Anger

The Many Faces of Aggression and Resistance

Foreign aggression has many causes, but those resisting or fleeing need support.

Posted March 9, 2022 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Key points

The forces of empathy and cooperation are being confronted by widespread news of foreign atrocities.
Though many are complicit with immoral orders, others have resisted them.
There are ways today for speeding and not impeding aid where it is needed.

Empathy with others is widespread in human evolution. Even thousands of years ago, members of pre-industrial hunter-gatherer societies needed to cooperate with each other for hunting, gathering food, and caring for children. The development of language gave an added dimension of communication within the group. We can see today how young children are innately social and need to attach themselves to parents, imitate others, and play with their peers. People worldwide reach out to help others in schools, hospitals, and elsewhere. How can we square this with the recent history of so many devastating attacks on civilians in Europe, Asia, and Africa? And now Ukraine.

Following World War II, many of those on trial for crimes against humanity pleaded that they were “just following orders.” After observing the trial of Nazi official Eichmann, Hannah Arendt wrote: "The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak [in anything but cliches] was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of anybody else.”

Her views were echoed when a member of the Russian Parliament recently told the independent Dohzd television channel, “I do not identify myself with those representatives of the state that speak out in favor of the war. They are following orders without thinking” (New York Times, March 3, 2022).

When Arendt wrote that many who committed war crimes were faceless bureaucrats with no understanding of what they were doing, her views were controversial. She later clarified her views to point out those who resisted immoral orders. She wrote that “under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not … it could happen in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”

The tendency of normal people to follow orders without question was studied by social psychologists in 1963-1971 when they designed experiments to show that ordinary men could commit crimes against others when placed in a situation under the influence of an authority figure. Although these have been questioned and criticized for their methods and conclusions, the emphasis in psychology textbooks on those who complied has led to the mistaken impression that immoral obedience is a universal characteristic of human behavior.

If some of the perpetrators of wartime crimes were thoughtless bureaucrats influenced by the situation, many in leadership positions past and present show the psychopathic or sociopathic traits of narcissistic self-centeredness, arrogance, an urge to dominate others, and cold-heartedness.

As a clinical disorder, this can take the form of antisocial personality disorder, in which a person shows no regard for right and wrong, ignores the rights and feelings of others, antagonizes, lies, manipulates, treats others harshly, behaves with grandiosity, and shows no remorse for their behavior. Underlings in their inner circle may fear giving them honest advice.

The personality traits of those who complied and those who were able to resist varied from person to person, and from one nation to another. Consider those the courageous resistance leaders who risked their lives during World War II in occupied Europe, the ordinary Danes in 1943 who defied the plans of their occupiers to deport their countrymen to death camps, those in the U.S. who struggled for civil rights against the powers that be, and those now working for the rescue of deserving refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere while up against the slow wheels of bureaucracy.

Today, unlike those who turn away, there are many actively aiding those fighting to defend their country in Ukraine, speeding to provide military and humanitarian help, and providing concrete assistance to families fleeing indiscriminate artillery attacks.

Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We can tell our senators and congresspersons today to speed, not impede, aid to those defending their country in Eastern Europe. We can contribute to legitimate aid organizations such as Save the Children to provide aid to families and children in Ukraine and the Middle East, book Airbnb stays in Ukraine (without planning to use them) to quickly provide funds and support to individuals, and work with others to close shop in the invading country.