Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson and the theology of death cults
Gavin Ashenden• May 31, 2025
What we believe about the existence of good and evil – but perhaps especially evil – shapes the map of the world we hold in our heads. Conversation about good and evil becomes more difficult if – as our culture does – we replace the language of the spirit with that of therapy or the politics of power. Very few people in the West seem to believe in the existence of evil. Most believe that destructive behaviour is a justifiable response to trauma; an expression of victimhood.
Douglas Murray’s new book, On Democracies and Death Cults, starts with the conclusion that extremist Islamism is, or has become, a death cult. But his approach is contingent on a recognition of the reality of evil. Those for whom a theological world-view is accessible will find his argument persuasive.
Others, like Jordan Peterson – with whom Murray spoke on Peterson’s The Jordan B Peterson Podcast last month – may find that examining Islam’s preoccupation with death shifts them uncomfortably into a theological paradigm.
Murray complains that on those rare occasions when evil is recognised, it is often in a downgraded form provided for us by Hannah Arendt in her work on Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. Arendt described “the banality of evil”, but the difficulty with that striking phrase is that it sucks some of the mystique out of evil – and downplays its seriousness.
Arendt’s famous aphorism incensed Murray and Peterson as they discussed On Democracies and Death Cults. Murray argued against the accuracy of Arendt’s banality. He described the gleeful, psychopathic barbarity of the 7 October Hamas terrorists beheading captured Jews with spades as the opposite of banal. Murray has been an excoriating critic of violence in Islamist theological and political culture; he quoted leaders of Hamas who have claimed that “the infidels’ great weakness is that they love life. But we love death, and this is our great advantage.”
Murray lamented: “If you do hear the word ‘evil’ used in the West, almost inevitably people will resort to Arendt’s reference to banality. After the beheading of Lee Rigby on the streets of London, it was described the next day by the Daily Telegraph as ‘banal’. One of the things I want readers to come away from On Democracies and Death Cults thinking about is: Maybe there is such a force in the world. Maybe evil really does descend. Maybe it actually exists.”
Peterson, recognising this shift of metaphysical gear for what it was, nervously asked: “When did you come to that conclusion? Is it a theological conclusion?” Murray replied: “The depth of horror was so profound that no other language than the theological would suffice.” Peterson added his own changing perspective: “I don’t think you understand evil unless you understand it as the ultimate in rebellion against the fact of existence itself – hence death cult.
“The layer under that is where death is offered up as a form of worship, which is something the Western mind finds incredibly hard to understand.”
Murray reflected: “It was because of something I was mulling in my head from 7 October onwards; seeing the videos Hamas took themselves on that Sunday morning, one of the things I could not get out of my head was the glee – the sheer orgiastic glee – of the terrorists.” Peterson, who often refers to Auschwitz in his reflections on evil, countered: “At least the Nazis tried to hide their crimes.”
As both Murray and Peterson explored the phenomenon of antisemitism, they agreed that at the heart of it lay a complex act of projection. “Antisemitism acts as a mirror to the failings of the person who suffers from it,” claimed Peterson. “Whatever failings they found most distressing and uncomfortable within their own community or value system, they projected onto the Jews and then sought to destroy them.”
If Murray was correct that inflicting death on Jews involved the experience of a kind of ecstasy that in itself seemed to constitute an act of worship – which he described as “this thing of the ecstasy in bringing death” – then the death cult seems to constitute a surrender to, and a worship of, evil itself.
Many readers will find this binary metaphysical analysis of Murray, supported by Peterson, deeply uncomfortable. The fact that both men claim to be agnostics makes the conclusion even more provocative and stark.
Photo: Canadian psychologist and commentator Jordan Peterson walks the red carpet at the Turning Point USA Inaugural-Eve Ball at the Salamander Hotel on January 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)