2,806
04-14-2024, 01:03 PM
I couldn't resist adding this article to our collection of discussion topics...
From MIT Technology Review: A brief, weird history of brainwashing
Subtitled: L. Ron Hubbard, Operation Midnight Climax, and stochastic terrorism—the race for mind control changed America forever.
The article begins by introducing the name of one former operative of the cold-war era anticommunist variety, one Edward Hunter.
On an early spring day in 1959, Edward Hunter testified before a US Senate subcommittee investigating “the effect of Red China Communes on the United States.” It was the kind of opportunity he relished. A war correspondent who had spent considerable time in Asia, Hunter had achieved brief media stardom in 1951 after his book Brain-Washing in Red China introduced a new concept to the American public: a supposedly scientific system for changing people’s minds, even making them love things they once hated.
Hunter claimed to have discovered “... [a] technique of mind-attack” in use in Communist China, coining the word "brainwashing" in English (which was a mischaracterization of the word "heart-washing" referring to a spiritual or emotional reorientation of mindset, that seemed never intended to create or forge a 'slave-like' conversion of a personality, rather an 'enlightenment' or cleansing of undesirable affectations, or traits, we all carry within us due to thoughtlessness and life events.)
Hunters claim was untrue in that a) he had not 'coined' the phrase, and also in b) that it was not the menacing practice of creating in a person, a lack of discernment about what they believed and acted upon. But the idea became 'vogue' in the world of social scientists and their activist ilk, politicians - in part driven by the 'Red Menace" marketing which propagandists fueled and nurtured during that period in history.
Yet Hunter’s sensational tales still became an important part of the disinformation and pseudoscience that fueled a “mind-control race” during the Cold War, much like the space race. Inspired by new studies on brain function, the US military and intelligence communities prepared themselves for a psychic war with the Soviet Union and China by spending millions of dollars on research into manipulating the human brain. But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role in ideological and scientific debates to this day.
European scholars analyzed US National Security Council documents, reportedly finding that "[brainwashing] ... might be “fake” but contained so much accurate information that it was clearly written by “experts.” When it came to brainwashing, government operatives made almost no distinction between black propaganda and so-called expertise." In my opinion, this exemplifies the societal danger of "cloisterism" within our halls of power, where a status of 'association of experts' automatically means everything they produce is fundamentally true and not propaganda.
The fantasy of brainwashing was always one of optimization. Military experts knew that adversaries could be broken with torture, but it took months and was often a violent, messy process. A fast, scientifically informed interrogation method would save time and could potentially be deployed on a mass scale. In 1953, that dream led the CIA to invest millions of dollars in MK-Ultra, a project that injected cash into university and research programs devoted to memory wiping, mind control, and “truth serum” drugs. Worried that their rivals in the Soviet Union and China were controlling people’s minds to spread communism throughout the world, the intelligence community was willing to try almost anything to fight back. No operation was too weird.
I would like to honor the author by stopping my commentary here, and allowing you my friends to analyze it for yourselves... I think this article is chock full of good journalistic reporting... a relative rarity in today's media market. Let me know if you disagree. Or if there is something I missed.
Thanks
(PS - Please forgive the insertion of the thread I authored about "cloisterism" with which you may or may not agree. It seemed relevant at the time of writing this.)
From MIT Technology Review: A brief, weird history of brainwashing
Subtitled: L. Ron Hubbard, Operation Midnight Climax, and stochastic terrorism—the race for mind control changed America forever.
The article begins by introducing the name of one former operative of the cold-war era anticommunist variety, one Edward Hunter.
On an early spring day in 1959, Edward Hunter testified before a US Senate subcommittee investigating “the effect of Red China Communes on the United States.” It was the kind of opportunity he relished. A war correspondent who had spent considerable time in Asia, Hunter had achieved brief media stardom in 1951 after his book Brain-Washing in Red China introduced a new concept to the American public: a supposedly scientific system for changing people’s minds, even making them love things they once hated.
Hunter claimed to have discovered “... [a] technique of mind-attack” in use in Communist China, coining the word "brainwashing" in English (which was a mischaracterization of the word "heart-washing" referring to a spiritual or emotional reorientation of mindset, that seemed never intended to create or forge a 'slave-like' conversion of a personality, rather an 'enlightenment' or cleansing of undesirable affectations, or traits, we all carry within us due to thoughtlessness and life events.)
Hunters claim was untrue in that a) he had not 'coined' the phrase, and also in b) that it was not the menacing practice of creating in a person, a lack of discernment about what they believed and acted upon. But the idea became 'vogue' in the world of social scientists and their activist ilk, politicians - in part driven by the 'Red Menace" marketing which propagandists fueled and nurtured during that period in history.
Yet Hunter’s sensational tales still became an important part of the disinformation and pseudoscience that fueled a “mind-control race” during the Cold War, much like the space race. Inspired by new studies on brain function, the US military and intelligence communities prepared themselves for a psychic war with the Soviet Union and China by spending millions of dollars on research into manipulating the human brain. But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role in ideological and scientific debates to this day.
European scholars analyzed US National Security Council documents, reportedly finding that "[brainwashing] ... might be “fake” but contained so much accurate information that it was clearly written by “experts.” When it came to brainwashing, government operatives made almost no distinction between black propaganda and so-called expertise." In my opinion, this exemplifies the societal danger of "cloisterism" within our halls of power, where a status of 'association of experts' automatically means everything they produce is fundamentally true and not propaganda.
The fantasy of brainwashing was always one of optimization. Military experts knew that adversaries could be broken with torture, but it took months and was often a violent, messy process. A fast, scientifically informed interrogation method would save time and could potentially be deployed on a mass scale. In 1953, that dream led the CIA to invest millions of dollars in MK-Ultra, a project that injected cash into university and research programs devoted to memory wiping, mind control, and “truth serum” drugs. Worried that their rivals in the Soviet Union and China were controlling people’s minds to spread communism throughout the world, the intelligence community was willing to try almost anything to fight back. No operation was too weird.
I would like to honor the author by stopping my commentary here, and allowing you my friends to analyze it for yourselves... I think this article is chock full of good journalistic reporting... a relative rarity in today's media market. Let me know if you disagree. Or if there is something I missed.
Thanks
(PS - Please forgive the insertion of the thread I authored about "cloisterism" with which you may or may not agree. It seemed relevant at the time of writing this.)
