Thought reform and the psychology of totalism: parallels with our current "debate"?

[heresyandwitchcraft]

Robert Jay Lifton wrote a book on Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China

First we have the "Thought-terminating cliche"

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

(Quote from the Wiki page here, where there is a reference to a Google Book page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism )

Then we have the 8 Criteria of Thought-Reform (a.k.a. Brainwashing)

1) Milieu Control. This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.

2) Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.

3) Demand for Purity. The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.

4) Confession. Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members' "sins," "attitudes," and "faults" are discussed and exploited by the leaders.

5) Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.

6) Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking.

7) Doctrine over person. Member's personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.

8) Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group's ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also. (Lifton, 1989)

www.csj.org/studyindex/studymindctr/study_mindctr_lifton.htm

"Trans women are women", especially when accompanied by "get over it", "no debate", or "repeat after us".... Women are called TERFs and should die in a fire or be sent to the Gulag. Transsexuals should be doxxed for refusing to use the preferred pronouns of a rapist. Detransitioners experiences are invalid because "they were never trans." Centre trans people in everything to the point that you cannot say that women are the group that needs cervical cancer smears, or wear a pink cat hat to a protest march without being criticized. A trans activist who is under investigation for allegedly flashing their penis speculates on national television whether there is such as thing as a real woman? Lesbians are not same-sex attracted females but hateful "transphobic bigots." A philosopher cannot tweet an article from an established media outlet. A billboard of a dictionary definition of one of the most commonly used words in the English language is taken down because it is deemed "transphobic." Gender-critical people need to be erased from life and should be stopped from even having one goddamned board on a parenting website where they can say their opinion.

SO. Anyone else, at all, see the relevance of these ideas to what is going on with trans activism and our current political climate?

NB, Haven't read the book yet. It is next on the list after finishing the excellent Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, (thanks to Lisa Muggeridge for the recommendation!).

Yes, totally. And have been thinking the same thing for quite a while. Like many things in this debate, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

It's deliberate, in my opinion. Used to think I was being tinfoil-hatted, but now I honestly think it's a test-run for other forms of totalitarianism.

(just to add, I don't know if anyone saw this article a little while back. About Trump, not this, but I can see the link:

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375)

Sorry, hopefully this should work:

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375

From the above 5 min summary of Road to Serfdom - it could be renamed as The Dangers of Majority Male Leadership.

That's a fab video. Honestly, this book should be required reading, even if you disagree with it. Will put the Gulag Archipelago as third on the list.

Ahem, and when I say required reading, I mean recommended by educators but you can obviously freely choose not to pick it up.

That "thought-reforming" list reminds me of something... Now, what could it be? Perhaps Dr Adrian Harrop could help me remember. It will be ok as it's not a biological term defined in a dictionary, or anything subversive like that.

For anyone interested in th neuroscience of thought reform I'd recommend Kathleen Taylor's book:

Brainwashing: The science of thought control (Oxford Landmark Science) www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0198798334/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_aRlRBbFNS8N1V?tag=mumsnetforum-21

hellandhairnets
That article makes some excellent points.

Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

18% of people agree with self-ID. The vast majority wish no harm to trans people, but simply do not accept the idea that people can change their sex just by declaring it so. To be honest, you can't change your actual sex even with medical intervention.

And

But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

I worry about how gender-critical people may be treated in the future. Honestly.

I know Lifton's work. The anti-women activists operate as a cult movement (totalitarianism) - hence all of the tactics OP quotes are in use - and at the heart of any cult are psychopaths wanting money and more status plus a "good" cover under which to do as they wish(to sequester people and their assets and often sexual entitlement such as to rape whatever women and children they see fit).

The money and sexual entitlement trail is key to understanding any cult leaders. The cult entraps the innocence as well as those with malevolent intentions.

What's also important is to understand how ordinary people in hierarchies are coerced to comply and /or think they are doing the right thing by staying in line - threats to be exiled/othered, from ones' community are enough to make people comply.

One of the best introductions to the usage and effect of horizontal coercion on a society is provided by Vaclav Havel in his essay Power of the Powerless:

“This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”

And what is the lie to which the regime is captive? The protocol. To keep it running, non-formal means of control need to be enacted.
...
Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth....

“Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”

The beauty of horizontal coercion is that it is so diffuse and lacking in clear responsibility.

Full essay The Power of the Powerless

18% of people agree with self-ID

That seems a lot, actually, until you consider about the same number of people think aliens built the pyramids and kidnap hillbillies to stick probes up their butts.

The number of rational people who support self-ID is probably minuscule.

My reading list is getting longer, thanks very much Aspie and Woman.

The 18% to me seems about right. Our friend Dr H has demonstrated on national television that even ostensibly rational people really buy into this stuff. What would be really interesting is breaking it down by socio-economic factors. My guess is you would find the largely white upper-middle class (the ones in power and who go to elite universities) are the ones to really support these ideas. Reportedly, Alex Drummond (trans activist pushing the bandwidth of womanhood by keeping a full beard but wearing a dress) didn't know about any of this stuff before going on a gender studies course. Now, Alex is at the forefront of spreading these (unproven, ideologically driven by Queer Theory) ideas of sex/gender to be taught in schools to kids without any form of rational or critical analysis of the material by people who should really know better. Why don't educators check things like the GIDS website or read the EA2010 for the facts instead of blindly going along with lobby groups? Because of the social pressure to get the applause for being at the forefront of what we now call "inclusivity," and the vitriol you get for thinking logically about this very complicated issue.

I mean this in all seriousness. If we cannot defend this most fundamental point (human sexual reproduction is a real phenomenon which means you have two categories of immutable biological sex) - then we are all FUCKED. Because what the hell will we do when confronted by people potentially wanting to change how we talk about other aspects of our reality? What will we do when asked about things that are actually more complicated to prove (but no less true) than the obvious existence of the basic process that gives every human life?