Robert Malone on Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil"

The concept of the “banality of evil” was introduced by Hannah Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.  Arendt, a German-American philosopher and political theorist, was tasked with reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi official responsible for the logistics of the Holocaust.

Arendt’s thesis was that Eichmann, who was considered a “normal” and “boring” individual, was not a fanatic or a sociopath, but rather an average and mundane person who relied on clichéd defenses rather than thinking for himself.  He was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology, and believed in success, which he considered the chief standard of “good society.”

Arendt argued that Eichmann’s actions were not driven by a desire for evil, but rather by a kind of complacency and thoughtlessness.  He was able to commit atrocities because he was not driven by a strong sense of morality or a desire to do good or evil, but rather by a desire to fit in and be successful.

~ Robert Malone, "Assassination and the Banality of Evil," July 16, 2024

1963

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on resisting evil

Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Paul Gottried on the use of riots for political gain

Riots by what Tucker Carlson aptly characterized as the “Biden voters” did not happen by chance. The Democratic Party and the overwhelmingly Democratic media condoned and even incited these “peaceful protests,” and former Vice President Biden’s staff labored mightily to bail out apprehended perpetrators of violence in order to put them back onto the streets. This is standard operating procedure for political movements trying to seize power. After World War II, the Soviets arranged for mob violence in Hungary, Poland, and other countries they occupied as preparation for the imposition of a Communist dictatorship. This violence, authorities claimed, proved the need for a new order. 

The Nazi Brown Shirts wrought havoc in Weimar Germany that Hitler then insisted only his rule would end. While Brown Shirts battled with real Communists on the streets of German cities, our media have less credible street enemies. The best they can come up with is the mostly powerless, racially integrated Proud Boys, policemen who killed or wounded several black men with long criminal records, and President Trump’s indelicate phraseology. Apparently, these troublemakers, not the Democratic-friendly BLM and Antifa, were behind the mayhem and looting during the “Summer of Violence.”

~ Paul Gottried, "What an American One-Party System Would Really Look Like," American Greatness, October 25, 2020

Paul Craig Roberts on "white privilege"

The vicious propaganda in the United States against white people is as bad if not worse than the Nazi propaganda against Jews, and it will have the same result. Indeed, it already has. What is the difference between krystallnacht and the looting and burning of white businesses?

~ Paul Craig Roberts, "White Privilege?," LewRockwell.com, August 21, 2020

George Watson on Hitler, socialism and genocide

The claim that Hitler cannot really have been a socialist because he advocated and practised genocide suggests a monumental failure, then, in the historical memory. Only socialists in that age advocated or practised genocide, at least in Europe, and from the first years of his political career Hitler was proudly aware of the fact. Addressing his own party, the NSDAP, in Munich in August 1920, he pledged his faith in socialist-racialism: "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites - and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose." There was loud applause. Hitler went on: "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?" The point was widely understood, and it is notable that no German socialist in the 1930s or earlier ever sought to deny Hitler's right to call himself a socialist on grounds of racial policy. In an age when the socialist tradition of genocide was familiar, that would have sounded merely absurd. The tradition, what is more, was unique. In the European century that began in the 1840s from Engels's article of 1849 down to the death of Hitler, everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist, and no exception has been found.

~ George Watson, "Hitler and the Socialist Dream," Independent, November 22, 1998

Phil Duffy on lessons from the Nazi era applied today

By now I'm one of the few left who lived through most of the Nazi years.  I believe the death toll from WWII from both direct and indirect causes was 100 million, far beyond any threat we face today with Covid-19. I started following WWII when I was 6 in 1941. Because I was reading the newspapers every day it probably expanded both my language and geography skills. At age 10 when the war ended and the news about the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Tribunals filled our lives, there were many deeper questions that were raised, but the answers then seem silly in retrospect. You've heard the saying, perhaps wrongly attributed to Edmund Burke, that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing. Americans aimed that accusation at ordinary Germans who had done nothing to prevent the crimes of the Nazi regime, bunkering down instead and pretending that nothing was morally wrong. We Americans rationalized that Germans were morally inferior to Americans. Indeed, those who fought WWII on the allied side, and particularly Americans, who "fought to be free."

By the time I was 21, that whole explanation was beginning to unravel. I had met my wife, and the German side of her family. They had been born in Germany, but had left to come to the United States. If there was something defective in the German DNA, clearly these people were outliers. Then I was stationed in Germany and met many fine Germans. Again, wonderful people.

I recognize that I had been exposed to simplistic propaganda during the Nazi and post-WWII years. More troubling was that I recognized the same attributes in Americans that were responsible for the do-nothing attitude of the German people during the Nazi period. The lesson that should have come out of that period should have been, "There but for the Grace of God go I!"

As a result, I committed to studying why and how people become a nation of sheep, to use the title of Judge Andrew Napolitano's book. That commitment included acting as well as reading and talking.  I still don't have all of the answers, but I have a lot of them. It is not a pretty picture, but the good news is that the current generation is positioned in history to do something about the corruption that inevitably occurs when masses of people bunker down and shut their eyes to what is going on.

That opportunity to learn who we really are is right around the corner, arriving as early as a month out as the Covid-19 Panic passes. If it is business as usual, then shame on us for looking the other way as our freedoms were trampled under the feet of the many petty Hitlers who crawled out of the woodwork during this period. Just as the WWII generation was called "The Greatest Generation", this generation will be the subject of derision and contempt in the future. It will be recognized how easily we traded our liberty for a $1,200 bribe, this generation's 30 pieces of silver.

~ Phil Duffy, note to his grandson, April 30, 2020

Jordan Peterson on how Hitler played to the German mob

Hitler came to embody the desire of the German people for order and revenge.  He embodied that fully.  What happened was a collaboration between him and the people.  It wasn't Hitler turned everyone into Nazis.  No, that's not how it worked.

~ Jordan Peterson, "Jordan Peterson Shares His Thoughts on Hitler," (4:42-5:00), YouTube,  November 26, 2017

Herbert Marcuse on suspending free speech to prevent radical right-wing movements

In past and different circumstances, the speeches of the Fascist and Nazi leaders were the immediate prologue to the massacre. The distance between the propaganda and the action, between the organization and its release on the people had become too short. But the spreading of the word could have been stopped before it was too late: if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn when the future leaders started their campaign, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.

The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger.

~ Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," 1965

Joseph Goebbels on propaganda

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

~ Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933-1945

Reverend Martin Niemoller on defending liberty in Nazi Germany

In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.

~ Reverend Martin Niemoller

Goering on herding the sheep-like people

... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

~ Field Marshall Hermann Goering, upon being interviewed by Gustave M. Gilbert, the German-speaking prison psychologist who had free access to all prisoners during the Nuremberg trails.

(This was reported in Robert Higgs, "How the State Leads People to Destruction." Higgs cites the Nuremberg Diary, pp. 278-279)

Phil Duffy: Did isolationism cause World War II?

One of the most comprehensive histories of the Nazi era was written by William L. Shirer, a journalist assigned to Germany during the period when the Nazis came to power. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich covers 1,143 pages, the first 276 of which describe the multiple forces and events that led to the rise of Hitler. American isolationism is not once mentioned in that section of the book.

The next 594 pages describe the beginning of World War II up to the point at which Hitler declared war on the United States as a result of "Adolph Hitler’s reckless promise to Japan …." It was Japan’s attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that brought the United States into World War II. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States four days later.

Following America’s disastrous foray into World War I, there were strong feelings in the United States about remaining outside of the European conflict. The newly formed America First Committee was the most visible and vocal example of that sentiment. Shirer dedicates a single paragraph to the role of American isolationism at the beginning of Chapter 25, "The Turn of the United States." He also mentions the role of Charles Lindbergh as the leading public isolationist in a footnote on Page 827. Otherwise, there are no references to American isolationism in this extensive work about this period. So if William Shirer virtually dismissed the importance of American isolationism in causing World War II, what does he have to say about the real causes of the rise of Adolph Hitler and World War II? Shirer points out that a number of causes and events contributed, including:

• Economic, political, social and cultural devastation following World War I (especially the Weimar hyperinflation from 1918–1923, the Wall Street-debt-financed boom of the late 1920s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s)
• A disastrous peace treaty at Versailles, including reparations to the allied powers considered unjust by the German people
• The bitter struggle between international socialism (the Communists) and national socialism (the Nazis)
• Failure of other European nations to appropriately defend themselves
• The "stab in the back" myth that anti-war Germans during World War I had given virtual aid and comfort to the enemy on the home front while the valiant solders fought to defend the Fatherland (the birth and growth of this myth is addressed extensively in Chapter 2, "Birth of the Nazi Party")

In Shirer’s opinion, the ‘stab in the back’ fallacy was a primary cause of the rise of Hitler: "Thus emerged for Hitler, as for so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the ‘stab in the back’ which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph." (Page 31)
On January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of a coalition government in Germany. The America First Committee was formed September 4, 1940. Clearly, isolationism in the United States had nothing to do with Hitler’s rise to power.
~ Phil Duffy, "Did Isolationism Cause World War II?," LewRockwell.com, December 6, 2007

Adolf Hitler on gun control

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.

~ Adolf Hitler

Jacob Hornberger on Hitler's war on terror

One of the most searing events in German history occurred soon after Hitler took office. On February 27, 1933, in what easily could be termed the 9/11 terrorist attack of that time, German terrorists fire-bombed the German parliament building. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Adolf Hitler, one of the strongest political leaders in history, would declare war on terrorism and ask the German parliament (the Reichstag) to give him temporary emergency powers to fight the terrorists. Passionately claiming that such powers were necessary to protect the freedom and well-being of the German people, Hitler persuaded the German legislators to give him the emergency powers he needed to confront the terrorist crisis. What became known as the Enabling Act allowed Hitler to suspend civil liberties “temporarily,” that is, until the crisis had passed. Not surprisingly, however, the threat of terrorism never subsided and Hitler’s “temporary” emergency powers, which were periodically renewed by the Reichstag, were still in effect when he took his own life some 12 years later.

Is it so surprising that ordinary German citizens were willing to support their government’s suspension of civil liberties in response to the threat of terrorism, especially after the terrorist strike on the Reichstag?

~ Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president, The Future of Freedom Foundation, "Why Germans Supported Hitler," LewRockwell.com, July 19, 2007

Goering on bringing the people to war

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why should a poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best thing he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

~ Hermann Goering, at the Nuremburg Trials

(This quote was part of a conversation Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist, held with a dejected Goering in his cell on the evening of April 18, 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess.)