Many people are familiar with the expression “the banality of evil” and the almost iconic figure of Adolf Eichmann, a little man who made the machinery of terror work along with the other banality actors. The world has decided that even the smallest people, as long as they belong to terror, must be condemned.
The problem could have been settled back then, in the 1960-ies, but the Eichmanns are regrettably still among us. They go shopping, walking, put on their work uniform (the new camouflage) every day. They raise their children, eat, drink, laugh and get upset about politics. They look like ordinary people.
Their lives are banal per se (ours somehow too), they become evil when they are given a position of power. Only then do we look at them and Arend’s words flash in our minds — and we see Eichmanns before us, living, breathing, there. These people follow the regulations without questioning them, and that is the evil that defines them.
…
She points to me with her forefinger, raises her eyebrows and makes a circular movement that is meant to be understood like “come here and turn around”. I turn around, as if on a podium I show myself. My transparent library bag contains a bottle of water, made of steel. She smiles briefly and then says very loudly, “Only the transparent bottles are permitted! You are not allowed in with that”. What is left for me, a student at a German university, but to turn around and return the bottle to the locker. I have to borrow the books for a term paper, I have to follow the rules, I have no choice.
- And when the bottle is empty?- I dare to negotiate.
- I dare to negotiate.
- The bottle must be transparent — the security woman repeats in a robotic voice.
It’s 30 degrees outside, the bib is not conditioned. You do a Corona test, even if you only have to borrow a book, then you wait for the test result in the heat for 25 minutes, then you come in and the water bottle is wrong.
I’m inside the library. My water bottle is in the locker. My feeling of silent powerlessness is more present than ever. I wonder if the world has ever been so upside down as it is now. Power relations are at the forefront even in human relations with fellow human beings. Everything is politics because power, just as in politics has become the goal of our lives. Are we all Eichmanns then?
…
I remember the sentence of a French philosopher, about whose work I am writing the term paper, for which I wanted to go to the library. His name is Georges Didi-Huberman. He wrote about the four photographs of Auschwitz taken by the prisoners. These pictures showed the blurred scenes of mass gassing — Didi-Huberman says that the prisoners resisted the uneven power relations between Nazis and Jews by taking these pictures. He talks a lot about expressions of power by the NS that are banal and evil. The violence is underpinned by the rules that give the NS the appearance of being right and going ahead with the extermination of people. As I wrote above — rules vs common sense or humanity. Didi-Huberman writes a phase that sounds something like “to act is to resist powerlessness.” Also, by indirectly shooting the pictures, the prisoners are acting against the Nazis. They make the claim against the pure and cruel inhumanity, which is underpinned with rules. If the prisoners took pictures obviously, they would be dead right away. That’s why they make pictures secretly.
I don’t compare myself to prisoners, but this phrase about powerlessness hit me as much as Eichmann’s presence in my life, both indirectly, but somehow palpable. So I declare this text to be resistance. I didn’t spit directly in the face of the librarian woman as an obvious response to the pointing. If I weren’t dead right now, I’d be de-registered, which is akin to death in the modern world. But I can write this text or smile at the woman next time — an indirect resistance that stands up to the face of Eichmann and changes something in me, makes me stronger and more hopeful because it shows me to be different from Eichmann.
