Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric
That would be Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." I don't really agree with your "theme", but what the heck.   Problem with her thesis is that allows for the "I was only following orders" excuse. Other theses suggest that even ordinary people can be evil when they fall for an evil ideology ... you know, Nazism, racism, Stalinism, and certain interpretations of Islam, which, if they are "minority", they are a sizeable one, strong in Pakistan (a failed state if ever there was one) in particular. Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" is a fascinating read, and it suggests other ways of looking at the realtionship between militant Islam and "ordinary" muslims.
|
Fair enough Eric the book was written 50 years ago but it does link the strange relationship between idiocy and evil, those cases I cited demonstrating just that, to me anyway.
The Israelis set Eichmann up in a show trial hoping to show him as a monster and despite all the efforts of the prosecution everybody could see the man was not a monster as Arendt says " It was difficult not to suspect he was a clown" He came across as a near robotic creation of Nazi bureaucracy speaking in jargon..
Anders Brevik some argued should not be given a platform and the publicity he craved in order to propagate his ethnic purity fantasies. Some thought a dark creed would emerge which if allowed into the public arena would inspire others.
Quite the reverse he came across as a complete fantasist. During his trial he stood exposed as a pitiful and deluded character whose political opinions weren't worth spit.
In short he was a murder who longed to be categorised as a terrorist.
That was my theme Eric writ badly maybe, this is what these two Woolwich murderers are. The mad mullahs seekout these simpletons.
I don't know whether these two can explain what they meant in their video rants. I'd like them to try to explain. It would expose the hollowness of their actions so that an act of senselesss murder can be called just what it is plain and simple.