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.