Banality of Evil 1: Overview
November 10, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Adolf Eichmann was just an example

This is the first of a series of essays on the banality of evil. The series is inspired by, but will not be limited to, Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil. The banality of evil is ever-present in society, perhaps having roots going back to the ancestors of our species, Homo sapiens. It has been noticed by many historical figures, though they used other descriptors for this type of human behavior. It ebbs and flows across times and geographies. Right now it seems to be in a period of strength in the United States. Hopefully it will not progress to the levels seen in Nazi Germany (Deutschland) and allied nations during World War II. Yet it seems to be progressing to something far worse: the acceptance and enabling of the destruction of the environment by fossil fuel use and other secondary effects of industrial society.

Most people have a definition of evil, and it is not banal. The word banal can be defined as boring or lacking in originality. Arendt used it to contrast the massive horror of the Nazi death camps (and other methods of mass killing) with the subjective blahness of many, probably most people, who did the actual killing or organization of the killing.

Hannah was reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was kidnapped from his hiding place in Argentina and put on trial in Jerusalem, in the relatively new State of Israel, in 1961. It was natural to assume that someone with Eichmann's purported resume would be the very epitome of evil, not much different than Adolf Hitler himself or SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

But under examination Eichmann turned out to be a not-particularly bright bureaucrat who was unlucky. He had few accomplishments in life, but over time gradually became the head of operations for transporting Jews. First, he worked with Zionist organizations to transport Jews (usually rich ones) out of Germany. When the Final Solution (genocide) was made policy, his group arranged for the trains that took Jews to concentration camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, where they (along with atheists, communists, Gypsies (Romani), POWs, and others) were worked to death or exterminated on an industrial scale.

Arendt could find no evidence that Eichmann was satanic, or a psychopath, or delighted in causing people pain and suffering. He seemed to have friendly relationships with the upper class Jews he helped to emigrate. He worked easily with the Jews (Judenrat) who saved themselves by helping to concentrate, and sometimes kill with their own hands, other Jews. He enjoyed making the trains run on time. He believed in following the law, in being a law abiding citizen, and if the government said make the trains run efficiently while moving Jews around, he was doing good. He did not think of himself as evil. He never killed a Jew, or anyone else, with his own hands. If you don't believe me, you might if you read the 300 or so pages Arendt wrote on the subject. Although Jewish herself, she became a target of Jewish hate.

In later essays I will go into more detail on specific facts Arendt highlights in the book about various people who cooperated with Hitler, including Nazis, Zionists, non-Zionist Jews, Catholics and other Christians, and a variety of ordinary people.

Fast forwarding a bit in history, I would not be surprised if the movement against the Vietnam War was, in part, influenced by reading Eichmann in Jerusalem. The war was already underway when the book was published in 163. Opposition to the war escalated roughly in line with the war itself. Perhaps some people decided that going along with the genocidal regime in Washington D.C. was not the right thing to do after reading the book. I don't have any specific information about this, nor am I the sort of academic researcher (gods bless them) who take on documenting such influences. Learn more at the Vietnam War pages in this site, or read my broader book, U.S. War Against Asia. A few, or even a few million, protesters usually does not offset the momentum of banality. While many federal workers doubtless turned against the war over the years, there is no evidence of mass resignations. The war ended in 1975, over a decade after it began, because the Vietnamese people fought back, not because of protests in the United States.

Spin back the tape a few decades and we have a massive example of the banality of evil in the system of race segregation, or Jim Crow, in the United States from about 1865 (when the Civil War ended slavery) and 1965, when a Civil Rights Act along with Supreme Court Rulings and popular action finally brought the evil system crashing down. [Disclaimer: my mother was a racist who worked hard, at times, to keep the segregation system going.] Were white southerners (or racists outside the old south) evil? Some were. Most just went along with the system. To challenge the system was social suicide for most people. People just went about their lives with their heads down. Many were not mean to African-Americans. If they made the segregated busses and trains run on time, they did not think of themselves as Nazis, much less Eichmanns.

Examples are numerous, but in this brief introduction I would like to bring us up to this present day. There are topics to choose from, and nations, but I want to highlight the parallel of Nazi death chambers to the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. All the science points to the near absolute destruction of the global ecosystem, and hence human life, sometime between 2050 and 2100. Maybe a lot of that destruction will come even earlier, given what we have seen so far.

The banality of evil is not just the management of Chevron, ExxonMobil, Aramco and etc. going about the business of destroying our world. It is about everyone who goes along with it, consciously or unconsciously. The Board of Directors and major stockholders might become classic examples of the banality of evil, but the ordinary workers, down to the roughnecks and service station owners, are essential to the destruction. All of us who turn on air conditioners, fly in jets, or burn more gasoline than is essential to our existence share in the evil.

Yet (almost) all of us do good, at least from time to time. How do you motivate people to do more good and less evil? How do you defeat the Nazis? How do you defeat the Klan and more run-of-the mill white segregationists? How do you defeat the criminals of the Vietnam War, like Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon? How can we shut down the global warming machine?

Finally, what of the people who are fighting for good, let's just say trying to defeat Republicans in elections, or feeding the hungry, but for that reason feel excused to not fight the oil companies?

The banality of evil sounds simple enough. Personified in one man, Adolf Eichmann, it is easy to understand. But it is a complex world we live in, and the banality of evil is the story of our complex times.

See also my recent essay, Rebel or Die.