Lirlee

「 ℑ𝔣 𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔇𝔞𝔪𝔬𝔠𝔩𝔢𝔰 𝔴𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔥𝔦𝔱 𝔪𝔢 𝔟𝔞𝔠𝔨

𝔑𝔬 𝔞𝔩𝔞𝔟𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 𝔬𝔯 𝔣𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔫 𝔞 𝔣𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤

𝔚𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔭𝔯𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔣𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔠𝔨 」

That's also true but it's not what the banality of evil means.

The term was coined by Hannah Arendt in her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the "final solution" in the Holocaust.

It describes the way in which the Nazis at large and Eichmann in particular have turned the horrendous act of mass murder into just another job, disconnecting themselves morally and emotionally from their actions.

Before the death camps and gas chambers, Nazi soldiers simply shot Jews into mass graves by the hundreds of thousands. It was a lot cheaper and faster, but it caused great psychological distress for the murderers who pulled the trigger.

The leadership's solution was a massively upscaled version of the "gas vans" they used to mass murder hundreds of thousands of Germans with disabilities and mental health issues.

Shooting bound civilians in point blank range over and over is something you can't just pretend you're not doing or is no big deal. But if you're just the guy who sorts people into groups. Or just the guy that funnels them into a room. Or just the guy who opens a cannister on the roof. It's much easier to distance yourself from what you know is happening.

This is April 19 on the Julian Calendar.