97yo convicted in Holocaust trial

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Shaman
Wasn't really commenting on Milgram, per se, although I am familiar with it. Was really commenting on social conditions that permit genocide.
 
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BoldonLad

Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
Location
South Tyneside
It really is.

I remember learning about the Milgram Experiment, conducted in the 1961, which showed that people could be easily persuaded by an authority figure to do things that were in conflict with their own conscience and would harm others. He did this to explain the psychology behind the ‘just following orders’ defence and question whether such people really could be considered accomplices in the genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

In 1974 he wrote an article "The Perils of Obedience", which summarised his earlier findings:


The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. 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.

(Edited for a spelling error.)

Yes, I was aware of those experiments, although, to be honest, I had forgotten the name (Migram). We humans are surprising creatures, and, not always for the best.
 
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