The Normality of Evil

Inherited conditions of peace allow tyranny to grow unchallenged

It is perhaps the fate of startling wisdom to become a repeated cliche. This is certainly what has happened to Arendt’s formulation regarding the ‘banality of evil’. What was a remarkable insight into the mediocrity and insignificance of men capable of astonishing evils (and hence the capacity of anyone of us to do the same) gradually became part of the furniture of discussions on totalitarianism. And like furniture, we would sit on it without paying it much attention.

So yes, we all knew that Himmler was a failed chicken farmer. We all knew that much of the architecture of evil was conducted by little grey men with little grey souls. We knew too that Trotsky called Stalin ‘the grey man in the middle’ long before the brilliant Trotsky ended up with an ice pick in his skull on the orders of the grey, once mocked Stalin. And all of these figures were of course more personally unusual, and certainly more capable of charisma, than the original focus of Arendt’s phrase, Adolph Eichmann.

Arendt’s central thesis can be summed up as a reflection on the disparity between the deed and the doer. For Arendt, Eichmann, one of the leading organisers of the Holocaust and the man tasked with all of the logistical operations of the mass murder of Jews, was personally an insignificant figure. He was a thoughtless bureaucrat who drifted into the Nazi Party. He organised death camps and hideous atrocities at a remove, concerned with the efficiency of the book-keeping and administration. Ten years after Eichmann’s trial Arendt described it thus:

“I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [ie Eichmann] which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.”

Arendt believed that Eichmann was simply incapable of empathy, that the lives of those harmed or killed by his work simply did not register. His actions were those of a robot rather than a demon. Others have pointed out that whilst Eichmann may have physically presented as a bland mediocrity, whilst his surface persona was (in his own words) that of the ‘quiet bureaucrat’, he was also an ideologically committed Nazi who firmly believed in the racial mission of eradicating the Jews. Eichmann referred to this duality, the contrast between his meekness and his fervour, by describing himself as both bureaucrat and ‘warrior’.

All of this attention on the banality of evil was focused therefore on the personal character of those who commit great evils. It made important points about what we might call the book and the cover of human evil and the way these will not necessarily match. But there’s a far more significant, for me, aspect of this.

It’s an aspect that might be described as the normality of evil, rather than its banality. It is an aspect that applies not to those who commit the evil deeds (even in bureaucratic support roles) but to everyone else, and to society as a whole. When we look at evil we tend to look at its emergence, we tend to focus on its rise and ask questions about how it came to be. But we ask far less questions of how it continues to operate when it becomes the normal existence of that society. We focus on the personality of key figures, and not on the compliance of millions of others.

It seems to me that there are two separate ways that the experience of normality aids the functions of tyranny. First, there is the normalisation of extreme attitudes to the extent that these become first permissible, then commonplace, then mandatory. We have some awareness of how this is achieved through propaganda, but far less awareness than we should have, or then we think we have.

Take, for example, the current situation in the United States of America. As we speak, the mainstream media and the US authorities will still tell us that far right white supremacism is the most significant threat facing the US. The FBI for example will repeatedly make this claim. And running alongside this, we are told that Trump and MAGA are extremist, or are threats to democracy. All of which is, objectively and verifiably, ludicrous. All of which is, in every way, malign propaganda.

The truth is that violence associated with MAGA or Trump was overwhelmingly violence AGAINST MAGA and Trump, just as denials of democracy, distortions of the political process, authoritarian actions and political corruption, have been overwhelmingly aimed at preventing MAGA and Trump gaining power, rather than supporting them gaining power.

It is the other side who stole an election through massive corruption, it was the other side who rioted for months, it is Trump supporters who have been imprisoned for lengthy periods without charge, or tortured behind bars. It is Trump and members of his administration who were illegally and corruptly prevented from resuming office, and are now being persecuted by Stalinist show trials. It was Trump that the US security and intelligence agencies worked against even prior to election, Trump who was subject to dodgy dossiers created by foreign spies, Trump who sees absurd charges against him for such objectively non criminal acts as recommending a particular TV station, treating presidential documents exactly as every other President has, or making phone calls designed to enquire about or prevent ACTUAL crimes.

All this means, of course, that the Biden administration shows all the characteristics of a tyranny that used a coup to assume power, and that uses the behaviour of a police state to retain it.

But this is normalised to such an extent now that millions of Americans believe the exact opposite, even whilst their side conducts Stalinist style ‘law’ aimed solely at removing any real political opposition. And even many of those nominally on the other side also accept this as perfectly normal, or merely a problem caused by its primary victim, Trump.

To move away from anything specific to Trump or Trumpism, consider the normalisation of evil that allows Hakeem Jeffries to be considered a respectable figure. This is a man who believes in the ‘melanin theory’ of black racial supremacism. He believes that black people are inherently superior to white people, and has endorsed a grotesque pseudo scientific theory about white people being ‘ice people’ prone to emotional coldness and evil, whilst black people are ‘sun people’ prone to creativity, empathy and decency.

All of these ideas are the mirror image version of Nazi views on race, and illustrate the way that Critical Race Theory and similar black supremacist ideologies of hate are the closest contemporary versions of Nazism, perhaps only exceeded in that capacity globally by the attitude of groups like Hamas. These things were also believed and expressed by BLM, which of course received overwhelming support and endorsement by corporations and media networks.

And this version of race hate theory is taught in every US university. It has the backing of every university and every college. It has the enthusiastic support of the Democrat Party to the extent that an outright black supremacist has the firm backing of his entire party for the position of Speaker.

Whilst fantasies of a MAGA white supremacist or Puritan Patriarchy are spun, black supremacism receives widespread support and endorsement, just as while people who didn’t even attended January 6th are jailed for decades, no comment or punishment ever follows leftist or progressive capitol invasions.

In other words, the normality of evil is already established, and described as ‘progress’ or as ‘anti-racism’ when, manifestly by reference to its own statements and beliefs and actions, it should be subject to ridicule and condemnation. And then these very people lecture us on what should be considered unacceptable, or imprison people for non crimes.

I mentioned, some time back, two ways in which Arendt’s discussion did not engage with the real banality of evil, the real problem which disguises what evil is. And that is that evil can coexist with normality for the majority of people. Evil can be dismissed because in many ways our lives continue as normal, at least until we are led into disastrous wars or severe economic collapse.

How is that in the western world black supremacism came to be so respectable and accepted, that people can be paid for it as a career choice? How is that support for Communism, which has killed at least 100 million people, and Islam, which has killed at least 250 million people, are both considered not only perfectly fine, but things strongly supported by many younger people? How is it possible that while Islamic terrorist atrocities continue, the threat of Islamic immigration is ignored, or even dismissed entirely?

One would think, for example, that everyone would be universally horrified by the barbarism of Hamas. How is it possible not to be? And yet our falsely educated masses contain a large percentage of people who effectively endorse that terrorism. Just as we had many people endorse the terrorism of the IRA. We even have, immediately following a Palestinian explosion of pure evil, the argument that we should welcome millions of Palestinians into the West.

It’s not just that these backers of terrorism and deniers of the obvious link between Islam and barbarism have been ideologically conditioned towards evil in our universities and colleges, although that is a significant part of it. It’s also that the continuing normality of life for most of us, an inherited peace, an inherited security, and an inherited level of civilisation, blinds us to the ideological and demographic shifts that threaten it all.

The fact that we are not immediately being threatened with the kind of things that happened to the 1400 innocent Israelis slaughtered two weeks ago, gives us a distorted sense that we never will be, even whilst similar savages and ideologies are imported or endorsed here. That we can live, and laugh, and love, that the vast majority of us have never experienced brutal treatment, never been arrested for an arbitrary reason, never been imprisoned for a non criminal act, never been raped in a park or survived a terrorist bombing, blinds us to these things coming closer, and closer, and closer to being our ‘new normal’.

That’s the really worrying banality of evil. More than the disguise of a meek character with murderous ideas. More than a matter of individual character, but of what a society is prepared to see. That our normal existence blinds us to true evil as a possibility, until it is too late. That we can accept ideologies of pure evil amongst us, even as they acquire power over us, without realising at any point that the normality which makes us so complacent can and will end from doing so.