Banality describes the perpetrators’ character but not their deeds, which transform them.

Evidence

What I have noted about the ordinariness of Nazi doctors as men would seem to be further evidence of her thesis. [Recall that the thesis involved the banality of evil-in this context the ordinariness in the present of the individuals who had committed horrible acts of evil in the past.] But not quite. Nazi doctors were banal, but what they did was not. Repeatedly in this study, I describe banal men performing demonic acts. In doing so-or in order to do so-the men changed; and in carrying out their actions, they themselves were no longer banal. (p. 5) Here Lifton reiterated his first point, that it is the individual’s encounter with the killing machine that results in a conversion process altering that individual and creating a doubled personality. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3953

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis directly — a familiar touchstone for this reader across the book.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the doer is transformed by the deed, becoming non-banal, unsettles the entire banality-of-evil framing and resists easy summary.