I’ve been hesitating to post on this thread, though I’ve been following it closely. Here now are my two cent, for what they might be worth.
The first question which arises is: What is evil? Was Melkor’s discord in the Ainulindalë evil already? Debatable, I think. But if we follow Melkor on his path then we will sooner or later hit on some things which are undebatably evil. This suffices for my purposes here.
I think there are many different stages of ‘liking evil’ which I feel have sometimes been mixed up in this thread. I’ll try to spell them out. The following probably isn’t complete – it’s just the things that have accumulated in my mind.
Empathy – I would take this as the first stage. One develops a certain understanding for the baddies’ situation and his motives. The baddie is pitied, in the most positive sense. This empathy does not include the approval of their deeds or intentions. Is it immoral? On the contrary, I think. In fact, I would go so far to call somebody who is unable of it immoral, because it means absence of pity.
Sympathy – This is more or less a natural consequence of empathy, though many people won’t go this far from there. Still, just because we sympathise with a character does not imply the approval of his deeds and intentions and therefore no immorality.
Fascination – I find it difficult to explain this properly. A kind of increase of sympathy. It includes a partial identification with the character. Partial is important, as, for example, a person who detests elves still knows that slaughtering them isn’t right. I'm aware this is a vague item.
Delight – This seems to be the point most fought over. Somebody recognises evil and delights in it and adopts it for reasons of entertainment. But, in order to be able to recognise it, one needs to be able to perceive something as evil, so the moral system of the person is ‘intact’ and the delight in evil will not affect the every-day behaviour. For these reasons, I see no immorality in it, since the persons real actions and intentions are unaffected. Can a moral person not delight in fictional immorality? I see no reason why.
Identification – Couldn’t find a better word for what I mean. At this stage, somebody identifies with a villain, completely or nearly completely, as opposed to the identification mentioned under fascination. The morals connected with the villain are adopted into the own moral system, or they were already equal beforehand. This is the big difference to what I said under delight. Of course, people like this delight in the portrayed evil, too, but for different reasons. Since the majority of them (I hope!) is not able to act according to their beliefs in their every-day life, they might seek delight in literature or play. But since the deeds portrayed are not evil in their mindset (though they might still call them evil) it is not the same. I would say that this is the item where the mark to immorality has been, at last, stepped over.
Sure, one could argue that these people just have a different moral system, and that one is as good as the other, but I think one has to stop at some point. Though I know it contradicts itself, I would say that there are some moral systems which are immoral. I’ll leave the solution to philosophers...
Of course, these categories overlap and have blurry edges.
The second question: Why? I admit I don’t know what to explain for most of the items (all except identification, in fact), because I think this is quite normal behaviour for a human being. Sorry.
Concerning identification, I can hardly imagine that Tolkien's works influenced a person in a way as to turn him into an immoral person. Therefore I would say that the views they hold already were like this before they read the books. Under this circumstance, it is no problem to find characters to identify with. What made these people hold their views in the first place? That's another question, and probably beyond the scope of this thread.
PS: Do examples for real-world evil-doers
always have to come from German history? Yes, Hitler was bad, really and earnestly bad. But history offers so many other bad people. Be more imaginative!
