Is Lucy Letby a case of the banality of evil?
Understandably, the British media is awash with coverage of the recently-concluded, ten-month court case in which Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more. The newspaper which I read – the “Guardian” – today devotes its first 12 pages to the case.
I love children. I love babies. I really struggle to understand how anyone could harm them. But new-born babies murdered by a neonational nurse just defies comprehension. Lucy Letby seems to have had a very normal upbringing and her parent appear to believe in her innocence.
I am reminded of a recent Netflix movie based on a real case in the United States. “The Good Nurse” told the story of Charlie Cullen who was convicted of 29 murders but is thought to have been responsible for around 400 which would make him the most prolific killer in US history.
Cases like Lucy Letby and Charlie Cullen raise profoundly difficult questions. Are some people evil or should we reserve the word for acts or behaviours rather than persons? Should we solely blame the perpetrators of these crimes or the institutions for which they worked which, in both these cases, covered up their concerns to protect public reputation and legal liability?
I am also reminded of the notion of “the banality of evil”, a controversial phrase associated with American philosopher and writer Hannah Arendt.
Can one do evil without being evil? This was the puzzling question that Arendt grappled with when she reported for “The New Yorker” in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for organising the transportation of millions of Jews and others to various concentration camps as part of the Holocaust.Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was “neither perverted nor sadistic”, but “terrifyingly normal”. She argued that he acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, “Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil” (1963).
We like to feel that we live in a rational world where people’s actions can be explained by their circumstances and their motives. But do we ever really know anybody? In certain circumstances, can any person do any thing? I don’t know …
August 20th, 2023 at 4:50 pm
Evil is much used term. It sits ill with those without religion. It refers to events and people that incomprehensibly breach accepted behavior.
All nature fosters care for the next generation. Most of us have that instinct built into us. If something goes wrong and laws and normality are breached, there has to be reasons. Labelling it as evil reinforces the norms. This and other cases merit detailed investigation by specialists. It must go beyond populist outcry.
August 20th, 2023 at 5:41 pm
Unlike Eichmann, Letby was not advancing her career or obeying orders. She was going out of her way to kill babies her profession had taught her to protect. Why? Did it give her a feeling of power (and rebelling against the ‘suffocation’ of her parents’ demands on her)? Did she enjoy the thrill of hiding her wicked deeds while people admired her? I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘evil’ but the distortion of people’s priorities can seem evil to others.