The banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.There is wisdom in this observation.
[Wikipedia entry, Banality of evil]
Demonizing "the enemy" or "the other" is natural - but not usually accurate.
The 9/11 hijackers - however much we struggle to understand the rationale for their attacks - were motivated by the same emotions that motivate you & me: love, patriotism, honor, greed, lust, fear...
One of my objections to most of the TV documentaries about the Nazis is that they almost invariably portray the perpetrators as "monsters".
I've written previously:
In fact, I think the more troubling - and more important - question is, "How did normal men come to commit such horrific acts?"The very fact that the Holocaust, 9/11, mass-murders, and all other truly EVIL acts were perpetrated by people just like you & me - THAT'S the truly terrifying thing!
As soon as we identify Himmler, Heydrich, et al., as non-human monsters, we are relieved of responsibility for our own actions. "Whatever we do to protect our nation, we are, after all, compassionate men, motivated only by patriotism - not at all like the sadistic monsters who led the SS!"
No. Demonizing the enemy is dangerous. With very few exceptions, most men share in humanity - we are motivated by love, by lust, by fear, by greed, by patriotism, by self-interest, by honor, by spirituality, ... lots of different motivations available, but none of them is alien to any one of us.
It is only by asking, "How could ordinary humans - my fellow men - do such terrible deeds?", that we arrive at understanding which may prove useful to us when we confront our own fears.
[p.s. & aside: for my view of 'evil', see previous post]
And just like the folks working for World Capitalism Inc who were killed in the attacks in 2001 on the towering icons of USer economic/commercial power, whom Ward Churchill accurately, but inopportunely, characterized as "little Eichmanns."
ReplyDeleteEichmann just kept the invoices straight, kept the trains running. He never pulled a trigger, released the Xylon, or buried a corpse. He just helped out on the front end, as any citizen might...
There is nothing in the worst of us which isn't also in every one of us...
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