Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYBy thinking that it has to protect itself from peaceful citizens, thestate has lost sight of its most important right to exist, as Karl Popperhas correctly emphasized: 205“But I demand that the fundamental purpose of the state shouldnot be lost sight of; I mean, the protection of that freedom whichdoes not harm other citizens.”How shockingly easy it is to bring people to commit atrocities, if onlythey believe in the authority of those giving them orders, was demonstratedby the sociologist Stanley Milgram in the mid-1960s by way ofan experiment. In it, students were asked by a professor to give a testperson painful electric shocks as punishments for errors made. Needlessto say that the test person was only an actor and that his reactions to thefeigned electric shocks were only pretended, but the students did notknow that. Only 37.5 % of the test students refused to obey the order toinflict harmful electric shocks to the “test person.” 206 Milgram commentedthis shockingly subservient behavior as follows: 207“If it was possible in this study for an anonymous experimenterto order an adult to force a fifty year old man into a yoke and to givehim painful electro shocks despite his protests, then one can onlywonder what a government – which has far more authority and ahigher prestige – may be able to order its subjects.”Today this experiment is a classic, and one does not have to searchlong to find the answer to the question what a government servant isprepared to do, if an order comes from higher up. Just look around here:how many government servants are obeying when asked to lock up obviouslyinnocent, peaceful dissidents? So far the rate of disobedience isat 0%.Let me now quote from the classic text par excellence in which disobedienceagainst an unjust state has been expressed, namely from theessay “Civil Disobedience” by the U.S. American Henry David Thoreau.This essay was written in the mid-1850s in view of the war of aggressionof the United States against Mexico aiming at conquering Texasas well as in protest against slavery. I quote: 208205 Karl Popper, The Open…, op. cit. (note 70), vol. 1, p. 110.206 Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral study of obedience,” Journal of abnormal and social psychology,Lancaster, PA, vol. 67 (1963) pp. 371-378.; seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment (the German version has a link to the completearticle: www.de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgramexperiment).207 Ibid., p. 460, quoted acc. to Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeld, op. cit. (note 63), p. 103, retranslated.208 Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings, Bantam, Toronto 1981, pp. 92, 94.182