A Critical Election On 19 August 2008 Mike Palij wrote: >No, not that one, this one: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html#article
>Now THAT was an experiment on obedience to authority. >Perhaps a good exercise would be to try to explain how/why >a person could get 90% of a large population to vote for him >and whether this is really something that a society should desire. [...] Since no one else has taken this up, I'll give it a go! I think there was rather more to this vote (on 18 August 1934) than "obedience to authority" (though I'm not at all dismissing this factor - far from it). William Shirer, in *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", writes that within a year of his appointment to the Chancellorship in January 1933, Hitler "had overthrown the Weimar Republic... destroyed all the political parties but his own, smashed the state governments and their parliaments,... wiped out the labour unions, stamped out democratic associations of any kind, driven the Jews out of public and professional life, abolished freedom of speech and of the press", and so on. The SA and SS had terrorised active anti-Nazis, driving some of the more prominent abroad. In other words, the basic conditions for anything like a *democratic* free vote had been eliminated. How many people voted "yes" in the plebiscite for fear that the authorities might be in a position to know how they voted and take reprisals can never be known. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that Hitler's gift for inspiring the German people with his rhetoric, notably his vision of strong government leading to a resurgence of Germany among the community of nations, was probably the major factor in the electorate's giving him a resounding victory. Whether that counts as "obedience to authority" for the majority of Germans at that *early* stage of Nazi rule I'm not sure. >...a person could get 90% of a large population to vote for him >and whether this is really something that a society should desire. (Pedantically speaking, it was around 85% of the electorate as a whole.) Given the diversity of viewpoints among a general population, I'd say "no" under any situation I can envisage. > P.S. In 2000 we had "hanging chads". In 1934 it was > "spoiled votes". What message was being sent there? As there's no "smiley" I'll treat this as it reads. To make any comparison with the conditions in Nazi Germany in 1934 with the United States in 2000 is, shall we say, just a wee bit facile. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
