Demonizing the enemy or demonization of the enemy is a propaganda technique which promotes an idea about the enemy being a threatening, evil aggressor with only destructive objectives. Demonization aims to inspire hatred toward an enemy, rendering the enemy more easily hurt while preserving and mobilizing allies and demoralizing the enemy.

Because of the frequent misuse of the term demonization, it is deprived of its potential to be analyzed. That is why Jules Boykoff defined four criteria of enemy demonization:

The demonization of the enemy has been routinely conducted throughout the history. Thucydides recorded examples in Ancient Greece.

Phillip Knightley believed that demonization of the enemy (first enemy leaders and later enemy individuals) became a predictable pattern followed by Western media, the final stage being atrocities.

During the Second World War, propaganda documentaries that contained enemy demonization and flag-waving patriotism were prepared by the US State Department and other state institutions of the United States and distributed, after being approved.

Demonization of the enemy can be much easier to conduct if the enemy is personalized in one man, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was demonized by the Russian popular media during the First World War.

I hold it to a sign of great prudence in men to refrain alike from threats and from the use of insulting language, for neither of these things deprives the enemy of his power, but the first puts him more on his guard, while the other intensifies his hatred of you and makes him more industrious in devising means to harm you.

— Niccolò Machiavelli