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Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era
"[B]racing…[Neiman] argues that our misunderstanding of evil has lulled us into complacency, so that we now take cruelty and corruption for granted." ―Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
The eminent moral philosopher Susan Neiman shows how naming and confronting evil is essential for preserving democracy in an age of demagogues.
Call It Evil is a bold reckoning with one of the most fraught words in our vocabulary. Far from being a religious or outdated concept, evil is a vital lens, Susan Neiman argues, through which to understand the threats we face today.
Neiman is one of our most important philosophers, and one of the world’s leading thinkers on the nature and question of evil. She opens this sharp, revelatory work with the idea that the reelection of Donald Trump is the outcome not simply of political and economic forces but the erosion of values that have been subject to derision for more than a century. She goes on to show how we have been quietly bombarded from all sides with messages that undermine basic moral principles. Misreadings of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin have led to a view of human nature we now accept as common ideals are for losers, or for politicians who wish to deceive them. Neiman then explores how that ancient view, first formulated by pre-Socratic philosophers, has been steadily promoted by corporate interests and (pseudo) scientists in the modern era. Drawing on history―from European fascism to the moral failures of recent U.S. leaders―she demonstrates how the normalization of evil corrodes trust, destroys justice, and endangers our future.
This is a book for readers who refuse to accept moral confusion as the price of political life, and who believe that confronting evil is the first step toward renewing it.
The eminent moral philosopher Susan Neiman shows how naming and confronting evil is essential for preserving democracy in an age of demagogues.
Call It Evil is a bold reckoning with one of the most fraught words in our vocabulary. Far from being a religious or outdated concept, evil is a vital lens, Susan Neiman argues, through which to understand the threats we face today.
Neiman is one of our most important philosophers, and one of the world’s leading thinkers on the nature and question of evil. She opens this sharp, revelatory work with the idea that the reelection of Donald Trump is the outcome not simply of political and economic forces but the erosion of values that have been subject to derision for more than a century. She goes on to show how we have been quietly bombarded from all sides with messages that undermine basic moral principles. Misreadings of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin have led to a view of human nature we now accept as common ideals are for losers, or for politicians who wish to deceive them. Neiman then explores how that ancient view, first formulated by pre-Socratic philosophers, has been steadily promoted by corporate interests and (pseudo) scientists in the modern era. Drawing on history―from European fascism to the moral failures of recent U.S. leaders―she demonstrates how the normalization of evil corrodes trust, destroys justice, and endangers our future.
This is a book for readers who refuse to accept moral confusion as the price of political life, and who believe that confronting evil is the first step toward renewing it.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2026
About the author
Susan Neiman
25 books268 followersSusan Neiman is an American moral philosopher and essayist, her main interests are in the history of philosophy and morality, and the philosophy of politics and religion.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 25, 2026
I subscribe to an interesting magazine entitled Jacobin [1] and their latest interview with Susan Nieman argues that the left needs to abandon appellations like “facist” and “authoritarian” when referring to Trump and adopt the much clearer designation: Evil. I understand evil to be a theological description rather than a scientific one, a point Mary Trump [2] is careful to make when talking about her uncle. In her book, Too Much and Never Enough, [3] she says, “I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.” She goes on, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests he’ll never sit for.”
Well that sent me down another rabbit hole, to read Nieman’s book. [4] In her interview in the magazine, she argues in order to effectively fight contemporary injustices and tyranny, the political Left urgently needs to reclaim moral terminology, particularly the word "evil." . According to Neiman, fundamentalists and right-wing actors who exploit these potent concepts for their own purposes have gained the moral upper hand as a result of progressive rejections of the religious or unscientific status of ethical terminology. That’s also pretty much the thesis of her book.
Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era is less a conventional book about Donald Trump than an attempt to explain the moral climate that, in her view, made the Trump era possible. Neiman, a moral philosopher whose earlier work has repeatedly returned to questions of evil, responsibility, Enlightenment values, and historical memory, argues that contemporary progressive Americans have become strangely reluctant to use moral language precisely when political life most requires it. Her central claim is deliberately provocative: the word “evil” should not be dismissed as religious, melodramatic, or intellectually unsophisticated. Properly understood, she argues, it describes circumstances in which the distance between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be becomes intolerably large.
Despite the subtitle, Neiman explicitly says that the book is “not a book about Donald Trump.” Trump is instead the culmination, or perhaps the most conspicuous symptom, of a much longer intellectual and cultural development. Her argument is that his political success cannot be explained simply by campaign strategy, economic resentment, racism, polarization, or institutional weakness. Those factors matter, but beneath them lies a deeper erosion of confidence in moral principles themselves. Over many decades, Neiman contends, Western societies have absorbed the idea that appeals to justice, decency, solidarity, or universal moral obligations are naïve. The supposedly sophisticated person assumes that everyone ultimately acts out of self-interest, that power matters more than principle, and that moral language is often merely a disguise for the pursuit of advantage. Ayn Rand springs to mind.
Neiman traces this cynicism through a wide range of intellectual influences. She argues that simplified readings of Adam Smith have reduced human beings to economic maximizers, while equally simplified versions of Darwin have encouraged the belief that ruthless competition is the natural condition of human life. In politics, she sees similar assumptions reinforced by the market-oriented policies associated with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Over time, according to Neiman, the idea that greed and self-interest are regrettable human weaknesses was transformed into something closer to a virtue. Empathy, shame, public service, and concern for the common good began to appear not merely impractical but foolish.
This is where Hannah Arendt becomes especially important to Neiman. Popular culture often imagines evil as something spectacular: a sadist, a monster, or someone who consciously enjoys inflicting suffering. Neiman thinks that conception is dangerously comforting because it allows ordinary people and institutions to escape moral scrutiny. Following Arendt’s famous discussion of Adolf Eichmann and the “banality of evil,” [5] Neiman emphasizes thoughtlessness, emptiness, and moral vacancy. The most destructive evil may not come from people cackling over their wickedness. It may arise from bureaucrats, political functionaries, business leaders, voters, or ordinary citizens who stop asking basic questions about the consequences of what they are doing.
The Trump era therefore serves Neiman as a moral case study. She points to policies and practices she considers sufficiently destructive to justify the language of evil, but her larger concern is what happens when a society loses the confidence to make strong moral judgments at all. Political opponents commonly accuse one another of illegality, incompetence, hypocrisy, or corruption. Neiman believes those words sometimes fail to capture the underlying moral stakes. “Crime,” in her formulation, belongs to the realm of established rules and procedures; the idea of evil enters when an action seems to violate more fundamental assumptions about human dignity, justice, or the limits of acceptable conduct. Like ICE.
There is considerable power in this argument even if it’s basically theological and she’s appealing to a secular audience, although I sometimes wonder that it’s similar to calling someone a Nazi. Understandable but excessively hyperbolic. Neiman is especially effective in challenging the assumption that moral seriousness requires avoiding morally charged vocabulary. Modern political language often substitutes technocratic terms such as “norm erosion,” “institutional stress,” or “democratic backsliding” for ordinary moral judgments. Such language can be analytically useful, but Neiman argues that it can also sanitize events that ought to provoke outrage. Her broader philosophical point is that democracy depends on more than laws and procedures. It also depends on citizens believing that ideas such as equality, truth, justice, and human dignity are meaningful in themselves rather than merely weapons used by rival political factions.
Her argument also raises an obvious difficulty, however: who decides when the boundary into “evil” has been crossed? Jennifer Szalai, reviewing the book in The New York Times,[6] identifies this as one of its unresolved problems. Neiman deliberately wrote an intervention rather than an exhaustive political history, and she says she did not want to bury the book beneath endless qualifications and detail. That gives Call It Evil urgency, but it also means that readers who do not already share Neiman’s moral premises (how could one not?) may find some of her conclusions asserted more readily than demonstrated.
There is also a danger inherent in the language Neiman wants to reclaim. Once political disagreement is described as a struggle against evil, compromise can begin to look like complicity and political opponents can be transformed from fellow citizens into embodiments of wickedness. Neiman herself is aware of this problem. She acknowledges that “evil” is an explosive word and that irresponsible use of it can intensify the very moral and political breakdown she is trying to resist. Her case therefore depends on a distinction between condemning particular actions, values, and institutions as evil and simply declaring whole populations or political tribes to be evil.
The book is ultimately an argument for moral universalism. Neiman wants principles such as human dignity and justice to apply regardless of political identity, nationality, race, religion, or ideological allegiance. That helps explain why her discussion extends beyond Trump and includes American foreign policy and the war in Gaza. The consistency is intentional: if moral principles are universal, they cannot apply only when politically convenient.
Call It Evil is therefore best understood not simply as an indictment of one president but as a philosophical diagnosis of political cynicism. Trump occupies a prominent place in Neiman’s story, but the more important villains are the ideas that morality is childish, self-interest is the only realistic motive, and power ultimately determines what is right. Whether readers accept Neiman’s application of the word “evil” to particular policies will depend heavily on their own moral and political premises. The more durable challenge posed by the book is harder to dismiss: a democratic society cannot survive indefinitely if its citizens cease believing that there are moral standards higher than victory, profit, loyalty, or power. Neiman’s book asks readers to consider whether the current political crisis is therefore not merely constitutional or partisan but philosophical—a crisis over whether moral judgment itself still has a legitimate place in public life.
Notes
[1] “Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. The print magazine is released quarterly and reaches 75,000 subscribers, in addition to a web audience of over 3,000,000 a month.” (https://jacobin.com/about )
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_L....
[3] Trump, M. L. (2022). Too much and never enough: How my family created the world's most dangerous man. Simon & Schuster. P. 17
[4] Neiman, S. (2026). Call it evil: Understanding the Trump era. W. W. Norton & Company.
[5] Arendt, H. (1992). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Penguin. (It was originally published in 1963, two years before I graduated high school, and it was assigned to us in college. It made a profound impression on me.
[6] Nytimes.com. (2026, September 9). nytimes.com. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/bo...
N.B. Neiman is not the only one arguing for a moral stance. David Brooks has been making similar arguments.
Well that sent me down another rabbit hole, to read Nieman’s book. [4] In her interview in the magazine, she argues in order to effectively fight contemporary injustices and tyranny, the political Left urgently needs to reclaim moral terminology, particularly the word "evil." . According to Neiman, fundamentalists and right-wing actors who exploit these potent concepts for their own purposes have gained the moral upper hand as a result of progressive rejections of the religious or unscientific status of ethical terminology. That’s also pretty much the thesis of her book.
Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era is less a conventional book about Donald Trump than an attempt to explain the moral climate that, in her view, made the Trump era possible. Neiman, a moral philosopher whose earlier work has repeatedly returned to questions of evil, responsibility, Enlightenment values, and historical memory, argues that contemporary progressive Americans have become strangely reluctant to use moral language precisely when political life most requires it. Her central claim is deliberately provocative: the word “evil” should not be dismissed as religious, melodramatic, or intellectually unsophisticated. Properly understood, she argues, it describes circumstances in which the distance between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be becomes intolerably large.
Despite the subtitle, Neiman explicitly says that the book is “not a book about Donald Trump.” Trump is instead the culmination, or perhaps the most conspicuous symptom, of a much longer intellectual and cultural development. Her argument is that his political success cannot be explained simply by campaign strategy, economic resentment, racism, polarization, or institutional weakness. Those factors matter, but beneath them lies a deeper erosion of confidence in moral principles themselves. Over many decades, Neiman contends, Western societies have absorbed the idea that appeals to justice, decency, solidarity, or universal moral obligations are naïve. The supposedly sophisticated person assumes that everyone ultimately acts out of self-interest, that power matters more than principle, and that moral language is often merely a disguise for the pursuit of advantage. Ayn Rand springs to mind.
Neiman traces this cynicism through a wide range of intellectual influences. She argues that simplified readings of Adam Smith have reduced human beings to economic maximizers, while equally simplified versions of Darwin have encouraged the belief that ruthless competition is the natural condition of human life. In politics, she sees similar assumptions reinforced by the market-oriented policies associated with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Over time, according to Neiman, the idea that greed and self-interest are regrettable human weaknesses was transformed into something closer to a virtue. Empathy, shame, public service, and concern for the common good began to appear not merely impractical but foolish.
This is where Hannah Arendt becomes especially important to Neiman. Popular culture often imagines evil as something spectacular: a sadist, a monster, or someone who consciously enjoys inflicting suffering. Neiman thinks that conception is dangerously comforting because it allows ordinary people and institutions to escape moral scrutiny. Following Arendt’s famous discussion of Adolf Eichmann and the “banality of evil,” [5] Neiman emphasizes thoughtlessness, emptiness, and moral vacancy. The most destructive evil may not come from people cackling over their wickedness. It may arise from bureaucrats, political functionaries, business leaders, voters, or ordinary citizens who stop asking basic questions about the consequences of what they are doing.
The Trump era therefore serves Neiman as a moral case study. She points to policies and practices she considers sufficiently destructive to justify the language of evil, but her larger concern is what happens when a society loses the confidence to make strong moral judgments at all. Political opponents commonly accuse one another of illegality, incompetence, hypocrisy, or corruption. Neiman believes those words sometimes fail to capture the underlying moral stakes. “Crime,” in her formulation, belongs to the realm of established rules and procedures; the idea of evil enters when an action seems to violate more fundamental assumptions about human dignity, justice, or the limits of acceptable conduct. Like ICE.
There is considerable power in this argument even if it’s basically theological and she’s appealing to a secular audience, although I sometimes wonder that it’s similar to calling someone a Nazi. Understandable but excessively hyperbolic. Neiman is especially effective in challenging the assumption that moral seriousness requires avoiding morally charged vocabulary. Modern political language often substitutes technocratic terms such as “norm erosion,” “institutional stress,” or “democratic backsliding” for ordinary moral judgments. Such language can be analytically useful, but Neiman argues that it can also sanitize events that ought to provoke outrage. Her broader philosophical point is that democracy depends on more than laws and procedures. It also depends on citizens believing that ideas such as equality, truth, justice, and human dignity are meaningful in themselves rather than merely weapons used by rival political factions.
Her argument also raises an obvious difficulty, however: who decides when the boundary into “evil” has been crossed? Jennifer Szalai, reviewing the book in The New York Times,[6] identifies this as one of its unresolved problems. Neiman deliberately wrote an intervention rather than an exhaustive political history, and she says she did not want to bury the book beneath endless qualifications and detail. That gives Call It Evil urgency, but it also means that readers who do not already share Neiman’s moral premises (how could one not?) may find some of her conclusions asserted more readily than demonstrated.
There is also a danger inherent in the language Neiman wants to reclaim. Once political disagreement is described as a struggle against evil, compromise can begin to look like complicity and political opponents can be transformed from fellow citizens into embodiments of wickedness. Neiman herself is aware of this problem. She acknowledges that “evil” is an explosive word and that irresponsible use of it can intensify the very moral and political breakdown she is trying to resist. Her case therefore depends on a distinction between condemning particular actions, values, and institutions as evil and simply declaring whole populations or political tribes to be evil.
The book is ultimately an argument for moral universalism. Neiman wants principles such as human dignity and justice to apply regardless of political identity, nationality, race, religion, or ideological allegiance. That helps explain why her discussion extends beyond Trump and includes American foreign policy and the war in Gaza. The consistency is intentional: if moral principles are universal, they cannot apply only when politically convenient.
Call It Evil is therefore best understood not simply as an indictment of one president but as a philosophical diagnosis of political cynicism. Trump occupies a prominent place in Neiman’s story, but the more important villains are the ideas that morality is childish, self-interest is the only realistic motive, and power ultimately determines what is right. Whether readers accept Neiman’s application of the word “evil” to particular policies will depend heavily on their own moral and political premises. The more durable challenge posed by the book is harder to dismiss: a democratic society cannot survive indefinitely if its citizens cease believing that there are moral standards higher than victory, profit, loyalty, or power. Neiman’s book asks readers to consider whether the current political crisis is therefore not merely constitutional or partisan but philosophical—a crisis over whether moral judgment itself still has a legitimate place in public life.
Notes
[1] “Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. The print magazine is released quarterly and reaches 75,000 subscribers, in addition to a web audience of over 3,000,000 a month.” (https://jacobin.com/about )
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_L....
[3] Trump, M. L. (2022). Too much and never enough: How my family created the world's most dangerous man. Simon & Schuster. P. 17
[4] Neiman, S. (2026). Call it evil: Understanding the Trump era. W. W. Norton & Company.
[5] Arendt, H. (1992). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Penguin. (It was originally published in 1963, two years before I graduated high school, and it was assigned to us in college. It made a profound impression on me.
[6] Nytimes.com. (2026, September 9). nytimes.com. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/bo...
N.B. Neiman is not the only one arguing for a moral stance. David Brooks has been making similar arguments.
September 20, 2026
I expected this was going to be a moral philosopher reflecting on the reelection of President Trump, but that was only a small fraction. What she really finds evil is, well, America - and what she seeks is democratic socialism. Which is fine if you’re looking for that kind of thing, but I was hoping something different.
One challenge is she is reluctant to come up with a solid definition of evil. She claims you can understand evil without some sort of religious/transcendental justification but doesn’t explain how. At some points it's just something we recognize as being too far from what we understand to be just but that begs the question of who “we” are. Clearly we do not agree and as all the examples of political evil she finds are done by Republican presidents you have to wonder if there is anything deeper to be learned. It certainly would have been interesting to explore what the people who do support Republican presidents see as “evil”.
She argues we inherit a twentieth century view of humanity from Smith (via Milton Friedman) and Darwin (via Dawkins) as entirely self-interested and criticizes traditional leftism as being focussed on argument based on material rather than making moral claims. This is true, up to a point, but it seems every political argument I’ve ever seen is conducted in explicitly moral terms. Furthermore, it isn’t clear where she expects to find these powerful moral principles. Alistair McIntyre wrote “After Virtue” some 45 years ago and complained that even then the world had effectively run out of the stock of virtues drawn from religion and tradition.
I found it telling she spent time explaining to us that “Little House of the Prairie” was written by a Mussolini-sympathizer who wanted to teach capitalism to children and was willing to ignore the genocide of the Plains Indians. That might be true, but there is a lot more on LHoP than naked self-interest; there is also family, care and community. These could be threads that could be woven into an American virtue rather than simply dismissed.
One thing I found interesting was her characterization of Trump’s importance as someone who refuses to put a moral gloss on anything and simply reflects wealth and power as the only goals in life; virtue is for suckers. In making that claim but failing to otherwise distinguish Trump from his predecessors she is making a defense of political hypocrisy I found surprisingly appealing! I also liked her criticisms of “woke” identity politics as giving in to the zero-sum tribalism she criticizes on the right.
One challenge is she is reluctant to come up with a solid definition of evil. She claims you can understand evil without some sort of religious/transcendental justification but doesn’t explain how. At some points it's just something we recognize as being too far from what we understand to be just but that begs the question of who “we” are. Clearly we do not agree and as all the examples of political evil she finds are done by Republican presidents you have to wonder if there is anything deeper to be learned. It certainly would have been interesting to explore what the people who do support Republican presidents see as “evil”.
She argues we inherit a twentieth century view of humanity from Smith (via Milton Friedman) and Darwin (via Dawkins) as entirely self-interested and criticizes traditional leftism as being focussed on argument based on material rather than making moral claims. This is true, up to a point, but it seems every political argument I’ve ever seen is conducted in explicitly moral terms. Furthermore, it isn’t clear where she expects to find these powerful moral principles. Alistair McIntyre wrote “After Virtue” some 45 years ago and complained that even then the world had effectively run out of the stock of virtues drawn from religion and tradition.
I found it telling she spent time explaining to us that “Little House of the Prairie” was written by a Mussolini-sympathizer who wanted to teach capitalism to children and was willing to ignore the genocide of the Plains Indians. That might be true, but there is a lot more on LHoP than naked self-interest; there is also family, care and community. These could be threads that could be woven into an American virtue rather than simply dismissed.
One thing I found interesting was her characterization of Trump’s importance as someone who refuses to put a moral gloss on anything and simply reflects wealth and power as the only goals in life; virtue is for suckers. In making that claim but failing to otherwise distinguish Trump from his predecessors she is making a defense of political hypocrisy I found surprisingly appealing! I also liked her criticisms of “woke” identity politics as giving in to the zero-sum tribalism she criticizes on the right.
September 30, 2026
In which Neiman wanders haphazardly through perceived slights and topic du-jour, a very inessential outing from a voice-that-we-don't-need-now. She does start off on an ironically hilarious note, stating that she was summoned to write such a work, as if the bat-signal went off over the few free capitals of the lands to extract her banal observations. Naturally you're going to get a lot of I/P and the surface level analysis that someone in the 'academy' will serve up on that topic, yet how many times is perhaps today's greatest source of evil mentioned? The chief modern day slaughter king gathers nary a word lest Neiman bristle her oppressor / oppressed suffused audience. The chapter on economy just completely misfired and it's clear she has very little competence in this area.
Since I read her last work (a convoluted work about Germany's Erinnerungskultur that she mostly botched) Neiman published one of the absolute worst book reviews I've ever read (in the NY Review of Books) - I was literally gob-smacked at her distortions and ham-fistedness on the Taubes biography. But it shows you who she is - stuck in a kind of Woke-1 ideology and without much constructive things to say about our world. Worse, I think that writers like Neiman are unintentionally (or mit Absicht) trying to increase antisemitism with works like this.
Since I read her last work (a convoluted work about Germany's Erinnerungskultur that she mostly botched) Neiman published one of the absolute worst book reviews I've ever read (in the NY Review of Books) - I was literally gob-smacked at her distortions and ham-fistedness on the Taubes biography. But it shows you who she is - stuck in a kind of Woke-1 ideology and without much constructive things to say about our world. Worse, I think that writers like Neiman are unintentionally (or mit Absicht) trying to increase antisemitism with works like this.
October 28, 2026
The author is a moral philosopher who advocates for universal moral standards, human dignity, and social and economic justice.
September 29, 2026
This was more philosophical than I expected so I wish I'd read it instead of listened.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This one is difficult to really review, because the content is all pretty well researched and thought out. It addresses some key issues very fairly and with good depth to the thoughts presented.
But A) this book has no clear theme. It doesn't seem to follow a straight-forward thesis. It seems to just be a collection of essays (each chapter), more than a cohesive book.
And B) this one is tedious to get through. It has taken me a month to read this 200-page book. It's not organized in a way that you flow between chapters. It's not even organized in a way to flow between sections in each chapter. I often found myself spacing this out a few sections of reading at a time because nothing made me want to continue forward to see what the author would say next. Often what was said next wasn't related to what had just been said at all.
So I'll give it a 3 out of 5 because it's got decent content and is somewhat well written, but overall I finished this book mostly just to get it over with, not because I wanted to continue reading it. There are better books on every concept mentioned out there. You could read three or four books that better organize the content with more attention in the span it took me to read this one less-than-cohesive book.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC copy of this book, as always.
But A) this book has no clear theme. It doesn't seem to follow a straight-forward thesis. It seems to just be a collection of essays (each chapter), more than a cohesive book.
And B) this one is tedious to get through. It has taken me a month to read this 200-page book. It's not organized in a way that you flow between chapters. It's not even organized in a way to flow between sections in each chapter. I often found myself spacing this out a few sections of reading at a time because nothing made me want to continue forward to see what the author would say next. Often what was said next wasn't related to what had just been said at all.
So I'll give it a 3 out of 5 because it's got decent content and is somewhat well written, but overall I finished this book mostly just to get it over with, not because I wanted to continue reading it. There are better books on every concept mentioned out there. You could read three or four books that better organize the content with more attention in the span it took me to read this one less-than-cohesive book.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC copy of this book, as always.
September 20, 2026
This book has just been out five days but I'm thankful I bought and read it; it's unquestionably the book of the moment for anyone worn out with Western liberals' bad faith and ready to have serious conversations about truth and right action in response to the resurgence of fascism. Thankful for the few like Neiman who have the courage to call out performative politics and not get frightened by the vulgar "woke" on either the Left or the Right. Essential reading for anyone who genuinely cares about social and economic justice.
September 30, 2026
Susan Neiman’s new book is, to a large extent, an amalgam of some of her past books, fortunately ones I haven’t read: Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (2019), Left Is Not Woke (2023), and Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (2004).
The “evil” part of the titles is not religious evil, but rather a modern turning against morality/ethics in favor of personal interest (which is where the “Trump Era” comes in, but much of the book is historical and philosophical, although there is some prescriptive material, especially toward the end). The book doesn’t all come together, but it is full of original analysis important to anyone on the Left, especially with respect to ethics. It will be hard for someone who reads this to say, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
The “evil” part of the titles is not religious evil, but rather a modern turning against morality/ethics in favor of personal interest (which is where the “Trump Era” comes in, but much of the book is historical and philosophical, although there is some prescriptive material, especially toward the end). The book doesn’t all come together, but it is full of original analysis important to anyone on the Left, especially with respect to ethics. It will be hard for someone who reads this to say, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
September 23, 2026
This is the fourth of Neiman's books I've read (listened to), and the third with the word "evil" in the title. It's also by far her weakest, as she doesn't at all do a good job of fulfilling the promise of the subtitle. Aside from some fairly superficial observations about trump's obvious depravity and selfishness, there isn't much of an attempt to explain his unique allure to his legion of fans, or his ability to so completely capture and hold both his political party and the attention of the media/press for over a decade, despite his numerous blatant failings. The few good points she makes mostly come from quoting other writers such as Naomi Klein and David Graeber.
Instead, she rehashes large segments of the arguments previously presented in her books on evil, Germany, and Left vs Woke. And since it's 2026, there's also a whole chapter on how Israel is uniquely evil, far more insidious than even the most oppressive totalitarian regimes. In this worldview, Germany's greatest sin was not the Holocaust, but its ongoing support for the perfidious Jewish state's continued existence. And despite nominally being anti-trump, she reserves her harshest criticism for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for refusing to don a keffiyeh and chant "from the river to the sea" or whatever other suitably anti-Zionist debasement would appease her ire.
Instead, she rehashes large segments of the arguments previously presented in her books on evil, Germany, and Left vs Woke. And since it's 2026, there's also a whole chapter on how Israel is uniquely evil, far more insidious than even the most oppressive totalitarian regimes. In this worldview, Germany's greatest sin was not the Holocaust, but its ongoing support for the perfidious Jewish state's continued existence. And despite nominally being anti-trump, she reserves her harshest criticism for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for refusing to don a keffiyeh and chant "from the river to the sea" or whatever other suitably anti-Zionist debasement would appease her ire.
September 20, 2026
Ok, I came around on this one. It’s not particularly well-organized (I have no idea what she was thinking with how she structured this book) but there’s a lot of interesting arguments. And I was really struck by the argument that you have to embrace a normative sense of right and wrong and coalition-building on those ideals, particularly during dark times. For that reason, I wish her last chapter was the whole book.
October 5, 2026
When people become convinced that morals no longer undergird the law and our adherence to law, trust is lost and it becomes an open question whether the principles that guiding those fortuneate enough to live in a democracy will be adhered to. The worst kind of evil, author Susan Neiman states, is the refusal to recognize morality at all, the phenomenon that prevents us individually from developing what I call a moral compass. It is, in my opinion, the worst of evils, because it bars us from recognizing or acting from goodness and justice.
The author believes that Americans, and others who live under a capitalistic regime, have unwisely bought into the concept that to be sustained as human beings, we must foster what amount to unregulated 'free markets' in our laws and outlooks, and, as a corollary, reject the broadest of definitions of socialism which becomes equated with communism. This author is by no means an advocate of communist-style systems or economies but correctly pleads that socialism and communism not be treated as identical. I agree with this.
The author addresses, in multiple places, the human disaster we know as Gaza and addresses the many issues surrounding Israel's wanton destruction of human lives and property. It seems evil that the Israeli army has acted in evil ways in many instances and more than likely has committed war crimes as such crimes have been defined by international law at least since the end of WWI. Neiman will be criticized for her analysis, I'm sure, but her analysis of whether evil has taken place is well thought out, I believe.
One of the most troubling aspects of the author's analysis is the process that occurs where public officials engage in evil actions repetitiously and often that the evil conduct becomes normalized, or even expected. At that point, of course, democratic systems no longer provide a guardrail, filter, or check to the conduct of those acting with evil intent.
This book of philosophy and political thought offers profound insights into the author's thinking. She says, "the task of reason is not to oppose nature, as the romantics complained, but to oppose authority, which defends its power by restricting the right to think to a small elite group." It is hard to ignore Neiman's point of reference to Donald Trump here. Trump's military and civil liberties assaults immediately come to mind.
Neiman's discourse on economics is incisive. She points out that economic theory is financial political policy coated with a veneer of financial, budgeting, and markets coatings. She notes the view of John Kenneth Galbraith who wrote,
"What economists believe is rarely hostile to the institutions that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this
takes effort, although many succeed," who also observed that "we have successfully converted the enjoyment of luxury
into an index of national virtue."
Galbraith's insights certainly apply to how growth is defined, and who is said to win and lose in the accumulation of wealth. But it also raises the philosophical question of whether striving to accumulate wealth or luxuries forces us to diminish the importance of kindness, empathy, and justice. Is it an accident that Bezos, Musk, Zuckerburg, Thiel, and Cooke show up with Trump while he struts his importance to the world, or that big, powerful, and prestigious colleges and law firms quavers when he makes demands?
Which brings us back to the problem, or question of evil and how do we recognize it, address it when it occurs, and discourage and prevent from occurring. Considering that morality undergirds the rule law, its becomes given that either distrust or disrepect for moral principles dimishes our respect for the rule of law and utlimately democracy. One need never mention the name Donald Trump to observe the role he's played in the crisis America now faces.
The author believes that Americans, and others who live under a capitalistic regime, have unwisely bought into the concept that to be sustained as human beings, we must foster what amount to unregulated 'free markets' in our laws and outlooks, and, as a corollary, reject the broadest of definitions of socialism which becomes equated with communism. This author is by no means an advocate of communist-style systems or economies but correctly pleads that socialism and communism not be treated as identical. I agree with this.
The author addresses, in multiple places, the human disaster we know as Gaza and addresses the many issues surrounding Israel's wanton destruction of human lives and property. It seems evil that the Israeli army has acted in evil ways in many instances and more than likely has committed war crimes as such crimes have been defined by international law at least since the end of WWI. Neiman will be criticized for her analysis, I'm sure, but her analysis of whether evil has taken place is well thought out, I believe.
One of the most troubling aspects of the author's analysis is the process that occurs where public officials engage in evil actions repetitiously and often that the evil conduct becomes normalized, or even expected. At that point, of course, democratic systems no longer provide a guardrail, filter, or check to the conduct of those acting with evil intent.
This book of philosophy and political thought offers profound insights into the author's thinking. She says, "the task of reason is not to oppose nature, as the romantics complained, but to oppose authority, which defends its power by restricting the right to think to a small elite group." It is hard to ignore Neiman's point of reference to Donald Trump here. Trump's military and civil liberties assaults immediately come to mind.
Neiman's discourse on economics is incisive. She points out that economic theory is financial political policy coated with a veneer of financial, budgeting, and markets coatings. She notes the view of John Kenneth Galbraith who wrote,
"What economists believe is rarely hostile to the institutions that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this
takes effort, although many succeed," who also observed that "we have successfully converted the enjoyment of luxury
into an index of national virtue."
Galbraith's insights certainly apply to how growth is defined, and who is said to win and lose in the accumulation of wealth. But it also raises the philosophical question of whether striving to accumulate wealth or luxuries forces us to diminish the importance of kindness, empathy, and justice. Is it an accident that Bezos, Musk, Zuckerburg, Thiel, and Cooke show up with Trump while he struts his importance to the world, or that big, powerful, and prestigious colleges and law firms quavers when he makes demands?
Which brings us back to the problem, or question of evil and how do we recognize it, address it when it occurs, and discourage and prevent from occurring. Considering that morality undergirds the rule law, its becomes given that either distrust or disrepect for moral principles dimishes our respect for the rule of law and utlimately democracy. One need never mention the name Donald Trump to observe the role he's played in the crisis America now faces.
October 4, 2026
Susan Neiman explores the red lines between just a crime and what one can call evil. She also really nails the worldview of Americas current administration: maximizing self- interest as the standard
of rationality, rather than seeking to give any value to empathy, and other social justices !! No other principle except the supremacy of self-interest, subverting ethics or anything that gets in his way, and provocation for its own sake is his mantra .
Neiman, herself,sought advice on the anti-dote to despair from Justice Sachs, a veteran of many justice struggles. “ He succeeds by creating panic and rage. Stay crafty and cool. Everything else is his emotional victory.” Avoiding the panic without forgetting the shock of the disorder: the balance may be unstable, but must be maintained.
Neiman concludes : “No country , however powerful, can cancel the moral order. Sustaining it is in our hands.
Only 200 pages explain this phenomenon!!! I would give it ten plus. I have been searching for this answer for a long time and read many other diverse books while also good, never quit hit the nail on the head.
of rationality, rather than seeking to give any value to empathy, and other social justices !! No other principle except the supremacy of self-interest, subverting ethics or anything that gets in his way, and provocation for its own sake is his mantra .
Neiman, herself,sought advice on the anti-dote to despair from Justice Sachs, a veteran of many justice struggles. “ He succeeds by creating panic and rage. Stay crafty and cool. Everything else is his emotional victory.” Avoiding the panic without forgetting the shock of the disorder: the balance may be unstable, but must be maintained.
Neiman concludes : “No country , however powerful, can cancel the moral order. Sustaining it is in our hands.
Only 200 pages explain this phenomenon!!! I would give it ten plus. I have been searching for this answer for a long time and read many other diverse books while also good, never quit hit the nail on the head.
October 25, 2026
As some other Goodreads reviewers have cited, based on the subtitle of the book, I thought this would've been an examination of the Trump presidency and the topic of evil. That would've been a very interesting book to read. Instead, it drifted to many other topics, not necessarily relevant to Trump or current times and I lost interest in following the varied paths that the reader had to follow. As an aside, an excellent philosophy book usually requires a very slow and concentrated read or reading the book 2 or more times to understand what the author was trying to convey. Regrettably, I do not have the time or mental bandwidth to pursue those types of readings anymore. So my reading may be very unfair to the author, but I really did not get out of it what I expected. Could be my fault? Could be the author's? Could be a little of both? This is not an easy book to read for the general reader.
November 2, 2026
Book states it’s going to be about the Trump era but it’s much more than that. Helps you understand how come the most obviously wrong thing has such a huge following and why hypocrisy is rising in the modern world.
The poem quoted in the book sums it up best:
“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Book is extremely well researched and definitely a re-read because it’s packed with so much information.
The poem quoted in the book sums it up best:
“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Book is extremely well researched and definitely a re-read because it’s packed with so much information.
November 12, 2026
DNF. Regretfully.
After reading the introduction, I saw that this was one of those chapter-by-chapter books, not something you could sit down and read through. The chapters were like long-form essays on aspects of evil in the Trump era. I read two chapters, and had to stop after each to consider the philosophical points Neiman was making. Otherwise, it would be an exercise in "I read it but I didn't get it." Neiman is obviously brilliant, and has thought her way through the factors that allow what's happening in this country right now to be accurately labeled evil. It takes more mental energy than I have right now finish, however.
Densely written. A challenge to understand and absorb.
After reading the introduction, I saw that this was one of those chapter-by-chapter books, not something you could sit down and read through. The chapters were like long-form essays on aspects of evil in the Trump era. I read two chapters, and had to stop after each to consider the philosophical points Neiman was making. Otherwise, it would be an exercise in "I read it but I didn't get it." Neiman is obviously brilliant, and has thought her way through the factors that allow what's happening in this country right now to be accurately labeled evil. It takes more mental energy than I have right now finish, however.
Densely written. A challenge to understand and absorb.
October 8, 2026
A philosopher’s critique of conservative politics, the disproven theories that under pin it including the rapacity of humans and the promotion of self-interest as the basis of the free market (thus freedom) and the underlying evil of their implementation. No solutions but a clear call to expand political freedoms to include the social freedoms that can allow us to fully realize political freedoms. Well worth the read.
November 3, 2026
I took a ton of notes on this wise analysis of why the left cannot afford to abandon the language of morality, even when it appears idealistic or impractical. The author does the reader an important service by recasting cynicism and amorality as the actually impractical paths. She also does a superb job curating historical examples well to illustrate her case without losing the thread in extraneous details.
November 3, 2026
Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era by Susan Neiman
Reading history:
Normally I keep this in my private notes section, but I'm moving it. Yay!
Reading history was not added on Goodreads, but was instead kept on a small piece of paper with the book.
Started October 30th, 2026.
Finished October 30th, 2026.
Page numbers refer to hardcover first edition.
October 30th, 2026: listened to entire audiobook via Libby with physical copy nearby.
Reading history:
Normally I keep this in my private notes section, but I'm moving it. Yay!
Reading history was not added on Goodreads, but was instead kept on a small piece of paper with the book.
Started October 30th, 2026.
Finished October 30th, 2026.
Page numbers refer to hardcover first edition.
October 30th, 2026: listened to entire audiobook via Libby with physical copy nearby.
November 10, 2026
Maddening! Seems much longer than 200 pages because it kept circling around and drowning the reader in endless centuries old quotes and theories, all well researched and highly interesting on their own, but failing to bring them into full relevance to its promised subject: "Understanding the Trump Era."
I had no better understanding at the end than I had from the title. Yes, please "Call it Evil."
I had no better understanding at the end than I had from the title. Yes, please "Call it Evil."
October 14, 2026
Great Antidote
Navigating a perspective that does not give into nihilistic relativism on one side and moral fundamentalism on the other, Neiman offers a bracing and hard-nosed vision of moral courage in a confusing world. Much needed by those of us who are distressed, but unsure of how to actually “act” in the midst of such cynicism and hypocrisy.
Navigating a perspective that does not give into nihilistic relativism on one side and moral fundamentalism on the other, Neiman offers a bracing and hard-nosed vision of moral courage in a confusing world. Much needed by those of us who are distressed, but unsure of how to actually “act” in the midst of such cynicism and hypocrisy.
October 30, 2026
Very well written!! Neiman is a deep thinker with a thorough knowledge of history and philosophy. She uses her skills to present a clear readable book on US culture and events. Her admonition in the title to "Call it Evil" is well supported in the book. I recommend this book to both L and R, D and R.
November 13, 2026
Been looking for something that helps articulate what has been the sense of impotence we feel in trying to understand the US political landscape at the present moment, and where it comes from, and this book indicates a direction to explore. Far from being a polemic, it discusses the intellectual environment or lack there of over the past 40 years. Down to earth language.
October 16, 2026
The most interesting part of this came at the end, highlighting Albert Einstein's significant political/sociological work. The rest was most a retread of current events that if you are up on the news are no real surprise to you.
Read
October 28, 2026Wow. Much to think about.
November 10, 2026
Highly recommend.
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