Banality of evil: Anglo-American Wars & Patriotism

Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

If suicide bomb terrorists and state terrorism are both evils, the killers on both sides are not fanatics or sociopaths as they are depicted by the other side, banality of evil is a concept to describe British and American soldiers and fervent patriotic public better than those idealistic and religious Muslims.

As in the famous Milgram experiments in 1960s, Stanley Milgram, the American psychologist, showed that capacity for evil come from obedience. Milgram elaborated the theory of conformism in the experiment which describes the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person. A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person's behave model.

Another theory involved is the agentic state theory, which says, the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.

The above 2 theories describe the public under powerful state control and under strong media/propoganda influence better than those devoted Muslim individuals who went to joint a non-state radical organizations which apart from political and religious agiation lack the means and resources of states.

Since nowadays the concept of banality of evil is no longer used as frequently as in its early days, i have seen yet it being used to describe the Anglo-American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the part of society behind the invasions and occupations.

I don't think the term has been over used at all. it can be perfectly applied to individual responsibility in big institutions, individual journalist's responsibility in an organization like BBC, and CNN/BBC's role in state propaganda and war efforts. Within big bureaucracies and state, the personal responsibilities and judgement have been surrendered irresponsibly and wrongly

Behind the group conformism and agentic abandonment mentality, there is specialization and division of labour of modern economy and society, esp. in the developed industrial countries. As for insurgent, he would have used a knife to sever his enemy's head off, and see the result of his action, while a western solider, may he be a pilot or a mechanic, may kill dozens or many times more opponents or civilians and yet have not witnessed a single drop of blood.

The contrast of killing in a old way and industrialized way, retail and wholesale, inefficiency and efficiency, barbarian and civilized, irrational and rational, backward and scientific, immoral and moral. The state with its resources makes an efficiency issue into an moral issue. Not only the state can make such difference, but also can some big organization with better governance. like a state with a better political and economic governance can make an aggression look like a peace keep efforts, a powerful media company with better governance and tradition can made the rubbish they churned out more convincing.