In recent days some of us have had the excruciating if vicarious experience of bearing witness to evil. Specifically, evil ordered by Syria’s ousted leader, Bashar al-Assad. The most infamous example is film taken at Sednaya Prison, not far from Damascus, where Assad’s government detained tens of thousands, torturing and killing them as the New York Times reported, “on an industrial scale.”
What happened in Sednaya is without exception described as crimes of which Assad was guilty. Which he was.
But let’s be clear. He did not – he did not literally – commit these crimes. So far as we know Assad kept his distance – he did not personally torture or kill anyone. Instead, the pain and suffering were inflicted by his followers. By people who in other circumstances might have been perfectly normal, but who in this circumstance committed crimes of obedience.
There is a considerable literature on obedience to authority when authority is bad. Some of the best-known works are based on social science experiments conducted in the 1960s and ‘70s by, most famously, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.
But for all the knowledge that’s been accumulated since then about followers as agents of atrocity, it remains easier for us, much easier, psychologically, to attribute evil to a single individual. To the leader. Why? First, because it simplifies a process that is exceedingly complex. Second, more importantly, because it lets us, people like you and me, off the hook.
We prefer to think that good people would never, could never, turn evil. But the evidence suggests that what we prefer to think is wrong.
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Note: The phrase “agents of atrocity” is the title of a book by Neil Mitchell.