Religion and Exterminatory Fantasies
Benny Beit-Hallahmi
A guest post by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Ph.D.
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The Substack for Psychoanalytic Inquiry
The following is a shortened version of the latest issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry entitled “Politics and Hate.” The full text of the article is open-access, free for everyone. You may read it here. As always, the views of this writer don’t necessarily reflect the views of the journal. In dealing with religion’s effects, this post asks more questions about fantasies than about actions. As secular observers, we accept religious fantasies phenomenologically, as the actual experience of the believers. For true believers, stories about the Day of Judgment are real and mesmerizing, often presented as warnings. While we realize that these fantasies are a serious matter for believers, our secular analysis seeks to identify the psychological mechanisms that create them. Where do destructive fantasies come from when they are part of a plan for cosmic salvation? What we observe is the free expression of death wishes, extending the difference between “us” and “them,” and the principles of harsh justice, where punishment is inflicted only on those who deserve it. Visions of cosmic justice are always tied to mass extermination. Harmony will follow total destruction, and world peace will come after all the heretics are killed off. In a well-known observation, Sigmund Freud noted:
And he reiterated:
When it comes to outsiders, the religious attitude is commonly not one of benevolence. Tolerance, equality, and democracy, all of which imply a respect for those who are different, are all recent secular ideas, which have faced religious opposition wherever and whenever they appeared. To properly introduce eschatology, we have to go back hundreds or even thousands of years, to a time when religious priests or scribes first started presenting ideas of end-of-times, the millennium, and the apocalypse. End-of-times (eschatological) fantasies are of three kinds. There are those that are most general and most common, promising world rebirth sometimes in the future. There are those which promise a rebirth very soon, and there are those rare cases where an actual date is specified. Such ideas appear both in schizophrenic or borderline individuals and in many religious scriptures and doctrines. The Christian and Muslim versions of the Day of Judgment are exterminatory. J.W. Reimer, a Mennonite Brethren preacher, expressed one version of many when he wrote: “The godless will be destroyed out of the land. For the righteous, death will be abolished forever.” According to Muslim visions, Judgment Day will divide humans and send the innocent of sin to Paradise, and those guilty to eternity in Hell. For Muslims who have sinned, staying in Hell may be only temporary, but for heretics, damnation is eternal. Only religious visionaries promise us the abolition of death for the elect, the only survivors at the Day of Judgment. Secular revolutionaries will never make such promises. Many humans today, in major and minor religions, still believe in such horrifying fantasies. Some groups explicitly voice their predictions of the survival of the elect (while most humans perish). Believers thus assert their cosmic superiority; outsiders condemned to oblivion may impotently judge the dream to be callous and cruel, but their judgment means little to believers. Vivid fantasies about the destruction of this world may provide consolation and revenge for the downtrodden and the oppressed. The end of the old world, the prophecies of earthquakes, epidemics, and floods that only the elect will survive, the cosmic victory over evil, is a response to frustration and an immediate outlet for aggression. Detailed descriptions of trials and tribulations enable believers to indulge their violent imaginations. Feeling angry and powerless to change earthly reality, they are more likely to express their opposition in the form of support for cosmic change. In the new world being born, the meek shall rule, after they inherit the earth and its riches. Religious traditions present us with dreams of extermination as revenge. Judaic texts and liturgy offer eloquent examples of revenge fantasies, expressing the heartfelt wishes of the defeated exiles, down to the graphic killing of babies. The Hebrew Bible narratives of triumph in the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan and mass exterminations, these are fantasy compensations for the real helplessness of the Hebrew kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel, defeated and exiled in 722 BCE, and the southern kingdom of Judah, defeated and exiled in 586 BCE. A great United Kingdom is another compensatory fantasy, and the most ambitious fantasy is the apocalyptic dream in which the Messiah shows the Gentiles who’s boss. The Hebrew Bible contains narratives of the extermination of the Midianites and the Canaanites by the Israelites, as ordered by divine authority. These blood- curdling accounts are totally fictitious, but they reflect very real ideals. Apparently, they were invented to justify exclusionary attitudes toward non-Israelites, or nonobservant Israelites. Those who composed them more than two millennia ago were not worried about anybody being outraged by them. How often do these destructive fantasies lead to the eruption of violent acts? Not very often, but there are cases when apocalyptic dreams lead to an apocalyptic nightmare. In most traditions, and among the majority of believers in this world, the apocalypse is kept at a distance, to arrive at the end of history at an unspecified date. While somebody like Billy Graham (1918–2018) would frequently bring up “End Times,” and believed that the Second Coming was near, he did not offer a date. In response to the question “What will the end be like?” Graham offered the following description, paired with a warning” For one thing, it will be sudden and unexpected – and most people will be unprepared. Just as in the days of Noah’s flood, a catastrophe will suddenly overtake the earth – and then it will be too late to turn to God. The Bible also hints at total, fiery destruction.” Religious fantasies about wiping out the heathens – who are always most humans – are acceptable or even enjoyable for those of us who are sure that we would be among the surviving elect. And most believers who accept the Day of Judgment narratives are not preoccupied with them; indeed, the preoccupation with such apocalyptic visions will rightly give rise to a suspicion of pathology. But real and imagined wounds push us toward ready-made compensation, and religion offers us not only eternity but also exterminatory fantasies which may be enjoyed even before we reach eternity. Fantasies about the extermination of most humans, those who do not share our beliefs, our culture, or our DNA, remain enormously seductive. Psychoanalytic Inquiry is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Psychoanalytic Inquiry that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Brian D'Agostino
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay, Benny. I want to add a few reflections about the etiology of the “death wishes” that you say are expressed in apocalyptic fantasies of destruction. Freud famously attributed these to a death drive—an inherent tendency in humans. There is no evidence in neuroscience for such a drive, nor does such a thing make sense biologically, since organisms that gratuitously harm themselves or other organisms on which they depend would die out disproportionately and lose out on their chances to reproduce themselves. Freud’s death drive is actually a modern variation on the religious doctrine of “original sin,” and a precursor of more recent notions such as “killer genes.”
To explain the etiology of human destructiveness, we need to look at “nurture” not “nature.” If you beat children, you induce in them a rage against the parent that must be repressed in the immediate situation of abuse because expressing and acting on the rage would exacerbate the child’s exposure to abuse. During later development including in adulthood, the repressed rage is then displaced onto scapegoats. In a religious context, these can be heretics, unbelievers, etc. In a secular context, the scapegoats can be religious or political minorities, non-conformists, etc. For peer reviewed research supporting this picture, see Michael Milburn and Sheree Conrad’s 2016 book Raised to Rage: The Politics of Anger and the Roots of Authoritarianism. If the repressed rage is powerful enough, it can take the form of world-destruction, the apocalyptic death wish described in this article.
Brian D’Agostino, Ph.D.
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