CONFRONTING EVIL

A talking head assembles some talking points about history’s merciless killers.

“This is a history book that explains the struggle between good and evil, a choice every person in the Judeo-­Christian tradition is compelled to make.” So writes former Fox News host and bestselling author O’Reilly, working with staffer/researcher Hammer. The Judeo-Christian distinction is telling, one supposes, since the book opens with Abed al Rahman, who, on October 7, 2023, “ordered his 150 gunmen to slaughter as many Jews as they can.” O’Reilly’s keyword is tossed off, to wit, “Here’s my definition of evil: harming a human being without remorse.” One wonders, then, whether Israel’s response in Gaza qualifies, to say nothing of the Trump administration’s treatment of unwanted undocumented immigrants. No matter: O’Reilly’s cast of villains is standard issue, opening with the Roman emperor Caligula, who “operates on emotional whim; his reign is truly one of terror and constant violence” and who left behind him “what was once a proud population [that] now seeks barbaric entertainment and free government handouts.” That Caligula’s most comprehensive contemporary biographer may have propagandized a bit doesn’t come into question, and the charge that Genghis Khan’s army killed 700,000 victims at a single sitting needs testing. Granted, by Judeo-Christian standards, Genghis was the devil incarnate, but the Mongols apparently liked him just fine. O’Reilly holds that Mao Zedong was history’s worst mass murderer, “although his evil role model, Genghis Khan, might have surpassed him.” Naturally, while ticking down a rogue’s gallery that includes a few Judeo-Christian figures, O’Reilly tries to own liberals: The Obama administration “does little to halt the Crimea aggression,” encouraging Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, while Ayatollah Khomeini makes Jimmy Carter his plaything, and so on.

If you need to be told that Hitler, slavery, and drug cartels are bad things, this is your book.