ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, however, the criterion is no longer tradition or national loyalty but ideology: if the ideology is correct, treason is not treason. Since ideologies are the criterion, and ideologies are different, there can be no agreement on what constitutes betrayal. Soviet agents who spied for communist tyrannies against democratic countries were motivated mostly by ideological reasons, at least in the early days of communism; it was not until later that money or blackmail, or both, took over from ideology. Ideological motives often turn out to be nothing more than emotions; and if emotions could justify, then everything we did would be justified, and the concept of betrayal as something bad would lose its meaning. Deliberately causing the death of someone who had a right to expect our loyalty is a particularly glaring and repellent instance of betrayal, and that is why both Judas and Brutus occupy the lowest circle of Dante's inferno.
