May I observe here that this phenomenon—a thoughtless person who evidently thinks and speaks in clichés, however inappropriate, while being capable of enormous harm—ought to be less alien to our experience in the United States today than perhaps it was when Arendt was writing?

When Arendt took me with her to public discussions of her book, which were often acrimonious and painful, what struck me was, first, that “the banality of evil” was deeply troubling to people, as it seemed to trivialize enormous wrongdoing and suffering. It occurred to me that, had Arendt spoken of “the evil of banality,” what she meant might have made more sense. The thought has stayed with me that we need to comprehend how banality—superficiality in its differing modes—works to enable its apparent opposite, the great drama of horrific harm-doing.

(elizabeth minnich, who studied with hannah arendt.)