On February 16, 1963, The New Yorker printed the first of Hannah Arendt’s extensive reports on the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, which began two years earlier. Her series, entitled, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, sought to uncover the very origins of the evil perpetrated against her People.
Arendt suggested that Eichmann, the self-styled architect of Hitler’s “final solution,” was little more than an ordinary man attempting to advance his career in a bureaucracy that rewarded the abrogation of morality. The Holocaust, she reasoned, happened because everyday people abandoned their sense of responsibility for the welfare of others, advancing, instead, their own selfish or tribalistic interests. Arendt even condemned local Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis, which embroiled her series in controversy.
As we plunge headlong into the Age of Misinformation and the stark divides it has created within public and private discourse, Arendt’s assessments seem particularly significant. When we begin to regard our fellow human beings as nothing more than obstacles—or worse yet, necessary casualties—in the pursuit of our ideologies or interests, we invite tragedy in the form of needless human suffering and despair.
We must beware any discourse—public or private, conservative or liberal, religious or secular—that attempts to vilify, blame, or otherwise disparage groups based upon ideology, race, gender, ethnicity, or any other affiliation.
— Rabbi Josh Knobel