Hannah Arendt, who lived from 1906 TO 1975, was a writer of political theory and a journalist, best known-known now for including the phrase "the banality of evil" in a book about the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Portions of the book were published in the New Yorker. In 2011, The Guardian published this piece about the meaning and importance of Arendt's work.
Adolf Eichmann, like Donald Trump, was the untalented, unfocused son of a successful businessman. Eichmann tried working for his father, failed, and sought work as a traveling salesman for an American oil company. Unlike Trump, Eichmann was a little nebbish who wore glasses. Like Trump, Eichmann benefited from a wave of political unrest and extreme xenophobia. In the way that Trump poses as BMOC turned self-made man, Eichmann posed as an intellectual.
He also posed as a vital cog in the Nazi war machine, when in fact he was tapped to fill a political need, not at all unlike the way the Koch Brothers, via Steve Bannon, tapped Trump to run on rage and racism.
Eichmann found his calling in 1941. Up till then, Hitler had herded Jews, Romany people, and LGBT people into work camps. But with the struggle at the Russian border, the German policy became extermination. Someone had to do the vile work of organizing all of that and Adolf Eichmann stepped into the post.
With the Allied defeat of Germany, Eichmann fled to South America, where he worked in a factory until the Israeli security agency found him and brought him back to Israel to face trial. Here he is in prison garb, iwearing absurd checked felt slippers in the exercise yard. A vision of mighty evil power, eh? That's what comes of mistaking your willingness to do the dirty work for intelligence, skill, or personal capability.
