Without going into the details of this case (which was widely covered by international media outlets), it will suffice for our purposes to show that, despite apparent similarities, this is a case of impure cruel moralism – or, at least, so I take it to be. It is impure because the moral and political standards of those who humiliated and hounded the professor, and eventually drove her out, were far from unproblematic or uncontroversial. Moreover, the conduct of many of the students involved and the modes of harassment that they adopted strongly suggests that this was a prime example of vain moralism. What is especially significant here is that the professor concerned had every reason to protest her innocence and could insist that the charges against her were groundless and themselves ethically suspect and pernicious. This is a stance and position that Marrus could not take. Moreover, those who condemned Marrus in Toronto could not be so easily dismissed as patently misguided and self-indulgent. It is, however, this very feature of pure cruel moralism that makes it even more difficult to identify, respond to, and call out. These observations about cases of both pure and impure cruel moralism draw our attention to another of its significant features: the way that cruel moralism can attach itself to moral perfectionism and idealism of various kinds. A casual review of history shows that moralism and moralisers find a natural home in religion and political movements and ideologies that encourage moral optimism and utopian hopes. Those who fail the standards and ideals in question are a particular source of disappointment and frustration for those who are devoted to them. The further irony of this dynamic is that those ideologies and movements that promise perfection and utopia are themselves especially prone to forms of moral cruelty and sadism. Their adherents, of whatever stripe or orientation, find particular satisfaction in the humiliation and suffering of their opponents, whom they perceive as ‘moral enemies’. The suffering of their ‘enemies’ offers them further evidence of their domination, superiority and hopes for a perfect future. Religions and political movements that are founded on a gospel of love and justice rank among the most frequent and flagrant practitioners of draconian, authoritarian and dogmatic policies and practices – all of which is well-concealed in the language of their higher and nobler ideals and motivations. This disposition to moral idealism and utopian goals is itself closely allied with a Manichean world view that divides the moral community into the good and the evil, the innocent and the guilty, victims and oppressors, exploited and exploiters, friends and enemies, saints and sinners, and so on. This becomes another dynamic for cruel moralism. Moral practitioners who live in a world that is ethically polarised in this way are especially vulnerable to the satisfactions of cruel moralism. A world governed by such simple and crude moral divisions and polarities is one where it becomes easy to lose all sympathetic feeling and affinity for those who fall on the wrong side of the divide. Whatever restraints and moderation might be encouraged by kinder motivations will be lost, and the pleasures of watching the wicked suffer will be amplified. In many religions, this becomes part of an ‘inspiring’ picture of our moral future – a form of moral sickness that has worked its way deeply into those political ideologies that developed out of them (including ideologies that claim to have repudiated their own religious sources and origins). We might ask, in light of this understanding of cruel moralism, what steps can be taken to contain and curtail its influence in human life? Perhaps the most obvious and significant sphere in which cruel moralism operates is within our retributive attitudes and practices. For reasons already mentioned, it is a mistake to assume that cruel moralism and retributivism amount to the same thing. Some forms of retributivism might well be called for and required for any viable form of