One of the major gripes this site has with liberals at the moment is the "Putin is a crazy man" mindset in which they give themselves to all sorts of "does Putin have autism?? Photographic caliper evidence says yes" and similarly inane takes. In the site's view this sort of conception of individuals as acting on history/anthropomorphizing a state is unhelpful and equivalent to Great Man Theory, which is an antiquated concept.
My question here is to what degree is this the case with the man to whom Putin is so commonly compared, Adolf Hitler? The Western liberal understanding seems to be at odds with itself, both accepting the "banality of evil" (through Arendt's analysis of Eichmann) and branding the Nazi regime as "crazy." To what degree did the Reich's actions flow from banal measured-and-genocidal political calculus, retroactively Putinified, and to what degree was the state and its actions (not asking about its propagandized citizens) actually given to wild irrational paranoia?
I don't think the mainstream view accepts the banality of evil at all. Sure, most libs are probably aware of it on some level, but the only time they think about it is when they want to say "certain Nazis weren't that bad" and then its dropped while talking about any other group the State Department wants them to hate. For the American liberal, not only is Putin uniquely magically evil, but all Russians are too - and the explanation they reach for to explain why this is the case is based on what cultural totems they value, ie blaming it on race or religion or some uniquely terrible understanding of Russian history.