Aaron Campbell: the face of ‘evil’
He’s called Aaron Campbell – the teenager convicted of abducting, raping and murdering six-year-old Alesha MacPhail on the Isle of Bute last July. The tabloids called him evil. This is, then, what evil looks like.
The Mirror calls Campbell the “Beast of Bute”. The Daily Mail brands him a “twisted narcissist”. You might all him a ****. The Mail also notes in a masterclass in opinion-triggering tabloidese:
The cat-torturing, adrenaline junkie teenager – who was obsessed with gaining YouTube followers, playing violent video games such as Fortnite and recording himself performing acrobatic moves on a trampoline – had received anonymity due to his age, but a judge unmasked him today.
For good measure, the Mail include football of the rapist jumping on a trampoline. They say Osama bin Laden cold do keepy-uppies for a full 30 seconds, and Jon Venables can whistle the Sesame Street theme song. But those videos for another time.
This is all about desperate-for-fame Aaron Campbell, who can now read about how his name came to be known by millions in the papers and online. Until yesterday his name could not be made public on pain of law. The law was unfit for purpose. Trial judge, Lord Matthews agreed with petitioners that naming Aaron Campbell was in the public interest.
The Sun says there is now “no hiding place” for Alesha’s murderer. The Mirror says there is a price on his head. Fellow inmates at Polmont Young Offenders’ prison know who he is. His lawyer says Campbell is at “risk of attack from others” or “potentially self harm” if his name and picture were in the public domain. They are. Few will weep for Campbell.
EVIL IS…
As for evil and what it is, a few words. Fr. Robert Barron looked at Hannah Arendt, and her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, and St. Augustine:
The young Hannah Arendt had written her doctoral dissertation under the great German philosopher Karl Jaspers, and the topic of her work was the concept of love in the writings of Saint Augustine. One of the most significant intellectual breakthroughs of Augustine’s life was the insight that evil is not something substantial, but rather a type of non-being, a lack of some perfection that ought to be present. Thus, a cancer is evil in the measure that it compromises the proper functioning of a bodily organ, and a sin is evil in the measure that it represents a distortion or twisting of a rightly functioning will. Accordingly, evil does not stand over and against the good as a kind of co-equal metaphysical force, as the Manichees would have it. Rather, it is invariably parasitic upon the good, existing only as a sort of shadow.
J.R.R. Tolkien gave visual expression to this Augustinian notion in his portrayal of the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings. Those terrible and terrifying threats, flying through the air on fearsome beasts, are revealed, once their capes and hoods are pulled away, to be precisely nothing, emptiness. And this is exactly why, to return to Arendt’s description, evil can never be radical. It can never sink down into the roots of being; it can never stand on its own; it has no integrity, no real depth or substance. To be sure, it can be extreme and it can, as Arendt’s image suggests, spread far and wide, doing enormous damage. But it can never truly be.
Aaron Campbell – the face of evil – might have joined ISIS.
Posted: 23rd, February 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
