Election fever: Leo vs Screwtape?

Election fever is in the air. Different election dates are being touted around. By June, many say, it will be over. The prime minister and other ministers have said that we have to wait quite a bit for an election, government supporters retort. That’s why it will be held early, the cynics answer, because the top government leaders have said that it will be held later.

Given that, now or later, the election will be held, I do not want to get involved in this debate. My interest is whether the campaign will be a contest that gives Leo or Screwtape the upper hand.

Screwtape is a very experienced retired devil. The last time he was seen in public was as the guest of honour at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College for young devils. His speech is faithfully recorded in C. S. Lewis’s monograph Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959). In The Screwtape Letters (1942), Lewis had also recorded most faithfully the 31 letters in which Screwtape had outlined a strategy for the benefit of his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter.

Leo is better known than Screwtape. He is currently the bishop of Rome and the pope of the Catholic Church. In the past few months, Leo has also outlined a communication strategy that Catholics should pursue.

Readers are probably puzzled. Le me explain. Both Leo and Screwtape have outlined diametrically opposed strategies on the use of words in the private and public sphere. The challenge we will face during the electoral campaign is whether we go along with the strategy proposed by Screwtape or with that proposed by Leo.

Screwtape suggests the corruption of words as the way forward. Leo bases himself on Christ’s dictum that truth sets us free. Screwtape is interested in short-term partisan results while Leo is interested in long-term outcomes for the common good.

The most devastating weapon in Screwtape’s chilling inventory of the tempter’s arsenal is the deliberate corruption of language. In Lewis’s satire, Screwtape urges his apprentice to exploit the slipperiness of words, to turn language from a vehicle of meaning into a tool of manipulation.

Words, he insists, should function like spells: persuasive, seductive and emptied of clear definition. Their purpose should not be to illuminate but to obscure. Confusion is the goal. Once language loses its anchor in truth, argument can be replaced by jargon and clarity by a haze of fashionable phrases.

In our post-truth society, the strategy proposed by Screwtape has become an industry. Instead of people militating for truth, we have professionals celebrating spin – the art of saying everything and nothing at once, while steering the listener exactly where you want them to go.

Leo is not naïve. He knows that Screwtape’s strategy has become mainstream in many countries. Consequently, last January, during a meeting with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Leo outlined the negative consequences of the current attack on truth:

“Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid, and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous… Language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents.”

Campaign seasons are rarely moments for calm analysis or thoughtful debate- Fr Joe Borg

He proposed a solution: “We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally. Only in this way can authentic dialogue resume without misunderstandings.”

In his Lenten 2026 retreat to Leo and the Roman Curia officials, Bishop Erik Varden linked this attack on truth to ambition described by St Bernard as “a secret virus, an occult pest, an artisan of deceit; the mother of hypocrisy”.

The ambitious leader uses charming words, promising heaven around the corner. But ambitious leaders are only interested in perpetuating their power and not in the common good of their people. Their corruption of language and confounding of truth and falsehoods lead to servitude and not to true freedom and dignity.

Hannah Ardendt, one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, has warned that the road to totalitarianism is opened wide when people ignore the distinction between fact and fiction, truth and falsehoods.

Addressing a global network of leading news agencies in October 2025, Pope Leo warned of attempts to suppress or manipulate information in the name of political or ideological interests. He said that when information is degraded through clickbait, disinformation and unfair competition, audiences are at risk.

To counter this manipulative strategy, the pope proposes a “virtuous circle”

between discerning audiences and

journalists who behave ethically and courageously.

Truth be told, though an electoral campaign is often dressed up as a “communications campaign”, yet genuine communication becomes impossible when language is bent out of shape and ambiguity replaces clarity. Sadly, these periods tend to divide public life into stark contrasts, stripping away the nuances that normally allow democracy to breathe.

In an age ruled by carefully engineered sound bites, few dare to risk a more layered or reflective statement. Slogans delivered with absolute certainty frequently stand in for reasoned argument, while edited or decontextualised clips are prominently broadcast and shared.

Unfortunately, campaign seasons are rarely moments for calm analysis or thoughtful debate. Positions are framed as wholly right or wholly wrong, with little room for complexity. One of the most corrosive tendencies is the pretence of transparency when opacity prevails. The public is left facing a polished façade – an image crafted for electoral consumption amusedly financed by the money of the same public – while the true face remains concealed behind a mask designed for the occasion.

I am not naïve. I look around me and what I see indicates that Screwtape will be the winner. But I hope against hope that there will be enough people who do their best to give Leo a fighting chance. Respect for our dignity and the common good ask for nothing less.