Book Review

Book Review

Brainwashing

by Edward Hunter

          In mid-century America, a publishing house called Pyramid Books mass produced lowbrow novels for mainstream public consumption. The subject matters of their pulp paperbacks usually revolved around action and adventure stories, westerns, thrillers, war stories, and detective fiction. One of their more unusual titles was a supposedly a journalistic account of communist P.O.W. camps during the Korean War called Brainwashing. Its author, Edward Hunter, claimed that communists had developed a powerful technique of mind control which they used to turn ordinary citizens into robots who were unquestioningly subservient to the state apparatus. But Brainwashing is not a work of scholarship nor is it a product of scientific inquiry. Its publication by a cheap book company churning out fluff literature for people of average intelligence and mediocre tastes should be a good indication of what it really is.

     An interesting man in his own right, Edward Hunter was no psychiatrist not was he a sociologist or even a political scientist. He was an OSS and CIA agent who worked for the for propaganda bureaus of those governmental branches. He oversaw an impressive archive of communist propaganda from the USSR and China. He was also in charge of creating and disseminating propaganda pushing America as the greatest and most truthful of all nations, a messianic titan ordained by God to save the world from anything un-American, a harbinger of truth that all nations must bow down and submit to or else be condemned to the hell of being on the wrong side of history. Hunter coined the term “brainwashing” and used it to explain why people, who otherwise would be good, would choose to take sides with those the American government hates. Some of these people were citizens of communist countries and some of them were American soldiers who gave up sensitive military secrets to communist officials and sometimes even renounced their American citizenship.

     Hunter starts off this book by presenting it as a scientific history of mind control. The great discovery of the neurological scientist Ivan Pavlov is described; you know the one where he rings a bell and gives the dog food and watches as it starts to drool; later ring the bell but in the absence of the food and the dog still drools. Transfer this practice to the human population and you have a powerful formula for controlling the masses of humanity, right? Hunter claims that Pavlov went on to secretly refine this technique and gave the results to Nikolai Lenin, a claim that has since been debunked by legitimate historians.

     The bulk of Brainwashing consists of anecdotal evidence or should we say “case studies”? Probably not because Edward Hunter was not enough of a scientist to be able to properly use the concept of case studies in the writing of a research paper. Each sleep-inducing account is written in a dull, dry prose of short declarative sentences that drone on and on. The soldiers all tell stories about life in Pak’s Palace, the military’s name for the P.O.W. camps located in North Korea. A perceptive reader might quickly notice that their descriptions of brainwashing techniques are not only minimal but also vague, muddled, and unclear. Most of what they say involves things they do to amuse themselves, often at their captors’ expense, descriptions of the miseries of their prison, self-criticism sessions, and torture.

     Using canned responses, the soldiers all answer questions about how they resisted brainwashing and survived the ordeal. Without variation, their explanations come down to two stock answers: religious faith and patriotism. Ring a bell and the dog starts to drool. Invoke the sacred ideals of God and country and any human will feel the strength and courage to survive any trial. Are the emotional responses to faith and patriotism conditioned reflexes? Pavlovian psychiatrists would say yes. Does America brainwash American citizens the way communists brainwash Soviet and Chinese citizens? The communists would say yes. But Hunter claims that communists always lie, are never capable of telling the truth; only Americans tell the truth so when communists condition their citizens it is mind control and when Americans do the same it is not. Black is black and white is white; there are no other colors and there are no shades of grey. Hunter claims the shades of grey are for weaklings and liberals who are no different from communists or anything else that does not fall into lockstep with the American way. You don’t want to be a weakling or a liberal, do you? Jump on the bandwagon, take your place in line, and conform to what the American authorities say you should be, schmuck.

     If you think the testimony from those G.I.’s is not enough, some clinical analysis is provided by the great Dr. Leo Freedom. Yeah right. And you might be surprised to learn that Dr. Freedom has a brother named Captain America. I mean, if you are just going to make stuff up at least try to make it believable. In the end, the doctor’s analysis is little more than a reiteration of everything the soldier’s supposedly said in their descriptions of the P.O.W. camps, albeit in slightly altered language. He does not cite any peer-reviewed research, he uses no technical jargon, refers to no statistics, and his dialogue is no more sophisticated than that of a junior high school biology teacher. Dr. Freedom was probably never even a real person. Of course, he ends his explication by explaining the importance of religion and patriotism when it comes to resisting brainwashing. One of the indoctrination techniques mentioned by Hunter is the repetition of ideas to the point where they become an unquestionable part of a man’s mind. It’s kind of like a catechism, praying before a meal, or recitations of the Lord’s Prayer which they teach to children. But religion is true and communism isn’t so when the church conditions the minds of its sheep (the Lord is my shepherd so believe what we tell you to believe, you little piece of mutton) it is for the common good but when the communists do the same it is brainwashing.

     One point that Hunter makes about communist rhetoric is that they never offer proof for any of their claims. Their method of argumentation involves stating a premise, making some brief comments on it, then restating the premise. But this is also how Dr. Freedom states his case in the chapter allotted to him. In fact, Hunter does the same when he makes his own commentaries on brainwashing techniques. For example, he says that religious faith is necessary for resisting mind control with the explanation that having a belief in a higher purpose makes torture bearable and that is why we should all be religious. He does say that prayer helps to focus the mind on something other than the pain but that is the most explanation he gives. In the end we should all be religious because that is the right thing to do. He uses the same circular logic that he accuses the communists of using. If you read carefully, you might notice that Hunter often uses the same conditioning and rhetorical strategies that he claims are brainwashing techniques. You can accuse him of being a hypocrite but he probably was something worse; he knew how to manipulate emotions and knew most readers will just swallow everything he says without skepticism. He would piss in your face and tell you it’s raining because he’d assume you are too gullible and submissive to challenge him on the matter.

     In fact, Brainwashing is not actually a book about emptying the contents of a person’s mind and replacing them with what the communists want them to think. The scenarios described by the soldiers are all scenes of torture. The prisoners are given insufficient food rations, denied medical treatments, subjected to violence and verbal abuse, put into solitary confinement, questioned endlessly, force to make false confessions, rewarded for good behavior and punished for disobedience. This book is really about interrogation methods used by intelligence agents to learn military secrets from their captives. Individuals subjected to cruelty will often say anything their interrogator wants to hear in order to make their suffering stop. Mind control has little or nothing to do with what Edward Hunter is writing about. The interrogation techniques he describes are the same ones used by American intelligence agents and law enforcement officials anyhow. But certainly if the people on our side do it, it is not a problem.

     To make matters worse, at the time this book was published the CIA had already initiated their MK-ULTRA program. Although Hunter’s concept of brainwashing was little more than a propaganda ruse, the intelligence agency was fascinated with the idea of mind manipulation. Therefore they began a two decades long program exploring the possibilities of brainwashing, not because they wanted to combat it but because they wanted to develop a powerful coercion system of their own. They experimented with control techniques involving hallucinogenic drugs, truth serums, electro-shock therapy, hypnosis, and violence. It is as if Hunter’s book was written to say, “Hey look at what those commies are doing over there. We are the good guys. We would never do anything like that, would we?” Edward Hunter was the type of old-time grifter would direct your attention to a crime being committed in the distance while he slides your wallet out of your pocket, empties it of its contents, and slides it back in without you ever noticing it. He was the kind of conman who would forcibly anally rape you and then convince you to see a therapist because he just proved you are gay.

Time has not been kind to theorists of brainwashing. Neuroscientists and psychiatrists have dismissed it. Hypnotism is possibly a pseudoscience. Mass hypnosis has been relegated to the realm of conspiracy theory kooks. Mind control is the content of science fiction and for anyone smarter than one of Pavlov’s drooling dogs it is not hard to see that it is an oversimplification, a term used to describe the practices and beliefs of people who differ radically from your own point of view. It is too complicated for some to grasp the idea that Asian or Russian people are different from Americans because we live in geographically distinct regions of the world. We grow up in different cultures, speak different languages, and are the products of different histories. When Chinese or Korean communists give evasive answers to questions, speak indirectly, drop hints, or use face-saving behavior, it is not because they are sneaky or dishonest; it is because those are ordinary communication styles for Asian people and other cultures that are defined as “high-context” by sociologists. This reality is too complex for many people to understand so it is easier to say they have been brainwashed and leave it at that. Then again, there are times when most humans do seem to be little more than trained animals.

     Edward Hunter’s Brainwashing is a work of propaganda. The Chinese communists are always ugly, vicious, and tricky but never smart enough to see that the morally upright Americans are always outwitting them. Stereotyping, demonizing, and vilifying the enemy is a common propaganda technique, one that is abundant in the pages of this book. At one point the author address the moral conflict some soldiers might feel about lying to their interrogators to protect American military information. He says it is morally acceptable because deceit is a necessary part of war. He deliberately neglects to mention that the authorities’ deceit of the people on their own side is a part of that equation. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the leaders of your own country are more righteous than the leaders of any other country because the are not. The style may be different but the result is the same. You can choose to be a dupe for communists or you can choose to be a dupe for capitalists but either way you are nothing more than a dupe in the end.

     Brainwashing is, however, an interesting sample of Cold War propaganda. It is also an interesting window into the mindset of the American government. You can use it to familiarize yourself with propaganda techniques and be all the wiser in the end. Poke holes in Hunter’s flimsy theories and watch this house of cards collapse.

Hunter, Edward. Brainwashing. Pyramid Books, New York: 1956.