The New Banality of Evil
It is the inherent need for normalcy that will drive seemingly civilized men into committing the worst of atrocities. This threat has never been more prevalent.
“I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [Adolph Eichmann, Nazi Operative] which made it impossible to trace the incontestable 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.”
[Eichmann] was neither ‘perverted nor sadistic,’ but ‘terrifyingly normal.’
-Hannah Arrendt
Is evil a quality that only resides within the wicked? The Western World has reserved the title of evil for a particular subclass of household names; Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, etc. It is comfortable for us to look at an event such as the Holocaust and relegate the wrongdoing to the responsibility of one man. This allows us to ignore the fact that it was carried out with the public’s consent by ordinary citizens. That ignorance is what makes an event like the Holocaust not just possible, but actively a threat today.
There is a very thin margin of conditions that will determine if somebody living unconsciously follows a life of virtue or iniquity. This is the only way to explain how perceivably civilized men could be driven to carry out the worst atrocities in a very short amount of time. They will follow the path of perceived normalcy, even if it's paved all the way to hell. The Latin Root of normal, normalis, is defined as “conformity to rule.” The very origin of the word implies that the masses will organize themselves under the directions of the ruling class, regardless of any potential ethical implications. Normalcy does not always equate to morality, and this needs to be understood if we are to properly address the threat in front of us today.
Take the case of Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi Operative responsible for organizing the transportation of millions to various concentration camps in support of the Nazi’s Final Solution. Hannah Arrendt, a philosopher reporting for The New Yorker, looked at the totality of Eichmann’s life and found that he was not some amoral monster, but rather a “terrifyingly normal” man who worked to advance his career within the Nazi Party. Her thesis dubbed the collective characteristics as ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but a man who drifted into the Nazi Party in search of purpose and meaning, not out of deep ideological belief.
Many critics argue that the banality of evil thesis bypasses addressing the question of evil by Arrendt making her focus on who Eichmann was rather than what he did. However, this line of thinking creates a disconnect between the observer and Eichmann himself, and it implies that the observer would have acted differently given the same circumstances. The banality of evil thesis gives us a root origin of evil itself, as it points to the fact that it is a characteristic that resides within every single one of us. While we have figureheads at the top of totalitarian states who we can attribute the origin of a genocidal belief to, it is almost exclusively the “ordinary men” who carry out the totalitarian atrocities, as it is done for the greater good of their ideological normal. While we like to think we would be an Oskar Schindler, under the right conditions, and without having a connection to a purpose beyond the given societal framework, an ordinary man like you or I would have done the same thing as Adolph Eichmann.
Fast forward to the modern day, where we are now witnessing a global event putting the banality of evil thesis on full display. Just two years ago, January 2020, it would have been unthinkable to even suggest a scenario where compulsory vaccinations could become a reality. It was universally understood that there was a boundary separating the individual and the demands of the state. It was not controversial to suggest each person had a right to bodily autonomy. But just as the case in Nazi Germany, a mass psychosis event took place by the weaponization of fear and instilling of an ideological identity. This was only possible through the decades-long construction of a meaningless, material society, leaving us ripe to fall victim to the fruits of global totalitarianism.
Prior to the pandemic, what was our societal purpose? We were already well in the midst of a global health crisis in regards to mental health, obesity, cancer, heart disease, and drug addiction. We were never more politically and ideologically divided, as corporate media outlets had already gathered a reputation of invoking fear rather than reporting facts. There was no common higher ideal that we could unify around, and this manifested in the form of a free floating anxiety throughout the population.
This anxiety was then weaponized to give much of the population what they had always unconsciously strived for: a sense of purpose. Suddenly, the world could work together to defeat a common enemy in COVID-19. Every person had a responsibility to protect themselves and their community, as anybody could fall victim at any time to this new threat. No suggested measure or restriction was too severe, as individual identity had to be sacrificed for the greater good. People’s own desire to be virtuous for the betterment of their community was turned against them, as the population fell into psychosis based on a delusion that we need to fear a virus.
We have seen the horrors that have taken place in the past when an entire nation state is under the control of rulers who have weaponized mass psychosis. Nazis did not fall out of the sky and just start the Holocaust. There was a clear tiptoe towards genocide that started with separating groups of people into different ideological identities. Today, we are seeing this present in the “vaccinated” vs “unvaccinated” rhetoric. Just as the Aryan race in Germany represented “purity,” the vaccinated are celebrated as the only socially acceptable identity. To be unvaccinated it to be unclean, a vector of disease, and ultimately a danger to yourself and others (a point disproven by numerous scientific studies).
Just compare the rhetoric used by Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the Nazi Party, and Joe Biden, President of the United States, in the video below.
“They (the Jews) better watch out. Our patience has its limits.” - Joseph Goebbels, 1934
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. Your refusal has cost all of us.” - Joe Biden, 2021
This rhetoric from Biden was only the beginning of the dehumanization process. We have recently seen leaders from all around the world, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, use vile language to describe the unvaccinated. Italy recently passed a law that anybody over 50 years old will be required by law to be vaccinated. Austria has also passed legislation requiring all of its citizens to be vaccinated by February. Despite these types of laws being in direct contradiction with the Nuremberg Code, they will only continue to be implemented around the world. In areas currently requiring vaccination passports, compulsory vaccination will be the next step. This is only possible because of the mass psychosis and weaponization of what is perceivably “normal.” People who were “ordinary” just two years ago have now become the iron fist for global totalitarianism, and will be the ones who consent to a “by any means necessary” approach to enforce their newfound ideological identity.
If you are supporting compulsory vaccinations, ask yourself just this one question: are you the one who is willing to pull the trigger on me when I refuse the vaccine? All laws are meant to be enforced by violence, and if you are not willing to be the one who carries it out, I encourage you to rethink your position. If your answer is yes, may you find the help that you so desperately need.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” -H.L. Mencken, 1956
There has never been a care about public health from our global elite. How else can you explain the countless health epidemics, opioid crisis, and emphasis on GMO foods? Compulsory vaccination is the state demanding the right to your body sovereignty. This represents the end of freedom as we know it, and it only took a public health facade to sweep the population into a psychosis to support global totalitarianism.
This does not have to be how the human story ends. We still have an opportunity to rewrite the narrative. Truth is reaching the masses at an unprecedented level, and the continued propaganda wouldn’t be necessary if that wasn’t a threat. Begin to ask the questions regarding your self-identity outside of this system. Can you begin to recognize the core of who you are, beyond all the countless material distractions and stories society conditions into us? We must reimagine and propose an alternative solution for the COVID-19 pandemic, and direction for humanity as a whole.
What is it that we all want? The answer is generally the same, regardless of the story we tell ourselves about the pandemic: an opportunity to be healthy and pursue the most optimized versions of ourselves. Our only chance is to unify around that common higher ideal and recognize the current structural delusion provides no chance for its’ collective success. The greater good only exists when we protect the rights of the individual. That individual then co-creates the greater good from the foundational principle of freedom. It is impossible to have one common ideological identity in a world if true diversity and tolerance is to be respected.
Now is the time for all of us to become highly conscious in each of our actions and choices. The veil between virtue and iniquity is growing thin for those unconsciously striving for normalcy, and it will be all of humanity that pays for that unconsciousness. We have seen this cycle repeated numerous times in history. If we don’t stand up for truth and stop the cycle that is tragically happening once again, we deserve the harsh lesson that is coming for us all.