Eichmann in Jerusalem was a controversial piece of literature when it first was published. Hannah Arendt’s thesis of the book has something to do with a term she coined because of the Adolf Eichmann trial, the “banality of evil.” This term refers to an observation about Eichmann’s personal life, in which Arendt claims that Eichmann’s reason for joining the SS was not caused by his wickedness or evil of character, but by his thoughtlessness and his willingness to conform to the leadership above him. Arendt claims that individuals can be convinced commit unspeakable acts simply because they want to conform to authority. This is backed up by Arendt’s claim that Eichmann personally knew and was close friends and family with people who were Jewish. “Eichmann new jews in his personal life and including dear friends and relative.” Arendt goes on to claim that while Eichmann was participating in the “force emigration” of Jewish people in Vienna as a bureaucrat he had an affair with a Jewish “mistress”. Arendt states that he was coaxed into his government job in Vienna, which was advertised to him as a job which had clear upward momentum in the party. While I do believe in the banality of evil as a concept, I do not believe (so far) that Eichmann’s case falls under this category. The concept is interesting though when applied to Ji Xianlin’s The Cowshed. Similar to how seemingly sane and non-malevolent bureaucrats in Germany were coaxed into commit atrocities on a mass scale, so where the members of the Cultural Revolution in China. Ji comments on how his students, who seemed politically conscious and nonviolent got swept up in the craze of the Cultural Revolution. Specifically Ji talks about one of his favorite prospects, Ma. Ma was one of his favorite students and he was grooming him to become his eventually successor when he got back to Peking University from the Cowshed. However upon coming back Ji attended a public denouncement of himself which was being held by Ma. Ji said, “I will not be the Golden Doll Paper doll of the Capitalist Academic Authority” (Ji, 135). The golden doll is a reference to an item which was buried with the Chinese when they die in a traditional funeral, and the Capitalist Academic Authority was a reference to what they would call Ji. Ji was surprised to find out that one of his most fond students turned on him when he found out that he had associations to anti-capitalistic ties, which were ultimately fake. This concept of the “banality of evil” could be applied to the members of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, as seemingly ordinary people with no malice towards others are led to commit horrible acts in the name of the revolution and communism.
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