Example Of Bad Brainwashing

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

Free will comes with both the bad and the good, but it is up to each person to do bad or do good. Personal evil exists everywhere from every relationship and to every activity; it can be corrupted and distorted (Ford 70). Evil exists even in our friendships, marriages and families. From the relationships people have and the things that they do, comes with intentions. These intentions can be whole-heartedly good such as love or strictly evil such as betrayal.

In some cases though, that’s not always true. Ender’s Game, a science-fiction book by Orson Scott Card, extremely contradicts it. The main character, Ender is manipulated into many terrible actions, while he has good morales and never intended to do these terrible things. He is portrayed as a good kids and one of the underlying themes convey that intentions mean everything, not the action. This has caused many controversial debates with many different views. For example, John Kessel has written a critical essay, Creating the Innocent Killer, about Ender’s game. Kessel’s essay works on all angles of Ender’s morality. The good

One characteristic of totalitarianism being shown in the movie is education/indoctrination of the youth. They did this through an organization called the Hitlerjugend, or commonly referred to in the movie as the HJs. The nazis were brainwashing boys and young men into believing Hitler’s ideology. One example of how this is depicted in the movie is Peter being forced to join the HJ after getting in trouble with the police for stealing a radio. Once he joined he would then be introduced to the “teachings” of the HJ teachers, with the teachers derogating Jews. This is an example of education of the youth because young men were strongly encouraged and in Peter’s case, forced to join the HJ. Once they joined they were taught about Hitler’s ideas, with them usually bad-mouthing other races or anything that was an influence from America. Another way that education of the youth was being shown in the movie was when a Jewish boy was being beaten up by a group of HJs. This is an example of education of the youth because the Hitlerjugend were successfully brainwashing the boys and young men to discriminate and hate Jews. Finally education of the youth is shown when Thomas and Peter were discussing about the HJ, one interesting point that appeared during their discussion was when Thomas mentioned all the rewards

Indoctrinating Youth." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 29 Jan. 2016. Web. 29 Apr. 2016. Retrieved from

“Young boys were organized into the Deutches Jungvolk (German Young People, informally called Pimpfe), older boys into the Hitlerjugend (HJ). The Deutches Jungvolk could have boys from the ages of 10-14 and the Hitlerjugend could have boys from the ages of 14-18. When World War II started, more than ninety percent of German youth were members of these organizations. Ninety percent is a huge percentage. That means that almost every teenage German, Gentile was a member of some kind of Nazi Youth Organization. Many of these youth organization actually over rid the parental control on the children. Many were told that the individual or the family was less important than the state. If children had disloyal parents, they were encouraged to report them. When the boys weren’t in school or at home with their parents, they were with their youth organization learning military maneuvers and different chants. An example of the one the chants that the Hitler Youth used to march around chanting are: “Comrades, we march to the field, red today, tomorrow dead, Comrades it must be that way.” If the boys made any achievement in the Hitler Youth, credit in school would be given to the student. The teacher must respect the authority of the youth leaders, regardless of their age or attitude towards them. Blind obedience seems to be a common theme. Children are taught these ideologies without knowing the true real reason. Teachers are forced to believe and follow these ideologies if they wish to

Ross, a history teacher had showed his class the history of the german camps in world war two. The students couldn't believe what the germans had done in the camps,   slaughtering thousands of people in horrifying ways. The class also questioned why the germans didn't admit to this, why they fled from it when it was brought up, why didn't they just not follow the command of Hitler? Ross took interest into this idea of why they didn't, so the following

During the early days of the holocaust, schools in Germany were training its students to conduct its own philosophy. Techniques were used such as paintings, drawings, and literature to establish an agreement that is based off of an expert's opinion. Anyone who disagrees with the teachers and staff would be punished. As the students get older, that philosophy would turn into a lecture of political and personal preference. Those students would lack the ability to change their way of thinking. That lecture would then become a method of brainwashing.

One major theme that the book addresses is the destructiveness of war, as the dreadfulness of the narrator's time in World War Two incite insanity in his postwar experiences. Particularly insane is his hallucination of being captured by aliens and being able to time travel. This relates to today's problem of terrorism and extremism as students are constantly under the influence of such violences, however the dangers of such immorality does not make impact when being taught with mainstream methods, such as lecture or media. As a matter of fact, research indicates that "Most lectures are not as effective as discussion methods to promote thought... [nor do they] teach behavioral skills" (Bligh 1), but the originality of teaching morals through literature and books enables students to understand society, being exactly what Slaughterhouse Five accomplishes.

All of these factors made it very difficult for the German people to be trustworthy, faithful and supportive of the regime of the Weimar Constitution. This idea is re-affirmed through German historian Friedrich Meinecke saying that “true loyalty to the Fatherland requires disloyalty to the Republic”, leading to an opening for extremist parties as well as the Republic’s doom.

After watching the film, I learned that there are certain things people use to brainwash an individual. I also learned that you should stand up and fight for what you truly believe in. Learning how to stand up to someone gives you strength and makes you feel like no one can mess with you. But when you live in a country like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or even Syria, it’s not that easy. There are consequences that follow when you finally begin to see the truth behind something bad. There are some individuals who say that it’s easy to not let someone brainwash or tell you what to do, all you have to do is say no. But see, it’s not that simple. Those individuals don’t have to go through what the individuals in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria have to go through when it comes to just saying no. If someone from one of those countries were to say “no” to their brainwasher, they would get punished, tortured or even killed. So it’s not really a win win. But what’s even more alarming, is that children are the ones who are also getting brainwashed, just like in the film. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a child or not, if you don’t obey or fall in, there’s a certainty you may get killed. It is important that individuals know brainwashing is serious and that it’s not that easy to turn away from. It’s like a quote that Caroline Kennedy once said that I believe fits well into what I learned, “It is not easy to stand up

Humans are obedient and disobedient at the same time. Nonetheless, we like to do things our way. If we feel challenged, we think that there is always a way to get past that. We like to think of ourselves as great and that we do not make mistakes. Once we do make a mistake or do something wrong, we point fingers. This is another reason why we blame the mentally ill for mass casualties.

This was an unjust threat against the whole school. To continue, most students were too afraid to speak out against The Wave for fear of getting hurt. These students were selfish cowards. They went against everything that America stands for, and they just threw away the individual rights for which so many people died. Because of their cowardice, The Wave grew more dangerous and powerful.

Here, Alex explains that goodness and badness in a human being is a natural trait and every human being needs free will to act according to their inborn trait. Nevertheless, such unbiased perception of free will becomes a problem when it is associated within the larger human society. Alex’s behaviour is a clear violation of the “harm principle” described by John Stuart Mill, which means that humans can engage in any action that does not harm anyone.

For many people doing that is evil something they do not think about until later in the future like murder: out of the evil things you can do, the worst kind of evil is murder because that is killing an innocent person or people. Redemption after committing such an act be regained but many instances you can kill 10 people and be forgiven, but kill one people and no one will forgive you because of the way you killed the person.