Whole organizations can turn members into evildoers without the apex directing it

Evidence

Yet large segments of the American Army did massacre civilians. So we face the fact that organizations can somehow be subverted or otherwise altered to turn persons within those organizations into evildoers, even when the apex of the organization does not direct this. … The analysis we have constructed so far can be read in the following way. Organizations of a particular type, roughly those concerned with social control, have the unique capacity to turn their members into evildoers. We have a reasonably clear notion of which organizations those are. Our task, therefore, is to be particularly vigilant in monitoring them, so that they do not consciously stray or unconsciously slip into creating evil actions, and in the process, create evildoers. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3991

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgram’s obedience work and Kelman on authorization/routinization in bureaucratic violence; also to arendt’s banality of evil in the reader’s political theory shelf.