WE are reminded of the tyranny of the lesser leaders by columnist Datuk Dr Ibrahim A. Bajunid, (“Tyranny of the lesser leaders” — NST, Sept 19).
He stated that “history is about continuities and discontinuities with forces of good and bad at work”, where lesser leaders like Adolf Hitler, Ku Klux Klan leaders and Pol Pot had hijacked the leadership in public as well as private domains. They committed evil acts that destroyed lives and traumatised the international community. They were a part of our history and they remained to haunt us.
We should learn from history. Should it take great tragedies to bring change for the better? Sadly, that is the story of our world. Referring to the Islamic State leaders, Tan Sri Mohd Sheriff Mohd Kassim wrote about IS’s gloating over beheadings, executions and terror tactics (“IS should learn from history” — NST, Sept 19).
Why are ordinary people willing to commit such acts of evil? There has been a lot of research about this, particularly based on Otto Adolf Eichmann, who assisted the Nazi Germany Fuhrer Adolf Hitler in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Hannah Arendt, who covered Eichmann’s trial in April 1961 for The New Yorker, wrote that “the deeds were monstrous, but the doer was quite ordinary”. To her, Eichmann “seemed to be a common man”, and “his transparent superficiality and mediocrity left her astonished”.
Arendt concluded that Eichmann, who organised the deportation of millions of Jewish people to the concentration camps, “portrayed something negative. It was thoughtlessness, ordinariness and an incapacity for independent critical thought”.
Based on recent research reports, after 50 years, Alex Haslam, a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, claims that “almost anyone is capable of carrying out atrocities if ordered to do so. Commanded by an authoritarian figure, and wishing to conform, we could bulldoze homes, burn books, separate parents from children or even slaughter them, and our much-prized conscience would not as much as flicker”.
His research paper illustrated that “conscience can be put on hold under orders” when people were made to believe that they were acting for a noble cause. Through a dose of mission-priming by “making them believe in a noxious ideology”, they can be called upon to do anything unconscionable like conduct ideological purgatory and religious persecution.
Stephen Reicher, a professor at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, agreed that “ordinary people could commit acts of extraordinary harm, but that thoughtlessness was not the main motivator. We argue that people are aware of what they are doing, but that they think it is the right thing to do”.
This suggests that when people acknowledge authoritative leaders as legitimate, they will succumb to tyrannical behaviour and by conforming, they could commit atrocities and evil acts.
This proves Sheriff’s point that “when democracy is strong and the economy thriving, extremists have little room to exploit the people’s frustrations and incite them with hate ideologies”.
Since the 1990s, the information superhighway has helped connect people around the globe. The present and the future are about the connected people acting together for the betterment of the world. Both good and the lesser leaders have the same access and assets. Who will lead the future will depend on their determined efforts.
In 1917, Vladimir Lenin prevented the restoration of the police by creating a people’s militia from the working class, who maintain the lines of communication by conveying information via word of mouth. He was successful and made his name in history.
Mena Jeyaram, Subang Jaya, Selangor