Part 7: The Rape of the Mind

"For the galloping lie can never be overtaken, it can only be overthrown."

There are many important lessons in the following excerpt that hardly need modernization. The tactics and strategy of totalitarian psychological warfare change very little over time it would seem. The new enemy is the same as the old. The tools by which the fundamental totalitarian processes are carried out are frequently updated, as the commercialization of technology progresses. The totalitarian obsession with the proliferation of lies — on a scale hard to fathom — is unrelenting for the purposes of the appropriately described “systematic psychological assault on mankind.”

These lies can be directed inward — propaganda operations of a host country against its own people — or directed outward — propaganda operations by one country directed against another. They can also be conducted by non-governmental organizations and can span vast amounts of time. One propaganda operation can blend smoothly into the next.

Multigenerational efforts to prolong the enslavement of particular regions or people’s is very much a concern. Whether done by religious ideologies, as is the case of fundamentalist religious groups like ISIS and similar groups, or by way of Communist or Marxist derivative ideologies — of which there are too many to name — to the would be dictator, the underlying pathology used as a cudgel for the mind matters very little.

The instilling of mass fear and paranoia is enough, in countless historical examples, to drive a society to either wartime loss or effective peacetime occupation.

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Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror

Every human communication can be either a report of straight facts or an attempt to suggest things and situations as they do not exist. Such distortion and perversion of facts strike at the core of human communication. The verbal battle against man's concept of truth and against his mind seems to be ceaseless. For example, if I can instill in eventual future enemies fear and terror and the suggestion of impending defeat, even before they are willing to fight, my battle is already half won.

The strategy of man to use a frightening mask and a loud voice to utter lies in order to manipulate friend and foe is as old as mankind. Primitive people used terror- provoking masks, magic fascination, or self-deceit as much as we use loudly spoken words to convince others or ourselves. They use their magic paints and we our ideologies. Truly, we live in an age of ads, propaganda, and publicity. But only under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes have such human habit formations mushroomed into systematic psychological assault on mankind.

The weapons the dictator uses against his own people, he may use against the outside world as well. For example, the false confessions that divert the minds of dictator's subjects from their own real problems have still another effect: they are meant (and sometimes they succeed in their aim) to terrorize the world's public. By strengthening the myth of the dictator's omnipotence, such confessions weaken man's will to resist him. If a period of peace can be used to soften up a future enemy, the totalitarian armies may be able in time of war to win a cheap and easy victory. Totalitarian psychological warfare is directed largely toward this end. It is an effort to propagandize and hypnotize the world into submission.

As far back as the early nineteenth century, Napoleon organized his Bureau de l'Opinion Publique in order to influence the thinking of the French people. But it fell to the Germans to develop the manipulation of public opinion into a huge, well organized machine. Their psychological warfare became aggressive strategy in peacetime, the so-called war between wars. It was as a result of the Nazi attack on European morale and the Nazi war of nerves against their neighbours that the other nations of the world began to organize their own psychological forces, but it was only in the second half of the war that they were able to achieve some measure of success. The Germans had a long head start.

Hitler's psychological artillery was composed primarily of the weapon of fear. He had, for example, a network of fifth columnists whose main job was to sow rumours and suspicions among the citizens of the countries against which he eventually planned to fight. The people were upset not only by the spy system itself, but by the very rumour of spies. These fifth columnists spread slogans of defeat and political confusion: "Why should France die for England?" Fear began to direct people's actions. Instead of facing the real threat of German invasion, instead of preparing for it, all of Europe shuddered at spy stories, discussed irrelevant problems, argued endlessly about scapegoats and minorities. Thus Hitler used the rampant, vague fears to becloud the real issues, and by attacking his enemies' will to fight, weakened them.

Not content with this strategic attack on the will to defend oneself, Hitler tried to paralyze Europe with the threat of terror, not only the threat of bombing, destruction, and occupation, but also the psychological threat implicit in his own boast of ruthlessness. The fear of an implacable foe makes man more willing to submit even before he has begun to fight. Hitler's criminal acts at home -- the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the mass murders, the atmosphere of terror throughout Germany - were as useful in the service of his fear-instilling propaganda machinery as they were a part of his delusions.

There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological shock. Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval. They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot - it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter- argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.

Strategic mental shocks were the instruments the Nazis used when they entered the Rhineland in 1936 and when they concluded their nonaggression pact with Russia in 1939. Stalin used the same strategy at the time of the Korean invasion in 1950 (which he directed), as did the Chinese and the North Koreans when they accused the United States of bacteriological warfare. By acting in this apparently irrational way, the totalitarians throw their logic-minded enemies into confusion. The enemy feels compelled to deny the propagandistic lies or to explain things as they really are, and these actions immediately put him in the weaker defensive position. For the galloping lie can never be overtaken, it can only be overthrown.

The technique of psychological shock has still another effect. It may so confuse the mind of the individual citizen that he ceases to make his own evaluations and begins to lean passively on the opinions of others. Hitler's destruction of Warsaw and Rotterdam - after the armistice in 1940, a complete violation of international law - immobilized France and shook the other democratic nations. Being in a paralysis of moral indignation, they became psychologically ill-equipped to deal with the Nazi horrors.

Just as the technological advances of the modern world have refined and perfected the weapons of physical warfare, so the advance in man's understanding of the manipulation of public opinion have enabled him to refine and perfect the weapons of psychological warfare.

Read it, then read it again. This book — written in 1956 — describes the phenomenon presented by the modern day sect of Branch Covidians to a T. It describes those who, after being utterly terrified, give up before a fight. And it explains the manifestation of ‘outsourced thinking’ whereby the individual stops making their “own evaluations and begins to lean passively on the opinions of others.”

Where else have we heard that story? Perhaps with respect to untested genetic serums being injected into the arms of billions of fearful people, without so much as an argument.

It’s gonna get way worse.