Term used by American political activist academic Ward Churchill to describe those victims of the
September 11th World Trade Center attacks whom he considered to be passively complicit in unethical industrial and political enterprises housed by buildings such as the WTC's. A reference to Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann and, in particular, to the analysis of his post-war trial, which suggested that rather than participating in the Nazi war machine out of
ideological fanaticism, he had participated in its worst atrocities largely out of an uncomplicated and uncritical sense of duty to the organisation. Churchill therefore used the term to imply this idea passive complicity in systemic evil.
Sure, Exxon has a few bigwigs and Ideas Men who know full well what they're destroying at any given point in time, and who they're ripping off
along the way, but its the little eichmanns
all the way down
the corporate foodchain who keep the wheels turning.