Two recent events, both related to reactions from family and friends to items on the news, got me thinking about the ease with which we comply with positions that authority wants us to assume. The first of these was a report on the current political situation in Afghanistan, with the Taliban taking political control of the country, and the second was a documentary on the extra-judicial murder of Qassem Soleimani an Iranian General by what is believed to be drones controlled by the United States of America. The ease with which agreement was reached with the narrative that was being presented in both cases, without questioning possible alternative narratives, reminded me of the importance of a study, which began 60 years ago.

In May of 1960, Adolf Eichmann a German Austrian was captured by the Israeli Secret Service, Mossad, in Argentina, where he had escaped from Germany. Eichmann, it was believed, was one of the main actors in the transfer of Jews to the parts of Eastern Europe that were occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was believed that he had managed the logistics of moving the Jews to the ghettos and death camps.

Following his capture in Argentina, he was taken to Israel, where a trial was brought against him, which began in Jerusalem, in 1961. Two weeks into the trial, a 29-year-old American, Stanley Milgram, decided to carry out an experiment at Yale University. The question that Milgram was investigating was how easy it was for ordinary people to obey authority. This was, of course, a key question that was related to the Eichmann trial. The question is did Eichmann and those that worked with him, work independently as individuals, or were they simply obeying orders that were imposed on them?

The announcement for the experiment stated that 500 subjects were needed for a scientific study on memory and learning, with the promise that those that participated would be paid the sum of $4.00 an hour. The experiment was made up of three main protagonists, the “experimenter”, the “teacher” and the “learner”. The teacher and the learner were supposed to come from the public, whilst the experimenter was supposed to be a scientist and was the person charged with running of the experiment.

The recruitment of the participants was organized in such a way that the teacher and the learner arrived for the experiment at the same time, they were then informed that the role that they were supposed to play was dependent on both selecting one of the two possible options, which were written on two pieces of paper. The reality, however, was that the learner was an actor and that it was the same role that was written on both pieces of paper, something the teacher did not know. So, it was only the teacher that was involved in the experiment.

Once the roles had been “determined”, both the teacher and the learner were taken to a room where they were joined by the experimenter. The learner was then strapped into what appeared to be an electric chair, with the experimenter informing both that the reason for this was to ensure that the learner could not escape, as they had to go through the experiment.

The experimenter and the teacher then left the room and moved into an adjacent room, which was supposed to allow for verbal communication between the teacher and the learner, without their having to see one another. In that room, the teacher was given a set of controls, which they were told applied voltages that ranged from 15 to 450 in increments of 15 to the electric chair in the adjacent room, to which the learner had supposedly been strapped to.

The teacher was then given a list of word pairs that they were supposed to teach the learner. So, when the teacher asked a question, the learner was supposed to respond to the question by pushing a button, which then reflected the answer of the learner to the teacher. If the answer was wrong, the teacher was then required to apply some voltage to the electric chair that the learner was supposed to be strapped to, thereby giving the learner an electric shock that corresponded to the voltage that was applied.

As was pointed out, the learner was really an actor, and after the teacher and experimenter left the room, he was removed from the chair. In addition, the responses of the learner were pre-recorded to correspond to each of the voltage levels that were applied. The recordings were such that at 75 volts the learner grunted, at 120 volts they complain loudly, at 150 volts they demanded to be released from the experiment, protests that progressively become more vehement up until 285 volts where they screamed in an agonized manner. Following this level, they hardly made any sound.

The role of the experimenter was to ensure that the teacher continued administering the voltages to answers that were wrong from the learner, in the name of science. Also, should the teacher get to the point where they felt they could no longer administer the voltages, based on the responses from the learner, or other thoughts, the experimenter was to encourage them to continue with the experiment, to its end.

The results of the experiment were such that 65% (26 out of 40) of those that were studied administered the experiment’s final massive 450 volts. In addition, all the participants were administered at least 300 volts, results that were quite surprising to those that carried out the experiment, including Milgram.

Interestingly, the experiment was repeated in different parts of the world, shortly after the first experiment, which ended in 1962, with startingly similar results. Since then, replications of experiments have been made over the decades that followed the original experiment, with the latest known one taking place in 2011. Again, the results have all been similar, telling us quite clearly that obedience to authority is a common human trait, even when those that obey know that their actions they are demanded to carry out bring about detriment to others.

It should come as no surprise at all, that Milgram and the others conducting the experiment were surprised at the results. Their thinking, at the time, was that the obedience of the Germans to authority, which happened during the war, had to be unique to Germans, and had to be the reason why the atrocities that were committed by the Nazi Germany regime took place. Without realizing it, they, who were conducting the experiment, had accepted the narrative of their country, which was that they, the USA, were the “good” side of the war, and did not, as such, commit any crimes against humanity during the war. Corollary to this was the thinking that those who lived in the USA would not obey authority to the point where their actions would bring harm to others.

With regards to the committing of crimes against humanity, during the Second World War, these were not limited to just Nazi Germany and the other countries that fought on the side of the Axis, who lost the war. The Allied Forces, the winners of the war, also committed their own share. Examples of these are the bombs that were dropped, at the very end of the war, which definitely did not need to be dropped. These were in Dresden, in February of 1945, which ended up, in addition to the destruction of the city that was seen as a cultural landmark, killing an estimated twenty-five thousand people, or even probably more. The others were the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of the same year, which were believed to have killed an estimate of over two hundred thousand people.

One cannot help but wonder had the Axis been the side that won the war, whether the crimes of Nazi Germany would be seen in the same light or given the same weight that they are given today. Similarly, one wonders had that been the case that the Allied Forces lost the war, in what light we would be compelled to see the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What is clear to me is that each government has its own narrative on events, and the narratives of the sides that win wars, as well as those that are “powerful”, whether these narratives are true or not, become the narratives that are generally believed. Rather unfortunately, not only are these narratives of the powerful and winners of wars followed, their version of justice and accountability, which are not normally universal, as they tend to exempt them, are the ones that are implemented. Examples of these can be found not only in the narrative surrounding Nazi Germany but also in the way that governments that were responsible for other historical crimes against humanity like the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the colonization of non-Europeans by Europeans have handled accountability related to those events.

This lack of universality in the application of concepts such as justice and accountability has allowed those with power impunity, and immunity, which in turn allows them to continue the activities that they carry out, even when those activities are crimes against humanity.

Though it is governments that commit these crimes, the instrument that they use, of course, are individuals. The way that they get the individuals within the society, to believe their position, is by creating a narrative, which they encourage the population to accept. Not only is the narrative’s acceptance encouraged, the population, at the same time, is actively discouraged from challenging this narrative, with possible repercussions against those that choose to challenge them. These include the invalidation of people and their know-how, as well as persecution, and even in some cases murders.

Stanley Milgram, in a 1974 article “The Perils of Obedience”, which was related to the experiment he had carried out, stated that

“…perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

Thankfully for us, humanity, we have had a few such people, who despite the threats to their livelihood and even life, have had the courage to stand up against the activities of their governments, when they believed those governments were working against humanity. Recent examples of such bravery have come from amongst other Mordechai Vanunu, Chelsea Manning, Katharine Gun, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. Snowden had to flee his country, whilst Vanunu, Manning, and Assange were and are incarcerated in harsh conditions, for exposing what those governments did against humanity.

It would be great if all of us would display the courage that these people have shown, but I am aware that not all are willing to display such courage. My opinion, however, is that we do not all necessarily have to display such courage, for us to effect change. All we would need to simply do is to question the narratives that are put out for us to believe. If we then arrive at the point where we do not believe the narratives, all we would need to do is simply not accept them.

I believe that the positions that governments assume are based on the presumption that the majority of the population believes in the position that they declare, and in the narratives, they put out to defend those positions. I also believe that when the majority of the population no longer believes a position of the government, the government would ultimately have no other option, but to change that position.

The point being that if enough people begin to question the information they receive, we might have enough people that would alter the policies of governments that cause or maintain crimes against us, humanity. From this point of view, the hope that we do not support tyranny comes from you and I questioning not only the information that we receive but the positions that we have already assumed. This could be information on the Taliban, or the extra-judicial murders carried out by the powerful. It could also be questioning the information on the current coronavirus situation that we are in. Not questioning the information that we receive could mean that we could become complicit in the crimes that are committed today, some of which we do not know about. This is not a position that I think most of us would want to be in. And so, I see this questioning of information as a duty that we owe not only ourselves but the rest of humanity, and the others whom we share this planet with.