Emmanuel Goldstein
Patron
I have recently started reading "Brain-Washing in Red China" by Edward Hunter, since the copyright has expired it is available for free on Archive.org; https://archive.org/details/Brain-Washing_in_Red_China_Edward_Hunter
His follow-up work "Brainwashing; the story of men who defied it" is also on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/brainwashingstor00huntrich
The first reviewer on Archive.org says it all:
"i knew nothing of this history, shocking stuff. The basic premise explains how communism as a philosophy and regime was actually principally interested in turning people into mind controlled slaves by inverting the science of psychiatry, so that instead of using it to heal mental illness, was used to create it, which was the process that became known in communist block countries as "brainwashing", aka "corticovisceral psychiatry" and when used with malevolent intent as in communism, involved breaking a persons capacity for self autonomy, ability to determine fact from fiction, right from wrong, freedom from slavery, turning the mind bitter and hateful, all to turn people into mindless robots willing to think and do anything the authority wants"
And when you now think "hmmm... sounds familar... where have I seen this before?", I can only say, wait till you actually read the books!
I already spoke about it a bit in the thread about 1984, but I feel Brainwashing in Red China might be even more relevant so I felt it deserved its own thread and I also wanna give you an excerpt that I felt relevant (which doesn't mean the rest of the book is any less relevant)
I admit that it is a long exerpt, but TRUST ME, IT IS ABSOLUTELY WORTH READING:
"There were about 8,500 students at the North China Peo-
ple’s Revolutionary University when Chi arrived. Forty-six
wooden, two-story barracks, each divided into twenty-four
rooms, covered an area three miles in circumference. Of
this area seven acres were parade grounds, used now in place
of an auditorium. The barracks had been a training center for
the Japanese and later for Gen. Fu Tse-yi’s 207th Regiment.
The gun emplacements were still there.
When the truckload of transferred students reached the
gates of the Revolutionary University, it was greeted by stu-
dents who themselves had arrived only the previous week.
They came out beating drums, shouting slogans, and doing
the yang ko — the short, prancing folk dance based on the
way a coolie walks while carrying a heavy load on his shoul-
ders — ^which the Communist Party has made its dance sym-
bol. They surrounded the truck and walked "with it through
the gate. The escort brought water for the parched anivals
and helped them carry their baggage inside. The new stu-
dents were received like heroes and taken to a bathhouse
inside one of the barracks to bathe in water that happened
to be warm that day and to rest.
Older students and party members were waiting ceremo-
niously at the entrance to welcome the newcomers and to ask
them if they were willing to enter the Revolutionary Univer-
sity. The arrivals just as ceremoniously said that of course
they were glad to come, for certainly they would be better
taught here than anywhere else. Wasn’t it, after all, operated
by the Communist Party itself?
“With their help, we told the older students, we were sure
we would all become Communist Party members in a short
time,” Chi recalled. ‘We were given lunch at one-thirty, an
unexpectedly good lunch with manto, a popular dish of meat
and dumplings. ‘We’re lucky you came,’ one of the older stu-
dents said. ‘This isn’t the usual food. Life is very hard in the
university. Be prepared for it.'
“A group of students then showed us about the university
and took us for a walk around the campus. They escorted us
to the exquisite Summer Palace nearby, where the Dowager
Empress used to enjoy herself. When we returned at about six
in the evening, we sat down to the same good food and then
saw a movie. It was about the May Day parade in Soviet
Russia. We went to bed about nine-thirty.
“When we woke up the next morning, we were shown
where to wash at wells outside. Then we went to breakfast.
We had breakfast every morning that first week, but after
that no more. From then on we had only two meals a day. Af-
ter breakfast we were divided into classes and groups. I was
put in the second department, second class, fourth group.”
The students were divided among four departments; one
for students sent from other universities for ideological reform;
another for intelligence personnel of the Military Revolution-
ary Committee of the Communist army; a third for members
of the various liberal groups and parties (that these had been
anti-Kuomintang and had cooperated with the Reds made no
difference); and a fourth department for Party members ac-
cused of bungling their tasks or doing poor work. There was a
fifth department, too, directly under the principal, called the
Study Department. However, it wasn’t for study hy the stu-
dents but for study of the students — of their thoughts. Each of
the four departments was divided into ten classes and each
class into nine groups of twenty-three students. The faculty
numbered four hundred and fifty, including about one hun-
dred and twenty young women. The men were from twenty-
eight to forty years old and the women between twenty-three
and twenty-eight. One faculty member was assigned to each
group but not as a professor or even a teacher. He was always
a Party member who brought his own stool and sat aside lis-
tening and taking notes, not intervening except to settle points
in the discussion. Actually he was not even a faculty
member, but a Party member who had slipped up somewhere
in the past and was himself deemed in need of a measure of
mind reform. While indoctrinating others, he reaffirmed and
strengthened his own indoctrination.
Chi, the interpreter, and I had quite a discussion on how to
class this individual. Commissar was correct but vague. He
was more a moderator than a teacher but had greater author-
ity than a moderator.
“How did the students refer to him when they talked
among themselves?” I asked, expecting this to settle the ques-
tion.
“When we spoke about him among ourselves, we always
referred to him simply as Comrade, or as the able Party mem-
ber,” Chi informed me. This was obviously one of those safe
compromises which evade the issue. Comrade was the term
used in referring to anyone in Red China, from Mao Tse-
tung, who headed the government, to the farmer in the field.
Able Party member was also a vague term, but there were
certain specific meanings to it that gave it significance. The
term able Party member is used quite generally. He can be
the political commissar of an army detachment, a class leader,
or he can fulfill any of the innumerable watchdog posts with
which Communist Party members are entrusted.
About twenty students were assigned to a room in which
everyone slept on the floor. Each student was given a small
stool on which he put his name and which he carried with
him. Each brought his own blanket, but was given about
five pounds of straw to help keep warm in the winter, for
it gets bitingly cold in North China. Every room had a small
coal stove, but only one catty (1/3 pounds) of coal was al-
lotted each day, and this had to be used up the same day and
not saved for a colder period. Conserving coal was consid-
ered the same as creating private property. ‘We shivered in
those rooms, and our hands and feet almost froze,” Chi
said.
His follow-up work "Brainwashing; the story of men who defied it" is also on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/brainwashingstor00huntrich
The first reviewer on Archive.org says it all:
"i knew nothing of this history, shocking stuff. The basic premise explains how communism as a philosophy and regime was actually principally interested in turning people into mind controlled slaves by inverting the science of psychiatry, so that instead of using it to heal mental illness, was used to create it, which was the process that became known in communist block countries as "brainwashing", aka "corticovisceral psychiatry" and when used with malevolent intent as in communism, involved breaking a persons capacity for self autonomy, ability to determine fact from fiction, right from wrong, freedom from slavery, turning the mind bitter and hateful, all to turn people into mindless robots willing to think and do anything the authority wants"
And when you now think "hmmm... sounds familar... where have I seen this before?", I can only say, wait till you actually read the books!
I already spoke about it a bit in the thread about 1984, but I feel Brainwashing in Red China might be even more relevant so I felt it deserved its own thread and I also wanna give you an excerpt that I felt relevant (which doesn't mean the rest of the book is any less relevant)
I admit that it is a long exerpt, but TRUST ME, IT IS ABSOLUTELY WORTH READING:
"There were about 8,500 students at the North China Peo-
ple’s Revolutionary University when Chi arrived. Forty-six
wooden, two-story barracks, each divided into twenty-four
rooms, covered an area three miles in circumference. Of
this area seven acres were parade grounds, used now in place
of an auditorium. The barracks had been a training center for
the Japanese and later for Gen. Fu Tse-yi’s 207th Regiment.
The gun emplacements were still there.
When the truckload of transferred students reached the
gates of the Revolutionary University, it was greeted by stu-
dents who themselves had arrived only the previous week.
They came out beating drums, shouting slogans, and doing
the yang ko — the short, prancing folk dance based on the
way a coolie walks while carrying a heavy load on his shoul-
ders — ^which the Communist Party has made its dance sym-
bol. They surrounded the truck and walked "with it through
the gate. The escort brought water for the parched anivals
and helped them carry their baggage inside. The new stu-
dents were received like heroes and taken to a bathhouse
inside one of the barracks to bathe in water that happened
to be warm that day and to rest.
Older students and party members were waiting ceremo-
niously at the entrance to welcome the newcomers and to ask
them if they were willing to enter the Revolutionary Univer-
sity. The arrivals just as ceremoniously said that of course
they were glad to come, for certainly they would be better
taught here than anywhere else. Wasn’t it, after all, operated
by the Communist Party itself?
“With their help, we told the older students, we were sure
we would all become Communist Party members in a short
time,” Chi recalled. ‘We were given lunch at one-thirty, an
unexpectedly good lunch with manto, a popular dish of meat
and dumplings. ‘We’re lucky you came,’ one of the older stu-
dents said. ‘This isn’t the usual food. Life is very hard in the
university. Be prepared for it.'
“A group of students then showed us about the university
and took us for a walk around the campus. They escorted us
to the exquisite Summer Palace nearby, where the Dowager
Empress used to enjoy herself. When we returned at about six
in the evening, we sat down to the same good food and then
saw a movie. It was about the May Day parade in Soviet
Russia. We went to bed about nine-thirty.
“When we woke up the next morning, we were shown
where to wash at wells outside. Then we went to breakfast.
We had breakfast every morning that first week, but after
that no more. From then on we had only two meals a day. Af-
ter breakfast we were divided into classes and groups. I was
put in the second department, second class, fourth group.”
The students were divided among four departments; one
for students sent from other universities for ideological reform;
another for intelligence personnel of the Military Revolution-
ary Committee of the Communist army; a third for members
of the various liberal groups and parties (that these had been
anti-Kuomintang and had cooperated with the Reds made no
difference); and a fourth department for Party members ac-
cused of bungling their tasks or doing poor work. There was a
fifth department, too, directly under the principal, called the
Study Department. However, it wasn’t for study hy the stu-
dents but for study of the students — of their thoughts. Each of
the four departments was divided into ten classes and each
class into nine groups of twenty-three students. The faculty
numbered four hundred and fifty, including about one hun-
dred and twenty young women. The men were from twenty-
eight to forty years old and the women between twenty-three
and twenty-eight. One faculty member was assigned to each
group but not as a professor or even a teacher. He was always
a Party member who brought his own stool and sat aside lis-
tening and taking notes, not intervening except to settle points
in the discussion. Actually he was not even a faculty
member, but a Party member who had slipped up somewhere
in the past and was himself deemed in need of a measure of
mind reform. While indoctrinating others, he reaffirmed and
strengthened his own indoctrination.
Chi, the interpreter, and I had quite a discussion on how to
class this individual. Commissar was correct but vague. He
was more a moderator than a teacher but had greater author-
ity than a moderator.
“How did the students refer to him when they talked
among themselves?” I asked, expecting this to settle the ques-
tion.
“When we spoke about him among ourselves, we always
referred to him simply as Comrade, or as the able Party mem-
ber,” Chi informed me. This was obviously one of those safe
compromises which evade the issue. Comrade was the term
used in referring to anyone in Red China, from Mao Tse-
tung, who headed the government, to the farmer in the field.
Able Party member was also a vague term, but there were
certain specific meanings to it that gave it significance. The
term able Party member is used quite generally. He can be
the political commissar of an army detachment, a class leader,
or he can fulfill any of the innumerable watchdog posts with
which Communist Party members are entrusted.
About twenty students were assigned to a room in which
everyone slept on the floor. Each student was given a small
stool on which he put his name and which he carried with
him. Each brought his own blanket, but was given about
five pounds of straw to help keep warm in the winter, for
it gets bitingly cold in North China. Every room had a small
coal stove, but only one catty (1/3 pounds) of coal was al-
lotted each day, and this had to be used up the same day and
not saved for a colder period. Conserving coal was consid-
ered the same as creating private property. ‘We shivered in
those rooms, and our hands and feet almost froze,” Chi
said.