The Banality of Evil

It’s Friday, after the congressional Jumma prayers the streets of Kasur turn into an arena for cold blooded murder. A young man is killed by the merciless crowd over an accusation which proves to be false later. The image of two teenage boys being beaten to death in the middle of a crowd in Sialkot, is still etched in our hearts and minds. Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala all over the country there are scenes of violence in the name of street justice. All the aggressors will vouch for the fact that they were merely doing the right thing, all their victims were accused thieves, or were involved in social crimes; most would say they were merely watching.

All this malevolence is carried out by ordinary people, who are not necessarily either violent or possess a tendency to evil. How can an ordinary man justify the killing of another person in cold blood? The answer lies in the fact that most of them actually don’t believe that they are taking active part in an evil process itself. The banality of evil is our tendency to justify and make righteous our acts of evil till they cease to be evil in our minds.

In Hitler’s concentration camps, hundreds were employed in making the huge killing machine work, were all of those people inherently evil? No. they were doing their jobs, they were not looking at the big picture and surely they were not killing anyone. There were janitors, soldiers and administrators who just did what they were told. By making an act normal, they actually acquitted themselves of the responsibility of the act itself.

Every person that contributes to the death or torture of a person is guilty by association; from the person who was silent at the scene of the crime to the government official on whose watch the crime took place. Ask the people who were standing there at the “Just” killings taking place all over the country and they will plead innocent. Not realizing that by simply becoming spectators or supporters to these events renders them just as guilty of not saving a life, as it qualifies the killers to a murder.

The need of the hour is a society with an active moral conscious, where any form of violence is entirely unacceptable. Where all life is sacred, whether it belongs to any group or ethnicity, religion or political party. Where at an individual level we ensure the respect of every person’s right to life and privacy. Where we take responsibility for every single action we perform and understand its butterfly effect. Unless we adopt this self-check; precious lives will continue to be lost in the name of so-called “street justice”.