BY BORDI JAEN
I RECENTLY watched Downfall (Der Untergang in German), a film about the last days of Hitler based on the accounts of those close to him as the Soviets crept on Berlin.
The film was quite enjoyable but what struck me were the apparent critical reviews and discourses in Germany arising from the film’s portrayal of Hitler. The synopsis of the debates was: Should someone so cruel and evil as Hitler be portrayed in a sympathetic light? Should the focus be on his supposed humanity?
Historical records recount Hitler as having had a charming personality, which he used to disarm those around him. His fiery speeches earned him the awe of millions of Germans. Anyone could certainly be wrapped up in his prose, wit and charisma. Certainly, no one could ever come to be führer without such qualities.
We often think of evil individuals as clowns prancing on grassy fields, easy to spot. We think that we know evil, like the supervillains in the movies. One must remember that evil wears a human garment. Evil takes on the appearance of good because that is how evil proliferates. It is from that knowledge where the proverb “wolf in sheep’s clothing” has sprung from. Evil is most atrocious in places least expected.
Strangely, evil people don’t often think of themselves as evil. They think of themselves as men on a mission; the fulfillers of a certain goal.
Hitler thought what he was doing was best for Germany and the German people.
Joseph Stalin wanted to keep the USSR and the communist ideology alive.
Heck, Thanos wanted to end human suffering by killing 50 percent of the universe’s populace.
Niccolo Machiavelli’s book, The Prince, ended with an appeal to Lorenzo the Magnificent to unify Italy with ideas from it. In short, the evilest of men are motivated by the idea of the “end justifies the means” at all cost.
But what is the benefit derived from shedding the light of humanity for the evilest? To understand. Of course, never to make up for the atrocities they commit but rather to understand that the evilest of men do not necessarily display their ambience of evil; that behind the scabbard is a sword waiting to be unsheathed; that evil interweaves goodness. They take morality hostage, knife to its neck. It’s no wonder that after more than two thousand years of evil, here it goes again, under different names, under different ideologies, under different cloaks. History has always been cyclical.
Viewing evil from a human lens gives us the perspective of how evil operates. How better else to recognize evil than by understanding its operation?
Interestingly, most people see The Prince as a book that teaches people how to be the “ultimate evil ruler”; the bible of the amoral. However, another perspective is that The Prince is the guide, not anymore to the unifier of Italy nor to any other ruler, but rather, to the empowerment of the ordinary citizen by providing a handbook as to how evil reaches and maintains its grip so that we may work, in our way, to eradicate it or at least, to never be complacent of it. After all, Edmund Burke did say that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Going back to the title, a play-on of the famous line of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet where Hamlets says, “I must be cruel to be kind”, necessitating the fact that good men aren’t always nice or kind in the best interest of those they love.
It is ironic then that evil twists this line where they, the evil men, use goodness (or a façade of it) to allow their evil to flourish; that evil men must be kind to be cruel. Machiavelli correctly points out that bad deeds can be buried by good deeds, because people are forgetful and their memories are short.
This is one thing that people need to understand; that evil needs to hijack aspects of virtue and goodness to thrive, like a virus hijacking cells. Hopefully, by the portrayal of what evil really is, we may move forward to make sure that evil may never see the light of day, by shedding light on it./PN
