Most freshly trained soldiers would obey orders to crush democracy itself

Evidence

In 1977 I asked a sample of Canadian soldiers who had just finished their basic training what they would do if the prime minister suspended the civil liberties of Canadians and declared Parliament closed, when “there are no laws giving the prime minister such powers.” Seventy-six percent said that they would obey orders to take up positions on Parliament Hill to keep the House of Commons from meeting. Ninety-two percent said they would arrest a member of the House of Commons who tried to enter the Parliament buildings. Sixty-three percent said they would, if ordered, shoot at demonstrators who gathered to protest the destruction of democracy (RWA, pp. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4461

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgram’s obedience studies and General Milley’s concerns about military coups; also echoes the Milgram experiment dynamics covered in earlier chapters.
• DEEPTHINKING: Seventy-six percent of soldiers willing to suppress their own nation’s parliament on a clearly illegal order is a chilling, paradigm-level data point about institutionalized obedience.
• QUESTION: Was this replicated post-9/11 or in other militaries? How much does basic training selection versus training itself drive this?
• SEED: An essay angle: obedience training as the quiet precondition for autocracy — the citizen-soldier who will shoot at his own representatives.