The Critic Magazine

The “baddies” don’t know they are

“HANS … ARE WE THE BADDIES?” The moment of ‘‘Hans self-realisation in a Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch as two Nazis in a bunker examine their uniform and realise that their symbol is a skull. “I mean,” says David Mitchell, “what do skulls make you think of? Death … cannibals … beheading … pirates… [and] fun or not, pirates are still the baddies.”

Psychological outliers apart, nobody likes to think of themselves as the baddies. And yet, many people do things that are unambiguously evil. They often do them

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