Which is worse? Criminal evil or tribal evil?

Which is worse?

(1) A man with an intact conscience, but whose compulsions drive him to defy it.

(2) A man whose conscience itself has been made ill by mass hysteria, and who follows it faithfully.

The first is criminal evil. His conscience still works—it hurts him, condemns him, limits him. It’s his own built-in negative feedback. He hides his acts, doesn’t boast, doesn’t recruit. Think of Jeffrey Dahmer, or the addict who lies and steals though he hates himself for it, or the corrupt official who knows he’s wrong but can’t stop. Their evil burns inward like an infection that can’t spread.

The second is tribal evil. His conscience has been hijacked; the sickness is moral, not compulsive. Every cruelty feels virtuous. Each atrocity affirms his belonging. Think of the mobs of China’s Cultural Revolution, Soviet and Khmer Rouge purges, or modern Islamist zealotry. Their evil is self-reinforcing—the more carnage, the more righteousness. And it spreads, because it feels good to do and holy to proclaim.

Criminal evil is self-limiting—its own guilt restrains it.

Tribal evil is self-reinforcing—its own virtue fuels it.

These evils run on completely different machinery, and while we all have fairly good intuitions about criminal evil, people tend to be absolutely atrocious at making sense of tribal evil.