Stanley Milgram set up several now famous experiments in the early 1960s to discover why so many people had obeyed orders in the 2nd World War to kill, torture and mutilate others. He especially wanted to know why people participated in the Holocaust. Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust when placed on trial claimed only to be obeying orders.
Was it ever as simple as that? Can we recognise such processes in the recruits to Isis, and other terrorist groups? Isn't it about how we view others?
There has been a lot of research in the last ten years or so, correcting (or: debunking) many of Milgram's statements. His research actually shows that people didn't simply follow orders. He gave his participants four stages of prods to apply electric shocks, with only the last prod consituting an order. Most participants were willing to apply the shocks at the earlier stages, and those who refused until the fourth prod would keep refusing to apply the shock even after being "ordered" to do so.
As I said, there is lots of literature out on this. Maybe Gina Perry's book "Behind the Shock Machine" from 2013 is a good start. She delves deep into Milgram's background and agenda.
Milgram did not include punishment as a means of effecting obedience to orders. His tests were surely designed for the liberal society he inhabited?
Milgram gave choice as an option in his experiments, for many, in many societies, choice does not exist.
Stanley Wilkin makes a good point. His research is indeed most useful in determining the likelihood of evil behavior on orders from above in countries such as America, not so much as during the Holocaust. Alexander von Lunen's echoing of revisionist attempts to downplay Milgram's findings I find dubious. Surely Milgram did not claim that everyone in his experiments turned into gleeful torturers, that is a straw man. That considerable numbers of participants in the study were willing to torture victims on order from above with no compulsion whatsoever involved is surely a sufficiently disturbing finding. If Milgram overstated his results slightly that is hardly of great importance.
I'm not debunking Milgram here either as his experiments were necessary for the liberal West, but his conclusions were wrong. How can you after all, John, transfer Milgram's thesis to Isis, based upon paradigms of authority? His conclusions were right for the group in his experiment, but not overall. The thugs of Isis were not drawn to rape and murder because of the need to obey or not obey authority. Many German soldiers at the end of WW11 were shot when they refused to fight by gangs of newly recruited teenagers who were given guns to play with. Sometimes what we now call psychopathic behaviour (not, I hold, a useful term) is simply providing some people with an excuse to kill and destroy.
Indeed, I do not think Milgram's thesis is applicable to ISIS, an organization whose use of torture does not conflict with its philosophical and moral concepts. It is quite applicable however to the similar use of torture by, for example, the CIA and the Chicago police department.
In what way? There was a moral and organisational anarchy about Isis violence, surely? They were not a uniformed, authoritative institution basing violence on their institutional roles.
No. ISIS is the farthest thing from an anarchic organization, it is extremely authoritarian. Their philosophical and religious principles justify any sort of mistreatment of Yazidi alleged "devil worshippers," and the theological peculiarities of Yazidi religion have led orthodox Christians and Muslims in the past other than ISIS to brand them unfairly as "devil worshippers." And torture is not actually a major ISIS practice, rather killing of infidels and apostates is, and that is something that was formerly accepted in many religions, indeed especially in Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant. The most famous use of torture-like methods by ISIS was when a captured Jordanian pilot was burned to death. At the time, Middle Eastern intellectuals sympathetic to ISIS, as was reported in the press, justified this as being a deterrent that was more moral than the American practice of e bombardment and drone strikes against civilian populations. Indeed, the number of civilian casualties in the Middle East inflicted by America exceeds that of ISIS by at least one order of magnitude, and perhaps two.
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