I Am Just Following Orders

Photo by Vlada

A few nights ago, I saw the movie, Nuremberg. It is a movie that depicts the events leading up to the trial of Nazi war criminals and what occurred at the trial itself. At the same time, I am reading an article sent to me written by one of my psychologist colleagues who is Lithuanian regarding how the people in that country killed Jews and covered it up by indicating that they really weren’t fighting the Nazis but directed their military against the Russian invaders. They repeated the lie until their people believed it.

The heart of the Holocaust that we must remember and Never Forget is the fact that people were just following orders. I have taught Holocaust studies and gone to Holocaust workshops. There is one exercise that I always remember. My group of participants started the workshop by being assigned to one room. When our teacher did not appear, someone came to the room and told us to move to another room. We dutifully did what we were expected to do. Once we were comfortably seated in that second room another person directed us to go to a third room. We did that willingly until we waited for the teacher and then were sent to yet another room. Finally, we looked around at each other, and said, “Wait a minute. You have been moving us all over the place.” The leader of the workshop entered our room and said, “You have been following our orders without even thinking.”

People do as they are told. The people who facilitated the Holocaust were ordinary people and many were highly educated. The people who facilitated the Holocaust were not a small group of right-wing people. They were people who looked away and allowed it to happen. All people forget when they should NEVER FORGET which is why it is so difficult for me to understand how the people in Israel could have stood by and witnessed the genocide of the Palestinian people. They too were just following orders and trusted their advisors to do the right thing. This phenomenon is part of our psyche and soul.

There was an exercise referred to as the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971 by Stanford psychologist Phillip Zimbardo. Randomly selected college students were selected to be prisoners or guards in a mock prison setting. It was designed to explore the psychological impact of power, conformity, and following orders in an oppressive environment. It was shut down after six days due to the extreme and abusive behavior of the guards and the severe psychological distress of the prisoners.

While watching the movie, I kept thinking about Trump and his reaction to the six Democrat senators who placed the advertisement that our military should be reminded not to follow illegal orders. The Republicans overall were silent or spun it to say that these six people were traitors committing sedition completely forgetting that the key word in the advertisement was ILLEGAL.

The same dynamic of the Holocaust and the Stanford Study describe the actions of those appointed to be ice agents in their relation to the people with which they have been interacting. They are following orders which can quickly get out of control particularly when the Commander in Chief, Commander Bone Spurs, is focusing on “you must follow orders.”

I am surprised that no one has screamed, Remember Lt. Calley! William L. Calley was an Army Lieutenant who led U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern history. Calley was angry because he lost troops the day before. Calley herded the Vietnamese civilians into bomb shelters and then he had hand grenades thrown in after them. Other civilians were slaughtered in a drainage ditch. Women and girls were gang raped. He was convicted of murder but was pardoned by President Nixon. Later in life in 2009, he publicly announced that his crime was following orders. That case is the precedent for all such actions since then. Following illegal orders cites this as a precedent.

But there is more. The U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972. The study was supposed to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. Black people were never given treatment which was penicillium after it was easily available. Tuskegee community members were never told what the study was about and thought that it was a special health program. No women were part of the study. No consent was given.

In 1997 President Clinton issued a formal government apology and established the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare at Tuskegee University. The field of Bioethics began because of the Tuskegee Study and the Trial at Nuremberg.

But the Tuskegee Study still exists in the cultural memory of black people. Vicki Squire who worked in breast cancer research indicated to me that it was difficult to get black women into breast cancer clinical trials because of their suspicion of clinical studies done by hospitals because our government “was doing what they were told.”

Art Caplan, one time bioethics Chair at Penn and my mentor, and others and I vetted the controversial Body World Exhibit when it came to the Franklin Institute. Every body that was on display had to be vetted so that there was a clear trail that consent was given by families for the bodies to be part of the exhibit. It is bioethics that requires anyone having surgery to sign a consent form before the surgery can be performed. It is impossible for anyone to watch the movie, Nuremberg, and know the above without thinking of Trump…what did he say about the six democrats calling on Troops to not follow illegal orders? “Seditious behavior…punishable by death.” Enough said!!!!!

Body World Exhibit