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How to feed a dictator

theguardian.com

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Re: How to feed a dictator

#31

Post by mc32 »

namuol wrote: post #7
ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

Later: > By most measures, theirs was a great gig – logic that can excuse almost anything. “Saddam’s chef got a car every year,” Neel says. “That phrase, ‘it was a great gig,’ I think, actually runs the world. Like, ‘It was just business.’” I’d say they understood the meaning.

Perhaps but using that quote to describe that relationship seemed very forced and ill-fitting. They tried to make it work but came up short because it wasn't an apt application of the quote.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#32

Post by jdw64 »

ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil,' as I understand it, refers to human beings who are incapable of thinking. Within a massively bureaucratized and divided system, the immense guilt of killing someone is broken down into tiny, mundane tasks, like stamping a document. Because the system absorbs all individual moral friction, ordinary people can become cogs in a vast machinery of evil without ever questioning it. (In other words, the individual is not morally evil, but the system is designed to break things down so thoroughly that it renders those parts mindless, and that is the truly frightening part.)

In that sense, I can understand part of what the article is claiming. The phrase 'it was a great gig' seems to be the core of what it was trying to say. The high salary, the Mercedes, the abundant food supplies all point to the fact that the source of that funding came from the dictatorship.

An individual can be moral, but the system numbs them. That is why evil is not interesting; its desires are too simple. Wanting to earn more money, wanting to beat someone else, becoming consumed by such things. But in that regard, good is interesting. Because it means overcoming one's own contradictions, striving for the greater good, or even sacrificing one's life for the sake of everyone.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#33

Post by brightball »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #30
copper-float wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is disconcerting that a large portion of people (many in government) actually believe Trump was appointed by God to lead the United States. If any US president could become a dictator, it's him, and I don't blame people for being worried.

The people who believe that believe that every US President is appointed by God. This is a very common Christian view and there’s nothing special about Trump in this regard. By the same token, Biden and Obama were also.

It’s an interesting subject.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#34

Post by vkou »

ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

But, uh, I don't think I'll necessarily assign that level of moral gravity to chef.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#35

Post by hyperhello »

ashalhashim wrote: post #28
hyperhello wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn’t the chef literally serve the dictator, pushing moral concerns aside by dispassionately performing their assigned tasks?

These chefs are effectively being held hostage. One had his passport withheld. Another was executed for giving a kid a stomachache. This isn’t careerism.

Point taken, but maybe it's not that different than anyone who has no choice in any military. They could just shoot you for "cowardice" too.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#36

Post by zerobees »

ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

This is an interesting article backed by months of hard work. It offers perspectives we probably won't find anywhere else. The quote is pretty tangential.

I see this over and over again on HN: pick the weakest sentence, attack it, proclaim the article is rubbish, and move on. Why? There are no internet points awarded for maximum drive-by cynicism.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#37

Post by orochimaaru »

hyperhello wrote: post #26
ashalhashim wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they did not. Arendt’s point about evil being banal is that the perpetrator’s behavior is motivated by the banal. A chef isn’t the perp. They’re adjacent to the monsters and they might be motivated by and fixated on the banality of doing great work.at most this is juxtaposition of evil and banality.

But didn’t the chef literally serve the dictator, pushing moral concerns aside by dispassionately performing their assigned tasks?

It depends. If one is Iraqi and Saddam asks him to be his chef, they're not refusing. They're probably dead if they refuse. Chef's are also sourced from other countries without disclosing the actual client. Once they land their situation is precarious and getting out is next to impossible. One just shuts up, cooks and takes the money.

It's like everyone else serving the dictator. They money may be good, but threat to life is real and scary.

I wouldn't vilify them. It's the proverbial golden cage. They can't get out even if they want to.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#38

Post by harrall »

jdw64 wrote: post #32
ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil,' as I understand it, refers to human beings who are incapable of thinking. Within a massively bureaucratized and divided system, the immense guilt of killing someone is broken down into tiny, mundane tasks, like stamping a document. Because the system absorbs all individual moral friction, ordinary people can become cogs in a vast machinery of evil without ever questioning it. (In o…

But I think that is overly presumptuous though.

Some people have a different moral framework. Some people think Saddam’s brutal dictatorship was for the better because it finally brought stability. When forced to choose between stability and freedom, they choose stability.

There are also just simply amoral people too who just don’t care.

So I wouldn’t automatically assume someone working in an “evil” regime as “trapped as a cog” — they might frankly be OK with it. This is why sometimes just cutting off the head doesn’t enact change.

Re: How to feed a dictator

#39

Post by altmanaltman »

ashalhashim wrote: post #4

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promot…

Tangential point but just to be clear, Ardent's book is a journalistic work not something that is proven or widely accepted. There are many who disagree with this idea that Einchman was just a simple person who took orders since there are several documented events where it's clear that he was a piece of shit nazi and fully embraced the role.

> In Eichmann Before Jerusalem (2014), the German historian Bettina Stangneth reveals another side to him besides the banal, seemingly apolitical man, who was just acting like any other ‘ordinary’ career-oriented bureaucrat. Drawing on audiotapes of interviews with Eichmann by the Nazi journalist William Sassen, Stangneth shows Eichmann as a self-avowed, aggressive Nazi ideologue strongly committed to Nazi beliefs, who showed no remorse or guilt for his role in the Final Solution – a radically evil Third Reich operative living inside the deceptively normal shell of a bland bureaucrat. Far from being ‘thoughtless’, Eichmann had plenty of thoughts – thoughts of genocide, carried out on behalf of his beloved Nazi Party. On the tapes, Eichmann admitted to a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde dualism:

I, ‘[t]he cautious bureaucrat,’ that was me, yes indeed. But … this cautious bureaucrat was attended by a … a fanatical [Nazi] warrior, fighting for the freedom of my blood, which is my birthright… Arendt completely missed this radically evil side of Eichmann when she wrote 10 years after the trial that there was ‘no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives’. This only underscores the banality – and falsity – of the banality-of-evil thesis. And though Arendt never said that Eichmann was just an innocent ‘cog’ in the Nazi bureaucracy, nor defended Eichmann as ‘just following orders’ – both common misunderstandings of her findings on Eichmann – her critics, including Wolfe and Lipstadt, remain unsatisfied.

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-...

Re: How to feed a dictator

#40

Post by jdw64 »

harrall wrote: post #38
jdw64 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil,' as I understand it, refers to human beings who are incapable of thinking. Within a massively bureaucratized and divided system, the immense guilt of killing someone is broken down into tiny, mundane tasks, like stamping a document. Because the system absorbs all individual moral friction, ordinary people can become cogs in a vast machinery of evil without ever questioning it. (In o…

But I think that is overly presumptuous though. Some people have a different moral framework. Some people think Saddam’s brutal dictatorship was for the better because it finally brought stability. When forced to choose between stability and freedom, they choose stability. There are also just simply amoral people too who just don’t care. So I wouldn’t automatically assume someone working in an “evil” regime as “trapp…

That is what makes the world interesting. You, unlike the unthinking people I was describing, are different. You are different from those who do not reflect on the final outcome of a subject and do not empathize with it, because you can empathize with a life trapped within a particular system or framework. I also do not think you are wrong. All context must ultimately be judged according to the situation. In some respects, I think you are right. And that is a good thing. We are different people, we think differently, and I like that difference in thinking.
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