Bruce Levine
Vital Ignored Truths in Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Studies
Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) was deeply affected by Nazi atrocities, so when his early 1960s research on Americans revealed an unexpectedly high rate of obedience to authority commanding subjects to commit cruel actions, this very much troubled him. Milgram’s studies revealed other truths—not as widely known—that are crucial to fighting authoritarianism. One ignored finding is […]
Vital Ignored Truths in Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Studies
Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) was deeply affected by Nazi atrocities, so when his early 1960s research on Americans revealed an unexpectedly high rate of obedience to authority commanding subjects to commit cruel actions, this very much troubled him. Milgram’s studies revealed other truths—not as widely known—that are crucial to fighting authoritarianism. One ignored finding is […]
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” Shows Democrats’ Complicity in Electing Trump
Unlike the standard Michael Moore film that is replete with cheap shots and lurid tangents aimed at hooking and pleasing his choir, Moore cuts back on candy for his Trump-hating fans in Fahrenheit 11/9 and instead provides them with much-needed political truths. The substance of Fahrenheit 11/9 challenges his fans to go beyond their easy […]
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” Shows Democrats’ Complicity in Electing Trump
The substance of Fahrenheit 11/9 challenges his fans to go beyond their easy contempt for the obnoxious Trump. Moore pushes his audience to consider how the corporatist blue team — an authoritarian Democratic National Party, a clueless self-serving Hillary Clinton, a slickly betraying Barack Obama and an ultimately pathetic Bernie Sanders — helped elect Trump […]
Another Sad October for Reds Fans
I have long studied legitimate and illegitimate authorities, which exist in all walks of life. Illegitimate authorities include dishonest or exploitative ones but also include those which are incompetent. The fact that 1.6 million fans attended Reds games in 2018 compared to nearly 2.5 million in 2013 is not about Reds fans’ disloyalty, but about loyal […]
“Mutual Aid” Excerpt from Resisting Illegitimate Authority, Titled by Yes!: “Why Alcoholics Can’t Be Forced to Stop Drinking”
The following excerpt is from the subchapter “Mutual Aid” and which Yes! has titled “Why Alcoholics Can’t Be Forced to Stop Drinking.”
When Bernie Sold Out His Hero, Anti-Authoritarians Paid
Bernie Sanders, in his thirties, wrote and directed the documentary Eugene V. Debs: Trade Unionist, Socialist, Revolutionary (1979), and a picture of Debs is on Sanders’s office wall. But the arc of Sanders’s political career has moved in the opposite direction from the arc of his hero. Debs moved from polite dissent to courageously […]
When Bernie Sold Out His Hero, Anti-Authoritarians Paid
Bernie Sanders, in his thirties, wrote and directed the documentary Eugene V. Debs: Trade Unionist, Socialist, Revolutionary (1979), and a picture of Debs is on Sanders’s office wall. But the arc of Sanders’s political career has moved in the opposite direction from the arc of his hero. Debs moved from polite dissent to courageously resisting […]
“Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Smarty”: Why Anti-Authoritarian Doctors Are So Rare
“Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi Party” is an intentionally obnoxious line from the hilarious “Springtime for Hitler” in Mel Brook’s The Producers. Not hilarious is the reality that doctors in Nazi Germany were “smarties” in Brook’s sardonic sense, as they joined the Nazi SS in a far higher proportion […]
“Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Smarty”: Why Anti-Authoritarian Doctors Are So Rare
n the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2012, Alessandra Colaianni reports “More than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi SS during World War II, compared with less than 1% of the general population. . . . By 1945, half of all German physicians had joined the Nazi party, 6% before Adolf Hitler gained power.” Colaianni points out, “Physicians joined the Nazi party and the killing operations not at gunpoint, not by force, but of their own volition.”
