What Joaquim Barbosa should learn from Hannah Arendt
She had the courage to react to a trial "established not to satisfy the demands of justice, but to appease the desire and perhaps the right to revenge of the victims."
By Kiko Nogueira, from Diary of the Center of the World
In 1961, the German philosopher of Jewish origin Hannah Arendt went to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker magazine. Eichmann had been captured in Buenos Aires by the secret service. During the Nazi era, he had been head of the Jewish Affairs Section and responsible for organizing the deportation scheme to the extermination camps.
The report was published in two editions and later became the book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." This expression, which she popularized, was in the last line of the last chapter of the book. Arendt was astonished by Eichmann's mediocrity, a bureaucrat who only used clichés to speak, without any trace of antisemitism, an ambitious functionary without moral discernment and blindly obedient to his superiors. Where was the monster?
After her account was published, she was accused of being a Nazi, lost friends, and received death threats. She touched on the sensitive subject of Jewish organizations' cooperation in transporting people to the camps. And she harshly criticized the trial.
What she says about the sensationalism surrounding the court fits with what was seen here, broadcast live, during the Mensalão trial.
According to Arendt, the trial, which should have been grand, lost its dimension due to the pettiness of the defendant, the attitude of the prosecution, and the atmosphere of "settling scores." It was something the Israeli state wanted to transform into an unforgettable spectacle for future generations. She insists on the theatricality that called into question the notion of justice in the case.
For Arendt, the trial “was instituted not to satisfy the demands of justice, but to appease the desire and perhaps the right to revenge of the victims.”
(continue reading at Diary of the Center of the World)