Mao's Last Revolution*. Harvard University Press, 2006. - U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Reports of 5 November 1979 and 17 and 18 January 1991 (Internet Archive, US Government Documents collection), via the archive entries below. - Rijksmuseum, object RP-P-OB-77.217, print from the pamphlet *Het Ondersoeck der Geesten*, 1672 to 1675. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl - Object details for the posters, leaflets and broadcasts come from the archive entries listed below. *Sourcing note: the Reagan and Bush wording is taken from the Miller Center transcripts; the Khomeini wording is from the English translation on the Iran Data Portal, which does not show the Persian term. The "Lesser Satan" and "Little Satan" usages rest on a secondary source. The Cultural Revolution detail rests on the Chinese Posters summary of the editorial and Dikötter's preface; the page gives no casualty figure.* **Gaps.** No First World War case is on this page as a demon image; the Allied "Hun" posters, which lean on the beast image, are in [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/) and [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/). No sourced Nazi or Imperial Japanese example of a devil image is given, since the archive objects checked for this page fell under dehumanization or conspiracy framing. No sourced case from Africa or Latin America is on this page yet. ## The science Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the Learn library: Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/) library: - [Moral outrage](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/moral-outrage/) — Moral outrage - [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/dehumanization/) — Dehumanization - [Social identity](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/social-identity/) — Social identity - [In-group favoritism](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/in-group-favoritism/) — In-group favoritism - [Out-group homogeneity](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/out-group-homogeneity/) — Out-group homogeneity ## Demonization propaganda examples in the collection [All 9 demonization examples](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/technique/demonization/) - [Ondersoeckt de Geesten, ofse van den Duyvel syn, of niet (the De Witt brothers as devils)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ondersoeckt-de-geesten-de-witt-devils-1672/) (Dutch Republic · 1672 · Scapegoating, Name-calling, Demonization) - [赤魔不死 日滿合力 (Red Devils Not Dead; Japan and Manchukuo United), Concordia Association Jinzhou leaflet](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/concordia-association-jinzhou-leaflet-red-devils-not-dead-1936/) (Manchukuo · 1936 · Name-calling, Demonization) - [Save to Beat the Devil! Buy Victory Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/save-to-beat-the-devil-victory-bonds-canada-1939/) (Canada · 1939 · Name-calling, Fear appeal, Demonization) - [Stop this monster that stops at nothing... Produce to the limit! This is your war!](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/stop-this-monster-produce-1941/) (United States · 1941 · Fear appeal, Name-calling, Demonization). Content note: Dehumanising monster depiction of German and Japanese enemies, with blood and a menaced Statue of Liberty, shown as printed. - [恭賀新禧 (Happy New Year): Chinese soldier as door god, Chinese-language poster stamped Office of War Information](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/owi-new-year-door-god-chinese-poster-1945/) (United States · 1945 · Transfer, Name-calling, Demonization). Content note: Giant Chinese soldier stamping on a Japanese soldier; the text calls the Japanese 'devils' (日本鬼). - [Khrushchev and Stalin poster (Italian, Milan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/khrushchev-stalin-poster-italian-1957/) (United States · 1957 · Name-calling, Accusation in a mirror, Demonization) - [FBIS Daily Report: Baghdad Domestic Service reads Saddam Husayn's letter to Bush (17 Jan 1991)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/fbis-baghdad-saddam-letter-to-bush-1991/) (Iraq · Jan 17, 1991 · Name-calling, Transfer, Demagoguery, Demonization). Content note: Wartime letter from Saddam Husayn calling President Bush 'enemy of God and colleague of the devil', 'atheist, unbeliever, sinful aggressor', and the Gulf rulers 'treacherous'. - [Billboard 'No to the Natsebi! No to evil! No to betrayal!' with blood-spattered portraits of opposition figures (Tbilisi, 27 September 2021)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anti-opposition-billboard-blood-tbilisi-2021/) (Georgia · Sep 27, 2021 · Demonization, Guilt by association). Content note: Political billboard with blood-spatter graphics over portraits of named opposition figures, reproduced as photographed. ## Propaganda techniques related to Demonization [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Loaded language](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/loaded-language/) [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/)