Author: Cynthia Chung Via Strategic Culture Foundation
“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.” – William Sargant “ Battle for the Mind”
It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.
If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.
However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?
The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1). We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.
We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, the majority choose not to…
It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.
What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”
Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted.
In fact, many are probably not fully aware that presently there is a battle waging for who will “control the past” in a manner that is closely resembling a form of “memory wipe”.
There is an especial focus to rewrite the history of WWII at this very moment. These revisionists are attempting to rewrite this history since there lies the root from which today’s fascism stems.
Whoever understands this period of history understands today’s fascism.
The “experts” say that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23rd 1939 is supposedly “proof” that Stalin supported Hitler’s fascist agenda, and thus the veneer of the Soviet Union being the greatest defender against fascism during WWII is a sham.
However, what is left out of this discussion every time, is that in the previous year, the UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed an appeasement deal with Hitler on September 30th 1938, known as the Munich Agreement (aka the Munich Betrayal), where Hitler demanded and promptly received the annexation of Czech border areas, known as the Sudetenland annexation. It had thus become official British policy to allow Hitler’s expansion of German territory relatively unchecked as part of the “appeasement”.
The “logic” behind it was that Britain would give what Hitler demanded in hopes of “appeasing” his imperial “appetites” and thus avoid further conflict. That is, by giving Hitler more power, it would somehow or other, convince him not to desire more…at least the plan apparently looked good on paper.
Then there is the whole embarrassing affair with the Bank of England and Bank of International Settlements, to which the BoE Governor Montague Norman allowed for the direct transfer of money to Hitler, however, not with England’s own money but rather 5.6 million pounds worth of gold owned by the National Bank of Czechoslovakia! Well, you certainly didn’t think that England would use her own money?
And let us not forget, the Union Banking Corporation, with founding member and director Prescott Bush also caught in the funding of Hitler before and during WWII, and on Oct 20th, 1942 its bank assets were seized under the “U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act” and “Executive Order 9095”.
.... Such “high society” men are used to pulling on strings, they muse themselves as chess masters, yet one never quite knows which side they are playing…
. And thus, we find ourselves increasingly in the unsettling position of a Winston. In Orwell’s “1984”, there are three main super states in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that are in one combination or another constantly at war with each other and have been so for the last 25 years.
. In the case of Winston, he has only known Oceania (the British commonwealths and U.S.), he knows essentially nothing of either Eurasia or Eastasia, except that sometimes Oceania is at war with Eurasia and sometimes it is at war with Eastasia. In fact, even this memory, that the enemy is not constant, is not something Winston is supposed to recollect or acknowledge. Just by doing this very thing, he is committing a “thoughtcrime”.
. Winston’s experience begs the questions, if one were born into a fascist, totalitarian state would they know it? Of course, the state itself would not describe itself as such. How would you be able to compare your “freedom” with the “oppression” of the enemy, when all you were given was what the state chose to give to you?
. How do you know that what has come to shape your convictions, your beliefs, your fears really belong to you, and were not placed there by another?.
. We are all very sensitive to this unsettling question because ironically, that has also been placed in us. It was what started this whole business of “mind control”, you see, it had to be done…for our “protection”.
The Battle for Your Mind
“He whom the gods wish to destroy, they first of all drive mad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Masque of Pandora”
William Sargant was a British psychiatrist and, one could say, effectively the Father of “mind control” in the West, with connections to British Intelligence and the Tavistock Institute, which would influence the CIA and American military via the program MK Ultra. Sargant was also an advisor for Ewen Cameron’s LSD “blank slate” work at McGill University, funded by the CIA.
Sargant accounts for his reason in studying and using forms of “mind control” on his patients, which were primarily British soldiers that were sent back from the battlefield during WWII with various forms of “psychosis”, as the only way to rehabilitate extreme forms of PTSD.
.The other reason, was because the Soviets had apparently become “experts” in the field, and out of a need for national security, the British would thus in turn have to become experts as well…as a matter of self-defence of course............ the issue of “free will” was getting in the way.
Sargant found that a falsely implanted memory could help induce abnormal stress leading to emotional exhaustion and physical breakdown to invoke “suggestibility”. That is, one didn’t even need to have a “real stress” but an “imagined stress” would work just as effectively.
The Art of Doublethink
“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” - George Orwell’s “1984” (Big Brother Mantra)
Thus what Sargant found, and what Orwell astutely identified, was that the most reliable form of mind control was found to be in the art of “doublethink”, that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites. Full Article @ Strategic Culture Foundation
Gaslighting and Brainwashing
Disagree and you are Insane [Or racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, white supremacist .....
"Do not imagine that you will save yourself... however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. .... Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves." [Orwell - 1984] Read More
Yea, Though I Walk Through The Uncanny Valley
You are being gaslit You are on the business end of a casual conspiracy of complicity.
No, you’re not crazy. They just want you to feel that way.
There is a special flavor of cognitive dissonance experienced by those confronted with the dawning of a collectivist utopia. It’s found in the twilight between luminescent NuThink, and the benighted remainders of objective reality to which we plebs still cling so bitterly. Read More
