Post by pim on Mar 19, 2014 14:02:02 GMT 10
This is an expression popularised by an American Jewish journalist Hannah Arendt in the report she filed for the magazine New Yorker from the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Israel in 1960. Her brief was to cover the trial of a Nazi mass murderer on trial in the Jewish State for the genocide of Jews in Hitler's Europe: six million counts of murder. Instead of describing Eichmann as a monster consumed by blood lust she described a rather boring little man who if anything was a bureaucrat who saw his task as just a job of work. If as a senior public servant he'd been tasked with setting up a universal health insurance scheme that facilitated access to free health care for everyone you could have imagined him setting about this task with the same bureaucratic zeal and thoroughness with which he set about organising the logistics for the murder of six million human beings. Hannah Arendt described him as a colourless individual who was not motivated by any visceral hatred for Jews but by the desire to do a thorough efficient job in order to advance his career in government service.
Her phrase "the banality of evil" got Arendt into a lot of trouble and she was subjected to a barrage of vicious personal attacks. She was accused of being an apologist for the Holocaust and, the ultimate insult levelled by far right Jews at a Jew who dares look critically at issues involving Judaism, the Holocaust and Israel rather than speak as part of an echo chamber, a "self-hating" Jew.
And yet the phrase "banality of evil" stuck because it resonated. And this is the point isn't it: in eschewing the "monster" characterisations of Eichmann and Nazis in favour of the more prosaic "banality of evil" Hannah Arendt courageously points to a much deeper and therefore scarier truth about Hitler and the whole Nazi kit & caboodle. To characterise them as "monsters" is to exonerate us - that type of genocidal behaviour is something only monsters and madmen indulge in, not people like "us". Not our sort! Oh goodness gracious me no!! And yet in portraying Eichmann as a boring colourless little bureaucrat with a briefcase who was indistinguishable from countless other faceless office workers riding the public transport to work, Arendt shows us a mirror labelled "Nazis" and when we look into it we're horrified to see ourselves.
Here's a film review:
The Limits Of Political Common Sense
By Janna Thompson
newmatilda.com/2014/03/19/limits-political-common-sense
A new film that explores Hannah Arendt's experience at the 1960 trial of top Nazi Adolf Eichmann should prompt us to revisit her work on the nature of evil, writes Janna Thompson In Margarethe von Trotta’s film, recently released in Australia, Hannah Arendt is portrayed as a philosopher who tells truths that no one wants to hear. The cost is vicious attacks on her integrity, ostracism and the loss of some of her closest friends. The film revisits a controversy that has never completely died down: whether Arendt betrayed her fellow Jews in her portrayal of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and her claim that Jewish leaders collaborated in the destruction of their people. It invites us to reassess her conclusions and the criticisms that were made against her. Arendt was sent by the New Yorker to cover the trial in Jerusalem of Eichmann, who had been kidnapped from his refuge in Argentina in 1960 and brought to court for his role in the murder of European Jews. Eichmann had been responsible for arranging the transport of Jews to concentration camps.
Instead of an anti-Semitic monster, Arendt discovered in Eichmann a man without any real hatred for the Jews, a clown who spoke in clichés, a bureaucrat who thought his moral duty was to do his job and a "company man" who was mostly concerned with progressing his career. In trying to bridge the gap between the mediocrity of this person and the evil that he did, she made use of a phrase that has become famous: the "banality of evil". In the controversy that followed her articles for New Yorker and her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, she was accused of exonerating Eichmann and defaming the Jewish leaders who he induced to cooperate with him in rounding up Jews. Was she right in her assessment of Eichmann? On the basis of an interview he gave to a Nazi sympathiser in Argentina, some scholars have concluded that he really was a Jew-hating monster, who fully identified with the Nazi cause. They think that Arendt was fooled by the way he presented himself at his trial.
But their evidence has to be taken with a grain of salt. Arendt’s careful examination of Eichmann’s career demonstrates that he was a moral chameleon. His views adapted themselves to his environment. When he was in the company of Jews he was their friend, when he was trying to impress his superiors he was dedicated to their cause. In the courtroom he presented himself as a mere cog in the Nazi machine. When asked about his zealous pursuit of the final solution, he identified himself as a faithful follower of the philosopher Kant. It would not be surprising if in the company of another Nazi he became a fellow believer in the purity of the blood. Perhaps he was all along a very clever actor who hid his real self behind the mask of an ordinary bureaucrat. Or perhaps Arendt was right after all about his lack of character. But even if she was wrong about Eichmann, this does not undermine the serious purpose of her analysis: to explain how ordinary, even decent, people can do evil.
For a start, this is an exaggeration. There are more plausible candidates for that description: for example, the failure of many German religious and political leaders to speak out or act against Nazi crimes or the failure of other countries to accept desperate Jewish refugees. Her condemnation of Jewish leaders is ungenerous for reasons similar to those she uses to explain why conscience fails to work under abnormal conditions. Political common sense also fails in the face of a regime driven by a criminal ideology. It is common sense to believe that people in a highly civilised society will not commit genocide. It is common sense to think that something can be saved even in desperate circumstances and that compromise is always possible. It is common sense to assume that a country fighting a war will not keep putting its resources into an activity that detracts from the war effort. It is common sense to think that leaders facing defeat will find it prudent to stop behaviour that their enemies regard as criminal.
In hindsight we might agree with Arendt that things would have been somewhat better for Germany's Jews if their leaders had not cooperated. But hindsight was not available to them. Arendt was one of the first to delve deeply into the moral questions raised by the Nazi regime and the complicity of those who supported it or failed to act against it. Even her critics regard her as a pioneer. The value of her work does not depend on whether she was right about Eichmann or whether she was too hard on the Jewish leaders. Her writings contain a moral message that we should not ignore.
I haven't seen this movie yet but I know I definitely intend to - and soon!
Her phrase "the banality of evil" got Arendt into a lot of trouble and she was subjected to a barrage of vicious personal attacks. She was accused of being an apologist for the Holocaust and, the ultimate insult levelled by far right Jews at a Jew who dares look critically at issues involving Judaism, the Holocaust and Israel rather than speak as part of an echo chamber, a "self-hating" Jew.
And yet the phrase "banality of evil" stuck because it resonated. And this is the point isn't it: in eschewing the "monster" characterisations of Eichmann and Nazis in favour of the more prosaic "banality of evil" Hannah Arendt courageously points to a much deeper and therefore scarier truth about Hitler and the whole Nazi kit & caboodle. To characterise them as "monsters" is to exonerate us - that type of genocidal behaviour is something only monsters and madmen indulge in, not people like "us". Not our sort! Oh goodness gracious me no!! And yet in portraying Eichmann as a boring colourless little bureaucrat with a briefcase who was indistinguishable from countless other faceless office workers riding the public transport to work, Arendt shows us a mirror labelled "Nazis" and when we look into it we're horrified to see ourselves.
Here's a film review:
The Limits Of Political Common Sense
By Janna Thompson
newmatilda.com/2014/03/19/limits-political-common-sense
A new film that explores Hannah Arendt's experience at the 1960 trial of top Nazi Adolf Eichmann should prompt us to revisit her work on the nature of evil, writes Janna Thompson In Margarethe von Trotta’s film, recently released in Australia, Hannah Arendt is portrayed as a philosopher who tells truths that no one wants to hear. The cost is vicious attacks on her integrity, ostracism and the loss of some of her closest friends. The film revisits a controversy that has never completely died down: whether Arendt betrayed her fellow Jews in her portrayal of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and her claim that Jewish leaders collaborated in the destruction of their people. It invites us to reassess her conclusions and the criticisms that were made against her. Arendt was sent by the New Yorker to cover the trial in Jerusalem of Eichmann, who had been kidnapped from his refuge in Argentina in 1960 and brought to court for his role in the murder of European Jews. Eichmann had been responsible for arranging the transport of Jews to concentration camps.
Instead of an anti-Semitic monster, Arendt discovered in Eichmann a man without any real hatred for the Jews, a clown who spoke in clichés, a bureaucrat who thought his moral duty was to do his job and a "company man" who was mostly concerned with progressing his career. In trying to bridge the gap between the mediocrity of this person and the evil that he did, she made use of a phrase that has become famous: the "banality of evil". In the controversy that followed her articles for New Yorker and her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, she was accused of exonerating Eichmann and defaming the Jewish leaders who he induced to cooperate with him in rounding up Jews. Was she right in her assessment of Eichmann? On the basis of an interview he gave to a Nazi sympathiser in Argentina, some scholars have concluded that he really was a Jew-hating monster, who fully identified with the Nazi cause. They think that Arendt was fooled by the way he presented himself at his trial.
But their evidence has to be taken with a grain of salt. Arendt’s careful examination of Eichmann’s career demonstrates that he was a moral chameleon. His views adapted themselves to his environment. When he was in the company of Jews he was their friend, when he was trying to impress his superiors he was dedicated to their cause. In the courtroom he presented himself as a mere cog in the Nazi machine. When asked about his zealous pursuit of the final solution, he identified himself as a faithful follower of the philosopher Kant. It would not be surprising if in the company of another Nazi he became a fellow believer in the purity of the blood. Perhaps he was all along a very clever actor who hid his real self behind the mask of an ordinary bureaucrat. Or perhaps Arendt was right after all about his lack of character. But even if she was wrong about Eichmann, this does not undermine the serious purpose of her analysis: to explain how ordinary, even decent, people can do evil.
For a start, this is an exaggeration. There are more plausible candidates for that description: for example, the failure of many German religious and political leaders to speak out or act against Nazi crimes or the failure of other countries to accept desperate Jewish refugees. Her condemnation of Jewish leaders is ungenerous for reasons similar to those she uses to explain why conscience fails to work under abnormal conditions. Political common sense also fails in the face of a regime driven by a criminal ideology. It is common sense to believe that people in a highly civilised society will not commit genocide. It is common sense to think that something can be saved even in desperate circumstances and that compromise is always possible. It is common sense to assume that a country fighting a war will not keep putting its resources into an activity that detracts from the war effort. It is common sense to think that leaders facing defeat will find it prudent to stop behaviour that their enemies regard as criminal.
In hindsight we might agree with Arendt that things would have been somewhat better for Germany's Jews if their leaders had not cooperated. But hindsight was not available to them. Arendt was one of the first to delve deeply into the moral questions raised by the Nazi regime and the complicity of those who supported it or failed to act against it. Even her critics regard her as a pioneer. The value of her work does not depend on whether she was right about Eichmann or whether she was too hard on the Jewish leaders. Her writings contain a moral message that we should not ignore.
I haven't seen this movie yet but I know I definitely intend to - and soon!