I believe the consensus now is that her analysis of Eichmann was wrong, he had fooled her (and others). Personally I still think the concept of the “banality of evil” overall still has merit.
The non-appearance of "monstrous psychopaths" is only part of it. I
don't know much about Eichmann but there's a rather good treatment of
the Nuremberg trials in the Adam Curtis documentary The Living Dead
[0], in which Hermann Göring is shown as setting a tone that later
resurfaces with Eichmann and in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings
of post-apartheid South Africa and many other trials of atrocities and
war crimes - namely an intransigent adherence to the defence that
"everything was done legally".
I don't think any culture has fully digested the implications or had
the courage to approach the questions Nuremberg and subsequent trials
posed 80 years ago; where does the law run out? When does it become
not just okay but morally necessary to defect/rebel/rise-up against
your own side, and its so-called "laws" when it's become degenerate
and run by criminals ?
In this way I don't think the difficult issue is that evil is banal
(as in C. R. Browning's "Ordinary Men" [2]) but that it's "everyday,
procedural and institutionally backed". It's defended by social
organisations held dear, right up until a point of collapse and pivot
of history when those institutions themselves become seen as evil.
Eichmann and Göring went beyond "Kadavergehorsam" [1] and were
indignant that anyone dare judge them. Göring tried to school the
judges in moral philosophy.
I don't think anyone is comfortable revisiting this topic, especially
as it's still relevant and playing out today in at least two theatres
of war.
