Last week the New York Times published an article -- "A Voice of Hate in America" -- about a normal young man who identifies with white supremacy. The article and the outcry against it hint at something we should have known for a long time: Evil isn't a problem because it has grand objectives. Evil is a problem because it is so, well, banal.
Banal: Common, ordinary, conventional.
That's right, evil is trite.
In 1963, Hannah Arendt published an article in The New Yorker magazine, "Eichmann in Jerusalem". In that article (which later became a book of the same title) she investigated the "ordinary" case of Adolf Eichmann, who had been masquerading in Argentina as factory worker Ricardo Klement, after having fled Germany at the end of the War. Eichmann, you see, was an an obedient Nazi bureaucrat, had risen to Obersturmbannführer (a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel) in the Schutzstaffel (SS), a branch of the state secret police, or Gestapo, headed by Heinrich Himmler. Eichmann became the "Jewish expert" of the branch known as the Head Office for Reich Security. In accordance with Adolf Hitler's plan for a "final solution" for the Jewish people, Eichmann was put in charge of arranging the mass deportations to the killing centers, which were mainly in Poland.
After Germany's defeat in May, 1945, Eichmann was captured by the Americans but hid his true identity and, with the aid of Nazi sympathizers, eventually escaped to Argentina. For ten years, reunited with his family, he lived a quiet life until his capture.
Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker and came away with an understanding of how such "ordinary" people went about "business as usual" in Germany, when that business included the racial violence of killing thousands upon thousands.
Most people never stop to think how racial supremacy works. That's because it works with most people. That was Arendt's point. It's simply so easy to become a racial supremacist, it takes so little of us and yet expects so much from us.
"A Voice of Hate in America" highlights how true this is. And, if we're honest in a way that Americans aren't taught to be honest, the backlash to that article is a part of the problem. We want to believe that this isn't normal. But it is. Racial violence in America -- in all its forms, including racial supremacy -- is standard operating procedure for so many!
The evil of that racial violence and supremacy is ordinary. That's what Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" means.
But if this is a new idea to you, I submit you spend about an hour with this video. Then you'll get it:
Banal: Common, ordinary, conventional.
That's right, evil is trite.
In 1963, Hannah Arendt published an article in The New Yorker magazine, "Eichmann in Jerusalem". In that article (which later became a book of the same title) she investigated the "ordinary" case of Adolf Eichmann, who had been masquerading in Argentina as factory worker Ricardo Klement, after having fled Germany at the end of the War. Eichmann, you see, was an an obedient Nazi bureaucrat, had risen to Obersturmbannführer (a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel) in the Schutzstaffel (SS), a branch of the state secret police, or Gestapo, headed by Heinrich Himmler. Eichmann became the "Jewish expert" of the branch known as the Head Office for Reich Security. In accordance with Adolf Hitler's plan for a "final solution" for the Jewish people, Eichmann was put in charge of arranging the mass deportations to the killing centers, which were mainly in Poland.
After Germany's defeat in May, 1945, Eichmann was captured by the Americans but hid his true identity and, with the aid of Nazi sympathizers, eventually escaped to Argentina. For ten years, reunited with his family, he lived a quiet life until his capture.
Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker and came away with an understanding of how such "ordinary" people went about "business as usual" in Germany, when that business included the racial violence of killing thousands upon thousands.
Most people never stop to think how racial supremacy works. That's because it works with most people. That was Arendt's point. It's simply so easy to become a racial supremacist, it takes so little of us and yet expects so much from us.
"A Voice of Hate in America" highlights how true this is. And, if we're honest in a way that Americans aren't taught to be honest, the backlash to that article is a part of the problem. We want to believe that this isn't normal. But it is. Racial violence in America -- in all its forms, including racial supremacy -- is standard operating procedure for so many!
The evil of that racial violence and supremacy is ordinary. That's what Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" means.
But if this is a new idea to you, I submit you spend about an hour with this video. Then you'll get it: