Evil empire

This article is about use the of the expression by Ronald Reagan and American conservatives. For other uses, see Evil empire (disambiguation).

The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words, write the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union. The characterization demeaned the Soviet Union and angered Soviet leaders; it represented the rhetorical side of the escalation of the Cold War.

British House of Commons Speech

Reagan's chief speechwriter at the time, Anthony R. Dolan, reportedly coined the phrase for Reagan's use. Some sources incorrectly refer to the June 1982 speech before the British House of Commons as the "Evil Empire" speech, but while Reagan referred twice to totalitarianism in his London speech, the exact phrase "evil empire" did not appear in any speech until later in his Presidency. Rather, the phrase "ash heap of history" appeared in this speech, used by Reagan to predict what he saw as the inevitable failure and collapse of global communism. Ironically, this latter phrase was coined by Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in November 1917, using it against his opponents (the Mensheviks) and suggesting that communism was the future; the irony may not have been lost on Reagan's speech writers.

First recorded use

Reagan's March 8, 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida is his first recorded use of the phrase "evil empire." Reagan said:

So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. ... They preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth. They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

In the "evil empire" speech, which also dealt with domestic issues, Reagan made the case for deploying NATO nuclear armed missiles in Western Europe as a response to the Soviets installing new nuclear armed missiles in Eastern Europe. Eventually, the NATO missiles were set up and used as bargaining chips in arms talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who took office in 1985. In 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to go farther than a nuclear freeze. In an atomic age first, they agreed to reduce nuclear arsenals. Intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear missiles were eliminated.

Global reaction

Michael Johns, writing for The Heritage Foundation's Policy Review magazine, prominently supported Reagan's assertion. In "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," Johns cited 208 acts by the Soviet Union that, he argued, demonstrated the Soviet leadership's evil inclinations.

Yuri Maltsev, a high-ranking economist in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev during the 1980s, believed that Reagan was definitely right. He labeled the USSR an "evil empire" in the introduction to the book Requiem for Marx, published in 1993, and in an essay he wrote for the Ludwig von Mises Institute. In his essay, he labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire," using those exact words. Maltsev had first hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Soviet Union, and concurred with Reagan.

The Soviet Union, for its part, alleged that the United States was an imperialist superpower seeking to dominate the entire world, and that the Soviet Union was fighting against it in the name of humanity. In Moscow, the Soviet press agency TASS said the "evil empire" words demonstrated that the Reagan administration "can think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anti-communism."

During his second term in office, in May–June 1988, more than five years after using the term "evil empire," Reagan visited the new reformist General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. When asked by a reporter whether he still thought the Soviet Union was an "evil empire," Reagan responded that he no longer did, and that when he used the term it was a "different era"; that is, the period before Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms. Still, Reagan remained a critic of the Soviet regime for its absence of democratic institutions.

Recent historians, such as Yale University's John Lewis Gaddis, have grown more favorable towards the use and influence of the phrase "evil empire" in describing the Soviet Union. In his book The Cold War Gaddis argues that, in their use of the phrase "evil empire," Reagan and his anti-Communist political allies were effective in breaking the détente tradition, thus laying the ground for the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.

In popular culture

Following Reagan's use of the phrase, the phrase "evil empire" took on a nearly iconic status in popular culture and was used in numerous other contexts:

• Meant for the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.
• The band Rage Against the Machine released a 1996 album titled Evil Empire, which featured songs generally critical of the United States government, including "People of the Sun" and "Bulls on Parade".
• In recent years, the American professional baseball team the New York Yankees has been nicknamed the "evil empire" because of their huge team salaries and success in seemingly obtaining any player of their choice with lucrative contracts. The first usage of this term relating to the Yankees was from Boston Red Sox President and CEO Larry Lucchino, after the Red Sox lost out to the Yankees in a bidding war for Cuban pitcher José Contreras. After initially not commenting on the signing, a frustrated Lucchino told the New York Times "No, I'll make a comment. The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America." The nickname, though derogatory towards the team, has since been embraced by Yankee fans.
• In the 2000s, the American football team the New England Patriots is nicknamed the "evil empire" after their success in winning Super Bowls, as well as the Spygate scandal being another factor. Patriots coach Bill Belichick frequently wears a hood, giving him a loose resemblance of Emperor Palpatine-even though most sources say Belichick resembles Darth Vader, as the "apprentice" of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
• During the 1980s, the Oklahoma Sooners men's basketball team, coached by Billy Tubbs, was known to fans of other Big Eight schools, particularly Kansas and Kansas State as "The Evil Empire", due to Tubbs' Sooners' tendency to run up the score on its opponents.
• Retail giant Walmart is sometimes referred to as the "evil empire" by consumer advocacy groups due to its controversial labor tactics.
• The American band Of Montreal references America as "The Evil Empire" in the song "Du Og Meg" from their album Icons, Abstract Thee, released in 2007.
• In a 2007 book, The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World, author Steven A. Grasse lists many alleged crimes committed by the British Empire and editorially makes the claim that the British acted in an evil fashion, particularly during their global colonial reign, but also afterwards, blaming the British solely for World War I, World War II and the Great Depression. The book was ridiculed by critics in the Daily Mail. Grasse also states that the British are all homosexual, and that Britain ruined the world by knighting Elton John. In 2008, Grasse blamed Great Britain solely for the 2008 credit crisis.
• Microsoft has long held the reputation as the "evil empire" amongst advocates of free software.
• The Canadian football team the Edmonton Eskimos are often referred to by their rivals as the "Evil Empire" due to their success in the last 50 years.
• Critics' comments referring to big government and/or Big Business.

See also

• American imperialism
• Fascist (epithet)
• Soviet Empire
• Soviet Imperialism
• Soviet Union
• Empire
• Evil

External links

• "Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" speech to the 41st Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals.