The work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt in reporting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in the aftermath of WW2, led to the coining of the phrase ‘the banality of evil’. Reflecting the very ordinariness of the way in which great acts of atrocity were planned and carried out.

Eichmann, Arendt felt, was ‘terrifyingly normal’. Not a monster. Not a pervert. Just a man immersed in a philosophy of hatred: thoughtless, careless of the suffering of others.

It would have been easier for all of us if he’d had a pitchfork and a tail, and had cackled maniacally at the torments of others. But instead he was a bureaucrat with a ballpoint pen – a middle class, middle manager, who simply didn’t care. Like so many others. It’s far easier to project evil outwards on to a diabolical figure with horns and a cosmological otherness than it is to look inward at the callous thoughtlessness that leads, ultimately, to the destruction of others.