Screwtape Letters to America 23 -- The Antichrist

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Dear Uncle Screwtape,

You have inspired me to imagine further how certain conceptions among the Enemy’s followers might be turned into instruments against them. My thoughts first ran to the fears many harbor about a man of lawlessness. The human authors who composed those sacred accounts clearly had Nero in mind. Nevertheless, since then the figure has been a ready template for any powerful mortal -- real or imagined -- who dares to stand against the Enemy.

We have long employed this method to deepen the tribal instincts of voters. We persuaded many to oppose Franklin Delano Roosevelt even as his New Deal was keeping them from ruin and his leadership was about to thwart the efforts of our champion in Europe. "Could he be the Antichrist?" we planted in their heads along with fears that he would be the one to usher in a one world government. 

Later, we turned suspicion upon John F. Kennedy. We could see a path beginning to open that might at last lift the Africans among them from a misery we had cultivated for nearly a century after the Civil War. We whispered that JFK was the Pope's puppet. "Might the Pope himself be the Antichrist?" we planted again. In both cases, I suspect the Enemy Himself may have intervened.

In these days, we have managed to turn half of the Enemy’s people to thinking their present leader might be such a figure. They fashion him as a liar eagerly believed, a dealer in oppression disguised as righteousness, a hater of the foreigner and of any who resist his will. I smile at such descriptions. It matters not. Their warnings are dismissed by the rest as some sort of derangement.

It is, in fact, the other half that proves more susceptible to imagery of the Antichrist. The question, then, is whom we can persuade them to see as the embodiment of their greatest foe? The goal is that, in recoiling from him, they might all the more zealously empower a leader of our choosing. In earlier centuries, the Pope was a reliable candidate, and we have long exploited that vision of the seven hills from the Revelation to stir such suspicions. Regrettably, the recent occupants of that office have appeared too virtuous for the charge to cling.

Once, of course, we might have fastened the role upon a Russian leader. But, curiously, some of the Enemy's people have grown strangely fond of the current one. What a triumph of subtle labor by some in our ranks! We encouraged the whisper that his mother instilled him with Christian virtue in childhood. And if their present champion speaks well of him, must he not therefore be righteous? What a coup, that the party once most fearful of Russia should now treat its ruler as an object of admiration!

I suspect the most convenient candidate at this moment will arise from a region already marked in their imaginations as foreign and menacing, namely, the Middle East. We caught a glimpse of that potential in the recent quarrels between Israel and its neighbors, tensions still ripe for further cultivation. No real prominent figure is required. These specters need not exist in reality. A single rumor, whispered into the right mouths, can raise an ordinary name to the stature of a global menace.

Once such a global foe is established, we could easily empower a leader of our own design here. That is, of course, assuming that the Enemy permits us. Yet I wonder whether this is precisely the sort of proposal our master has placed before the Enemy. We shall soon see.

My musings will no doubt continue.

Your nephew,
Wormwood
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Previous chapters

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion
• 10 -- Reliable Race
• 11 -- Misdirection
• 12 -- The Very Elect
• 13 -- The Great Wedge
• 14 -- The Revolt
• 15 -- Deepening the Wedge
• 16 -- Church over State
• 17 -- The Great Election
• 18 -- The Great Pestilence
• 19 -- Foiled Plans
• 20 -- A Single Authority
• 21 -- Forgetfulness
• 22 -- The Tribulation Request