"Just Following Orders" Is How Cruelty Always Starts

A brief history of how power gives bullies permission to hurt people

Just Following Orders.

The phrase shows up again and again in history, like some kind of cultural earworm.

It sounds modest, responsible, almost humble. It pretends the speaker has stepped out of the story and handed agency to someone else, as if history itself grabbed their wrist and made them do it.

But history doesn’t work that way.

In the 19th century, …