Symbolic exclusion is often a distortion of the other, not simply ignorance about the other; it is a willful misconstruction, not mere failure of knowledge. We demonize and bestialize not because we do not know better, but because we refuse to know what is manifest and choose to know what serves our interests. That we nevertheless believe our distortions to be plain verities is no counter-argument; it only underlines that evil is capable of generating an ideational environment in which it can thrive unrecognized.
