As I learn this thoughtful article, I'm not worried about Steemit platform, but about Italian today politics. I see a bit of this "banality of evil" in many people that are quite empathic and peaceful, but they are careless of the fate of some social or ethnic group, even thinking they "deserve" this hard fate. When they eat tomatoes or sauce they don't care about these vegetables being harvested by African semi-slaves in the south, the same they think are making a "bella vita" paid by the State, because this thing happens far from their eyes... And they absolutely want to keep their eyes far from disturbing things like that.
"If this doesn't affect me, I don't care", "I've got more important problems to deal with", "People are poor because their fault", "I can't do anything about it"...this is the banality of evil for me.
I also have the doubt in Italy the Stanford experiment or the Third Wave would have had the same result. We're selfish and used to bend and break all the rules... I think there would have been different social distorsions, like part of the "prisoners" and part of the "guards" creating a mafia-like parallel group, or a merely formal rule application and a creation of a subset of unwritten "true rules"...
You make me remember a video of Caparezza about Puglia. The banality of evil is a slow decline into the oblivion of this whole social system made of indifferent lotus eaters. I don't know and I don't care about Italy or Netherland, honestly. Yes, of course, I do understand your point but, after being traumatized in that bloody island for the rest of my whole life, a lot of things changed within myself, even If I try to hide it and be the same as always. Thank you for reading this brick ;-)