In a recent column, Ramzy Baroud wrote about the failure of French President Hollande to “learn from W. Bush’s plunders.” One can hardly fault “Le Guimauve Socialiste” for failing to learn anything from the village idiot and war criminal W. Bush.   The lesson Hollande – like all the other leaders of the Western terrorist states – should have learned was from Hannah Arendt.  In her seminal reports on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, she elucidated how the banality of evil encompasses not just the perpetrators but also the victims.  Both the perpetrators and victims are too often co-dependents in an evil embrace of conformity.   Conformity to a corrupt and evil society ensures that there are no longer simply innocent victims and evil perpetrators.   Conformity to a corrupt social order, ensures that there is no longer a difference between individual and state terrorism, no matter how much the leaders of those states condemn the former and practice the latter.

I do not know those who were killed at the Kosher market.  I would guess that they were not Muslim hating Zionists but ordinary, good people who just wanted to live and let live.  It is likely they were people who simply wanted to conform to their affluent Parisian society, while somehow ignoring how their nation state was condoning, supporting and engaging in terrorism against Muslims — most of whom also just wanted to live in peace.   They may not have supported the actions of French governments past and present. They may have even been opposed to Israeli genocide in Gaza last summer.   But, like the Jews who passively accepted and even helped the Nazi terror, they also may have done nothing to resist or stop Western state terror against Muslims.   Their conformity to French society made them complicit in the crimes of their society and tragically in the banality of evil that has so engulfed our world.

On a visceral level, political leaders like W. Bush understand the banality of evil much better than those like Hollande or Obama.  They know the people they rule over are not potentially innocent victims but co-dependents in their crimes.   They know that those who acquiesce and conform to their state terrorism are an integral part of their banality of evil.   They understand that blowback is inevitable and that there are no innocent victims. And, knowing this, these leaders spend vast amounts of energy and resources constructing a “Homeland Security” state to keep those conformists feeling “safe” from the terrorists.

The actions of the nation states where we live would have us all become co-dependents in the banality of evil.   As much as we would like, living in safety or as innocents is not an option in our world — not as long as our nation states do not allow all other peoples to also live in peace.   Our choice is to conform to the banality of state terrorism or to resist that evil.    As individuals we may not be able to stop the state terrorism but that does not excuse conformity.   Individual conformity to corrupt and evil nation states is why the banality of evil thrives in today’s world.    Resisting will not keep us safe, but it will allow us to live as something other than co-dependents in the banality of that evil.   Our only moral response and our only hope for peace and safety is in collective resistance to the banality of state terrorism.

---