AG Barr & “the Banality of Evil”: Crimes Against Humanity Part One
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) has been quoted fairly frequently over the past three years since the launching of the Trump presidency. Her articles in The New Yorker and her book on the conduct of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 have been pointed to as illustrative of some of the characters inhabiting the Trump administration. Arendt’s point is the banality of evil — a catch phrase associated with the Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany, the aftermath of World War II, the “Successor trials” after the Nurenburg trials, Eichmann, and other hapless former Nazis kidnaped or extradited to Israel. The last known Nazi was Jakiw Palij (“Jackiv Pali”), who was deported to Germany by ICE in August 2018. He died in a nursing home in Germany January 9, 2019. No other country would accept him. German investigators concluded that there was not enough evidence of wartime criminal activity to bring charges against him. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) is a densely written, political and legal analysis of the Eichmann trial. To lift the phrase out of its context with the flippant carelessness of a Tweet or Facebook screed can be misleading, unfair, and dangerous. As with Palij 45 years later, both the ultimate statelessness of Eichmann, and the lack of evidence directly applicable to him individually (as Arendt argues) raise issues of fairness and relevance.
For example, in a Tweet on May 29, 2019 regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s televised public remarks on the results of the Russia investigation, Chris Sampson @TAPSTRIMEDIA* wrote:
“Mueller’s words had enormous import but the pundits missed the message. He was telling Mitch McConnell and the Republicans to do their patriotic duty.
“Bill Bar is the epitome of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil when referring to Adolf Eichmann. Barr should be shunned. Amabassador Joseph Wilson.”
Mr. Sampson was apparently quoting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent by the Bush administration in retaliation for Wilson blowing the whistle on the lack of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq — which led to the Iraq war and now going on a 17-year war in Afghanistan. I note that this quote cannot be verified — at least not by the means available to me. Therefore, this tweeted opinion is at once misleading, unfair, and possibly dangerous because it raises the specter of Adolf Eichmann as described by Hannah Arendt embodied in Attorney General William Barr. She argues that Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem was at best a show trial, the purpose of which was revenge on the part of the Jewish people. At worst it was a miscarriage of justice because contrary to Western jurisprudence, no precedent existed under which Eichmann could legally be charged; and further, he was illegally kidnapped from Argentina to Jerusalem because Argentina had no extradition treaty with Israel. She spends the preponderance of the book illustrating the banal cluelessness of Eichmann himself. He was only interested in his own professional advancement; he carried out policies without ever questioning their morality. “The trouble with Eichmann,” Arendt writes, “was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal” (p. 276). Even when walking on his own to the gallows,
“[H]e was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was . . . no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while, gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” In the face of death, he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was ‘elated’ and he forgot that this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us — the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil” (p. 252).
Arendt is adamant that her book is not “finally and least of all, a theoretical treatise on the nature of evil.” It is merely a report of her observations that “except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, [Eichmann] had no motives at all. . . . he never realized what he was doing” [emphasis in original]. Indeed, what gives rise to the ordinariness — the normalcy — of state-sponsored immorality is the inability of ordinary citizens to discern right from wrong in the context of the society in which they live. The evil is compounded when the leadership is also incapable of seeing the consequences to humanity of the single-minded pursuit of their own power.
Is Attorney General Barr truly the epitome of this? Is he the only one in the current ruling American regime to have succumbed to the seductive power of corruption? Clearly the answer is no. Inches of newsprint and hours of punditry have been spent on how Sen. Lindsay Graham has “drunk the Koolaid.” More alarming perhaps is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s smug assertion that obfuscation and obstruction are the order of the day. What is most important to him is winning and keeping power. In the February 25, 2019 New York Review of Books, Michael R. Cohen wrote, “[McConnell] is a remorselessly political creature, devoid of principle, who, more than any figure in modern political history has damaged the fabric of American democracy.”
That political remorselessness could become the model of banality for a public that is more concerned with immediate issues of personal survival than who, or what ideology is controlling the rule of law and the means of communication. When holding three part-time jobs fails to win enough money to put food on the table; when health care costs are at bankruptcy-inducing levels; when most people are unable to raise $400 for an emergency need, then the spiritual or psychological emptiness, or the political remorselessness of the leadership has little relevance. Further, no one seems to have a clue about what to do about it.
Supposedly former Ambassador Joseph Wilson suggests “shunning” AG Barr. We are often counseled to ignore the bully in the school yard, but it’s too late. We ignore Barr at our national peril as he pursues his stated objective, which is to establish presidential power unrestrained by Constitutional checks and balances. What’s needed from leadership is a clear vision of right and wrong beyond the zero sum game, beyond means/ends analysis.
Arendt argues that the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem was based on the precedent set by the Nuremberg and Successor trials, all of which failed on three fundamental issues of justice: 1) the ispso facto injustice embedded in a court run by the victors; 2) no valid definition of “crimes against humanity” had been established anywhere; and 3) what Arendt calls “a clear recognition of the new criminal who commits this [non-defined] crime.” Without getting into the legal weeds — through which Arendt cuts a complicated path — twenty-first century international law would seem to have addressed the first two issues. There is an international tribunal in The Hague (which the United States does not recognize as valid). The U.S. participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the court (the Rome Statute), but in 1998 the U.S. was one of only seven countries — along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen — that voted against it. President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. In 2002, President George W. Bush effectively “unsigned” the treaty, sending a note to the United Nations secretary-general that the U.S. no longer intended to ratify the treaty and that it did not have any obligations toward it.
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides a clear definition of “crimes against humanity”:
“ A physical element, which includes the commission of “any of the following acts”: Murder; Extermination; Enslavement; Deportation or forcible transfer of population; Imprisonment; Torture; Grave forms of sexual violence; Persecution; Enforced disappearance of persons; The crime of apartheid; Other inhumane acts.
“A contextual element: “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”; and
“A mental element: “with knowledge of the attack.” In contrast with genocide, crimes against humanity do not need to target a specific group. Instead, the victim of the attack can be any civilian population, regardless of its affiliation or identity. Another important distinction is that in the case of crimes against humanity, it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent. It suffices for there to be a simple intent to commit any of the acts listed, with the exception of the act of persecution, which requires additional discriminatory intent. The perpetrator must also act with knowledge of the attack against the civilian population and that his/her action is part of that attack.”
An argument could be made that much of the current U.S. administrative bureaucracy is already collectively participating in deliberate flaunting of Article 7 — but of course, the United States is not a party to the international consensus, so supposedly would be in a similar position as the governing hierarchy of the Third Reich.
Arendt’s third element is “a clear recognition” of the then “new criminal” who is charged and ultimately found guilty of a crime against humanity. Here is where the concept of the “banality of evil” might be found in an individual such as AG Barr (or Kirstjen Nielsen, Kris Kobach, Stephen Miller, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, other White House staff, or president Trump himself). Following orders has been disqualifying in terms of innocence for 75 years, whether or not the United States wishes to follow international precedent. But none of the major players (Barr, Nielsen, Kobach, Miller, Trump) have been following orders. Rather, each one has been all too enthusiastic about not just ignoring black letter law, but creating policy that deliberately contradicts letter and spirit.
Does the above brief list of players really reflect Eichmann’s banal cluelessness? Are they really only interested in their own professional advancement? Is there enough evidence for a conviction of crimes against humanity? They do seem to have demonstrably carried out policies without ever questioning their morality, especially in the case of continuing immigration atrocities. But what can be done about Arendt’s point “that so many were like [Eichmann], and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal”? This is in Arendt’s word, truly fearsome, word-and-thought defying. How can the perpetrators be ultimately held to account? And who will do the accounting?
*Note: Chris Sampson is an author and analyst of terrorism, cyber, and geopolitical politics and frequently interviewed on matters of terrorism and cyberwar with TV appearances on MSNBC, BBC, GCTV (Chinese TV) and CheddarTV, in radio interviews on BBC, LBC, KPFT, and Canadian radio stations and in print ranging from Newsweek, The Daily Beast, BBC and has given presentations to organizations and law enforcement. He is the co-author of Hacking ISIS, an exploration of the tools and actions of ISIS online. He is lead researcher for several bestselling books by Malcolm Nance, one of the world’s leading experts in terrorism including New York Times Bestseller Defeating ISIS and The Plot To Hack America.
