Guys, hear me out.
Perhaps teaching children to never question authority was a bad idea
Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.dbzer0.comView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com
Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.dbzer0.comPerhaps teaching children to never question authority was a bad idea
91 replies
Studies on obedience (e.g. replications of Milgrim Experiment) suggest a lot of factors play into people harming and killing others on behalf of an authority. Original was 65% of participants, but it can to up to 90% with men in authoritarian cultures.
My favorite was Australian women having the lowest rate of obedience in the shock experiment, at only 16%, being relatively individualistic and rebellious culturally, but even less obedient then men as women are less likely to conform when it involves harming others. That may have changed in recent years though, as people more comfortable with authoritarianism tend to be more likely to obey.
Typically, people least likely to obey the order have better social intelligence and moral development. Unfortunately, those traits are far and few between lately...
There's a reason American fascists are trying to demonize the concept of 'empathy'.
Absolutely, empathy is easily the enemy of fascism. And the worst thing to them is unity, as we have the most empathy for people we consider in-group, so division only feeds into their agenda.
From the Wikipedia article Rudolf Höss, about the commandant of Auschwitz.
Straya. Brings a tear to me eye mate.
Do you have a book or a paper which aggregates these studies?
I picked up a fair amount from an OER textbook that references the studies on its chapter on conformity and obedience, but I bet there is a meta analysis out there with a more comprehensive list. The only issue is later studies on this can't ethically go beyond a certain amount of fake voltage, as the original studies went a bit too far it's getting people to think they killed someone.
The textbook in question is available here: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/
Yo, please do better. I really want to know what you're saying but I cannot figure it out.
Sorry, my phone corrected conform to confirm. I think most people picked that up by context, but simply typing it several times just now it reverted to confirm. Lol
I have always wondered about this sort of thing. Powerful people are only powerful because people choose to obey them.
Not even obey. Many people willingly follow along mostly because they think someone they don't like will get hurt. Trump isn't destoying the US on his own. He is being aided by a large portion of the conservative population.
Choice is the wrong word, it's rarely an honest choice
I mean that's gross oversimplification, they also use violence of the state to force what they want
To use violence, they still need someone to carry that out.
Those people don't need to believe in it though, there's plenty of people who will do violence for the sake of violence
ThenUS basically has a nation wide grooming campaign tonget boys to join the military. You're not wrong, but the problem is deeper then that.
Only 13 million? I think that severely limits his responsibility. Hitler didn't cause just 13 million deaths. Hitler caused 13 million jews to be killed + 65 million allies + ~44k in the blitzkreig + ~5 million german soldiers + all the other groups targeted in the holocaust (Roma, Gypsies, LGBT, mental patients, etc.) + all the civilians that got caught up in the battlefield (Africa + Europe). In total, Hitler mighta got 100 million.
Hurr, nooo, those are the victims of comyunusm
That's 100 million billion!
It was 6 million Jews, 13 million total in the camps.
There weren’t even 13 million Jews in Europe before wwii lol.
And total deaths, military and civilian, during wwii were 75-85 million. You don’t need to make up numbers. It was already the most human death in history. Making shit up gives the conspiracy nuts ammo.
I believe most estimates converge around 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
6 million jew, okay. But I didn't quantify all the other victims of the camps.
He was a soldier in the Great War, but I see your point.
There is no such thing as a great war. ffs.
I dunno, it had some cool stuff. Like, um... Those grenades on sticks? Pretty great.
The only difference between Osama Bin Laden and Brian Thompson, is that Brian got people killed for money.
That and he did structural violence. Our brains are not adapted to react to that emotionally
Sir. This post is about Hitler
And the person he killed? The most evil person ever: Hitler!
Also Hitlers wife.
She killed herself, one could argue.
And Whistler's mother
I think Hitler is said to have killed people in the first world war.
He was a courier. There are no records and no eyewitness accounts of Hitler ever killing anyone in combat, and he saw very little of it. Hitler himself makes no claims at ever killing an enemy soldier.
He also dodged the draft in Austria-Hungary so that's fun.
Thanks Eva! I'm glad your doing well
Oh thanks for the correction then, even if he did claim it I wouldn't believe it obviously, I thought he was supposed to have taken a bunch of prisoners at gunpoint but that memory of reading that is from like decades back now so idk.
There was recently news about Hitler probably murdering his niece in 1931. She supposedly killed herself in his apartment but historians found old archives that apparently suggest that's not what actually happened.
Does Hitler killing himself not count?
Pretty sure thats the one.
He was a war hero from WW1 so it was presumably a bit higher than that, but the vibe is there.
Also both the Holocaust numbers and war deaths are wrong so I'm very curious about where exactly 13 million came from, especially considering one of the things Nazi did was militarize law enforcement even more than Germany already did, which was considerable.
I don't remember him being a war hero, just a veteran. And the number isn't for the war, it's "law enforcement", so, death camps (including the Jews, Slavs, Roma...) and various raids and mass executions all over the occupied territories.
He received the second and first class Iron Crosses, the first class famously on the recommendation of his Jewish officer.
People compare them pretty frequently to the Bronze Star. I don't think that's quite right because the award systems are simply different but by all accounts the first class award was a rarity for his rank.
Ah, yeah, the iron cross would count, at least for the sake of argument.
Ironically that was the best thing he ever done
Just goes to show that bad people can do good things, and vice versa.
What about Eva Braun?
She committed suicide with a cyanide capsule.
What about his dog
Hitler got the cyanide capsules from Himmler, but he didn't trust Himmler, and he also doubted the capsules effectiveness. He really didn't want to be caught alive, especially after hearing the relatively mild treatment Mussolini got... so he had his physician test it first on Blondi.
:(
IIRC, in the movie Downfall, some of his men makes it bite down on a cyanide capsule.
I still need to watch that movie. Been seeing the memes of his rant about Steiner for 22 years. Few things bring me more joy than watching a very well acted Hitler Mental Breakdown.
You should absolutely give it a watch.
Probably assumed he escaped to Argentina so left it at 0.
Pretty safe to assume he went somewhere because he wasn't in that hole. Dental records confirmed that.
Sauce?
This also applies to everyone in tech blindly contributing to the AI bubble and the rise in fascism
Indeed and the MAGA fucknuts would do the same for Mango Mussolini.
Enablers must die
"They only followed orders" is the most fucking stupid way to defend the oppressor, yet it works, because people have no balls to stand for themselves in such situations.
Notably, it didn't work.
Adolf Eichmann is the guy who made that claim famous, and he was hung almost immediately after his trial.
Notably it worked really well
A few dozen people were executed for German war crimes. These people were not "just following orders", regardless of what they said. They were creating orders.
Thousands and thousands of people directly responsible for nazi slaughter were safely smuggled out of Germany by the CIA, given new names, and resettled in America, Canada, South America, South Africa, and more.
These people were also creating orders, and yet they were freed from any consequences, including even the economic ones that followed in postwar Germany. They went on to fertilize many of the fascist, racist movements we see taking over today.
Millions more lower level people who only directly murdered others by pulling a trigger, were let off the hook completely. Many got to keep their positions of violent state enforcement. These were the only people "just following orders" and they all escaped prosecution.
In fairness it's hard to stand your ground when surrounded by murderous fascists.
Where I live, fash put people in cages for decades just for having zines.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/prairieland-texas-ice-protests-zines
I'm sure you're balls would be all over the place
The point still stands, but did Hitler never kill even one person with his own two hands? Did he not find the time to go down to a camp and kill a few innocents himself? Seems like a thing would be bound to happen.
He was in the military in WW1, so he may have killed a few people.
Some historians seem to think he would've mentioned it in Mein Kampf if he had.
Yeah I knew he was in WW1, and may have taken a life there. But I'm wondering about when he was actually in power. Like, did history's greatest anti-Semite really resist the temptation to do a little dirty work himself? Did he never take an afternoon to go throw the lever on a gas chamber himself? It's not like he couldn't have easily arranged such a thing.
You know it's a bad idea when it's the military strategy to build obedient soldiers
We should give Hitler a posthumous peace prize for killing the leader of the Nazis. Maybe that could inspire a certain fat orange pedophile to follow suit.
I will have to be the peace prize though
Dr Harold Shipman has entered the chat.
Goons are the ones doing it and had their chance to get out and choose to keep going. Spare no goons.
This isn't even a cop thing, though I have no doubt the rate would be higher if empirically tested; cops tend to be very Conventional Morality in the sense that If Legal -> Moral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
TL;DR: 65% of people would kill someone if given an order to do so (and some plausible deniability).
My money's on it being 70-80% for US cops, maybe higher. My only real metric on this is the one guy I knew who made an arrest he was ordered to that he (should have) known wasn't legal and shrugged his shoulders about retelling the incident, saying "I'm a soldier (he was an Army veteran); I follow orders."
Pulling a gun and shooting a person running away from you is hardly plausible deniability.
Did you just not read the Wikipedia article or what?
Maybe you're implying shooting people running away is common in US law enforcement?
Don't be glib; state your point with some conviction.
I am aware of the milgram experiment.
The experiment is null if the "experimenter" or proposed authority figure isnt in the room with the person. The subjects, famously, hesitate before being pressured. Most cops just pull triggers and laugh to the bank to cash their 6 months paid leave.
Naw, the vast majority of cops never pull their trigger anywhere other than the shooting range.
As for paid leave after a shooting, are you implying you'd rather a cop who just shot someone be back out on the street immediately with zero investigation first?
Id rather our "protectors" not kill us
They're not your protectors; you fell for an LAPD slogan.
I kinda doubt you want the cops to kill 0 people ever; are you saying you're good with them waiting around for the killer to get bored at Uvalde?
Once again as soon as you are hit with a point that contradicts your stance, you leap to the Red Herring. Presumably, this is because you don't actually care that much about the topic and are just toying with it.
As long as conservatives continue to live, the normal people will continue to be oppressed.
If not for conservatives, the epstein class could be charged with crimes, forced to pay fair wages and be required to pay fair taxes. If not for conservatives, capitalism could be regulated, climate change could be addressed, housing prices and wealth inequality could be cured, for-profit prison camps could be abolished and genocide could be resisted.
Every invasion and every genocide in human history has been led exclusively by conservatives. They are truly, deeply evil and will never change. Never. Only their complete erasure can bring us peace.
This comment would be more convincing if you just called them fascists instead of using the meaningless euphemism of "conservative".
Conservatives are fascists. They are the same people. Always have been.
Now do the number of people killed by British capitalism in India
uhm, this is an anarchist sub
Honestly, I’m happily surprised this guy is being ratioed like this. We are subverting the leftist infighting trope.
Capitalism kills as many as the most inflated numbers attributed to communism every 10 years. The Black Book of Communism, widely cited for its accounting of deaths allegedly caused by communist states, estimates that communism has killed 100 million people. This includes Nazi soldiers killed in WW2 and, bizarrely, the unborn children that hypothetically would have been born if there hadn't been a famine or a war.
To this day, 10 million people who live under capitalism die from starvation and preventable disease simply because it isn't profitable to save them. If we take the Black Book seriously, and agree that every death that happened under a communist state (preventable or not) is attributable to the communist ideology, then we must also agree that every death under a capitalist regime is attributable to capitalism. If we do that, then capitalism is the most murderous ideology there has ever been.
Even if you don't want to agree with the above logic, we can look at how US sanctions have directly led to the deaths of 38 million people in 50 years. These sanctions are murder done solely to coerce countries into falling in line with US interests.
One of those kids could've gone on to have a kid that has a kid that helps populate the whole universe. So the real number is closer to 500 kajillion million trillion.
source?