‘Ghoul’ is a political insult with real bite

Why “Ghoul” Has Become a Sharp Political Epithet

Healfromzero.com – As Election Day on November 3 approaches, an old monster from folklore is appearing with new force in political arguments. The word “ghoul,” long associated with graveyards, corpses and supernatural horror, is now regularly aimed at public figures accused of exploiting suffering or displaying a startling lack of empathy.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, became a recent target after his campaign aired an advertisement involving the estranged mother of his opponent, Amy Acton. The woman’s husband had been charged with raping Acton during her childhood. Critics condemned the ad in especially harsh language.

“Vivek is a ghoul,” Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, the Democratic Party vice chair, wrote on X.

Andrew Weinstein, who served in the Obama and Biden administrations, made a similar accusation on Bluesky, calling Ramaswamy “an absolute ghoul.” The reaction illustrates why the term carries more weight than a routine political insult: it suggests that the target is not simply mistaken, aggressive or opportunistic, but predatory.

A Cross-Partisan Insult

The label has not been reserved for one party or ideology. In recent weeks, members of the public have used it against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in response to his plan to livestream a firing-squad execution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been called a ghoul following his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Republicans have used the language as well. Earlier in the year, a Republican strategist described former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee as a “soulless ghoul” after a social media post connected to a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The White House of President Donald Trump has employed the insult, too. Last year, it applied the word to a journalist who said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fled a medical emergency in the Oval Office. A writer critical of Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops into Washington, DC, was described as a “sick, disgusting ghoul.”

Its broad use reveals how political language increasingly relies on horror imagery. Calling someone a ghoul removes them from the category of an ordinary opponent. The accusation is that the person feeds on pain, benefits from tragedy or treats vulnerable people as raw material for personal gain.

“It’s in a sense a dehumanization tactic,” said Fielding Montgomery, a researcher and author of “Horror Framing and the General Election.”

“It’s that they are a monster … that they are particularly taking advantage of people or preying on people.”

From Arab Folklore to Western Horror

The history of the word reaches far beyond modern political rhetoric. “Ghoul” entered English through the French goule and the Arabic ġūl, a word connected to the Arabic verb ġāla, meaning “to seize.” Its roots lie in pre-Islamic Arab traditions, where the creature inspired both fear and fascination.

Scholar Ahmed Al-Rawi wrote in 2009 that the ghoul’s identity varied across Arab folklore. It could be understood as a devil, a genie, an enchantress of genies, a devilish genie or a spirit. Despite those shifting forms, a common image emerged: an ugly female predator roaming the desert and luring travelers away from safety.

The monster changed significantly after Antoine Galland produced his early 18th-century French translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Galland added elements that were absent from the original Arabic stories, most notably the ghoul’s appetite for human flesh taken from graves. That version helped establish the familiar Western picture of a corpse-eating creature haunting cemeteries.

European retellings of the tales adopted this image. In “The Story of King Yunan and Duban the Sage,” a prince encounters a ghoul that initially takes the appearance of a beautiful woman before revealing itself as a grotesque cannibalistic being. The creature’s ability to deceive made it especially attractive to Gothic writers.

It appeared in William Beckford’s 1786 novel Vathek and in Lord Byron’s poem The Giaour. Edgar Allan Poe later used the term in his 1849 poem “The Bells.”

“They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls.”

The Figurative Meaning Took Hold

By the 19th century, “ghoul” was no longer limited to a mythical creature. It became a figurative description for people who appeared to relish another person’s downfall, disgrace or death. William Makepeace Thackeray used the image in his 1854 novel The Newcomes, describing people as “Ghouls feasting on the fresh corpse of a reputation.”

That metaphor survives because it is so vivid. A political opponent may be accused of cynicism, but a ghoul is portrayed as doing something worse: consuming suffering. The word implies an appetite for scandal, grief and human vulnerability.

Fiction kept revising the monster. H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 short story “Pickman’s Model” portrayed ghouls as underground beings with “dog-like features,” as Rehan Hyder noted in The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. In Lovecraft’s later novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Richard Pickman returns as a ghoul, underscoring the unsettling idea that a human being can become something less than human.

That history helps explain the insult’s enduring force. It combines physical horror with moral revulsion. In a political environment full of accusations of bad judgment and bad faith, “ghoul” remains an especially severe charge because it alleges cruelty at the level of character, not merely policy.