little Eichmanns

{{Short description|Small actions leading to complicity in evil}}

File:Adolf Eichmann at Trial1961.jpg in Jerusalem (1961)]]

"Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The name comes from Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who helped to orchestrate the Holocaust, but claimed that he did so without feeling anything about his actions, merely following the orders given to him.

The use of "Eichmann" as an archetype stems from Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil".{{cite journal |last=Busk |first=Larry |date=July 31, 2015 |title=Sleepwalker: Arendt, Thoughtlessness, and the Question of Little Eichmanns |url=https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/d/3851/files/2014/05/Busk_PHILmatters_2014-1k7bbxr.pdf |journal=Social Philosophy Today |doi=10.5840/socphiltoday201573023 |volume=31 |access-date=June 23, 2018}} According to Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann relied on propaganda rather than thinking for himself, and carried out Nazi goals mostly to advance his career, appearing at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality while displaying neither guilt nor hatred. She suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi war criminals were manifestly psychopathic and fundamentally different from ordinary people.{{cite book |first=Hannah|last=Arendt |title=Eichmann in Jerusalem |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Books |date=1977 }}{{cite web |url=https://ahvalnews.com/node/390 |first=Umut |last=Özkırımlı |author-link=Umut Özkirimli |title=On the Banality of Evil and 'Little Eichmanns' |publisher=Ahval |date=October 31, 2017}}

The idea that Eichmann{{snd}}or, indeed, the majority of Nazis or those working in such regimes{{snd}}actually fit this concept has been criticized by those who contend that Eichmann and the majority of Nazis were in fact deeply ideological and extremely antisemitic, with Eichmann, in particular, having been fixated on and obsessed with the Jews from a young age.for example, see {{cite journal

|title=Are We All Little Eichmanns?; The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder, Author: Abram de Swann New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015, 332 pp |url=https://philarchive.org/archive/JASAWA |doi=10.1007/s11406-016-9694-y |first=Gary J |last=Jason |date=17 August 2015 |journal=Philosophia |volume=44 |issue=1 |s2cid=147548088}} German political scientist {{ill|Clemens Heni|de}} goes so far as to say the phrase "belittles the Holocaust".{{cite journal |title=Secondary Anti-Semitism:From Hard-core to Soft-core Denial of the Shoah |first=Clemens |last=Heni |journal=Jewish Political Studies Review |volume=20 |issue=3/4 |date=Fall 2008 |page=82}}

Barbara Mann wrote that the term was perhaps best known for its use by anarcho-primitivist writer John Zerzan in his essay Whose Unabomber? written in 1995, although it was already common in the 1960s,{{cite book |first=Barbara Alice |last=Mann |chapter=And Then They Build Monuments to You |editor-last=Churchill |editor-first=Ward |title=Wielding Words Like Weapons: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1995–2005 |publisher=PM Press |date=February 26, 2017}}{{cite book |chapter=Whose Unabomber? |title=Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilisation |first=John |last=Zerzan |publisher=Feral House |location=Los Angeles |year=2002 |orig-year=1995 |isbn=978-0-922915-75-0 |chapter-url=http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/whoseunabomber.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090318160658/http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/whoseunabomber.htm |archive-date=2009-03-18}} as various prior examples are known.{{cite book |first=John |last=Dornberg |title=Schizophrenic Germany |publisher=MacMillan |year=1961 |page=52}}{{cite book |chapter=Live |first=Anne|last=Sexton|author-link=Anne Sexton |date=1967 |title=Live or Die |isbn=978-0395081808|title-link=Live or Die (book)|publisher=Houghton Mifflin }}. Reprinted and analyzed in: {{cite book |chapter='My Business Is Words': The Poetry of Anne Sexton |pages=117–118 |title="Never Asking Why Build – Only Asking Which Tools": Confessional Poetry and the Construction of the Self |first=Rita|last=Horváth |date=2005 |series=Philosophiae Doctores |volume=36 |location=Budapest |publisher=Akadémiai Kiadó |isbn=9789630582322 |oclc=61133213 |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8hFpx-wVvMC&pg=PA117 |access-date=August 5, 2015}}{{cite book |title=The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II|url=https://archive.org/details/pentagonofpower00mumf|url-access=registration|last=Mumford |first=Lewis |author-link=Lewis Mumford |year=1970 |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |location=New York City |isbn=978-0-15-163974-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/pentagonofpower00mumf/page/279 279]}} It gained prominence in American political culture several years after the September 11 attacks, when a controversy ensued{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A76-2005Feb4.html |title=Professor Under Fire For 9/11 Comments: Free Speech Furor Roils Over Remarks |first=T.R. |last=Reid |newspaper=Washington Post |date=February 5, 2005}}{{cite web|url=http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0201-05.htm |title=Ward Churchill Statement |author-link=Ward Churchill |first=Ward |last=Churchill |work=Daily Camera |date=February 1, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130601114914/http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=%2Fheadlines05%2F0201-05.htm |archive-date=1 June 2013 |access-date=5 August 2015 |url-status=dead }} over the 2003 book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,{{cite book |title=On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality |first=Ward |last=Churchill |date=November 1, 2003 |publisher=AK Press |isbn=978-1902593791 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/onjusticeofroost00chur}} republishing a similarly titled essay Ward Churchill wrote shortly after the attacks.{{cite journal |title=Academic freedom and antiwar dissent in a democratic idiom |first=Robert L. |last=Ivie |journal=College Literature |volume=33 |issue=4 |date=Fall 2006 |pages=76–92 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |doi=10.1353/lit.2006.0055 |s2cid=145409384 |quote=Churchill was made notorious for views he expressed on 9/11 about the culpability of Americans, including the victims of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, whom he labeled 'little Eichmanns' rather than innocent civilians. When this provocative label was brought into focus three years later, in the superheated context of a coordinated and persistent national assault on academic freedom by the politically ascendant right, it prompted a rebuke of Churchill in a formal resolution passed by the Colorado House of Representatives and a call by the state's governor for Churchill to resign his position as professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. The attack on Churchill motivated in turn a university investigation that concluded Churchill was operating within his right of free speech but should be investigated further for related charges of plagiarism and misrepresentation of his Native-American ethnicity.}}{{cite journal

|title=Disingenuous controversy: responses to ward Churchill's 9/11 essay |first1=John |last1=Fritch |first2=Catherine Helen |last2=Palczewski |first3=Jennifer |last3=Farrell |first4=Eric |last4=Short |journal=Argumentation and Advocacy |volume=42 |issue=4 |date=Spring 2006|pages=190–205 |doi=10.1080/00028533.2006.11821654 |s2cid=141233099}} In the essay, Churchill used the phrase to describe technocrats working at the World Trade Center:{{cite journal |title='Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens |first=Ward|last=Churchill |journal=Pockets of Resistance |volume=20 |date=September 2001 |url=https://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180416173613/https://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2018-04-16 |access-date=August 5, 2015}} {{quote|If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.}}