Reply To: On Tyranny Lesson 1: Do Not Obey in Advance
I’m also not as tapped into US politics as most of our American friends are, so I don’t have a comprehensive list of groups. However, I have noticed a number of examples of groups within the US that are being unfairly persecuted. The first group is illegal immigrants. A second example are transgender folks, (Texas has just introduced a bill to make being trans or non-binary a state jail felony https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=89R&Bill=HB3817). A third example was just mentioned in Heather Cox Richardson’s recent post detailing Musk’s use of the term “NPCs” for political opponents and people who disagree with him (This term comes from the gaming world and refers to a nonplayer character, a character that follows a scripted path and cannot think or act on its own, and is there only to populate the world of the game for the actual players. https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-9-2025).
Ultimately, I believe these people and groups are identified as a way to dehumanize them by creating an “us vs them” mentality. It seems to be a common tactic to create an enemy consisting of “them”, where all blame and hate can be pointed. And I believe that Milgram’s experiment demonstrates how easily people are willing to dehumanize others, particularly when authority figures initiate the process of dehumanization.
There is another experiment, or performance as she calls it, that demonstrates how quickly people seem to switch off their empathy and dehumanize others. In 1974, artist Marina Abramović performed “Rhythm 0”, and just six days ago, YouTuber “Norme” live streamed his attempt to break a world record by standing still for 38 hours. In both these examples, we see how easily and how quickly people stop seeing other people as human and instead treat them as objects, often with destructive intentions. (Read more about these experiences here.)
As we’ve said many times in our book club discussions here, knowledge is power. First acquiring this knowledge allows us to do two things to positively influence our families and communities: share knowledge and model empathy.
Research studies suggest that people can cultivate empathy (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/11/feature-cultivating-empathy). Knowing about Milgram’s experiment and other examples of dehumanization helps not only to inoculate against the behaviour in ourselves, but also to raise awareness in others of the intent behind unfair persecution of minority groups. With a better understanding of this tactic, humans who are capable of empathizing with others (and I believe a great majority of humans are good and do have empathy for others) can stand up against unfair treatment of minority groups. It’s a similar situation with bullies who pick on those who seem weaker or smaller. If all those around the bully recognize the harmful behaviour and can empathize with the victim, bystanders will not stay silent and allow the bullying to continue.
On a related note, disinformation is often used to cultivate hate and unfairly assign blame to minority groups. Evidence based research has also demonstrated that teaching about disinformation inoculates against future acceptance of disinformation and that acting with empathy towards those who are questioning their past behaviours can help people to recognize and understand disinformation. (Read more about strategies to combat disinformation here.)
