Cultural Influence

The best reading we did this week was the Police Battalion 101 reading. What I found fascinating was the ability of the Nazi party to control people they barely knew. The whole time I was reading this I was thinking about the famous experiment where the test subjects were asked by a fake specialist to electrocute people. The subjects shocked other people with surprising frequency, and didn't show signs of stopping even in cases where the person getting ficticiously shocked screamed in horror. I think both the experiment and the Police Battalion anecdote illustrates the immense control that authority has on people. Furthermore, the author went out of their way to describe how the members of the police battalion were akin to the average citizen. The author makes a very valid point by subtlety showing the average humans threshold to do as their told and follow the crowd. Another famous experiment I remember was the one where people were asked to pick out the line with the longest length, or something along those lines( I believe this experiment has been done many times), and the rest of the room who were paid actors picked the wrong line. I think this a microcosm of the situation in the villages of Germany. Even without any direct authoritative figure, except for some Nazi party orders the reserve police are willing to do as they are told rather than speak up. The few who do not follow their orders give few thoughts on why they cannot perform their duty. Could this happen in America? Certainly not in the current cultural climate, but I definitely believe this could happen if an authoritative party rose to power; this could have been particularly scary during the reconstructionist era of the South. All that needs to be changed is the culture; the culture that people are raised in, shapes everything about a person, and it is normally scarier for someone to step out of that culture than to stand up and take action and risked being ostracized.

Bismarck is a very interesting leader in a lot of ways, but his Kulturkampf proved to be one of the greatest missteps of his administration. Anti-Catholic and other sentiments that stemmed from the Kulturkampf resulted really out of the air. There didn't seem to be any reason for Bismarck's hatred towards Catholic's other than his fear of the papal infallibility doctrine. When the Catholics were discriminated against they huddled together and formed their own political groups and organizations, and they were eventually more successful as a result of the discrimination. This got me thinking about other Kulturkampfs in history, and whether or not the long term effects were positive or negative. Specific Kulturkampfs are hard to find but I think a broader Kulturkampf has been commited against a lot of ethnicities and organizations. The Jewish people are the first thing that comes to mind because of the long history of discrimination. While they might not have been Kulturkampfed, their discrimination definitely led to a sense of community and organization that made them successful in almost every European country. A more specific Kulturkampf that I would argue is happening right now is homosexual people in America. With amendments being passed like crazy to try and stop gay marriage; I believe there has been more organization and communication within the gay movement than ever before. It is hard to tell if homosexual people in America are being ostracized; I would say there are not, and definitely not to the degree the Catholics were under Bismarck. I would say they are every bit as ostracized politically as Catholics were for many years. I believe they also suffer from some of the same propaganda that was used directly to influence the citizens of Germany. Obviously no one is attacking homosexual people directly except for Pat Robertson, but gay steretypes are often the most popular stereotypes perpetuated in tv and movies. I think in the long run homosexual will come out better having to organize and network politically, but we have a two party system in America so who knows.

Reading about the Burschenschaft got me thinking about what it would take for students today to become more politically active. The Burschenschaft are interesting because a large percentage of students were in one of these organizations at some income level, or so it seems. This many politically motivated youths is not unprecedented, but it is strange in the way that it came about. Usually youth movements are somewhat unorganized and unstructured, see hippies in the 1960's, but this movement was well organized with a specific goal in mind, the unification of Germany. It really surprises me that college students were so politically minded, especially about something like the unification of the country. It is hard for me to understand the sort of political spirit that was behind the Burschenschaften. I realize that times were tough and political sentiment to unify Germany was high, but to put a political organization together with such success is still impressive. I am trying to think of an issue that would lead students to the same sort of organization in America; I realize that a lot of students do organize politically, but I got the sense with the Burschenschaft incorporated a majority of students. I really can't see American college students getting motivated for anything like this even if the economy got a lot worse. With so many distractions for young people today I just don't think there is a will to get political goals accomplished. We will vote for Obama or Ron Paul but there isn't an activism like the Burschenschaft and there probably never will be again.