Collectivism: When are we going to learn?

Civilization does not suppress the barbarism; it perfects it

- François Marie Arouet Voltaire

97 years ago, on July 29th, Adolf Hitler became the leader of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German National Socialist Workers' Party). In an extraordinary assembly of NSDAP members, Hitler got 543 votes in favor and only one against.

Hitler's political career would begin in 1919 when he decided to join the party. Once he took absolute control of the party Hitler perpetuated a failed coup d'état in Munich in November 1923, the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, this attempted coup d'état aimed to take control of the local government, then start a march to Berlin and overthrow the federal government of the Weimar Republic, due to his failure Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment for treason, but 9 months later he was released.

If anything characterized Hitler during his political career, it was his speech. While most right-wing politicians criticized the government with a boring, technical style, Hitler managed to use different ideas from both spectrums and follow the model of the social-democratic speakers. He won over the people by saying everything they wanted to hear. He used a simple, common and direct language that people understood, his speech was full of short phrases, emotions and slogans and the tool that made him use and legitimate within the masses, the most recurrent technique in political discourse: We and them.

Hitler, like every good speaker, was undoubtedly a demagogue and a populist. Hitler used the idea of the oppression and humiliation of the German people by the conditions of the Versailles Treaty. The document signed after the First World War stipulated that Germany should pay extraordinarily high economic compensation, as well as cede land and reduce its military strength.

The Second World War shocked the consciousness of many. Germany was morally destroyed, German pride would never again be a reality for its population as they realized how manipulated they were.

The liberation of Hitler after the coup d'état and the case of the Treaty of Versailles were undoubtedly determining factors in Hitler's rise to power. There is no point in considering what would have happened if Hitler had never been released or if Germany had not been blamed for the first World War. From this, one can simply create speculation and "learn" from what really happened so as not to hit again a disaster so great that it claimed the lives of many. Germany to this day represents a source of knowledge and a lesson to all the peoples of the world about how acts of collectivism and the sense of belonging can lead to control and a non-thinking society that could create harm and suffer for many.

The rise to power by manipulators of truth and word is not a unique case of Hitler, there are many, many examples very similar to the arrival of the National Socialist party in Germany in different parts of the world after the Second World War. Fidel Castro in Cuba, Salvador Allende in Chile, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Hailé Mengistu in Ethiopia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, among many other speakers who through their words have taken power in their countries.

Even in our present society we can find different behaviors shared and acquired due to different factors that surround us, in the Nazis the central manipulation was focused on the young, in order to show them the supremacy of the German race and how they should defend it with their own lives.

Today one would wonder if the world has really learned its lesson from what happened in Germany in 1929 or if everything was lost. A key answer to understanding the question whether something like National Socialism could happen again has already been answered. In 1967, students at Cubberly High School in Cubberly, California, asked their teacher Ron Jones several questions:

How did the German people follow Adolph Hitler so simply?
How could Nazism prosper in a country as advanced as Germany in the 1930s?
How could the German people (the common citizen) demonstrate their ignorance about what was happening to the Jews?

This charismatic and unconventional history professor graduated from Stanford wanted to make his students live the same story to answer their questions and teach them the history of Germany. Jones decided for a week to do an experiment to anecdotally show his class students how it was possible for a free society to become a fascist regime easily. He followed a careful plan to prove his point, subjecting his students to continuous pressure, so that many people ended up accepting totalitarianism as a norm of life. Also, John himself was later affected and acknowledged:

My ego was pumped up, I liked it.

The Beginning: Discipline

The experiment began with persuasion, the first day the teacher spoke to the students about the benefits of the discipline, how physical and mental effort helped people to be successful. The teacher proposed them to assume a very rigid body posture on their desks to improve their efficiency, he then correct them severely if they had even the slightest failure. With this the teacher had achieved something much more transcendent: discipline and total obedience in record time. The teacher wanted to test his limits and introduced a series of rules to them, it was an obligation to stand up and step aside before speaking in class and every time there was a question the teacher had to be referred to as "Mr Jones". The student who did not follow the new rules was reprimanded and forced to repeat them until he assimilated them.

A highlight of this first day was the increased levels of productivity and participation of its students, who asked better questions and addressed the teacher with more respect than usual. No doubt this ended up reflecting how everyone responded positively to authoritarianism.

Belonging and Distinction

On the second day, the teacher entered the classroom and noticed that all the students were in silence and perfectly sit in their seats. Jones went on to write on the whiteboard a slogan that summarized everything they had learned: "Power through discipline" and "Power through community". He then talked about the strength of teamwork, of belonging to a community that transcends the individual. Then he had the whole class chant the two slogans in unison, unopposed, the teacher denotes that the students were pleased and experienced feelings of communal belonging. He himself began to feel the effects of the experiment and stated the following:

As for me, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to escape the situation and identification that the class was developing; I was following the group's advice in the same way I was leading it.

To wrap up the day Jones created a greeting for the group members, so that they would recognize each other. He called it the greeting of the third wave. He himself was the first to do it. This made other students aware of this new community and wanted to enter this mysterious brotherhood.

Cohesion

On the third day more rules were imposed, it was compulsory to use a card to belong to the group. No students dropped out and in fact, many more joined the classroom. The teacher tried to bring them all together as a homogeneous mass that did not think that simply followed instruction because he noticed that some of the new members, after the initial laughs, were beginning to think for themselves. Some of the brightest students were used to doubt and debate. Therefore, the teacher designed an initiation ritual, in which the new members had to swear allegiance and fidelity to the principles of the group, while at the same time he warned about the need for everyone to be part of the movement and to watch over those who showed themselves to be sloppy in following the rules.

Students who had previously been outstanding in intelligence and questioning were passive and distracted. Students with fewer skills felt more at ease and participated more, as everything was predictable and regulated, there was no challenge. The new situation equated them with their community partners and gave them a sense of superiority over all those who did not belong to the Third Wave.

Pride and chauvinism

On the last day, the teacher noticed that he had more people than ever before, 80 students in complete silence and attentive. The professor gave them a speech about national pride and the importance of making a nation stronger and making it the best of all the others. The teacher said that The third Wave transcended their school, that there were teachers all over the country doing the same, preparing for the rise of a third party, a third way that would be the beginning of the regeneration of the country.

He decided to hold a meeting for those members belonging to the third wave, where he said that the next day everything would come out and they would be informed about who would be the new candidate for national leader. Everyone felt motivated and enthusiastic, so they started with the preparation of the activity without any problem but they had to keep everything secret until the next day.

The end

The last day of the experiment began with the preparations for the activity. Jones brought in actors to pretend to be reporters and photographers. In the auditorium, Professor Jones greeted the students from the third wave, while the young people waited for a speech that never came. Jones made the room rumble with the slogan, a demonstration for journalists: greeting and disciplined chorus: "Power through discipline. After a few minutes the TV in the room turned on, while the young people waited for the party leader to make the announcements but never arrived. Anguish and despair had taken over the student body and it was at that time that Professor Jones decided to announce the following:

Listen carefully, I have something important to tell you. There is no leader, there is no movement called the third wave. You were used, manipulated, and you are no better than the German Nazis that you studied.

Jones then sets off on a video showing Hitler being applauded by the masses in Nuremberg.

Some cried, some simply stood up and left in silence, others were disappointed, despite the clear implications this study had for the malleability of the youngest minds. Jones finished his speech by saying:

Everyone must take the blame. No one can declare that they did not take part.

After the experiment Jones became the subject of controversy, many called him a communist, bad teacher and indolent for exposing these young people to the harsh realities of life. Others considered him a pioneer and an extraordinary teacher. Without a doubt this experiment as well as the results of Nazism clash with anyone's conscience, many were shocked to learn that the same mentality that caused so much damage and pain can easily be implemented without difficulty.

Collectivism is a doctrine that erases any trace of individuality in people, the feeling of belonging it generates makes people take refuge in a group to be part of something much larger and transcendental than they really are or could be. The Human being, speaking in general terms, is as malleable as he is lacking in self-esteem or belief in himself, he is a being full of worries and doubts. Belonging to a whole, being socially accepted, feeling superior, makes us forget the aberrations of the past. This experiment proves it.

If we didn't label the Nazi dictatorship as crime, aberration and injustice, would it really look like what it was? Rousseau asserted that man was good by nature, hence his counterpart to this kind of attitude that is opposed to a homogeneous conglomerate, an unthinking mass, but what is needed so that everyone is not like that? Education? Individual or collective? What is the limit?

By common sense everyone will be against any movement that exerts violence or alienates the goods of any person and commits injustice to any other member of our society, however, Jones demonstrates something extremely interesting and it is how collectivism can nullify any sense of what is considered by universal conviction to be good and evil. Everything about repudiating the fascist and authoritarian movements is not the answer, and that's what Jones demonstrated. Jones demonstrated the insecurity of the human being and the problem of his subconscious, the need to accept, to be better than the rest, to be part of something transcendental. This experiment demonstrated the intrinsic need - not of everyone, but of many - to belong at all costs to something significant and important.

All human beings seek meaning, therefore we create gods, give metaphysical explanations to understand what we cannot explain and thus fill emotional gaps that cause nightmares at night. This search for meaning can easily lead to authoritarianism and ruthless collectivism; it is a desperate search to fill gaps. Collectivism nullifies any sense of individuality, destroys the questioning of the interests of the group, destroys the processes of thought for the same reason.

We always start from two premises: 1) We are much smarter than previous generations and 2) We learn from past mistakes.

Is it really like that, though? I don't think so. This self-centeredness and powerlessness of superiority make these premises totally false. The same story corroborates that human beings do not fully learn from their actions. A clear example is that today there is still talk of state intervention against freedom by itself when all the examples of state intervention have led either to totalitarianism or economic crises. There is no point in reviewing the lesson if you do not understand the meaning of the facts. We judged in haste what we would do as citizens and what we would not do, without really knowing what the others went through, why and how.

Notes:

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