>>392278

388528

https:// www.techdirt.com/articles/20141104/15480529040/former-nsa-lawys-stewart-baker-thinks-reason-blackberry-failed-was-too-much-encryption.shtml

>Milgram Experiment

PROFILE

Revisiting the Banality of Evil: Contemporary Political Violence

and the Milgram Experiments

Paul Hollander1

Published online: 4 January 2016

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Stanley Milgram’s remarkable obedience experiments have

been one of the most influential and controversial studies in

social psychology.1 They are highly original, theoretically significant

and closely related to the major political and socialhistorical

experiences and preoccupations of the 20th century.

The latter include the ideologically inspired mass murders, the

limited moral choices available to individuals in repressive

and regimented societies, as well as the venerable issues of

free will vs. social and situational determination. Despite their

importance and impact, there is room for a reconsideration of

these experiments and their relevance to understanding the

varieties and nature of political violence in the 20th and 21st

centuries.

Milgram’s findings were often linked to the influential and

similarly controversial ideas of Hannah Arendt, notably her

concept of the Bbanality of evil.^2 The obedience experiments

seemed to provide empirical support for her highly speculative

propositions inspired by the case of Adolf Eichman and

especially his trial.3 The famous psychologist, Gordon

Allport called these experiments Bthe Eichman experiment.^4

Milgram himself wrote that Bafter witnessing hundreds of

ordinary people submit to the authority in our experiments, I

must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil

comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine.^5

It is most unlikely that Milgram would have undertaken his

experiments if there had been no Holocaust. The latter - a

unique historical case of mass murder and incomplete genocide

• inspired his study of obedience. He wrote: BThe Nazi

extermination of Jews is the most extreme instance of abhorrent

immoral acts carried out by thousands of people in the

name of obedience.^6 While communist systems (Soviet,

Chinese and other) killed far more people than the Nazis, the

Holocaust is the only instance of an ideologically motivated,

premeditated, dispassionate, highly organized and technologically

innovative effort to eliminate rapidly an entire ethnic

group of several million people - the Jews.7

Milgram was determined to find an explanation of this

historically unprecedented undertaking and located it in the

processes of obedience to authority that appeared to be a precondition

of mass murders requiring an elaborate division of

labor and the participation of large numbers of ordinary people.

Most puzzling for him and all those seeking to

3 Milgram’s biographer observed that BMilgram’s work provided the scientific

underpinnings for Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’

perspective…^ [Blass cited, p. 268.]

4 Quoted in Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental

View, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p.178.

5 Ibid., p.6.

6 Ibid., p.2.

7 Peter Kenez, an American historian wrote: BNo other mass murder was

so ideologically driven, so well organized, and carried out with such mad

efficiency.^ [The Coming of the Holocaust: From Antisemitism to

Genocide, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 1].

Soc (2016) 53:56–66

DOI 10.1007/s12115-015-9973-4

1According to his biographer “His obedience research has become a

classic of modern psychology…a ‘must’ topic for introductory psychology

and social psychology courses, and any textbook for those courses

that failed to mention those studies would be considered incomplete.”

[Thomas Blass: The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy

of Stanley Milgram, New York: Basic, 2004, p. 259.]

2Unveiled in Hannah Arendt: Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the

Banality of Evil, New York: Viking Press 1963.

• Paul Hollander

phollander32@gmail.com

1 35 Vernon St., Northampton, MA 01060, USA>>392835

>>>392278

>388528

>https:// www.techdirt.com/articles/20141104/15480529040/former-nsa-lawys-stewart-baker-thinks-reason-blackberry-failed-was-too-much-encryption.shtml>>392835