Individual resistance cannot withstand coercive organizational evil, so prevention must be structural.

Evidence

I continue to believe in that message, but I find I cannot apply it with such conviction as I used to when I think about the cases discussed here. To resist the psychological forces characteristic of the organizations discussed herein, pressures which strike me as often highly coercive and reinforced by real physical threats, requires a rare degree of individual strength indeed. This plea for resistance at the individual level to the contrary, the real action in evil-prevention may lie elsewhere. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4036

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Zimbardo, the architect of the situationalist lecture, candidly retracts its empowering conclusion when faced with coercive killing organizations — the rare concession that awareness of situational forces is insufficient when those forces include physical threat.
• XREF: connects to: Bureaucratic resistance to change is outweighed by competitive survival pressures. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 219; Resisting organizational evil individually is too rare to be the main preventive lever — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4036