EP 887 Evil Regimes Require Many Ordinary People Just Doing Their Jobs

 The type of extensive evil that went on under Adolf Hitler back in the 1930’s and 40’s requires an apparatus that enlists ‘average’ Germans of the era doing their jobs.  No one man could have done it alone.  Bringing this story forward, in authoritarian regimes around the globe there are people looking away at the inhumanity of their actions, becoming unthinking about its moral consequences, in pursuit of career advancement and other common things.  Our guest, Elizabeth Minnich, a student of and teaching assistant to Hannah Arendt, the great political theorist, has followed on to Arendt’s work in her new book called “The Evil of Banality: On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking.”  Arendt witnessed the Adolf Eichmann trial for Nazi war crimes and was struck by this seemingly normal, ordinary man-charged with unthinkable crimes-calmly arguing that he was simply “following orders” and “doing his job.”  It goes on today, every day, in totalitarian regimes around the globe.  How does banality become evil?  And what about those in our own country who watch backsliding on commitments to civil liberties and go along?  Provocative questions today on the podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download