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Reactions to the Calley Trial: Class and Political Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Lee H. Lawrence  and
Herbert C. Kelman
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Extract

At the time the American public seemed to take the Mylai massacre itself in stried Lieutenant William Calley's conviction produced a massive response, with many signs of anger, bitterness and indignation. The pattern should not surprise any student of history or social science. It is consistent with what we have learned from Nazi Germany and elsewhere about the banality of evil, the dividing line between in-group and out-group, the unquestioning nature of obedience to legitimate authority. Yet the intensity of the public outcry against the conviction and the seemingly complex pattern of reactions called for some explanation. We looked for part of the explanation in a national survey we conducted about a month after Calley s conviction was announced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Worldview , Volume 16 , Issue 6 , June 1973 , pp. 34 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1973

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References

Notes

1. Herbert C. Kelman and Lee H. Lawrence, “Assignment of Responsibility in the Case of Lt. Calley: Preliminary Report on a National Survey, ”Journal Social Issues (January, 1972). A briefer report can be found in Herbert C. Kelman and Lee H. Lawrence, ‘American Response to the Trial of Lt. William L. Calley,” Psychology Today (January, 1972).

2. Nor are these findings unique to the United States. Similar relationships were found by Leon Mann in an Australian sample (“Attitudes Toward My Lai and Obedience to Orders: An Australian Survey,” to be published in the Australian Journal of Psychology).

3. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, 1964).

4. Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience, “Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (1963); and “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority,“ in Ivan D. Steiner and Martin Fishbein, eds,. Current Studies in Social Psychology (New York, 1965).

5. Herbert C. Kelman, “Patterns of Personal Involvement in the National System: A Social-Psycho logy Analysis of Political Legitimacy,” in James N. Rosenau, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (New York, 1969).

6. This is not to say that the working class or lower middle class is incapable of resistance. In this connection it would be instructive to examine the social-class background of deserters and others who resisted the Vietnam war from within the armed forces, as well as of the rank-and-file membership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.