[namuol]

Later:

> By most measures, theirs was a great gig – logic that can excuse almost anything. “Saddam’s chef got a car every year,” Neel says. “That phrase, ‘it was a great gig,’ I think, actually runs the world. Like, ‘It was just business.’”

I’d say they understood the meaning.

[ashalhashim]

No, they did not. Arendt’s point about evil being banal is that the perpetrator’s behavior is motivated by the banal. A chef isn’t the perp. They’re adjacent to the monsters and they might be motivated by and fixated on the banality of doing great work.at most this is juxtaposition of evil and banality.

[hyperhello]

But didn’t the chef literally serve the dictator, pushing moral concerns aside by dispassionately performing their assigned tasks?

[orochimaaru]

It depends. If one is Iraqi and Saddam asks him to be his chef, they're not refusing. They're probably dead if they refuse. Chef's are also sourced from other countries without disclosing the actual client. Once they land their situation is precarious and getting out is next to impossible. One just shuts up, cooks and takes the money.

It's like everyone else serving the dictator. They money may be good, but threat to life is real and scary.

I wouldn't vilify them. It's the proverbial golden cage. They can't get out even if they want to.

[antonymoose]

In the Iraqi case Saddam was known for a similar strategy to North Korea. High-trust families, not persons, are identified and groomed for positions. Of course, if your son disgraced the regime with failure or betrayal both they and their family might be on the chopping block both literally and figuratively.

I happen to have known a former Iraqi ambassador under Saddam here in the US. He and his brother were selected at a young age of 10 or so, and provided the highest levels of education by the administration, for the administration. Their family was already high enough up but were rewarded further for providing their sons. However, after one of the Iraqi losses (Kuwait?) Saddam summoned his ambassadors back to Iraq. The brothers smelled blood in the water and fled to America for asylum. Unfortunately this caused their parents to be ostracized by the regime but luckily not killed.

This pattern existed across military, civil service, academia, and even to produce Olympic athletes.

[ashalhashim]

These chefs are effectively being held hostage. One had his passport withheld. Another was executed for giving a kid a stomachache. This isn’t careerism.

[hyperhello]

Point taken, but maybe it's not that different than anyone who has no choice in any military. They could just shoot you for "cowardice" too.

[raincole]

Perhaps they understand the meaning, but this:

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

Is still a misquote/misrepresentation. People can understand a subject but still say wrong things about it.

[cycomanic]

It seems your misinterpreting the quote, it does never says that

> “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

Is the definition of the banality of evil concept. I would argue though that within the concept you will interpret banal things differently. For a more blatant example, the banal act of putting an approval stamp onto a piece of paper will be interpreted quite differently in the context of a administrator in Reichsbahn in Nazi germanycompared to an administrator at the Bundesbahn now.

[mc32]

Perhaps but using that quote to describe that relationship seemed very forced and ill-fitting. They tried to make it work but came up short because it wasn't an apt application of the quote.