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?
— John Zerzan, Whose Unabomber?
Little Eichmanns is a phrase coined by anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan[1] that symbolically refers to Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, and more generally, to the complicity of those who participate in destructive and criminal systems in ways that are not often considered to be direct. Zerzan used the phrase in his essay Whose Unabomber? in 1995.
Ward Churchill used the phrase in his essay Some People Push Back to describe the technocrats working in the Twin Towers on the morning of the September 11th attacks, because in his opinion their status as drivers of the American empire, participating in sweatshop exploitation, the devastating Iraq sanctions, US support for dictators and attacks against other countries etc. shared similarities with Adolf Eichmann's bureaucratic participation in the Nazi system.[2]
Eichmann as a stand-in comes from Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil. 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.
See also
References
- Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.
External links
- Whose Unabomber? by John Zerzan (first recorded use of term)
- Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens by Ward Churchill (notable use of term)