The year 2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt\u2019s controversial critique of the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and her work remains unambiguously pertinent. Indeed, not only do the ghosts of the past continue to haunt Eichmann in Jerusalem; another ghost \u2014 a ghost from the future \u2014 is also detectable among her words. As one reads her text, Eichmann\u2019s polar opposite, Bradley Manning, arises from Arendt\u2019s pages like a photographic negative. Presently on trial for charges that include \u201ccommunicating national defense information to an unauthorized source,\u201d and \u201caiding the enemy,\u201d Manning succeeded in accomplishing what Eichmann was tried and executed for failing to do; Manning refused to participate in the commission of crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
The reader must refrain from inferring that an equivalence is being drawn between the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and those committed by the US. However shocking the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis may be, one must recognize that those crimes are not at all inconsistent with the genocidal aims that that regime repeatedly and explicitly espoused. To be sure, the US \u2014 which is also guilty of launching a war of aggression \u2014 never professed any genocidal intentions; However much it fell short, and however disingenuous it may have been, the rhetoric invoked by the US was that of the enlightenment ideal of human freedom. In this light, it should not be too contentious to maintain that the US ought to be held to a standard higher than that reserved for Nazis. No war crimes are acceptable, and the systematic denial of procedural justice, as well as outright torture, and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Yemen, Pakistan, and other places over the past decade are beyond reasonable dispute.<\/p>\n
Acts such as those recorded in the video Collateral Murder (titled and released to the public via Wikileaks), for example, which depict US soldiers killing innocent civilians in clear violation of International Law, not to mention such war crimes as the unabating drone attacks on civilian targets, are among those that Manning intended to stop. That Manning is facing life in prison for his actions is nothing short of a perversion of justice \u2014 as perverse as the fact that had Manning meticulously followed the rules, like Eichmann had, Manning would have been more likely to be awarded a medal than a court martial. It is this injustice \u2014 the injustice that arises from the collective adherence to unjust laws, acceding to the inertia of injustice \u2014 that Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.<\/p>\n
Arguably Arendt\u2019s most familiar argument \u2014 and that which provides the subtitle for her piece on Eichmann \u2014 the banality of evil arose from her observation that Eichmann, rather than being some demonic, terrifying creature, one so instrumental in perpetrating monumental acts of horror, was just, as she put it, a \u201cnobody.\u201d Describing Eichmann as a habitual \u201cfollower,\u201d in distinguishing his character from that of the stereotypical evildoer, Arendt wrote that Eichmann \u201cnot only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law.\u201d This was, in fact, Eichmann\u2019s main defense \u2014 the same discredited defense invoked by the Nazi war criminals in 1945 at Nuremberg. Among Arendt\u2019s observations regarding Eichmann\u2019s \u201cbanal evil\u201d was that, rather than scheming and plotting and intending to commit evil, Eichmann didn\u2019t really think at all. \u201cHis inability to speak\u201d she writes, \u201cwas closely connected with an inability to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proverbial cog in the machine, a tool more than a human being, Eichmann did not resist the inertial flow of the Nazi war effort. To the extent that this applies to Eichmann, though, the opposite may be said of Manning. In spite of the claims of the prosecution, Manning consistently demonstrated an ability to act according to clearly articulated reasons. Rather than thoughtlessly obeying unjust laws, as Eichmann did, as Manning put it in his testimony before a military court earlier this year, \u201cI believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information \u2026 this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.\u201d Manning may have violated unjust laws. However, as Martin Luther King Jr., citing Augustine of Hippo, put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, \u201can unjust law is no law at all.\u201d To be sure, should a conflict arise between justice and law, justice ought to prevail.<\/p>\n
This is not simply rhetoric. The Law itself recognizes that to the degree that it furthers injustice, a law is invalid. The precedents established by the Nuremberg Trials \u2014 now firmly entrenched in such pillars of International Law as Article 85 and Article 17 of the Geneva Convention, not to mention the US Army\u2019s very own Field Manual \u2014 include the very principle that merely following orders does not exculpate someone from responsibility for war crimes. As Nuremberg Principle VII states, \u201cComplicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI [which includes the murder of civilians, something which Manning repeatedly witnessed and attempted to obstruct] is a crime under international law.\u201d That is, in addition to his conscientious resistance, Manning had a positive legal duty to resist collaborating with war crimes. That the enemy was not at all aided by Manning\u2019s disclosure (unlike Bob Woodward\u2019s repeated and uncensured disclosures of sensitive national security information) and that no harm came to anyone because of Manning\u2019s acts is, though completely relevant, dismissed from consideration by the prosecution.<\/p>\n
Of course, like history, \u201cjustice\u201d is often determined by those in power. If Nazi-Germany had prevailed over the Allies in the second world war, for example, Adolf Eichmann would have most likely lived out the rest of his life in relative peace and obscurity. Likewise, had Bradley Manning followed the rules, as Eichmann meticulously followed those of the Third Reich, he would probably not be facing life in prison. In other words, had he not resisted, Manning would be guilty in fact \u2014 and in his heart, if not in a court of law \u2014 of some of the very crimes that Eichmann was found guilty of committing \u2014 and this is just how the US would have wanted it.<\/p>\n
It is no hyperbole to remark that the precedent established in Nuremberg in 1945 is one of the most important and enduring lessons of the Holocaust. And though this lesson seems to have been lost on Barack Obama, and on many others, this lesson was not lost on Bradley Manning. Learning of the regular perpetration of war crimes, and finding himself in a position that demanded that he either do his job, like Eichmann, and become an accessory to these crimes, or resist, Manning made the decision to break this causal chain of injustice, to resist unjust laws and practices, and to act in accordance with justice.<\/p>\n
While some of his supporters proclaim their solidarity with Manning by announcing that \u201cwe are all Bradley Manning,\u201d insofar as his supporters are not in prison \u2014 and may be unwilling to go to prison for their beliefs \u2014 it is not entirely clear what such a proclamation entails. What is patently clear, however, is that, to the degree that we accede and conform to the dominating power of capital and the state (as opposed to the liberating power of resistance), we are all, every one of us, Adolf Eichmann.<\/p>\n
Elliot Sperber<\/strong> is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com<\/a> He lives in New York City and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n