The Banality of Evil: Part I

A few years ago, I travelled with my spouse and some friends to Nuremberg, Germany where we stood in the courtroom where former Nazis were tried after the war. Two thoughts kept running through my brain that day and they have lingered: 

The first was a memory of my New Testament professor in seminary, The Rev. Dr. Kalyan Dey. Kalyan loved to shock us and I loved his pedagogical style. More than once he told us (I believe in the context of studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans) that “Adolf Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews. Good church-going beer-drinking Christians did that.”

I knew that he was right, both theologically and historically. But it went against the simplest definition of evil I’d been working with. If you asked people in my small town growing up to define evil they would very likely say, “Adolf Hitler.” But this left us ill-equipped to deal with the real nature of evil. Don’t misunderstand me or my professor here: I’m not defending (in any way) Adolf Hitler. But when you project a theological category onto one (dead) person it leads to a pretty anemic understanding of the nature of evil. 

Kalyan knew this. He wanted to remind us at every opportunity of another Old Testament text, from the prophet Isaiah, that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” Although ordained in the United Methodist Church, his theology of sin was pretty Lutheran and his reading of Romans was through that lens. He challenged us, or at least me, to think more deeply about the web of sin and evil rather than locating it exclusively in one individual.

The second memory I had in that courtroom in Nuremburg was a memory of the phrase coined by Hannah Arendt, in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Eichmann had escaped to Argentina and was tried much later, in Jerusalem. But that phrase about the “banality of evil” kept coming back to me in Nuremberg. In those trials, Kalyan Dey was proven right: Hitler didn’t do this by himself. The trials focused on the charge of conspiracy. How and why did these atrocities happen? 

What did Arendt mean by this subtitle? She observed of Eichmann that he did not display either guilt for what he’d done nor hatred for those trying him. He claimed he bore no responsibility (as others had at Nuremberg) because he was “just doing his job.” He didn’t break any laws. (This can lead down a completely different rabbit hole, but I'll resist that for now. When is it “just” to break an “unjust law?" Or to put it slightly differently, can something be “legal” and still morally wrong? Yes!)

Arendt observed about Eichmann that he wasn’t able to think for himself. He had a “crippling lack of communication skills” because he relied on cliches and propaganda and euphemisms that made him seem like a normal guy just doing his job. I also find her observation interesting that Eichmann was a “joiner” throughout his entire life. He joined organizations that had a higher “purpose” and he had belonged to groups that he allowed to define him growing up. She also noted that while he clearly had anti-Semitic leanings, he didn’t hate Jews. Joining the SS was part of a pattern. He needed to belong. 

If you Google the word "banal" you find this definition: "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring." Elsewhere, synonyms like "bland" and "hackneyed" and "vapid" are offered. 

In other words, as I understand Arendt, this isn't like The Exorcist with chairs flying and pea-soup coming out of one's mouth. It's not dramatic. It's boring, but not less real. A lot of bad can be done but never by one person, not even Adolf Hitler. The bad that is done in this world, the evil that hurts and destroys the creatures of God, is done by "normal" boring people who don't know how to think for themselves. 

I've labelled this as Part I with an intent to write two more parts to this series but I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the next two posts so those may not come immediately...