After witnessing the trial of Nazi SS Officer Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Hannah Arendt expressed how it seemed that Eichmann’s actions came more from a notion of banal evil; his evil actions while in the Nazi party weren’t done with evil intention, but instead was the result of a bureaucrats obeying orders given to them. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, a work of all of Arendt’s essays on Eichmann compiled, Arendt says, “When Eichmann was asked how he reconciled his personal feeling about Jews with the outspoken and violent anti-Semitism of the party he had joined, he replied with the proverb: ‘Nothing’s as hot when you eat it as when it’s being cooked,’” (Arendt, 38-39). The proverb is often used to mean that something is never as bad as it seems in the moment, so Eichmann’s usage of it is most likely meant to express that his intentions were well meant and that it takes time to look at the whole situation to see how he had no evil intentions. Ji Xianlin also employs that notion of banal evil when trying to help the audience understand the reasons behind the actions of the students who raided his house, as shown in his memoir The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Xianlin says, “There may have been some good people led astray among the hooligans who raided my home. But many of the others were psychopaths indulging their sadistic instincts under the cover of revolutionary instructions,” (Xianlin, 41). Xianlin does agree that when someone does something bad, they may have not had evil intentions and were just doing what they were told, either out of a love for or a fear of their leaders. However, he makes sure to express that banal evil never applies to everyone, and that some people’s actions are truly malicious in intent and they just use notions like banal evil to help cover for them.