Live Lecture: License to Sell Arms to Kill: A Legal Arms Dealer’s Biography & the Banality of Aspirational Evil
 

Tuesday 5 April, 20:00
Auditorium, Minderbroedersberg 4-6

Yarin Eski
Universitair docent criminologie, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

For many, the arms trade and its dealers are the root cause of transnational organized crime, global terrorism, regional wars and genocide. In both public and academic debates, arms dealers are considered immoral because they profit from conflict, happening large-scale in the international arms trading business. Nevertheless, there seems to be little to no interest in the personal lives of those actively involved. Nor is there widespread curiosity about why we actually demonize arms dealers.

Yarin Eski has written a criminological biography of Constantine, a licensed thus legal arms dealer. It provides deep insights into Constantine’s all too human choices and life’s events. In his lecture, Eski will elaborate on Constantine’s biography and explain why his life’s story enables us to understand our society’s “biography”, also by discovering why we demonize arms dealers.