CALL IT EVIL

FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER 2026

LIFE AND NEWS NOTES

· As usual, the Trump administration is focusing on destroying any semblance of international law and justice. It announced severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC). The court seeks to prosecute war crimes, including genocide, and other serious criminal acts. Now, companies doing business with the court could be subject to punishment by the U.S. government. Rubio called the ICC a “rogue court” and Trump charged that the court was trying to violate American sovereignty (NYT). (Note: When court established, lawyer).

· Russia is trying to break the will of the U.S. and Europe to support Ukraine and “in a broader sense to change the security architecture of Europe,” said David Cattler, former NATO intelligence official who described what the Russians are with hybrid warfare doing as “hard to attribute….big enough to matter and yet small enough not to trigger.” The Europeans are trying to decide how to respond.

Book: “Call it evil: Understanding the Trump Era” by Susan Neiman. Interviewed on the Chris Hedges podcast. 9/30/26. (Note: The Chris Hedges Report is a fascinating podcast. I don’t agree with everything that is said, but you can’t deny the interesting content. Atlantic Article)

· There is a widespread distortion of the ideas of Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and Michel Foucoult that all we ever do is because of self-interest. This is not true. Everything we do is not to increase our own advantage.

· We grow up with a set of assumptions. We learn to take them for granted. We forget they are assumptions and that we could question them if we wanted to.

· Colonialism, for example, used to be considered fact, not questioned. In the 18^th century, we started questioning colonialism as fact. But, now, people like Trump are introducing it again. Trump, recently said: “To the victor belong the spoils.” (Note: oil in venezuela).

· Religion has been a way to express moral intentions, to restrain the more rapacious parts of our characters.

· It is bizarre for some people to hear Christian evangelicals support an administration which is all about ignoring the weak and those we leave behind.

· A faction of Evangelical Christianity itself practices something called Prosperity Gospel. If you are a good Christian, you will be rewarded with wealth and power. Norman Vincent Peale was a religious figure the Trump family admired, but this is an “infantile notion of religion”

· Chris Hedges: “It’s magical thinking.”

· (Note: Hedges’ book about fascists “American Fascists.)

· Mark Millie called Trump “fascist to the core.”

· But, we do not name the ideology that has vomited up Trump as well as masked men who deport people, a government that coerces its citizens and blows fishermen to bits.

· But, counting the crimes is hopeless. (Note: As if a certain number of crimes will qualify a certain government as “fascist.”)

· Our inability to use the appropriate kind of language to describe the activity around us confuses us and makes us weaker. It leads to the surrendering of law schools, media outlets, etc., a moral rot.

· Neiman: “I can’t stand to hear the word authoritarian.” The use of the word authoritarian simply masks the fascism that exists.

· What we see in the society is a cowtowing from people who had no need to cowtow. Being rich should gain you the power to say no, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Google, for example, decided to change its map.

· Neiman recommends a book, a novel by Daniel Kehlmann “The Director.” Americans, Neiman says, have the idea that Nazis are different from other people. (Note: As if you could spot a Nazi by looking). But, people start by saying that they would say not cross some red lines. Then, they cross that line and then another and another and before long they were Nazis. Lanauage is a big part of this transition. It’s not authoritarianism. It’s fascism.

· You convince yourself. “If we don’t name things properly, use language that rings alarm bells” we don’t recognize the reality of our existence. (Note: One of the reasons Eli Mystal is no longer on television is that he named things properly and used language and a manner that rang alarm bells).

· If we make ourselves believe that everybody is out for their own self-interest, and that morality is just for suckers, it makes it hard to stand up for principles.

· Chris Hedges: It is the “Normalizationn of evil.”

· Neiman: Yes, it’s Arendt’s banality of evil.

· Neiman recommends another book: “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” (Note: Documents available about Eichman and how evil he was.)

· Arendt was wrong about Eichman. He was not just this bureaucrat. He wanted to kill them all. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was dependent on millions of Germans, going along.

· (Book: “The Cruelty is the point” by Adam Serwer.)

· Most Americans do not enjoy cruelty. But, their ability to go along with evil but not realize that’s what it is, allows us to go along with this.

· “Call it Evil” “advocates a return to moral universalism as a panacea for an erosion of values.”

· Other books by Neiman “Learning from the Germans” (2019) and “Left is not Woke” (2023).

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· Neiman argues that the causes for the current state of affairs are: market fundamentalism and its focus on the accumulation of wealth as well as the elevation of power over law.

· Also, adherents of “identarian” policies or wokeness: “We must face the consequences of the liberal/left hesitation to use moral language.’

· Neiman challenges American “self-boosterism” (every survey of wealthy countries shows the U.S. behind on any measure of well-being) and defends Enlightenment thought.

· Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was, she points out, that of a benevolent God, not that of the capitalist market regulating itself.

· Kirkus Review.2026.

Review of “Call It Evil” by Ellen Gilbert (8/1/26) “Every sentence is worth reading in this compelling book.” www.susan-neiman.com

“This is not a book about Donald Trump, it is about the conditions that have allowed him to prevail.” (In this and other books: “Evil in Modern Thought” (2026) and “Moral Clarity” (2008) Neiman explains how it happened, tracing the history, politics, economics, and the misuse of language and reason that led to this point. It is not pretty, but rather

than feeling defeated by the normalization of beliefs and ideas that should have been rejected, she calls for creative resistance and reconsiders the potential of socialism as a means to restore some semblance of social justice”