Brainwashing Is Bunk but Some People Are Gullible Fools

By Aristotle’s Sausage

The term “brainwashing” was invented by journalist Edward Hunter in September 1950 for an article in the Miami Daily News.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-brainwashing-and-how-it-shaped-america-180963400/

Brainwashing doesn’t exist. It’s a fable.

It was a Cold War invention, useful for “explaining” how those Red Chinese devils could spread their ideology. Movies like The Manchurian Candidate helped spread the notion of “brainwashing”.

he Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir, psychological political thriller about the Cold War and sleeper agents. The film was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, and co-star Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.[4] The plot centers on Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, part of a prominent political family. Shaw is brainwashed by communists after his Army platoon is captured. He returns to civilian life in the United States, where he becomes an unwitting assassin in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and overthrow the U.S. government.

he Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. The plot centers on Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, who is “brainwashed” by communists after his Army platoon is captured. He returns to civilian life in the United States, where he becomes an unwitting assassin in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and overthrow the U.S. government.

It remains a popular belief, useful for explaining away one’s foolish choices such as joining a cult, getting branded with some asshole’s initials, etc. That way, you’re a victim, instead of a fool.

While it sounds extremely cruel to brand someone without anesthesia, it is in fact how all branding is done – since people who brand – and there are hundreds in the USA – normally are not legally able to administer anesthesia. As stupid as branding [or tattooing] may be to some people, branding and tattoo artists can do their marking of customers' bodies without any qualifications and obviously without anesthesia.

Many of the women who were branded with his initials were considered victims of Keith Raniere at his trial.

The term “brainwashing” is now often replaced with updated ones like “adult grooming” and “gaslighting”. They mean the same thing though.

Short of a gun to your head, nobody can make you do anything. A lot of people can be convinced to do stupid and damaging things. Some a lot easier than others.

There are plenty of people within Nxivm, and DOS, who didn’t go along. Who said “screw this” and left. Those people had strength of character. They had morals and courage.

Nxivm community group pictures

Many others collaborated, some to the bitter end. I have no respect and little sympathy for collaborators.

It was the early whistleblowers I respect. People like Frank Parlato and Jessica Joan.

Allison Mack used 'brainwashing' as one of her primary arguments for leniency.

Allison Mack used ‘brainwashing’ as one of her primary arguments for leniency.

Mack Was Not Brainwashed

Allison Mack isn’t crazy. She’s ambitious, self-centered, and vaguely dissatisfied with her life. She’s not too bright, has a limited attention span, has no morals and has unreasonable expectations of what life owes her. Nothing will ever be enough for her. She thinks she’s special and she’s anything but.

In other words, she’s like most people in LA.

Theodore John Kaczynski (/kəˈzɪnski/ kə-ZIN-skee; born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber (/ˈjuːnəbɒmər/), is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor.[3][4] He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive life.[5] Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment. He issued a social critique opposing industrialization and advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism.[6] Kaczynski's critiques of civilization bear some similarities to anarcho-primitivism, but Kaczynski rejected and criticized anarcho-primitivist views.[7][8][9] In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills to become self-sufficient. He witnessed the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin and concluded that living in nature was becoming impossible, resolving to fight industrialization and its destruction of nature. He used terrorism to fight this industrialization, beginning his bombing campaign in 1978. In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times and promised to "desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his essay Industrial Society and Its Future, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require mass organization.[10] Kaczynski was the subject of the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation up to that point.[11] The FBI used the case identifier UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) to refer to his case before his identity was known, which resulted in the media naming him the "Unabomber". The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno pushed for the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, which appeared in The Washington Post in September 1995. Upon reading the essay, Kaczynski's brother David recognized the prose style and reported his suspicions to the FBI. After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski—maintaining that he was sane—tried and failed to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wanted him to plead insanity to avoid the death penalty. In 1998, a plea bargain was reached under which he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

Theodore John Kaczynski, 79, also known as the Unabomber, killed three people and injured 23 others in a bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment.  After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski—maintaining that he was sane—tried and failed to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wanted him to plead insanity to avoid the death penalty. In 1998, a plea bargain was reached under which he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. He is currently residing at the Supermax facility in Florence Colorado.

That Ted Kaczynski was subject to some psychological experiments and would later become the Unabomber does not prove that the experiments made him the Unabomber. This is confusing correlation with causation.

That “b” follows “a” does not prove that “a” caused “b”.

Now if a higher than a random number of those experimented-upon Harvard students became violent crazies, that would be evidence. As it stands, the PT article presents nothing more than an interesting anecdote.

As the article points out, the CIA and military were very interested in brainwashing. They, and a lot of psychologists, believed brainwashing was possible. They also experimented with psychoactive drugs including LSD. It was that research that established that brainwashing is not possible. And while it’s certainly possible to fry your brain on LSD, it sure ain’t the route to making an army of zombie super soldiers.

The Army intensively studied indoctrination too. What they found is that some people can be pressured into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. This is the fallback position taken by the believers in high control group manipulation, “gaslighting”, etc.

Isolate people and harangue them long enough, and you can convince some of them of all sorts of nonsense.

However, all this means is that some people are gullible fools.

Critics of Keith Raniere suggested he did more than lead the thinking of his followers but he brainwashed them. Here is an artist's depiction of Raniere carefully drying the brains of three of his followers after having washed them and prior to his returning them to their heads.,

Artist’s conception of Keith Raniere sequestering the brains of Allison Mack [orange brain] Nancy Salzman [gold brain], Lauren Salzman [green brain] in order to brainwash them