Eichmann in Jerusalem

(A Report on the Banality of Evil)

by Hannah Arendt

Dimly aware of a defect that must have plagued him even in school—it amounted to a mild case of aphasia—he apologized, saying, “Officialese [Amtssprache] is my only language.” But the point here is that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. (Was it these clichés that the psychiatrists thought so “normal” and “desirable”? Are these the “positive ideas” a clergyman...