DR. PETER MARINA: STAND UP AGAINST WEAPONIZING AUTHORITY
/STAND UP AGAINST WEAPONIZING AUTHORITY
By: Peter Marina, Ph.D.
“Be true to the law, obedient, live an upright personal life, do not to come into conflict with the law,” said one of the lead organizers of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.
“You gotta put food on the table, “said one my fellow colleagues on universities selling (out) the promise of careers instead of intellectual pursuits.
“I’m just doing my job,” or “You gotta do what you gotta do,” say many conformists, bureaucrats, administrators, professional–managerial class workers, and mainstream academics and journalists to justify their careerism and personal advancement. It’s the ideology of the elite that the masses internalized as the call to service, something that seems as normal and natural as rain. But what passes for normal is often evil.
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt developed the concept of “the banality of evil” while watching Eichmann’s trial on numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Eichmann didn’t join the Nazi party out of any known hatred for the Jews, Romas, black and mixed-race people, homosexuals, communists, trade unionists, or anarchists, among others. He joined the Nazi party simply to make a good career move. During his trial, Eichmann insisted that he lacked the power to challenge institutional hierarchy and simply followed orders.
Arendt observes, “The trouble with Eichmann 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.” In other words, “normal” people commit the greatest of evil. They often make no choice to be evil; they simply commit evil in the course of living their social lives and performing their worker duties.
People who commit evil don’t look like the villains in James Bond movies. They look like our friends, mothers, fathers, coworkers, and the plain-faced Dick’s and Jane’s walking down the street.
While many humans engage in the absurd game of one-upmanship hoping (often begging) to climb the career ladder, most lack the ability, will, or opportunity to engage in such large-scale acts of evil. Instead, many people are just like Eichmann: They boss around other people and perform the little acts of evil that keep the status quo intact.
While consciousness shapes action, perhaps action shapes consciousness to a greater degree. When people engage in destructive behaviors that hurt others, they often provide ready-made, manufactured justifications for such behaviors — ideologies that make such actions seem reasonable and ordinary.
Our teachers, employers, politicians, journalists, influencers, and “leaders” tell us what’s normal. They provide endless justifications to make absurd and evil acts look as mundane as grass growing. Normal people learn to think according to society’s dominant discourse — dictated by our ruling class. Those of us who think “normally” become Little Eichmann’s engaging in small but destructive acts of evil that allow the status quo to continue.
Arendt continues her observation, “The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.” Or as Orwell said, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
The greatest threat facing our civilization is, perhaps, the inability to think for oneself, to live independently using one’s own intelligence and moral compass, and to use empathy to understand how others view the world. Most of us succumb to society’s pressures, justified using the language of Eichmann.
I’ve talked to countless police officers who want to serve their community and support human rights but have become demoralized and apathetic to human rights abuses out of fear of losing their jobs. Unfortunately, Little Eichmann’s exist in all institutional hierarchies — from the university to law enforcement and from Wall Street to Main Street.
In the end, we must decide if career advancement, upward mobility, and status are worth becoming a Little Eichmann. Or we can decide to point out contradiction and hypocrisy, challenge power and authority, stand up to structural oppression and inequality, and fight the powerful who have taken over our government, culture, education, and economy. As a friend once told me, “You got principles or you don’t.”
To my sisters and brothers in blue, while many of you hold noble principles, hopes and dreams (like many of us); you exist, also like many of us, in a flawed institution. Under such conditions, we must negotiate our principles and participation in institutions that contradict our morality. It’s a challenging task. But, coming from police blood, I know many of you will rise to the occasion to value your principles over personal gain, support human rights over career advancement, and uphold service to the people over following orders.
As public intellectual Chris Hedges points out, Hannah Arendt’s idea on morality holds that “the only morally reliable people are not those who say, ‘this is wrong’ or ‘this should not be done,’ but those who say, ‘I can’t do this.’” Police officers and law enforcement agents, as well as anyone who wants to listen; will you be an independent actor fighting for the people? Or will you bow to the ubiquitous banality of evil?
My advice: Don’t be a Little Eichmann.
