“… the more superficial someone is, the more likely he will yield to Evil.
That is the Banality of Evil. An indication of such superficiality was the use of cliches. And Eichmann, God knows, was a perfect example.” (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Hannah Arendt 1963).
‘Vita Active’ is a documentary on the life of the philosopher, Hannah Arendt. She travelled to Israel in the 1961 to see the trial of Adolph Eichmann and was taken by the prosaic, mundane attitude Eichmann demonstrated as he bore witness to his role in the death of thousands of people during the Nazi holocaust. In 1963 she published the book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’.
Arendt was criticised for seemingly minimising the horrors of the holocaust, but she defended her description because it applied not so much to the holocaust itself but the response to it by the perpetrators, those who worked in the camps to exterminate unwanted, superfluous peoples, be they Jew or Gypsy, homosexual, Jehovah’s Witnesses or any others deemed less than Aryan.
What struck me in opening statement, it that is more than just a response to Adolph Eichmann’s defence, ‘merely following orders’, it is the lack of thinking behind that cliche’d response. The shrugging off of any responsibility.
In another clip from the film, a leaders of soldiers is instructing his underlings on how to kill people, to shoot them, in such a way they would not carry the trauma with them. He told them to follow his orders, that way the responsibility, the burden of guilt or trauma would be his to carry. In other words, don’t think, just do.
Don’t think of the people to be killed as people, they are just things, things we don’t need. The action is just a following of orders, much the same as an instruction to an apprentice in a workplace, learning their trade or craft.
A footnote in the film, almost an after thought, is in the closing graphics of the film: Hannah Arendt passed away in 1975, never experiencing the lingering relevance of her ideas:
the prevalence of totalitarian elements in non-totalitarian regimes,
the danger of ideology, any ideology,
the need for pluralism,
the banality of evil in the world today.
Totalitarian elements in non-totalitarian regimes
The United States of America claims to be the world’s leading democracy, with a constitution which guarantees freedom of speech among so many other liberal ideals, yet in recent days a student activist at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested, for protesting against the treatment of Palestinians in the Israel/Palestinian conflicts both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Totalitarian elements within democracies appear to be contradictions of terms, but we need not look too far back in our own history to see that in action when we consider the hounding of people for debts they did not have in the Robodebt campaign by the previous government.
Or the apparent criminalisation of poverty, of being Aboriginal with ‘tough on crime’ and ‘adult time for adult crime’ slogans being carried out in Queensland and the NT where Indigenous incarceration rates are an embarrassment. Better to deal with the crime rather than the social conditions driving that criminality.
In the current election campaign, Peter Dutton has backtracked on several policy positions. He has come to the campaign pretending to be the strong leader, calling the Prime Minister weak, not just during the campaign but repeatedly in the last three years. Dutton is trying to win the election without any clear idea of what to offer the people, except that they should trust him as he sacks 41,000 public servants, who would now be allowed to work from home, another back flip on the idea that people doing the same job at a work site as others should be paid the same. And so it goes, backflips, and thought bubbles, but a rhetoric which is divisive, a bit Trump-like really.
Ideology, any ideology
Ideologies, the ‘isms’ of politics, have caused distress when seen as the only set of standards or ideals to live by, or to have as the rules for a nation, and can cover the complete left to right spectrum of political thinking, from an inclusive form of socialism, to communism to far right conservatism, but the more insidious ones today are rooted in religion such as in Iran and Afghanistan.
The role of religio-politics is evident in the US, with the restriction of abortion rights and other equalities gained in the last sixty or so years, with the rise of religious influence within the republican party particularly.
Here in Australia we see at least two Christian political parties who aim to restore ‘Judeo-Christian values’, and I respect their honesty in making that their platform.
However, the infiltration of religious activists into the Liberal party, a sectarian political party, is seeing an assault on the freedoms achieved over the last fifty or so years, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights including marriage equality, the freedom to ‘be who we are’ when it comes to sexual self definition, voluntary assisted dying rights, the attack on trans people, people who have or are contemplating sexual redefining operations and so forth.
By taking on those ‘Judeo-Christian values, the Liberals are demonstrating hypocrisy, a dishonesty, and when empowered will remove those hard won freedoms and human rights, criminalising behaviours which are based on theology rather than human rights.
The attack on a ‘woke’ education system which includes an authentic teaching of colonialism in Australia and the brutality of the land grabs, the Stolen Generation and cultural extinction inflicted on our first nations people. Denying the truth of that history, further marginalises first nations people through promoting ignorance, the same anti-intellectualism as the ‘If you don’t know, vote no’ in the stance against passing the Voice to Parliament referendum. The ideology of religion should not over-ride the ideology of democracy.
Pluralism
The rise on nationalism late in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw national definitions, especially in Europe define the populations of nations according to language and purity of physical attributes, such as Aryan as being the ideal German giving rise to National Socialism, or Nazi ideology. Similarly in Italy with and the rise of Fascism.
For European Jews, the isolation suffered through the rise of nationalism led to Zionism as a uniquely Jewish political ideal. There was no room for such diversity in German Nationalism to include Jews.
But isolation based on difference, whether it be religious identity, language or other cultural markers has been around for a long long time. The term ‘Barbarian’ was coined by the Romans, 2000 years ago, to define those who were not Roman citizens. Barbarians were enslaved, became the entertainers who fought the lions or gladiators in the Coliseums.
In recent days, during the bitterness of the religious divide, and subsequent political posturing, anti-semitism became a real thing, requiring redefinition to ensure that semitic people, the Jewish communities which are part of the diverse mix of ethnicities which make up the Australian population were not discriminated against. Palestinians, and those who supported Palestinians became targets, leading to a rise in Islamophobia. So we saw graffiti on mosques, we say attacks on religious freedoms. But the rise of Islamophobia saw the debate on whether to accept Palestinian refugees become an issue.
We fear difference, yet we are one of the most pluralistic populations in the world with people from every country on the planet making Australia home, with every religion represented in the faith spectrum, yet, we see a ramping up of fear when refugees arrive on our doorstep.
Stateless people wanting somewhere to live. There are currently over 122 million people forcibly displaced by war or religion or famine or natural disasters. That is about 1.5% of the world’s population has no where to go.
The fear of ‘illegal’ immigration is rife. The incoming Trump administration in America made it a campaign issue, tormenting hatred, further the ramping up of other diverse people, coloured people, the move to eliminate the Diverse, Inclusive and Equitable employment criteria is an attack in diversity in American employment law, and becomes an interesting chat topic over coffee or a few beers with friends here too.
But it is more than just a presence in the world today, I see it in the history of humanity. The constant struggle for supremacy, the demands for subservience, the marginalisation of peoples, especially of indigenous peoples as empires and colonies asserted power of invaded territories and people. But also in the feudal past where land owners owned not just the land and the wealth it produced, but also the people who worked that land, as peasants, as owned people.
In industrialised Britain, those marginalised by the newest farming methods, where machines replaced people in sowing and reaping crops, where fields were enclosed so that when fallow, they could feed the livestock, fatten animals for slaughter and sold to the growing middle-class population No room there for common land, land for the peasants to grow food for their families. They were superfluous to needs and were tossed aside, some to find employment on subsistence wages in the new factories, others who may steal a rabbit from the King’s forest, exported, transported off to the colonies in the Virginias to labour for the extent of their sentences.
No thought given to the intrinsic humanity of those people, no thought given to why they may have stolen that rabbit, or in the case of the negroes taken by force, no thought given to their human-ness, just their fitness to labour until they fell over, died, to be replaced by slaves from the next shipment.
The criteria used was to ensure that those who ‘owned’ the land, those who had invested in the ships to transport goods and slaves, those who had invested in the new ways of farming, the new ways of factory production as opposed to cottage industries, were entitled to whatever profits could be made.
We’ve moved on haven’t we?
We are not like that, so greedy, so selfish, so smitten by the excitement of a new something or other. So devoid of valuing each person to render them as not worthy of a living wage, not worthy of the opportunities to own a home, but worthy enough to charge exorbitant rents for homes hardly fit for habitation.
Or to close women’s refuge centres because they ‘attract the wrong types of people’ to the city, the excuse given by the then Mayor of Perth, now leader of the opposition in WA, the same man wanting to remove homeless people from the Perth City, but offering no solution to homelessness. Get rid of those superfluous people.
And the would be Prime Minister promotes nuclear energy despite the proven problems of such high prices that no investor will come up with the money and the unreliability with cost over runs and production delays, because one of his billionaire friends and major donor to the election campaign just might be sitting on a sizeable deposit of uranium… just putting 2 and 2 together here, folks.
Perhaps we should just look what evil really is, how it is defined.
From the Book of Thoughts:
Evil:
a.The radical evil b. Not a result of evil will
The radical Evil which wishes Evil for the sake of Evil does not exist. Only the selfish Evil exists.
Evil is thought defying.
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Great article Bert.
Your reference to “the Liberal party, a sectarian political party”
Should that be “secular”?
Dutton is like a car chasing dog.
The chase is more important than the catch.
And what about the backpackers reduced to indentured servitude to complete their stay?
Neo-nationalism, or worse, white Christian nationalism that is transnational running across both the Anglosphere and Europe, but requires complicit citizens to vote.
However, we have ageing electoral rolls, white Christian nationalism and faux free market economics getting to heaving mass of middle aged and older voters (8 mill on local rolls) with 24/7/365 electoral or leadership campaigns and xenophobia.
Brexit was a good example, like Trump both Koch doing the free market or ‘survival,of the fittest’ to avoid EU regulatory constraints on fossil fuels & few tariffs, while Tanton did the anti-immigrant agitprop (see Farage & Murdoch).
Researchers in UK, Italy, Hungary and Australia have described Brexit, Orbán, The Voice No campaign and now Trump as examples of ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’, before ‘the great replacement’.
One’s concern are the RWNJs and crazies behind Trump who are supposed to experts inc Navarro et al., but clearly not equipped except for catering to Trump.
Meanwhile our own allies or supporters of Brexit, Trump and The Voice No campaign Murdoch, Howard, Abbott, Rhinehart, Sheridan, Bolt, Downer, Assange et al are mute on their preferred occupant in the White House?
I thought “barbarian” was a Greek invention, because their (non Greek) spoken languages just sounded like meaningless noises to the We’re-oh-so-superior Greeks?
There is no-one so weak and insecure as those who insist others must submit to them due to a supposedly natural inferiority which is essentially defined as “just because”; skin colour, ancestry, religion, etc.
Steve:
No, sectarian is a fair enough usage here; they’ve been thoroughly infiltrated by the same extremist RRWNJs who are the drivers behind Project 2025 and the MAGA cult.
leefe, yes, you’re right.
I don’t think the Libs would see themselves that way, I think they would prefer “secular”, but who cares what they think? 🙂
Well said Bert.
It may as well be called the death of empathy. The big regressive push of course, is related to ‘exclusive’ ownership of realty, being the principal determinant of power. On top of this are the invisibilities, impunities and escape routes afforded by ‘Corporate Personhood’, the agglomeration of power by cross-corporate ownership / control, and selective jurisdiction jumping (‘relocation’), particularly by mega-corporate-networks (incl Churches) to minimize or obviate liabilities, compensation and coercive powers of enforcement by courts. And all those are subject to Constitutions and legislation of States, and the political intentions the incumbent government.
These matters are far from uniform across jurisdictions, and remain as a febrility and potentially a huge litigation cost-risk for all but the corporate behemoths. Accordingly, mega-corporations and / or their derivatives are rampantly buying realty, causing prices to skyrocket, and ordinary folk are being rendered to the unproductive margins of States or entrapped in a ‘slavery’ manufactured by the mega-corporations and the proclivities of corrupted and / or cowardly politics.
We are seeing this world-wide, particularly as an assault on ‘advanced western economies’, and permeating through all vulnerable so-called democracies. Its effect is as if it’s a regression to times when only real property owners had voting rights, except, now, voting rights mean almost nothing amid the entanglements enunciated above.
The advent of T-Rump as POTUS and putative controller of SCOTUS and his actions and those of his flunkies and backers are examples in the extreme of the backslide. And it is why interdependent ‘democratic’ governments across the globe are, in addition to balancing their economies and confidence, now somewhat hamstrung in their ability to address increasing homelessness.