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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31548 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Sometimes I wonder if "banality of evil" is just a way to downplay regular evil. In other circumstances, if someone commits or aquiesques to evil deeds for the sake of personal success, that just gets called evil. If an armed robber murders a clerk, they don't get the privilege of having their evil called "banal" even if it was done seeking personal gain. Perhaps confronting the alternative, that some 90% of Germans simply were evil with no qualifiers during the height of Nazi rule, is too politically awkward?

There's a certain sick irony to an article in The Guardian discussing the banality of evil after what transpired over the last few years in the UK with lockdowns. Then again, maybe banality is still the wrong word for it, given that at every turn they wanted the government to go even further, lockdown harder and for longer, and be even more aggressive towards dissenters.

I think of banality of evil more in line with the Moloch idea. And I also find it useless. For instance I think that everybody involved in transitioning kids is taking part in great evil, of course they think they are doing good. In the end most people involved ranging from receptionist in gender clinic to actual surgeon who chops off healthy organs of kids will be fine. They are not doing anything illegal presumably. Another example - everybody knows what is happening in Xinjiang, China and it does not mean squat. Disney executives had no qualms filming Mulan next to it, literally thanking Xinjiang government for their tremendous help.

I most probably would not do shit about Jews were I living in those times. I don't do squat about kids being tortured in North Korea or literal slavery all over the world. So there is that - am I evil for just watching Netflix while all that is happening around me, possibly even contributing by paying slavers money for their products? If yes, then I don't care, it is not my business to solve these injustices.

The banality of evil refers to those who participate in some way in doing evil, rather than those who simply are aware of evil deeds but do nothing to stop them.

And further the reason it is linked to Nazi Germany is because such a large segment of the population, for one reason or another, eventually became supporters of the Nazi regime. Maybe not all enthusiastically so, but enough to be regarded as supporters of Nazi policy.

Opinion poll data from the immediate post-war years confirm the limited impact of Allied efforts. In October 1946, when the Nuremberg Trial ended, only 6 per cent of Germans were willing to admit that they thought it had been 'unfair', but four years later one in three took this view. That they felt this way should come as no surprise, since throughout the years 1945-49 a consistent majority of Germans believed that 'Nazism was a good idea, badly applied'. In November 1946, 37 per cent of Germans questioned in a survey of the American zone took the view that 'the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans'.

Source

No, the reason it is linked to Nazi Germany is because the term originated in Hannah Arendt's book on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

The review of the film in question is linking it to Nazi Germany as a whole, not Eichmann specifically.

Right. Because Eichmann was a high Nazi official, and Arent used him as an example of a more general phenomenon.

Yes, the general phenomenon that a large segment of the population in Nazi Germany came to support the regime for one reason or another. I'm not sure we really disagree?

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