They Can’t Do This Without Us — An Analysis (27 March 2025) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I—Following Orders
How many people does Donald Trump directly give orders to? I don’t mean “executive orders” broadcast to the ether, but rather face to face orders—the people who then distribute those commands to the next level and so on. My guess is about 25 or so, but the numbers get exponentially larger as the distribution process proceeds. One can ask the same question about the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and all the other sociopathic barbarians presently pursuing the destruction of international law.
Why is it that, over the millennia of recorded history, the vast majority of those receiving such orders, starting with our hypothetical 25, proceed to carry them out regardless of the orders’ often-problematic legality, morality, or ofttimes sheer lack of common sense? Have you ever thought about this? It is surely an important and very timely question.
Part II—Experiment and Theory
Recall the famous (or infamous) experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. They suggested that a large majority of “average individuals” would follow orders even though they knew they were harming others. Milgram described it this way: “the individual [following orders] no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument carrying out the wishes of others.” Milgram also noted the role of fear of reprimand and a desire to be rewarded by authority played a role. The field of psychology at the time was said to have experienced “shockwaves” due to the experiment’s result. In the wake of the 20th century’s continuous wars up to that time, why this was such a shock is itself a mystery.
More recently, Milgram’s explanation has been augmented by the not particularly original suggestion that “how much people identify with the cause they think they’re supporting might explain their willingness to follow potentially harmful instructions.” This suggestion goes under the name of “engaged fellowship theory.” Actually, the “fellowship” part of the title proves the most explanatory. Consider the following:
— (1) We are social animals and the vast majority of us need a minimum amount of fellowship to feel socially comfortable. How many hermits do you know?
—(2) Genetically, nature and nurture work together to make us who we are and, again, the nurture part is a socially-based phenomenon.
—(3) Our social context is almost always locally focused, so what is right or wrong, good or bad, appears to flow from a locally shared culture. And that environment ties us to a local fellowship. By the way, this makes it awkward to think critically about one’s local group.
—(4) Thus, except perhaps in extreme circumstances, it is a rare individual who defies the demands of his/her local fellowship.
Part III—Playing Out an Age-Old Drama
Those folks, particularly in the United States and Israel, who are now or soon will be “following orders,” despite ethical or constitutional questions—be they the police, the military in its many guises, so-called intelligence agents, CEOs, administrators, politicians, ad nauseam—are playing out this age-old drama of follow the leader of your chosen or inherited fellowship. They are surrounded by others who are going along and so, most of them, will also go along. They will tell themselves and each other they are doing so for the sake of their community. How bad can this get? If history gives us relevant examples, the answer is pretty bad.
There is a recent book written by Richard Evans that speaks to this point. It is titled,Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. It would be a mistake to dismiss this work as not presently relevant because, after all, the subjects are Germany’s Nazis. Truth is, a lot of us can easily approach this extreme level of barbarism—just ask the American soldiers who followed orders at Mai Lai.
Among the relevant things that Evans points out is that “Nazi perpetrators … were not freaks, but they had been brought up in a culture of rancid, self-pitying national paranoia.” One determinant of that culture was, according to Evans, the German defeat in World War I. The truth is that there are many other scenarios that can potentially produce a similar “rancid, self-pitying, national paranoia.” Here are just two:
—(1) In the United States, there are subsets of the population who have never accepted the cultural consequences of the South’s defeat in the Civil War (mid 19th century), nor that of the civil rights legislation (mid 20th century). They have rolled their “rancid” anger, passed down over generations (for instance, having to share resources with minorities) into a thorough dislike of the national government and its social programs. Now these “self-pitying” millions are voting for politicians who are promising to protect them from immigrants and people of color. To this end, Donald Trump serves as a national standard.
What is the potential here? Well, one can already see the corrosive impact of this state of mind on the nature of U.S. democracy. The reversal of civil rights is a work in progress and, along with it, comes the possibility of a return to the national violence of an earlier time.
What of the millions of Americans who are not longing for a past era—return to which will allegedly “make America great again”? They are now in the process of being repressed. The attack their free speech, on the courts, and increasingly on any opposition to the domination of a conservative male white culture and political establishment, is meant to intimidate and silence them. And, if history is any predictor, for the majority of these folks the intimidation will work. They will stay in their local sphere, hemmed in by a potent hostility they are not willing to actively challenge.
—(2) In the state of Israel we also find a long standing “culture of rancid, self-pitying national paranoia.” Here it is not just subsets of the population who have been raised, over multiple generations, to a racist, ethnocentric sense of, in this case, Jewish supremacy. It is just about the whole Israeli Jewish population. The number of Israeli Jews supporting orders implementing policies of repression against Palestinians (reinterpreted into an illusion of self-defense), runs into the millions.
One sign of the effectiveness of this “rancid” Israeli environment is that when, on 7 October 2023, Palestinian resistance fighters broke out of Gaza, resulting in the death of around 1200 Israelis, the vast majority of Israeli Jews did not recognize this violence to be a consequence of their own long term oppressive policies. This remarkable blind spot can only be the result of comprehensive indoctrination through education, media, preaching political and historical narratives manipulated to shut out the Palestinians and their fate. Every time the Palestinians sought to defend themselves against Israeli state oppression, the majority of Israeli Jews called them “terrorists” and reacted with a “self-pitying national paranoia.” Now, the Israeli Jews are mimicking the behavior of their own past persecutors and seeking the ethnic cleansing and/or genocide of the Palestinian minority.
Part IV—Conclusion
Richard Evans concludes that the people who follow the orders to repress and/or persecute others may not be “ordinary people” in a generic sense. However, they turn out to be “ordinary” within the context of their particular “rancid, self-pitying national paranoid” culture. In each case, be it Germany, the U.S., and Israel (among many others), the culture defines what constitutes “ordinary,” and following orders becomes part of that definition. The “ordinary” individual plays his or her role because their respective communities tell them it’s acceptable and expected. Being a barbarian becomes a patriotic act of fellowship.
This is not a new or original insight. The danger has been recognized for quite a long time. When the U.S. Constitution was in the process of ratification, there was a demand for a Bill of Rights. Why so? Because at the time, a group led by James Madison was concerned about the possibility of a “tyranny of the majority.” In other words, even within a supposed democratic framework, the majority may be manipulated or led by their own prejudices to suppress the minority—thus undermining justice and equity.
Certainly, something of the sort has happened in Israel. The same process is taking place in the United States (today most Americans do not know what constitutes the Bill of Rights, much less why it exists). Again, if history is at all predictive, “ordinary people” within each cultural setting will either silently let repression proceed or, more or less avidly, follow the orders that make it all happen—thus, yet again, vindicating Stanley Milgram’s findings on a national level.
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