The banality of violence

Source: The News

Date: September 06, 2010

In 1960, Israeli agents kidnapped former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires and tried him for his role in the Holocaust. The New Yorker sent philosopher Hannah Arendt to what was then West Jerusalem to report on his trial. Eichmann was hanged on May 31, 1962. Arendt published a series of articles about the trial in the newspaper and later published the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The book, particularly “banality of evil” in the sub-title, enraged leading intellectuals of the day, as well as Jewish leaders. What she meant by the phrase was that evil deeds committed during the Holocaust on a gigantic scale were not committed by demonic Nazis but by average (banal) persons, like Eichmann. 

The lynching of the two brothers by a mob in Sialkot on Aug 15 shows that violence has become banal for the average Pakistani. The way the two young men were brutally beaten, and from the treatment meted out to their dead bodies strung upside-down from a pole, people thronging to see the brutality and recording it on mobile sets reveals that callousness has become mundane in Pakistani society and does not shock our sensibilities. Factors contributing to this phenomenon have emerged in different times and contexts, but their intersection these days is what makes violence banal. 

The 1980s witnessed the emergence of Jihadi ideology, Kalashnikov culture and ethnic violence in Pakistan. The 1990s saw the rise of the sectarian monster, and more ethnic violence. With the advent of the 21st century Pakistan faced the scourge of terrorism. The post-9/11 period coincided with the phenomenal growth of the electronic media in Pakistan, and its extensive focus on the issues of terrorism, insurgency, invasions, bombings and atrocities around the world. Since then we have been consistently bombarded with violent images, and our language has been imbued with vocabulary drawn from violent events. 

For more details: http://www.thenews.com.pk/06-09-2010/Opinion/3196.htm