Adolf Eichmann and Iain Duncan Smith
Their similarities
The banality of Evil
Giles Fraser
Wrote this article which contained a
description of Eichmann and his justification for
the actions he carried out and why he believed
was innocent of any personal muderous intent.
Just a mere functionary do his leaders bidding
In her famous account of the trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described Eichmann as a small-minded functionary, more concerned with the managerial hows of his job than the moral or existential whys. According to Arendt, Eichmann wasn’t a man for asking difficult questions, he just got on with the job of managing timetables and calculating travel costs – thus her famous phrase “the banality of evil”.
Irrespective of the accuracy of Arendt’s disputed portrait, the importance of her account was that it expanded our moral grammar of evil. She persuaded many that moral evil did not need to have all the central-casting Gothic intensity of a horror movie. Evil could be ponderous and bureaucratic. It could be the work of a desk-bound pen-pusher whose emotional range didn’t extend much towards hate and who didn’t particularly care for the sight of blood. But this estimation didn’t fit with what a lot of people wanted to find. Which is why some felt that Arendt was letting Eichmann off the hook.
Putting aside Godwins theory can anyone deny this fits Iain
Duncan Smith like a glove . A man ? who can carry out the
most evil deeds to his fellow citisens with no more thought
than if they were a colony of ants.
A man who has caused and is causing the slow pain filled deaths
on many sick and vulnerable citisens at the behest of
his party leader he will say no doubt,
In all honesty I do not imagine he gives one momentary thought
to the evil of his handiwork
