Beyond the Macabre: Unmasking True Malice

We often fixate on the most gruesome, sensational acts when we talk about evil. Think serial killers, cannibalism, or the kind of horror that fills tabloids and true crime documentaries. But what if that focus distracts us from a more pervasive, and frankly, more dangerous kind of evil that operates in plain sight?

It’s a notion that challenges our deep-seated fascination with the monstrous. As Adam Smith wisely observed,

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful…is the great and most universal cause of our moral sentiments.

This admiration can blind us to the more subtle harms committed by those in positions of authority.

The Problem with Spectacle

Recently, I was approached by a British podcast company looking into 'modern manifestations of the concept of evil.' Their interest, unfortunately, quickly veered towards the sensational—cases of cannibalism, grotesque violence. While undeniably horrific, these incidents, I argued, are rare and often serve to divert our attention.

When asked why such cases don’t capture my focus, I made it clear: “Cases like these are very rare, and they distract us from evils that are much more common and much more dangerous.”

“Like what?” the young producer pressed.

My answer was straightforward:

Making war in order to stay in power. Cutting aid that will cost poor people’s lives in order to lower rich people’s taxes.

These are the systemic, less flashy forms of harm that often escape our moral outrage, precisely because they lack the shock value of a headline-grabbing atrocity.

The Banality of Evil

Our natural inclination is to externalize evil, to portray it as something so profoundly alien to normal human behavior that it becomes an almost mythical force. This impulse allows us to avoid the harder questions about less gory, but far more impactful, crimes. We'd rather believe in “satanic greatness” than confront the uncomfortable truth.

This is where Hannah Arendt's monumental work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , remains incredibly prescient. Arendt sought to dismantle the idea of evil as a grand, diabolical force. She argued against the perception of evil as something ambiguously sexy or terrifyingly sublime.

In a famous letter to her friend Gershom Sholem, Arendt articulated this profound insight: “Evil possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste to the world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface.”

To call evil 'banal' is to strip it of its mystique, to reveal it as often mundane, bureaucratic, and shockingly un-erotic. It's not the terrifying monster in the shadows, but the quiet, administrative decisions that inflict widespread suffering. The appeal of a fungus is, after all, limited.

This perspective forces us to look beyond the spectacle and confront the everyday mechanisms of harm that truly shape our world.

Where Do We Look for True Malice?

The fascination with rare, grisly crimes often serves as a substitute for a more challenging question: What accounts for the less dramatic forms of evil that have become so common they merely serve as background noise to our lives? We focus on those who take pleasure in cruelty because they are seldom who we are—and because we are often reluctant to recognize that the greater evil might be the conviction that there is no good at all, leading to complacency in the face of systemic injustice.

The real challenge lies in examining the reasons behind these less spectacular, yet devastating, cases of harm.

It means shifting our gaze from the grotesque individual act to the societal structures and accepted norms that enable profound suffering on a massive scale. It's about recognizing that the quiet removal of aid or the strategic escalation of conflict can be far more destructive than the isolated act of a madman.

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