The more I think of Boris Johnson, the more I am led back to Hannah Arendt and to the real meaning of her much misused notion of the banality of evil. Famously, she describes Adolf Eichmann as acting due to thoughtlessness and lack of imagination. https://images.app.goo.gl/FqyqBchymQ9q4rHh8

Psychologists, led by Stanley Milgram have misinterpreted that to mean that he was simply unaware of the consequences of his actions. But as Arendt shows, that isn’t true. He knew full well what he was doing.

Rather ‘thinking’ for Arendt means reflexivity - it means a critical appraisal of ones own positions by taking the perspective of others. This is what Eichmann lacked. He never examined his own beliefs or entertained any doubts - and so was able to go to obscene extremes.

Now Johnson is no Eichmann and it would be distasteful to compare their beliefs or actions. But Arendt’s account of the underlying process is enlightening. A person who cannot step beyond his privilege and see the perspective of others. A man who expresses no nuance or doubt...

A man who consistently talks in absolutes and extremes, where things must be the best or the worst, where all he does must be sublime, where he and his can do no wrong or ever admit to fallibility.

Ultimately a man immune to reflexive self-examination. And an illustration that the ills of this world are not just about lack of self-esteem in the under-privileged but also (and possibly more so) by lack of self-doubt in the over-privileged.