Radical Evil
Understanding automated warfare and campaigns of dehumanisation through the writings of Hannah Arendt (Part I)
I am not Jewish, but my partner and many of my friends and colleagues are. Ever since the intensified offensive on Gaza began, I've been observing something I can only describe as a cultural identity crisis. As we see more reports of civilian casualties and death tolls emerge in Western media, there’s a widening chasm of opinion among Jewish people. A growing rift can be traced between the populations within and outside Israel. Sometimes, with worry, I wonder what possible harms it could cause to Jewish communities worldwide should the tide wave of genuine, maliciously intended anti-Semitism align with justified criticism of the Netanyahu regime. One of my friends described it simply as a “ticking time bomb”. After all, acceptance is a leftist policy that tasks itself with creating a democratic world of equal opportunity, where minority populations are protected; rightist governments do not adhere to the same touchstone, even though they lie that they do. As democracies around the world are actively dismantled in favour of rightist regimes, we will eventually find ourselves living in a world that is truly not safe, and it’s a scary world to bring new people into.
As thousands of women and children in Palestine are trapped under airstrikes, profiled, interrogated, and denied basic human needs, the Netanyahu government vows to “finish the job” at all costs. Labelling the Gaza war as “genocide” feels preposterous and laughable to the majority of polarized Israelis, who will give you a hundred justifications for the conflict that are often logically unsound and supported by misinformation. Yet, the anti-war protest movement steadily grows, even inside Israel. Perhaps when the dust settles, the outlines of the political agenda, currently opaque and translucent, will present themselves clear as day. But by then, could it be too late?
Before we proceed any further, I would like to tell you a little about myself and where I am coming from. I am a serial academic with degrees in both arts and sciences; I love learning and discovering knowledge. I am also unapologetically pro-human values: in the modern world where corporations and governments actively attempt to weave exploitation into the human condition, I see a better way for society to move forward – and this is why I write.
I was born in a country that weaponized its political playbook, albeit not very elegantly – Russia. Russian political fictions to justify war on Ukraine worked fine for their own people but appeared sloppy and ineffective when bulldozed into international public discourse. Why ineffective? Because we know there are no organized “Nazis” in Ukraine, so the West didn’t buy the denazification campaign and figured out (granted, not right away) that this was an invasion. But this is how Russia “does it” – with a certain degree of hubris. Hubris is a byproduct of anti-intellectual population conditioning: when society banishes activists and academics, the experts, the knowledgeable and the introspective – what rises to the top is the bold, the ignorant, and the incompetent. Totalitarian governments have a proven track record of exploiting anti-intellectualism policies because populations without expertise are easier to control. Anti-intellectualism has a downside, however. In Russia, it is reflected in sloppily made warfare technology, in inadequate civilian infrastructure, and in our favourite national pastime / warfare tactic: tossing badly equipped and untrained soldiers towards tanks. We did it in WW2 – back then Germans thought we were crazy – and we still do it. Sometimes we give them horses or motorcycles to ride on, perhaps for comedic effect. If this made you feel uncomfortable, your feelings are justified – Russia made its own populations “disposable” in pursuit of its geopolitical and military goals.
Carrying the burden of being Russian in the modern context is painful, although at first it was confusing. Typically, there are two types of responses that expats have to the ongoing war with Ukraine: identity crisis and a “this is not my problem” attitude (the latter is far more common). In Russian, we also call this “my house is on the sidelines”, implying a lack of vested interest that would prompt action. This response is a carefully nourished home-grown conditioning that stretches back to Stalinism.
The idea was to make society so porous and divided that people automatically turn a blind eye to human rights violations. In truth, the blind eye only perpetuates further violations - whether these are prompted by government or criminals - it doesn’t matter. In Russian modus operandi, there’s no differentiation between the two: a sense of lawlessness and indifference are both deeply internalised. This coincides with the ongoing eradication of intellectualism in favour of ignorant, centrist neutrality (typically held as a virtue in anti-intellectual regimes) that deludes itself by refusing to choose between right and wrong, assuming all positions have merit. Seemingly simple choices become complex, and the search for truth becomes complicated and convoluted, since from the outset, all positions on the issue are assumed meaningful. While the brain entertains itself with intricacies of views some of which are garbage (like “vermiculite can cure Covid”), the meaning slips away.
In scientific reality, there are both right and wrong, provable by the scientific method: if one eats a pound of uranium, one will die; the position of the person who knows this and the person who does not cannot be weighed equally. For the same reason, we are more likely to trust doctors rather than comedians to perform surgeries. Unless the comedian is also a doctor, only one of these people has the necessary expertise.
The goal of anti-intellectualism is to distort the boundary between right and wrong positions on humanist issues, a staple of Russian society served cold; a product of many decades in the making: break social bonds, instil distrust, make the population neurotic – and you condition it to turn a blind eye to all kinds of atrocities. This is something one of my favourite authors – Hannah Arendt, an exceptional Jewish scholar, philosopher, and activist – extensively wrote about in her detailed account of totalitarianism. In her writing, she passionately sought an answer to how the genocide of Jewish populations happened. How did the German population become complicit? The genocidal playbook is on the table: all you need to do is trace the parallels between the past and the far-right politics enacted today. Are you willing to peek behind the curtain? Can I challenge you to read this essay till the end?
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, Hannah Arendt analyzes major totalitarian movements, including Nazism and Stalinism, to devise a theoretical framework for how these movements operate. Arendt argues that totalitarianism is a “novel form of government” that weaponizes terror to subjugate mass populations rather than just political adversaries. Furthermore, Arendt stresses that unlike other forms of political control, totalitarianism discovered the means of dominating human beings “from within”. The regime does not expose its power openly; it does not rule by overt violence, as dictatorships do, but it seamlessly and deliberately conditions the population to align with its governing goals. This approach eliminates any distance or misalignment between the ruler and the ruled population to make it seem as if the ruler is merely pursuing the will of the people. As Arendt writes:
“In substance, the totalitarian leader is nothing more nor less than the functionary of the masses he leads; he is not a power-hungry individual imposing a tyrannical and arbitrary will upon his subjects. Being a mere functionary, he can be replaced at any time, and he depends just as much on the ‘will’ of the masses he embodies as the masses depend on him. Without him they would lack external representation and remain an amorphous horde; without the masses the leader is a nonentity.” (Arendt, 325)
One of the most disturbing properties Arendt observes regarding this linkage between totalitarian rulers and the ruled populations is that polarized individuals often develop an unconditional loyalty to the regime's narratives.
In Nazi Germany, antisemitism reached its climax when Jewish people lost public influence and representation — which was an ongoing project of suppression for many years. This observation is vital because it directly connects representation to power, highlighting the importance of demanding that the voices of those denied political presence be heard. If these voices are absent or silenced, what follows is the establishment of enduring fictions of dehumanization, targeted at supporting totalitarian regimes. Once these fictions solidify, they become an unquestioned part of the social fabric.
Using the example of the Holocaust, Arendt emphasizes that in Nazi Germany, anti-Semitic fictions were not the operative factor but merely a convenient proxy. In other words, battling the “Jewish conspiracy” was not the real goal; it was merely an exercise in polarization and control. Ultimately, totalitarianism was about terror and consistency, not solely about eradicating Jewish populations. Explaining this, Arendt coins the concept of “Radical Evil”, which she applies to the men who create and carry out tyranny and the depiction of their victims as “disposable people”.
How can we view Gaza through the lens of Arendt’s writing? As Netanyahu swears to eliminate illusive Hamas, a seemingly ubiquitous group that is simultaneously nowhere in particular (so that it can always be chased) and everywhere : seen in little children and who they might become, as well as men and women, the entire population of Gaza is caught in the cross-fire and treated merely as “casualties”. What unfolds is a campaign of dehumanization and deeming the entire Palestinian population superfluous. As humanitarian aid is being blocked to the territory of nearly two million people, an Israeli Knesset member Tzippy Scott remarked on live TV how “everyone is used to the idea that you can kill 100 Gazans in one night and nobody in the world cares” (The Times of Israel, 2025). Confirmed reports detail Israeli settlers using violence to displace Palestinian families, driving them from their homes (CBC, 2023). Some Israeli settlements in Palestine were established illegally (are currently under sanctions), and have ties to the Israel’s far-right governing party.
Multiple sources, from Al Jazeera to the Israeli whistleblower organisation “Breaking the Silence”, corroborate reports of “routine patrols” where IDF soldiers break into Palestinian houses at night, wake up and interrogate families at gunpoint, search the houses, and damage property. Soldiers are given full freedom to interpret what constitutes an “offence” or “disobedience”. Al Jazeera reports that many Palestinians have been killed or injured during these operations. Yehuda Shaul (Breaking the Silence) explains these patrols aim to instil a sense of terror and constant surveillance, operating on the logic that populations kept in constant fear will be deterred from acting against Israel. These patrols occur multiple times daily; they dissolve any sense of basic human dignity and safety for thousands, leaving children traumatised.
Automated Warfare
The language of dehumanization is also symbolically reflected in how the Israeli army employs data tools like Palantir provided by Alex Karp and Peter Thiel, who built their fortune on mass surveillance software used by many governments of the world. The database with the unassuming name Lavender profiles the Palestinian population, predicts “terrorist” threats using AI without substantiation, and automates bombing — permitting a programmable threshold of civilian casualties. “Digitising” murder through software-mediated objectives and interfaces is a novel, technologically-mediated method of dehumanizing attack targets, who are mostly civilian. We were warned about the dangers of simulation and its impact on empathy, including in warfare situations, by scholars like Sherry Turkle (“Simulation and Its Discontents”, 2009) but reading about this in action is a whole new level of horrifying.
As one Israeli intelligence officer remarked: “This is unparalleled in my memory”, adding that they had more faith in “statistical mechanism” than judgement of a human soldier — “The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.” Another IDF officer notes: “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very costly for the country and there’s a shortage.” Yet another IDF officer corroborates this with similar sentiment:
“Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally dropping the whole house on its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care - you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.” (The Guardian, 2025)
It is terrifying to think that this kind of treatment of civilian population assumed to be terrorists is systemic; all of the testaments quoted above reflect desensitization to the realities of violence: - “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day…[] It saved a lot of time” (The Guardian, 2025).
In the brave new world of automated warfare, living men, women and children are reduced to something akin to video game targets. And to any democracy in the world, this should be a sobering wake up call: totalitarian politics of dehumanization can be applied against any population; these politics aren’t moved by reason or logic (that part belongs to intellectualism that is being actively suppressed) — the propaganda machine weaves a convincing narrative, and the mythology of the regime plants itself deep within the controlled population to justify its own necessity.
In both tech industry and scholarship, it is proven over and over again that AI and data predictions are unreliable. Hallucinations are baked into the very design of AI systems and with data — correlation does not imply causation, but this simply may not matter to the regime. AI targeting achieves terror; predictions are merely justifications, providing plausible deniability and driving raids, assaults and detainments. And we can see all this in action, unfolding before our own very eyes. A week ago, IDF raided Palestinian money exchange businesses in several cities using fire and tear gas, killing one and wounding thirty. They were acting on a “suspicion” that the shops were supporting “terrorism” (Al Jazeera, 2025). The operation resulted in the confiscation of large amounts of money allegedly designated for “terrorism infrastructure” in the West Bank. Was this prediction made by AI? Judging by the scale and randomness — it’s highly likely.
“Hunch-based” raids and operations have drastically increased since October 7, and for a good reason: IDF commanders demanded a continuous pipeline of targets:
“We were constantly being pressured: ‘Bring us more targets.’ They really shouted at us…We were told: now we have to fuck up Hamas, no matter what the cost. Whatever you can, you bomb.” (+972 Magazine & Local Call, 2024)
To meet the demand, the IDF came to rely heavily on Lavender to generate a database of individuals judged to have the characteristics of PIJ or Hamas militant, The Guardian reports. Were the targets ever verified? Unlikely. There’s simply no commitment to accountability to people treated as superfluous casualties. Accountability did not matter to the executive force of the Hitler’s Reich either; brown and black shirts did not need a valid reason or a sound justification to apprehend and detain Jews destined for the concentration camps. Reasons and justifications served mainly to appease the public conscious; they didn’t have to be true, they had to be cohesive with the narratives of the regime.
Israel effectively barred humanitarian UN intervention, allowing only private American and Israeli entities to distribute aid. Lack of accountability and care is evident in how aid distribution is under-supplied and disorganized. Aid centres are located far from northern Palestine, where it’s needed most. In exchange for aid, the population is forced to supply biometrics – another method of profiling that will be poured into Lavender surveillance systems to further generate predictions and projections of potential targets, justifying the war machine.
But the far-right government practices dehumanization and erasure simultaneously to ensure tat the divide between Israeli and Palestinian populations becomes irreconcilable. The Knesset proposed defunding the Peace Village – a community where Israeli and Palestinian children live side-by-side – by imposing an 80% tax on its funding, as if erasing the very possibility of co-existence (The Guardian, 2025).
This is Part I of the Essay. Part II is available here.