ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that social scientists have been unwilling to face the problem of massive violence that facts like this pose. It proposes the concept of political victimage ritual (VR) as the right concept to solve the problem. The Chapter also argues that a focus on VR redirects analytical attention to the actual practices of political violence. It presents the results of a semiotic analysis of the structure of VR. This involves a presentation of new research on US presidential discourse during the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump regimes. The chapter examines a series of power effects produced by VR: constitution of enemies, incitement to acts of violence and political sadism targeting that enemy, and constitute the objects of knowledge accepted by positivist social scientists. It presents the analysis to the genealogy of terrorism in relation to evil and the problem of political sadism.
