Gadaffi and the banality of evil

Last Thursday (31 March 2011) was the 50th aniverasary of the execution of Adolf Otto Eichmann. He was found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He presented a famous defence:  "I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from Adolf Hitler or any of my superiors." Hannah Arendt  called him the embodiment of the "Banality of Evil", as he appeared at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality, displaying neither guilt nor hatred. She later went on to expand this remark into a thesis: the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

This view, however, has been challenged by, amongst others, S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher, who have concluded: "Until recently, psychologists and historians have agreed that ordinary people commit evil when, under the influence of leaders and groups, they become blind to the consequences of their actions. This consensus has become so strong that it is repeated, almost as a mantra, in psychology textbooks and in society at large. However critical scrutiny of both historical and psychological evidence ... has produced a radically different picture. People do great wrong, not because they are unaware of what they are doing but because they consider it to be right. This is possible because they actively identify with groups whose ideology justifies and condones the oppression and destruction of others.


As we have suggested, this raises a whole set of new questions: Who identifies with such groups? When does identification become more likely? How do genocidal ideologies develop? What is the role of leaders in shaping group ideology?"

Or, as I would put it: What's a nice boy like Ibrahim Musa doing in a place like this?