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Why do people willingly torture their fellow human beings? Oxford University Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry Anthony Storr argues that often the torturer is motivated not by malice or by sadism but by an overpowering will to obey. "Torturers," says Storr, "are hierarchical people in that they accept and seek authority structures. They are people who obey orders without question." Whether leftist or rightist, many torturers link a fervent patriotism with a fanatical self-righteousness. Their victims often describe these torturers as intelligent but unbalanced, full of moral certitude but viciously vindictive toward people who hold beliefs contrary to their own.
Sadly enough, there seems to be no shortage of torturers; dictatorial regimes always manage to find enough people who —convinced of the righteousness of their cause—will maim or murder under orders from an absolute authority. The torture subculture provides these people with a kind of identity. It is also a dramatic and telling proof of what Historian and Social Critic Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil." The most inhumane cruelty of man to man can become routine if it is surrounded and buffered by an apparatus of normality.
* From God's Shadow Prison Poems, © 1976 by Indiana University Press, reprinted by permission of the publisher.