Little Eichmanns
| “ | The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account? | ” |
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—John Zerzan, Whose Unabomber? [emphasis added] |
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"Little Eichmanns" is a phrase used to describe persons who participate in society in a way that, while on an individual scale may seem relatively innocuous even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit — comparable to how Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat, unfeelingly helped to orchestrate The Holocaust. Anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan used the phrase in his essay Whose Unabomber? in 1995.[1] The phrase gained prominence in American political culture four years after the September 11th attacks, when an essay written by Ward Churchill shortly after the attacks received renewed media scrutiny. In the essay, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens", Churchill reiterated the phrase to describe technocrats working at the World Trade Center. The Ward Churchill September 11 attacks essay controversy ensued.[2]
The use of "Eichmann" as an archetype stems from Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil.[citation needed] Arendt wrote in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil that aside from a desire for improving his career, Eichmann showed no trace of anti-Semitism or psychological damage. She called him the embodiment of the "banality of evil" as he appeared at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality and displayed neither guilt nor hatred. She suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi criminals were manifestly psychopathic and fundamentally different from ordinary people. Lewis Mumford collectively refers to people willing to placidly carry out the extreme goals of megamachines as "Eichmanns".[3]
Related topics[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Running on emptiness: the pathology of civilisation; John Zerzan; University of Michigan Publications; 2002
- ^ Ward Churchill Statement, Daily Camera, February 1, 2005
- ^ Mumford, Lewis (1970). The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II. New York City: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 279. ISBN 0-15-163974-4. "In every country there are now countless Eichmanns in administrative offices, in business corporations, in universities, in laboratories, in the armed forces: orderly, obedient people, ready to carry out any officially sanctioned fantasy, however dehumanized and debased."
References[edit]
- Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.
External links[edit]
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Look up little Eichmann in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- The Wonderful Musician Anne Sexton's use of the phrase in poetry (1970 use of the phrase)
- Whose Unabomber? by John Zerzan (1995 use of the phrase)
- Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Churchill (2001 use of the phrase)
