Talk:Banality of evil

I think Threaou coined the phrase in Walden. I might be wrong, and thats just what I was taught in school. I will try to verify

In this sentence fragment "but rather by very ordinary people who", 'very' should be removed because it is redundant. --Patpecz 22:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

hey don't vandalize, and do your job

I have restored my expansion of this stub, which was requested. Atlan, don't vandalize this. Your action was banally evil in itself.

Continue, and I will act on your constant block evasion. Be happy that I let you edit at all.--Atlan (talk) 13:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

If you want to make yourself useful, you can formalize my cites. I have expanded the article as requested with references and YOU are vandalizing.

You cite nothing. You always give your personal opinion on matters. Go write a blog or start your very own Nilgespedia. Just don't dump your opinionated pieces of OR here.--Atlan (talk) 17:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Atlan, I checked edits and I mostly agree with you. However this sentence seems neutral to me, and relevant to the book: "Arendt noted that Eichmann produced arguments for his behavior like a "normal" person and even claimed to be following Kant's maxim to "so act that your action may be recommended as a general moral law".". It cites the book itself. Could it be reintroduced, maybe with a bit more of context? Just an idea. --Cyclopia (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, of course. Edward Nilges is a smart guy and he would be a valuable contributor if he could just adhere to NPOV and cite his edits. I generally don't take the time to extricate anything useful from his edits if they are so blatantly POV. If you care to use any on his deleted edits, feel free to do so.--Atlan (talk) 17:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)You seem to believe that if a writer uses complex syntax and unfamiliar words, or writes like a girl or something, he's POV. You also seem to infer from an overly humanistic tone, one whose background hiss as it were is constituted in the belief that there IS deviant behavior in the first place as well as its normalization, the writer doesn't have enough hip nihilism to be "truly" NPOV. Of course, if the writer is ethically nihilist (or nihilist in the manner of the male Fundamentalist, whose Fundamentalism is an effort to shore up a ruin), the result is as we see pages like the foul essay on Ayn Rand, or the tobacco articles which constitute adverts for smoking: the slack-jawed pseudo-NPOV are usually slaves to a loud POV and are blissfully unaware of their own slavery.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Well, you're wrong. The overview was NPOV.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)You're dang tootin' that Eichmann claimed to follow Kant. That's in Eichmann in Jerusalem, which I've read. Similar supporting material is in the unabridged ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, by Arendt, which I've read. More is in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's ORDINARY MEN, which I've read. The banal way in which the Nazis manipulated the Weimar constitution to come to power without getting an electoral majority is in Shirer, whom I've read. Still more is in Adorno, whom I've read, extensively.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)I started reading all this crap when Fascism arrived in America in its whimpering and banally-evil way on Dec 12 2000 when it turned out to be too hard to count votes, having encountered the preconditions for this in my career amongst banally evil people who made other men rich. That's a POV and it's NOT in the article except in the way the shoe fits.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)I've done my homework: you can add the cites because I don't have the time and I refuse to be a virtual slave.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Your job was to find and formalize my cites because as I have said, I don't have the time to make Jimbo Wales rich as he tries to figure out how to remove good contributors like me (by means of harassment) and capitalize as a Rand-selfish person on my work.

202.82.33.202 (talk) 05:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Get to work. Add the goddamn cites. The references can all be found in Amazon. Don't make me think of you as a "little Eichmann". Be a stand up guy instead. For my part I won't revert the edit: third parties who want to see my stub expansion can see it on the History page.

Edward G. Nilges

banality of evil proved

Might not belong here (in fact, probably doesn't), but Goldhagen's reaction to the Milgram experiments was a classic example of someone raging against the "banality of evil" argument. Milgram essentially proved that most people could be induced to commit an evil act. Goldhagen was offended by this and contends that the Nazis exhibited an especially severe brand of evilness. 208.181.100.18 04:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a superficial reading of Goldhagen. Sure, he believed that the Nazis were "especially" evil, but so did Arendt: Arendt took a pessimistic view of our potential for evil. And Goldhagen's empirical research confirm Arendt in that he could find no predictor of who would choose, under the voluntary nature of service, who would join the Einsatzgruppen.

"Banality" is a misinterpreted word. Arendt didn't mean by "banality", veniality, smallness-of-harm. She meant that the preconditions for big harm happen every day. The problem is that American mass media celebrates the every day, especially in its uncritical approach to the supposed virtues of the patriarchal family, since American society relies on "strong" (strong to abusive in some cases) patriarchs to assume a societal responsibility in the absence of safety nets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.82.33.202 (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Move to "banality of evil"

The article title was capitalized shortly after its creation with the comment "Phrase is always capitalised". Well, of course it's not always capitalized—I don't think it ever is. Arendt didn't capitalize it. I would have been bold and moved the article, but I can't because of a silly bot edit on the redirect page. -- BenRG (talk) 14:47, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

• Support. No reason to regard this as a proper noun, and the claim that it's always capitalised appears mistaken, so the capitalisation is a stylistic effect and contrary to WP:NC#Lowercase second and subsequent words in titles. Andrewa (talk) 14:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
• Uncontroversial. At least, that's how I'd have proposed it. Srnec (talk) 19:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)