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Sunday, April 11, 2021

The Banality of Evil at 60 by @Samantharhill

Hannah Arendt was vacationing in the Catskills in the summer of 1960 when the news broke that Adolf Eichmann had been captured in Argentina by Mossad agents of the Israeli government. She put down the book she was working on, rearranged her teaching schedule, and flew to Israel to cover the trial. It was her "last opportunity to see a chief Nazi in the flesh," and she wanted to expose herself to the evildoer. 

Eichmann was one of the major figures in the organization of the Holocaust, and as Hitler's chief logician, he was responsible for the murder of millions.

Sixty years ago today on April 11, 1961, the trial of Eichmann opened before an Israeli Tribunal. But as the trial began, and Arendt was confronted with Eichmann in a glass box, she wrote to her husband, Heinrich Blücher: "The whole thing is so damned banal and indescribably low and repulsive. I don't understand it yet, but it seems to me that the penny will drop at some point, probably in my lap." (continues)

https://t.co/Bst6LhvUcQ
(https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1381283833388089346?s=02)

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