The rise of authoritarianism today requires a comparative investigation of the tropes of political authority and models of subjectivity. From Cronus to the Leviathan, from the rise of fascism in Europe in the Twenties to the taghawwul (becoming ghoul) of contemporary Arab regimes, no understanding of current transformations could do away with myth, the literary, iconography, and technologies of the self, the other, and the state. Moreover, the digital age has opened a portal into rare and ancient texts and searchable medieval lexicons (digital humanities) but has also unleashed mythical creatures, video games, and drone warfare. In both cases, modes of interpellation and acts of reading and viewing have generated unparalleled anxieties and fears of losing oneself in the text or the screen, and of losing one’s life or freedom. It is in this light that I turn to the figure of the ghoul, tracing its development in Arabic folk tales and literary narratives from pre-Islamic Arabia to its usages today. I engage the ghoul simultaneously as a shape-shifting demon that lured and devoured travelers in ancient Arabia, as a process and a function of perverse fascination that characterizes contemporary viewing and reading practices, and as an embodiment of political transformations in the Arab world from the devouring state to the revolution that devours its children.