Hannah Arendt coined the term â??the banality of evilâ? to describe the galling normalcy of Nazi mass-murderer Adolf Eichmann. Covering his trial in Jerusalem, she described Eichmann as less a cartoonish villain than a dull, remorseless, paper-pushing functionary just â??doing his job.â?
The phrase â??banality of evilâ? was instantly controversial, largely because it was misunderstood. Arendt was not trying to minimize Nazismâ??s evil but to capture its enormity. The staggering moral horror of the Holocaust was that it made complicity â??normal.â? Liquidating the Jews was not just the stuff of mobs and demagogues but of bureaucracies and bureaucrats.
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