Bureaucratic structures increase sadistic behavior by permitting and even encouraging it. This effect is produced by the systematic lessening of the moral restraints inherent in personal agency (Kelman 1973, 52). Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s “Stanford County Prison” experiment in the early 1970s confirmed this relationship in dramatic fashion (Zimbardo, Haney, and Banks 1973). The experiment revealed that the sadism of people unhealthily obedient to authority can be tapped into and given an expressive outlet by their association with a bureaucratic organization, demonstrating that placing people in an environment in which they can freely exercise their sadistic impulses can have a liberating effect on their doing so. Zimbardo conducted the experiment by setting up a mock jail in the basement of a building and using participants from the general public who had been selected for their normality. Those chosen to participate were randomly assigned the role of a guard or an inmate. To Zimbardo and his fellow researchers’ surprise, a majority of the guards began to behave sadistically toward the inmates within hours of initiation of the experiment (1973, 87–97). Just as surprising, the inmates meekly accepted their subservient role and mistreatment…
The universality of Zimbardo’s finding is confirmed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the heinous acts committed in Europe during the Nazi era were not perpetrated by fanatics or deranged people. To the contrary, those acts were performed by ordinary Germans, French, Poles, Czechs, and others who considered themselves to be legally authorized to act in ways that we retrospectively view as inhumane (Browning 1993, 159–89; Kren and Rappoport 1994, 70, 81–83)…
A bureaucracy typically categorizes people outside of it in groups based on how much they conform to its standards. The more nonconforming or deviant a person or group is considered to be from bureaucratic norms, the higher the probability that person or group will be subject to dehumanization by a process known as distancing (Bauman 1989, 102–4)—a method of physically or mentally separating selected people from the rest of society. Those people are demonized and turned into strangers even though they may pose no threat to the public. Furthermore, mentally separating selected persons or groups by distancing often serves as a public relations precursor to their eventual physical separation. When practiced on a large scale, distancing typically degenerates into what are retrospectively described as witch hunts (McWilliams 1950, 3–23, 235–340). One consequence of the distancing process is that it enables what ordinarily appear to be decent people to act barbarically toward those who have been dehumanized. One of the best-known examples of mental separation is the dehumanization of Jews during the 1930s by Nazi propaganda that portrayed them as the human incarnation of rats and lice (Bosmajian 1974). This action was taken to justify a legal differentiation between the Jews and the approved people in German society. The special legal status of Jews made their mistreatment by bureaucrats an activity for the patriotic general public to support. Similarly, American soldiers in Vietnam did not kill human beings. They killed “gooks,” “dinks,” and “slopes.” And earlier, the Americans who contributed to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not exterminate hundreds of thousands of women, children, and old people, but a dehumanized and faceless “Jap” enemy (Keen 1991). Distancing is actively employed in the United States. The most vivid example is the use of criminal prosecutions as a ritualistic procedure to mentally and physically distance men, women, and children labeled as criminals from the rest of American society (Blumberg 1973, 77). Distancing people through the criminalization process also serves the function of justifying the exercise of bureaucratic power as a “necessary evil” in order to assuage people’s fears and insecurities about groups and individuals politically assigned the role of being a domestic enemy (Becker 1975, 96–127)…
The attraction of power-hungry people to positions of authority in a bureaucracy can have tragic consequences for everyone affected. To some degree, everyone in society is affected when the power-oriented people who influence and control the performance of bureaucracies express their darkest and most inhumane prejudices.7 For example, more than one in ten members of Congress as well as many federal judges are former U.S. attorneys. The power of compulsion and punishment available to U.S. attorneys and their prosecuting attorney brethren in the state courts attracts zealous people to seek these bureaucratic positions of minimal accountability. Positions in state legislatures and state courts are filled with former local, county, and state prosecutors, who infect all of the positions they fill, whether legislative or judicial, with their societally corrosive attitudes and prejudices…
Well-planned and well-coordinated atrocities have been carried out by bureaucracies in many countries, including the United States (Rummel 1994, Courtois and others 1999).
· Tir 05
o “Bureaucratic structures increase sadistic behavior by permitting and even encouraging it. This effect is produced by the systematic lessening of the moral restraints inherent in personal agency (Kelman 1973, 52). Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s “Stanford County Prison” experiment in the early 1970s confirmed this relationship in dramatic fashion (Zimbardo, Haney, and Banks 1973). The experiment revealed that the sadism of people unhealthily obedient to authority can be tapped into and given an expressive outlet by their association with a bureaucratic organization, demonstrating that placing people in an environment in which they can freely exercise their sadistic impulses can have a liberating effect on their doing so. Zimbardo conducted the experiment by setting up a mock jail in the basement of a building and using participants from the general public who had been selected for their normality. Those chosen to participate were randomly assigned the role of a guard or an inmate. To Zimbardo and his fellow researchers’ surprise, a majority of the guards began to behave sadistically toward the inmates within hours of initiation of the experiment (1973, 87–97). Just as surprising, the inmates meekly accepted their subservient role and mistreatment.” (252)
o “The universality of Zimbardo’s finding is confirmed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the heinous acts committed in Europe during the Nazi era were not perpetrated by fanatics or deranged people. To the contrary, those acts were performed by ordinary Germans, French, Poles, Czechs, and others who considered themselves to be legally authorized to act in ways that we retrospectively view as inhumane (Browning 1993, 159–89; Kren and Rappoport 1994, 70, 81–83).” (253)
o “A bureaucracy typically categorizes people outside of it in groups based on how much they conform to its standards. The more nonconforming or deviant a person or group is considered to be from bureaucratic norms, the higher the probability that person or group will be subject to dehumanization by a process known as distancing (Bauman 1989, 102–4)—a method of physically or mentally separating selected people from the rest of society. Those people are demonized and turned into strangers even though they may pose no threat to the public. Furthermore, mentally separating selected persons or groups by distancing often serves as a public relations precursor to their eventual physical separation. When practiced on a large scale, distancing typically degenerates into what are retrospectively described as witch hunts (McWilliams 1950, 3–23, 235–340). One consequence of the distancing process is that it enables what ordinarily appear to be decent people to act barbarically toward those who have been dehumanized. One of the best-known examples of mental separation is the dehumanization of Jews during the 1930s by Nazi propaganda that portrayed them as the human incarnation of rats and lice (Bosmajian 1974). This action was taken to justify a legal differentiation between the Jews and the approved people in German society. The special legal status of Jews made their mistreatment by bureaucrats an activity for the patriotic general public to support. Similarly, American soldiers in Vietnam did not kill human beings. They killed “gooks,” “dinks,” and “slopes.” And earlier, the Americans who contributed to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not exterminate hundreds of thousands of women, children, and old people, but a dehumanized and faceless “Jap” enemy (Keen 1991). Distancing is actively employed in the United States. The most vivid example is the use of criminal prosecutions as a ritualistic procedure to mentally and physically distance men, women, and children labeled as criminals from the rest of American society (Blumberg 1973, 77). Distancing people through the criminalization process also serves the function of justifying the exercise of bureaucratic power as a “necessary evil” in order to assuage people’s fears and insecurities about groups and individuals politically assigned the role of being a domestic enemy (Becker 1975, 96–127).” (255-56)
o The attraction of power-hungry people to positions of authority in a bureaucracy can have tragic consequences for everyone affected. To some degree, everyone in society is affected when the power-oriented people who influence and control the performance of bureaucracies express their darkest and most inhumane prejudices.7 For example, more than one in ten members of Congress as well as many federal judges are former U.S. attorneys. The power of compulsion and punishment available to U.S. attorneys and their prosecuting attorney brethren in the state courts attracts zealous people to seek these bureaucratic positions of minimal accountability. Positions in state legislatures and state courts are filled with former local, county, and state prosecutors, who infect all of the positions they fill, whether legislative or judicial, with their societally corrosive attitudes and prejudices.
Well-planned and well-coordinated atrocities have been carried out by bureaucracies in many countries, including the United States (Rummel 1994, Courtois and others 1999).