Book 4 - Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil

Last week I saw a docu/drama about the televising of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem ( The Eichmann Show). It was both fascinating and haunting. Haunting because it contained documentary footage from the concentration camps and fascination because it had a slightly oblique take on the question of whether or not Eichmann was a monster. The director of the 1961 television broadcasts, Leo Hurwitz, was convinced that everybody has a spark of humanity in them and that at some point Eichmann would recognise the horror of what had happened and what he was responsible for. He kept on looking, focusing on the face, wanting to see something - but there was nothing. Apart from the occasional twitch or pulling his mouth up to one side, Eichmann was blank. There was nothing.

The play did not deal directly with evil; the story was mainly about how the trial was televised (something truly remarkable, especially when you consider that even today no cameras are allowed in British courts). Nevertheless it raised the question and the documentary footage was a hammer blow to the solar plexus. For a more considered assessment of what the evidence showed and what the trial meant you need to look elsewhere. That place is the famous account by political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

Her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem:a report on the banality of evil” is the result of an assignment to cover the trial for the New Yorker magazine. It caused a storm when it was published because she did not flinch from writing about Jewish leaders who acquiesced to the process of expulsion and were unable to challenge force of the laws. You can see why that would caused offence: isn’t it enough that the the Jewish race was victim to an unprecedented, unimaginable, monstrous crime? why blame people faced by overwhelming of circumstances? why blame the victim? But Hannah Arendt had a steely hard intellect and would always follow the evidence and her own conclusions no matter where it took her and no matter how uncomfortable that place might be. The acquiescence of the Jewish leaders was part of the story she had to tell  because they shared a mentality with all the other Germans who thought Nazi ideology could not be confronted only ameliorated. By not challenging the idea of what was happening everybody allowed the process to become just that: a matter of process not of morality. For her the shocking thing  was that Eichmann, who was not a stupid man, did what he did unthinkingly. He had no personal animosity to Jews, their elimination was not ideological as such; it was a matter of him doing what was required to progress inside the organisation. What was expected. One of the key parts of his defence was that he was never challenged about what was being done - it just seemed to be accepted.

This is what Hurwitz struggles with in the play. He cannot understand how Eichmann cannot recognise the horror of what he did, the consequence of his administrative actions. The dramatic climax is the moment when Eichmann is forced to watch, in court,  film from the concentration camps of the emaciated bodies being bulldozed into mass graves, of the inhumanity of the conditions and what was done. Hurwitz was convinced that when Eichmann saw, with his own eyes, the eventual consequence of his actions he would break down. But he doesn’t flinch, does not connect what he sees to what he did. It was that disconnect that enabled evil to happen.This was the meaning of the phrase ‘banality of evil’, it was not that Eichmann was banal (though he probably was) but that everything was done organisationally, according to directives and done unthinkingly. The “strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” or “remoteness from reality” showed itself more capable of wreaking “more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together”.

This week I didn’t read the whole book, instead I read the lengthy extract in ‘The Portable Hannah Arendt”, edited by Peter Baehr, who also provides the introduction. In it he says:

“Already in the late 1940s, Arendt had recognised that among the elite of the Nazi movement, as distinct from its rank and file membership, ideology had played only a limited role. What characterised the thinking of the upper echelon’s members was neither a cognitive straightjacket centred on fundamental premises nor a belief they had found the key to history. The elite mentality evinced instead a view that the distinction between truth and falsehood as a mere construct to be fabricated as expedience dictated and a mercurial capacity to translate “every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose.” For instance when elite members of the Nazi movement heard the statement “Jews are inferior” they understood by that expression that all Jews were to be exterminated. Elite thinking promoted cynicism rather than dogmatism: for while the latter frame of mind might, in its rigidity, have impeded the movements progress, cynicism allowed it to proceed on the assumption that “everything is possible”.

I read that paragraph with chills because the mixture of cynicism and managerialism seems rather too close to the atmosphere of present day politics.

Date of publication
2000 (but the extracts date back many decades and Eichmann in Jerusalem dates from 1963)


Randomness factor
Holocaust Memorial Day was January 27th

Book 3 - Robert H Thouless, Straight and Crooked Thinking

During the Scottish Independence referendum the Scots Nats became very irritated with the reporting of the BBC’s political correspondent Nick Robinson. They thought he was biased in favour of the No vote and that his reports were slanted. One event they complained about was a report of press conference when questions were raised about RBS moving its HQ and some business leaders warning of bad economic consequences in the event of independence.

The BBC Editorial Complaints Unit has recently adjudicated on this complaint and concluded that although the impression the report gave was inaccurate there were no grounds for believing the inaccuracy was intentional.

Here are two videos (admittedly put up by partisan sources so you have to be aware that the full news bulletin is not shown, only the contentious bit ). Nevertheless you can compare the report with the actual question and answer







We cannot not tell if the news bulletin in the first clip was more balanced in totality (as this is only a short excerpt) but you can this part was misleading when you compare it to the full answer in the second clip. Firstly Robinson decided, after the event, that the key question was one of trust,  and made it look as if he put a simple question which was ignored. The “He didn’t answer but he did attack the reporting” line at the end suggest Alex Salmond ducked it by attacking the messenger (always a desparate tactic). However  it was not like that. Nick Robinson didn’t ask one question but two, the first of which was answered at some length. That is the way things usually go: you ask your most important question first and it gets answered, subsequent questions can get lost, especially if they seem a little snide. The second question certainly had a bit of an edge and reminded me of when Sir Robin Day asked the the then Minister of Defence, Sir John Nott "why we should believe you, a here today, gone tomorrow politician", and John Nott stormed out of the studio. In comparison Alex Salmond was quite calm. The problem for Nick Robinson was that it was a press conference and not an interview so he couldn't follow up about the economic warnings.

Alex Salmond didn’t really address the second question (he brushed it aside saying  old news) so Nick Robinson’s report is not an outright lie but you do not have to lie to be misleading. All you have to do is impose a narrative and edit a report to fit.  It is one of the most common traits of modern media and is one of a main cause of distortions in our understanding. A commentator thus has the power to shape information and be dishonest without being literally dishonest.

However it is the BBC's  finding that although it was misleading it was done unintentional  that piqued my interest. How can it be unintentional when the whole act of writing and editing is a conscious activity? One has to recall what happened, select the wheat from the chaff and then compress it for a bulletin. At every stage you must be thinking what you are doing. But they didn’t mean he was doing his job in a trance, they meant that there was no evidence of a malicious motive or wilful propagandising. If that was the case (and it probably was) it means Nick Robinson was making no effort to step outside his habitual thought patterns and was actually working on semi-automatic pilot. He therefore didn’t notice what he was doing was a distortion. My guess is that he felt rebuffed by the way he was treated and that emotion guided his hand.

This is a small but interesting example of how we need to look carefully at what we are told and how we have to make judgements. It brought me back to a book that has been on my shelves since the mid 70s: “Straight and Crooked Thinking”, which I can thoroughly recommend. In the words of the author:

The intention of the book is primarily practical. Its main purpose is not to stimulate intellectual curiosity but to increase awareness of the process of crooked thinking and crooked communication and to provide safeguards against these. It would not have succeeded in its object if it merely led its readers to study books about logic. The test of its success is rather whether it makes it less easy for one of its readers to be persuaded by a salesman …and less easy for a politician to influence his way of voting by such irrational means as the use of emotional language or confident affirmation.  More importantly I hope it will make it less easy for the reader to hate the enemy … with that blind lack of understanding that comes from various forms of crooked thinking about him.

It was first published in 1930 but seems more relevant now than ever. Look at the current state of political/social debate, where an emotional storm can be generated in 140 characters, all politicians are well trained in the art of evading of questions whilst making sure they they repeat their pre-prepared ‘talking points’, newspapers bend all news stories to illustrate their world view,  broadcasters see interviews as a form of hostile interrogation, and an unthinking cynicism exists that distrusts anything a politician says because “they are all the same and only in it for themselves”. Public discourse is pretty sticky at the moment and expanding media and outlets for opinion causes more confusion. A guide to help you pick your way through a thicket of words is timely even if it was written over 80 years ago.Not only does it act as a refresher in the ways one should examine the way people promote their cause and carry their argument, it you guard against failings in your own thought processes. After all we all have our own prejudices and bad habits.

It is timely because the principles of logic, debate, and the sifting of evidence are fundamental and unchanging, as are the tricks that can be played. However my copy has a slightly dated feel. It was revised in 1974 and uses examples from contemporary issues for of that time for illustration (as well as examples from earlier editions). Even more interesting though is the style and the way a modern book with the same aim would be more punchy with a more broken up layout to emphasise points. here the prose is measured and clear but it is that of an academic born in 1894. I actually like his style and enjoy the calmness but there again but my age may play a part in that.

When I started to write this I didn’t know whether the book would still be in print but I am really pleased to find a new edition is available, updated by Robert Thouless’ grandson. It would be interesting to see how the prose changes with the generations and what new examples are used, especially as the background of the younger Thouless is ecology and animal behaviour rather than psychology.

P.S. I'm glad the new edition has a new cover. My one looks like it was knocked up, in a hury, when the art director was away.

Date of first publication
1930, revised edition 1974

Randomness Factor:

Reminded of the book whilst reading the news

Book 2 - Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

The cover is simple: a posed photo of Christopher Hitchens, near the end of his life, seated, gazing at you with heavy eyes. The tonal range is limited, dark, mostly brown, and the face emerges from the background rather than being highlighted against it. It is like an old Dutch painting (it actuall looks darker on the book than it does in this photo). You can see the diminished strength of the body but the eye is still searching. It is compelling and you want to look at it to read into the face what you know of the man and his situation. From what you read in the book you know this is the look of someone facing his fate full on.

This is a short book, his last work and not quite finished, as it ends with scraps and notes that would have been filled out if there had been time. Nevertheless it is affecting; not in a sentimental way - he would have hated that - but because he is unbowed, still prepared to carry on his battles. To his core he was a polemicist and, whether you agreed with him or not, you always want a warrior to be carried out on his shield. Right to the end he wrote fluently and well (not necessarily  the same thing) but you would expect that as it was how he defined himself and his wish was to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense.

The ironies of his illness was where it struck - a cancer of the throat. Speaking and good conversation were amongst the things he loved the most (his writing style was only found when he was told something he had written was a bit dull and he should write more like the way he talked. He tells writing classes that anybody who could talk could also write but adds the kicker: how many people do you know who can really talk? Well Christopher `Hitchens could certainly talk and was a formidable debater. As he says:

“The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favourite authors and see if that is not one of the things that engages you, often at first without you noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realising that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear its only recorder … All the best recollections of wisdom and friendship, from Plato’s “Apology” for Socrates to Boswell’s Life of Johnson, resound with the spoken, unscripted moments of interplay and reason and speculation. It’s in engagement like this, in competition and comparison with others, that one can hope to hit upon the elusive, magical mot juste. For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”

Let that be an epitaph for someone whose life was of the mind but also social.

Date of publication
2012

Randomness factor:

I selected this from some just returned books in the library

Book 1 - Richard Powers, Orfeo

A socially isolated composer/retired university lecturer (Peter Els) is privately conducting biological experiments, trying to create new strands of DNA, for artistic reasons. This comes to the attention of the the security services who think it can only be  terrorism or at the least dangerously threatening. They draw parallels with the personality of the Unabomber. The house is raided, the experiments seized but they miss Els, who goes on the run. This sounds like a good set up for a conventional thriller with scope for the excitement of the chase. It is the outline of Orfeo but the book is nothing like a thriller and the set-up is only a Macguffin to allow the real subject (art music and the cultural ideas which shaped it in the last half of the Twentieth Century) to be discussed. There is no real peril, no twists and turns, no thrill of the chase but there is enough reason for Els to move out of his quiet life, remember his past and visit some people who were significant to him. As structure it also works mythically: you know that if Els is captured he will enter the dark underworld that is state security and might never re-emerge.But it is not too fanciful and it reminds me in some ways of Christopher Jeffries, the man vilified by the press for being a bit weird after his tenant was murdered. There was a tv play about him that was very good in showing how an innocent man (in both senses) could be pulled underground by the misunderstanding or lack of comprehension by law enforcement officers.

This though is a book of ideas and it shows how good the novel can be for taking disparate ideas, ramming them together, and making connections. Here there is science and the world described in "Biopunk: solving biotech biggest problems in kitchens and garages" by Marcus Wohlsen, which is about the amateur tinkering with genetics being done in home labs,  side by side with “The Rest is Noise”, the wonderful survey of Twentieth Century music by Alex Ross, which is chock full of anecdotes from composers’ lives. They are mixed together in the character of Els offer interesting parallels between art and science, structures and the act of creation. The book isn’t didactic and overly ernest (it is after all a novel) nevertheless at its heart there is the story of music and its creation in the second half of the last century. Perhaps, even more ambitiously, it also tries to describe how music feels subjectively, how it creates sensations, and how it works. Some of these abstract passages might seem pretentious and/or obscure but if they don’t connect they can be slid over. However they could only have been written by someone with a deep musical knowledge and they feel as if the author is writing about something he cares about, and you trust him.

I am a little younger than Els, but not by so many years. The times being remembered are my times. Perhaps this is why I can relate to the content because I recognise the hopes, assumptions and discussions that took place back then. I know the arts were seen as something to aspire to as part of the project to discard the old and stultifying, and discover the new. For sure that lead to many dead ends and the dreams and talk can now appear ridiculously idealistic or naive but when things came together there could be magic. Sometimes performances or works could fly with a joyful seriousness.

But back to the book.

Things I enjoyed:

The structure - There are no chapters, instead the text is divided by boxed quotes or phrases. These quotes are not part of the narrative but comment on it and add something from the outside the narrative often in the voice of Peter Els: “I’d been hearing that tune for sixty years. Musical taste change so little” or “a grammar but no dictionary, sense but no meaning, urgency without need: music and chemistry of cells.” The sort of half formed thoughts that can bubble into the consciousness before floating away. It is a neat way of giving the narrative another layer.

Stories of composers - This might be a backhanded compliment for a novel but I enjoyed the historical anecdotes. One of the most gripping sections was the description of how Messian’s “Quartet for the End of Time” was created and performed in a prisoner of war camp. This though is not just a Wikipedia entry it is a re imagining: “The audience crowds together on the benches, wrapped in grey-black coats. Clouds of frozen breath fill the room, whiffs of rotting guts exuded by malnourished men in oil stained rags. What heat the barrack manages on this bone numbing night comes only from these wasted bodies. Infirm men from the hospital block are borne in on stretchers. The music loving German soldiers take their reserved seats in the front rows.” It puts you there.

It is well researched; you can trust the information.

it is a book about art, though the art in question is music. “He’d learn the truth from Thomas Mann later that semester. Art was combat, an exhausting struggle. And it was impossible to stay fit for long. Music wasn’t about learning how to love. It was learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste.” I like books that struggle with the compulsion for art, its value and ultimate utility.

What’s not so good:

It is more or less within the head of Peter Els. The other characters are sketchy. But in a book of ideas that is not that much of a big deal.

Date of publication
2014

References:

Wikipedia
Guardian Review by Steven Poole

Randomness factor:

It was selected from the Booker Mann 2014 longlist. So not very random as it had been pre-selected as a good novel. (I don't know why it didn't make the final but neverheless it had a good cup run).