The banality of evil, the subtitle of a book by the political scientist Hannah Arendt, reigns worldwide. Hannah Arendt struggles to understand the banality of
evil. Arendt redefines the meaning of our most treasured political concepts and principles freedom, society, identity, truth, equality.
In Ben-Gurion’s words, “We want to show all the nations of the world that the Nazis murdered millions of people simply because they were Jews and a million babies simply because they were Jewish-born babies.” Or “We want the world community to recognize that Nazi Germany alone cannot be held responsible for the destruction of six million Jews of Europe. Therefore, we want the nations of the world to perceive this and be ashamed.”
The AKP regime in Turkey has recently sent educator Ayşe Özdoğan, a Stage 4 cancer patient, to solitary confinement and virtually to her death. With her husband in prison, Ayşe Özdoğan’s young son Burak too was left unattended. Evil should not have become this much banal. For the first time, the voice of a victim has resonated this wide across the country. Consciences should not have been so dumbed down regarding an ailing woman given a few months to live and was embraced by people from all walks of life not withstanding her identity!
These evils must be announced to the whole world, and humanity must hear this shame even after many decades. It should be our duty to make the voices of not only Ayşe’s but all those who have been subjected to the sufferings and shame of this period heard and to sympathize with their cries. We are human to the extent we can sense the agony of others, regardless of their identities.
Some judges presiding over the Turkey Tribunal’s trials of conscience in Geneva refused to eat after listening to the dramatic stories and torture inflicted on the defendants. They could not
control their tears while listening to some defendants.
To prevent evil from becoming banal and not to surrender the world to the evil John Milton described in his book titled Paradise Lost that we must take refuge in the harbour of goodness. We must believe that goodness has abundant power to burn all evil. In societies where there are goodness and good people, there will always be hope and peace.
Actually, the struggle between good and evil is our oldest human story. In the struggle of good and evil, races, colours, and nations are already blurred and sometimes erased.
Humanity is divided into those who can embrace and appreciate humanity and existence, those who can interpret life, those who can complete the search for meaning, and others.
The tragedy of Syrian girl Nahla Osman who used to live in a camp in Idlib was very tragic. She was chained by her father. She was 6 years old. She was rescued when she was about to starve to death, but she choked to death as she quickly ate the food handed to her. The shame of the cause of her death was sufficient to be equally distributed to all humanity…
To prevent evil from becoming banal, let us first remain the good ones, and then, despite all evil, let us fly the banner of goodness in our towns.
The world is not suffering because of evil and cruel people; the world is suffering because of the good people who keep silent against the evil.