You’ve no doubt seen the meme to the effect that “never in history has there been a time when the people who banned books were the good guys”. Well, that’s quite true. Book banning is an activity that is connected with authoritarianism and fundamentalist zealotry, which are not territories inhabited by Good Guys. But there are at least three other pursuits that Good Guys have never been guilty of.

Good Guys have never delighted in destruction

Sometimes it may be unavoidable to destroy things, especially in the course of waging warfare. But it wasn’t accidental or incidental when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Or when ISIS demolished the Temple Of Bel. Or when Napoleon’s troops plundered and wrecked Italy and Egypt. Or when Protestants destroyed Catholic religious art during the Reformation. Or when the British colonial troops plundered and decimated India’s historical treasures. Or when the Nazis destroyed a lot of things.

And before you ask, this usually does not apply to people who target Confederate monuments. First of all, it’s generally not a matter of actually destroying this statuary, but simply relocating it from the public square to a museum setting. Second, these monuments themselves are destructive; they were erected for the express purpose of galvanizing racist sentiments. On those occasions when they are actually toppled or damaged, destruction itself is not the original motivation. One even might say that it is more of a corrective urge than a destructive one, akin to tearing down a statue of Saddam Hussein.

By the same token, book “banning”, in the sense of restrictions against books or other reading (or viewing) matter, might be justified if such material is demonstrably harmful. There is no doubt, for instance, that the inflammatory and fraudulent treatise The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion — which was falsely presented as a manual written by Jewish teachers — led to widespread antisemitic attacks and even some murders. While this doesn’t mean that such a volume should be utterly outlawed (for one thing, it’s valuable in context for historical research), it certainly warrants barring its distribution in certain channels. But that would not be book banning in the usual sense; it would not be prompted by a desire to keep the public ignorant of good faith ideas or information, as is the case with measures enacted by religious and political factions to suppress scientific research or respectful portrayals of certain “lifestyles”.

Good Guys have never delighted in suffering

Again, there are times when suffering may be inflicted unintentionally. But all too often, it is all too intentional. Crucifixions. Medieval torture. The brutalization of New World natives by Colombus and company. The Inquisition. Concentration camps. The Khmer Rouge. The Armenian Genocide. The Cultural Revolution in China. Slavery and lynchings in the U.S. The Japanese occupation of China. The siege of the Belgian Congo under King Leopold II. The Rwandan Genocide. It’s quite safe to say that not one of the participants in any of these atrocities was a Good Guy.

Good Guys have never promoted proactive disinformation

Most of us, at one point or another, have unwittingly spread a false rumor or fake news story. But promoters of disinformation do it deliberately, repeatedly, systematically — and with malicious intent. The mention of disinformation always brings to mind the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels; and he certainly was the quintessential example. But he by no means invented the practice. It goes all the way back to ancient Rome (and no doubt even farther), when Octavian actually minted coins with dishonest slogans characterizing Mark Antony.

In some cases, the promoter of disinformation may be considerably less of a “bad guy” than the target of the disinformation. In some cases, a program of disinformation might even serve a noble cause. During World War I, for instance, Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau (yes, that was actually its name) tried to sway public opinion against Germany by circulating a rumor that Germans recycled the corpses of their soldiers into certain commercial products.

And during the second War To End All Wars, the British launched another disinformation campaign to help them fight the Germans, who had become even more worth fighting against. The false narrative they circulated this time was that British pilots had been consuming large quantities of carrots, which had sharpened their eyesight markedly. This ruse, designed to account for their success in battle while keeping the wraps on their big secret of radar technology, popularized the (mostly) mythical belief that carrots strengthen vision. One might even defend (though the defense certainly would be strained) the campaign by the Cheney-Bush Administration to spread the dishonest claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

But this is why we specify proactive disinformation as being evil — or at the very least quite un-good. By “proactive” we mean that it’s not formulated in response to some actual threat or constructive need; instead, it’s often concocted along with an imaginary threat that’s meant to justify it. The goal of proactive disinformation (e.g., birtherism and the myth of “Climategate”) is to do harm to someone who is not doing harm to you.

Additionally, disinformation is not merely lying. Virtually all of us lie at some time or another. There are situations in which it would be morally questionable not to lie. The most excusable lies are defensive lies: falsehoods intended to protect oneself or others. Those who spread disinformation, however, tend to be more prone to malicious lies — i.e., those intended to harm others. And while a lie is typically just a matter of one false utterance (though perhaps repeated a few times as the occasion arises), disinformation is a calculated blitz, a systematic effort to give a false and lasting impression about some particular matter.

All together now

So there you have it: four very reliable litmus tests to detect when some individual or body of individuals is acting with nefarious purposes. And if you find more than one of these undertakings in concert, you can be all the more certain that someone is up to no good.

Suppose, for instance, that the members of some sociopolitical movement systematically tried to remove books from shelves that portray gays and transgenders as individuals worthy of respect. Suppose they also gleefully dismantled government programs and institutions that they did not approve of. And that they cheerfully rounded up immigrants or anyone suspected of being an immigrant and subjected them to horrific abuse. Suppose they constantly spread delusional claims about immigrants and election fraud and abortion and vaccines and science. Suppose they were obsessed with abolishing racial equality, marriage equality, and any safety net for the underprivileged. Suppose they consistently spread the allegation that gays, transgenders and drag queens are somehow a threat to children.

Suppose, in other words, that they checked all four boxes with a very heavy mark. There would be absolutely no question that such folks do not belong in the column of Good Guys. And just imagine that such people managed to grab total control of the U.S. government. Just imagine.