Ideological Evil

I assert that the commonly portrayed image of ideologically driven evil is somewhat specious; I do not think that, say, jihadism is the greatest evil on earth - although it is very significant - but rather that those types of ideologies that tend towards manifesting in positions of power and causing mass suffering are indeed the most salient evils because of that suffering and certain inherent qualities they possess. Many consequentialists seem to maintain that intent matters in moral considerations of good or evil at least as a way of predicting or analyzing outcomes, and I will continue with reasoning along these lines.

To begin, I propose a stratification of ideologies in terms of their structures and will provide examples of these categories:

Tier (1) ideologies are those that “spontaneously” radicalize individuals. This is through media not originating from, not legitimized by, and that do not sustain concentrations of political power as much. A good example of this is the arising of IS and their subsequent violent rampages and insurgencies, which, according to various iterations of IS, were attempts, at least in part, to fight social injustice and marginalization (which is, of course, ridiculous, but no one ever thinks they are the bad guys, and this claim helped them recruit many fighters). Their propaganda efforts in general are excellent examples of the kind of media I'm referring to.

Tier (2) ideologies are those that occupy nexuses of power, openly legitimate that occupation, and manifest in governmental power structures. They tend towards sustaining concentrations of political power. Think ideologies like Zionism, neoconservatism, fascism, etc. The example of Zionism, in its modern-day form, is relatively straightforward: many Israeli Jews believe they are justified in stealing land in the West Bank. They likely would not have these beliefs if not for the decisions made by politicians and powerful people that resulted in the decision to create a Jewish ethnostate. The very existence of this state, and the propaganda it puts out, encourages the attempted vindication of Zionism through governmental channels.

One might argue that Tier (1) ideologies inevitably, or are likely to, morph into something resembling a Tier (2) ideology as they gain adherents and power. After all, IS is intent on ushering in a Caliphate or whatever. I think this is true, but we will be considering the likelihood of ideologies attaining power as part of this analysis.

Given we define the evil an ideology is capable of causing as being a function of both the intent of its adherents and the consequences of their actions, and we demarcate tier (1) ideologies from tier (2) on the basis of the definitions provided above, the evil of ideologies in either tier is thus determined (at least in part) by:

(1) The level of intent to cause destruction and suffering propagated by an ideology.
(2) The actual suffering and destruction reliably caused by adherents of an ideology.

(1) clearly affects (2), and perhaps vice versa, but it is a little harder to pull these two things apart and see the exact relationship than to just consider (2) to be a function of (1), which is how I'm going to treat it.

My question is this: if Tier (2) ideologies do not propagate as much bad intent, but they result in larger numbers of deaths, more suffering, etc., then can we actually say that certain Tier (1) ideologies are more evil than Tier (2) ideologies even given that if a certain Tier (1) would result in more suffering and death if it enjoyed as much power as other ideologies that do tend more often to manifest in positions of power? Given that Tier (2) ideologies can actually result in more suffering because they reliably manifest in power structures, and not just because of the efficacy of the associated propaganda of a given government and its content, it seems to me we must accept that Tier (2) ideologies are usually inherently more destructive according to a consequentialist criterion. That is to say that the capability of being more likely to manifest in power structures, nexuses of power, etc. is fundamental, and this capability affects the consequences of the actions of adherents of a given ideology - which is the bottom line. So, we could add the criteria that evil is also (conditionally) determined by an additional factor inherent to Tier (2) ideologies if we frame this input purely in terms of one-way, predicted consequences much like how (2) is a function of (1):

(1.5) The tendency towards originating from, legitimizing, and sustaining concentrations of political power.

I say that (1.5) conditionally determines evil because an ideology could also be a source of good depending upon the ideology and context. If one wants to maintain consequentialism while also condemning certain ideological actors as being a significant, or perhaps the most significant, evil based upon their intent, one might need to consider this critique.

Also: please don't fixate on the examples too much. I just used what was convenient and would allow for something concise. IS and Zionism don't need to be what is actually discussed, and I'm not even totally sure how they would measure up against each other in terms of bad consequences.