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Brainwashing; the story of men who defied it by Edward Hunter

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.
 
“Meals soon became routine— two a day— always a plate
of vegetables and Chinese millet without any
tea. We drank only well water, which we boiled. Everv two
weeks we had a meat course, two ounces of meat each. We
were not allowed to buy anything even if we had the money.
That was considered the same as capitalism. A few who
thought they were underfed bought eggs in the neighborhood,
but were criticized for having bourgeois ideas of enjoyment.
So they stopped those small purchases. Many of us became
ill, mostly with stomach troubles and coughs. There was a
doctor, but he seemed to know little about medicine.”

The Revolutionary University was directly under the
Party’s North China Department. The principal was Liu
Len-tao, a member of the Central Committee of the Political
Department of the Party. A graduate of the Yenan Anti-
Japanese University, he was fat, a six-footer, and had been a
guerrilla in Shansi Province during the anti-Japanese war-
fare. The only professor was the writer Ai Tze-chi, the lead-
ing political philosopher of the Communist Party and its rec-
ognized authority on the indoctrination movement. He came
only once a week, usually on Tuesday, when he spoke length-
ily to the entire student body gathered on the open parade
ground. Everyone brought his own stool. Ai spoke before a
microphone, and four loudspeakers broadcast his words. The
lecture was often broadcast to learning groups elsewhere.

When Chi’s group was formed, its leader ceremoniously
suggested that if anyone suffered any inconvenience in the
university or had any complaint whatsoever he should in-
form him of it. Many students, he explained, were not used
to the type of training they would get. The students replied,
just as ceremoniously, that they hoped he would help them
follow the same hard life he led. The first morning, after in-
troductions all around, there was a brief free talk in the
group, just a chat, with no organized discussion.

“Our actual studies began that day at ten in the morning,
when the whole student body went out to the parade ground
where Ai Tze-chi gave us a lecture entitled ‘Labor Creates
the World.’ He told us that our ancestors were animals and
that we must never forget our lowly origin. We could no
longer be parasites; we must undergo a hard life and help la-
bor advance. He talked for seven hours straight.

“We sat on our stools and took plenty of notes. There was
nothing to drink or eat, and though we felt very weary we had
to take copious notes, because we knew that after the lecture
each group would spend the rest of the week discussing the
lecture, and we had to prove that we had listened to it very
carefully.

“When the lecture was over we checked up on each other’s
notes to see if we had missed any points. We were sup-
posed to read them over three times and to be sure that we
had grasped the theme of the lecture. We were supposed to
ask ourselves what the speaker wanted us to extract from his
mind. When we had any doubts about his ideas, or when
there seemed to be some contradictions, we were supposed to
raise those questions in our group discussions. This was one of
the main purposes of the discussions. Heated arguments often
ensued over the exact meaning of some particular phrase.”

Ai’s lectures always lasted from four to seven hours. He
gave a nine- week course on these subjects: “Labor Creates
the World”; “Idea Formation and Class Property”; “The Class
Foundation”; “Internationalism”; ‘The History of the Chi-
nese Communist Party”; “The History of the Chinese Revo-
lution”; “Modem Chinese History”; and “A Brief History
of the Imperialist Invasion of China.”

A number of students in their first discussion said they
doubted Ai’s statement that “existing matter determined
thought.” The group leader said these doubts were absurd.
“The reason we fly is not that we have planes,” one student
persisted. “We made planes so that we could fly.” The leader
said, “No, the airplane had to come from some form and not
from nothing. What, then? Man saw birds fly, from which he
got the idea he might fly himself, and so he built an airplane.”

A student said that this was not the same thing, because
airplanes aren't made like birds, with animal organs, but out
of engines and machine parts. “An engine is the invention of
a human being, which proves that labor can create anything,”
the leader retorted.

He then ended the discussion with the smiling remark, “If
you don’t believe that labor creates the world, then we’ll make
an experiment, right out in the open fields.”

FIELD EXPERIENCE
The group found out what was meant by a field experiment
the very next morning. All the groups found out. Each was
given a small plot of land to farm. Production contests were
started at once and continued for two and a half days. Then,
after half a day of rest, the farm work was resumed on a new
schedule that went on unchanged for three months. Field
work took place daily from ten in the morning to one in the
afternoon. Farm labor consumed a third of the entire uni-
versity program.

In a production contest Chi’s group won second prize, a
pennant with the words “Labor Model.” First prize was a
pennant reading “Mao Tse-tung’s Good Students.” They
were hung in the classrooms and could not be taken away. The
crops were mainly spinach and cabbage, the mainstay of the
university meals. Some students became ill from overwork,
and others hurt their hands or legs. "Henceforth you will un-
derstand the sufferings of the farming class,” they were told.

Two slogans were posted: "Every grain of cooked rice,
every morsel of rice gruel, is the blood and sweat of the peo-
ple”; and, "When you drink water, think of its origin; don’t
forget the farmer.” The latter is a materialist version of the
old Chinese maxim, "When drinking water, remember its
source.”

Students who belonged to the Communist Party kept their
affiliation secret during the first two months of the course in
order to obtain information on the background and ideas of
the other students. "I couldn’t talk frankly to my schoolmates,
so I developed no special friendships,” Chi said. "Nobody
dared say what was in his mind for fear that a fellow student
would report it to the university heads. Indeed, such dis-
closures were part of the requirements and were encouraged
as part of the university’s self-criticism program. The whole
course was arranged so as to induce a student to reveal his
deepest feelings and exact reactions.

"Real friendship could not grow up under such circum-
stances. All intimacy was artificial, with a calculated pur-
pose. You could sense it in the atmosphere. Many students
avoided me, too, because the news had spread that I had
raised the Dairen and Port Arthur question at Tsing Hua.

"Our entire course was for the sole purpose of making us
capable of being pure and reliable Communist Party mem-
bers,’ who could be trusted to remain unflinchingly loyal to
the Party under any and all circumstances and in any en-
vironment.

"Even the students in the intelligence group received no
technical training. They, too, were in the university just to
‘reform their thoughts’ and to form definitive ‘trustworthy
thoughts.’ But their ‘thoughts’ must not interfere with their
dependability under all circumstances. This was regarded as
more important than technical training.

“After returning from field work, we usually had to write
a report on it. The university wasn’t interested in technical
details, such as how best to sow seeds, to water and fertilize,
or till and weed, but rather in our personal feelings while at
work and our attitude toward labor. We had no textbooks.
Our textbooks were supposed to be our notebooks, which we
crowded with notes. This was where we got the material for
our group discussions.”

When fall came the students were instructed to prepare
for winter defense against thieves and bandits. The walls
around the barracks had been destroyed during the Commu-
nist siege of Peiping, and the students were now sent out to
repair them. This work lasted four hours a day for half a
month. After rebuilding the walls, the students were shifted
to road repairs. They were assigned an eight-mile stretch of
highway between the West Gate of Peiping and the univer-
sity. The entire student body worked at this and finished the
job in a week.

“This was supposed to be an education program and was
called reform by labor,” Chi said. “We were supposed to
learn the value of labor that way. We just worked. We
weren’t shown any modem farming methods, and the road
repairs were the most primitive, using only shovels and
rakes.”
 
THOUGHT SEDUCTION

The backbone of the Revolutionary University’s course was
a personal investigation into the views and attitudes of every
member of the student body. This was the medium for and
the test of idea training.

Idea training began with the study of a subject called Idea
Formation and Class Property. The big capitalists, the stu-
dents were taught, aimed only at increasing their profits.
The little capitalists tried to improve their lives, to progress,
in order to achieve a secure, enjoyable existence. The workers
aimed for security, just hoping to keep their jobs without in-
terruption. Farmers did their duty, which is farming, but
cared only for their own crops, and had a narrow perspective.

The university authorities asked the students to analyze
their own ideas on the basis of those four points and to write
a complete report on their thoughts. When the reports were
handed in, the university used them as the basis for a per-
sonal inquiry into the views and attitudes of every member of
the student body. This enabled the authorities to probe into
each student’s personal history as interpreted through the
Marxist-Leninist doctrine of historical materialism.

The first part of the inquiry went back three generations,
into how each student, his parents, and grandparents lived,
and how they supported themselves. The students were asked
to write about what they were taught at home, what they
were taught in school, and then to describe their personal re-
lationships in society. This had to be followed by a descrip-
tion of their preferences in general and what kind of people
they liked to associate with.

After all this data had been assembled, the authorities fig-
ured that they had the thought processes of their students
fairly well dissected. Then they did a clever trick. They com-
pared the first report the students made on their personal
views and attitudes with the details they had given in the re-
port on their family backgrounds.

The announcement was then made in a dramatic manner
that this checkup showed that half of the students (about
4,000) had deep-set contradictions in their lives. They were
told that this proved that in the former capitalist society in
which they had been reared they had been dark people, that
is, sinneis. In China’s new democracy, they must cleanse
their minds of all remnants of their evil past. The process
through which this had to be done was by confession — the
frank admission of their sinful, contradictory pasts in
open congregation — publicly — through the medium of self-
criticism. This was perverted evangelism and, along with
quack psychiatry, constituted the two pillars of Red China’s
reformation program. The students were asked whether they
preferred to be master or servant, and were told that if they
wanted to be the master this showed that they needed to re-
form their thoughts, which could only be done by revealing
their dark pasts.

“If you don’t reveal your wrong thoughts and bad deeds,”
went the warning, “they will be an intolerable burden on your
shoulders. They will become heavier and heavier, until the
time comes when you no longer will be able to bear their great
weight.” They were cautioned that this burden of thoughts
would surely become overwhelming, so the only way to be-
come a new man was by revealing one’s bad past, unhesitat-
ingly.


“Surely the students didn’t take this seriously!” I ex-
claimed. “Didn’t they consider this kind of reasoning as a
corny joke?”

Chi looked at me with the utmost seriousness. “A great
struggle went on for the thoughts of the students during this
period,” he said. “This was a great struggle, truly a struggle
of one’s spirit. You must not underestimate it if you want to
understand what took place. You must remember the envi-
ronment in which we have been living.” His sincerity was
evident. He continued.

“The intensity of this personal struggle in our minds, and
for our minds, can hardly be exaggerated. This was especially
so in the case of anyone who had been a sympathizer with or
a member of the Kuomintang, who had worked for the Na-
tionalists, or who might have been an intelligence agent for
the Chiang Kai-shek regime.

“In such a struggle, the question would come up in a stu-
dent’s mind in this way: If I reveal that I was a member of
the Kuomintang, what action will the authorities take against
me? If I don’t confess, will it influence me in a bad way in my
future work?”

Chi was speaking fast now, and I had to slow him down. He
seemed to be living again those tense hours. “During this in-
ternal struggle, many students found it impossible to relax at
all,” he went on. “Some could not sleep the whole night
through. When a student was resdess at night this way, or
couldn’t sleep, someone sleeping near him would be sure to
notice it. The next day the agitated individual would be
asked why he hadn’t been able to sleep peacefully.

"What were you thinking about last night? What kept
you awake?’ he would be asked in a sympathetic tone. ‘If you
don’t feel like revealing it in public, tell it to me.’ ”


This was the point in the interview when I suddenly had
that feeling of having heard this before, but couldn’t remem-
ber where, until I recalled my visit to that most modem men-
tal hospital. If what was practised there was psychiatry, what
Chi was telling me about was surely quack psychiatry. No
wonder this gave me the eerie sensation of a world turned
inside out, a world more horrible than a tale by Edgar Allan
Poe, and one which made the ghastliness of a Grand Guignol
fantasy seem normal.

“There was no escape from this questioning,” Chi went on.
“Even when you lay down at night you were watched, and
your movements would betray your innermost thoughts. The
fact that you couldn’t hide even in sleep tormented you and
made you even more restless.”

Special agents conducted such questioning. Chi’s attempt
to tell me what these people were called led, as so often under
such circumstances, into a maze of semantics. There were
plenty of ways of translating it, but each time some essential
point would be left out or the words would lend themselves to
several interpretations. Doubletalk, which is so handy for
propagandists, thrives in such situations. The translator fa-
vored the term “thought-seduction worker,” and this seemed
to fit best. The man’s job was to coax forth the intimate
thoughts, the secrets which the students struggled to keep to
themselves. It could also be translated as “thought-revealing
worker,” but it was actually more penetrating than that. The
Chinese characters chi fah meant more than just to reveal;
they conveyed the sense of enticement, of seduction.

The difficulty we had finding a translation that would be
completely true to the original phrasing and would also con-
vey the correct nuance of the original demonstrates one of
the main reasons for the confusion and misunderstand-
ing over what is taking place in foreign countries. Editors
naturally insist on simple specific language that is under-
standable within the framework of their readers’ lives. Yet
there are many words or phrases in one language that simply
have no equivalent in another. To provide such a snap trans-
lation may be a clever bit of writing, but only at the sacrifice
of accuracy. We are given an approximation, but not what
the original exactly meant. Totalitarians have not hesitated
to take full propaganda advantage of this search by the poli-
tician, the reporter, and the headline vndter for the happy
graphic comparison.

An inflexible rule in group discussions was that everyone
had to participate. “After the weekly lecture,” Chi said, “if
you didn’t speak up, and at length, to show your own point of
view and thought processes, when you went for your rest pe-
riod afterwards, you would be asked, ‘Why did you have no
opinion to contribute to your group?'

“If you replied that you had no questions to ask, you would
be told, ‘This means that you accept the whole idea of the lec-
ture. If you accept it, this must mean that you understand it.
Then why don’t you speak up to help others understand? If
you don’t understand, then why don’t you ask questions?’

“So everyone talks. Whether what they say represents their
own ideas is irrelevant. Talking, you can’t keep from expos-
ing your own mental processes, and talking helps you indoc-
trinate yourself.

“A subtle pressure is used against a person who does not
enter the discussion to the extent desired. In self-criticism
sessions he is called a lagging-behind particle, a backward
element, someone without responsibility for the People’s
Revolution.

"Students became miserable under such pressures. When a
lecturer said something that contradicted his main point, you
didn’t dare bring it up, even by a hint. You asked only super-
ficial questions and accepted the ideas handed down to you.

"There was no escape. After each lecture, the groups of
twenty-three would meet separately to agree on the speaker’s
main idea. Then each group would break up into small sec-
tions to confirm the group findings by discussing the lecture
in detail so as to rationalize all points that seemed to conflict
with the main idea. The object of breaking up into smaller
groups, we were told, was to give each person the opportunity
to find the correct answer by himself.
 
"Often, too, a group would be encouraged to challenge an-
other group, sending it a ticklish question of political dogma
to solve. If this group succeeded — success meant always ex-
plaining away any contradictions — it published its conclusions
in the wall paper, taking credit for it. This was called a learn-
ing contest.

“If a whole class of nine groups couldn’t solve a problem,
the class head would summon all of them together for a class
meeting. Always, by the end of the meeting, any ideas among
the students that were not politically orthodox were sure to
succumb to those of the university authorities.

“A problem was not considered solved if one person re-
mained in a group who did not say that he was convinced.
Opinions had to be unanimous.

“When the entire class met, at a certain stage in the dis-
cussion questions could no longer be raised opposing the
line laid down by the class leader. This stage was reached
when it seemed possible that if discussion continued an oppo-
site opinion might make headway.

“The class head, practiced in detecting such dangerous mo-
ments, halted discussion by a simple tactic. When a student
wanted to speak, the system was that he raised his hand and
stated whether he opposed or favored the view taken by
the previous speaker. The instructor always could choke off
one side by saying, Wait until the other side talks.’ Then,
after allowing only those who agreed with the Party view-
point to express themselves, he could announce the desired
conclusion as that of the whole class and declare the meeting
over. This was frequently done.

“A student had no right to speak once discussion was de-
clared over. This was called maintaining discipline at a meet-
ing. Anyone who tried to speak up would be criticized for
disobedience. Where political opinions are the issue, disobedi-
ence becomes a very critical matter, affecting one's entire
future.”


Even so, the psychological pressure exerted by this skill-
fully devised technique of creating a hypnotic state of fatigue
and forcing a person, while in this trance, to repeat again and
again, lengthily and in his own words the political dogma de-
manded of him, was not over yet. This was only the prepara-
tory stage. The main pressures were yet to come under
critical, hypersensitive group conditions.

"After this initial period of mental struggle and mind re-
form, we were given back our reports and asked to rewrite
them in accordance with the new thinking we had achieved
through our intensive self-criticism program,” Chi declared.
“This was called our thought conclusion.”

“The students became terribly upset and very unhappy
during this period. Girls often broke into tears, weeping aloud
under this constant probing into their thoughts and the in-
ternal struggles brought about in their mental systems. But
they weren’t the only ones to collapse. Men did also. They
wept more than the girls, it seemed, but they were under
greater pressure. Girls had fewer social contacts, politically
speaking, and so comparatively less pressure was put on
them. Some tried to escape from what seemed an insoluble
problem by leaping into the quietude of Kwan Ming Lake
within the grounds of the Summer Palace. Some tried other
ways of committing suicide.

"The Communists taught that everything that a Kuomin-
tang member bad ever done was against the people’s welfare.
One student couldn’t bring himself to understand how he,
himself, had mistreated and exploited the people. He was no
capitalist; he was just a plain workman. An idea-seduction
worker told him that if he didn’t confess in the group that he
had worked against the people’s welfare he would be sent to
the People’s New Life Labor School at Peiping, where he
would get even more strenuous idea training and greater as-
sistance in self-criticism.

“Idea training at the People’s New Life Labor School con-
sisted of six months of study and hard labor, and, if the re-
sults were unsatisfactory, the student would be kept on. Only
if he did well during this period, he was told, and his ideas
came closer to those of true workingmen could he be released.

“The student was horrified. He knew that the People’s
New Life Labor School was the same as a forced labor camp.
The only difference was that you had to put yourself into a
state of mind of agreeing that you were going there voluntar-
ily to improve yourself. This requirement created a new men-
tal struggle, for the simple fellow felt that this was all wrong
and became greatly agitated. He apparently saw only one
outlet — death — and committed suicide in our placid, inviting
lake.

“There was another student, a graduate of "the eco-
nomics department of Nanking University, who had been
employed by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration in Nanking to gather statistics. He had been
closely attracted by the American way of life and firmly be-
lieved that the welfare of the workers and farmers in the
United States was being protected. He couldn’t see why
China had to lean to one side, as demanded by Mao.

“The university let him know that he was reactionary and
stubborn, was suffering from America-fascination, and that
he was doped with Americanism. He was warned that his
state of mind would lead him to become a traitor, a hateful
compradore, and an antirevolutionist. He was transferred
to a college in Sinkiang Province to till the soil. This was a
college only in name; actually it was a forced labor camp.

“The student protested that this was not reform, but a war
of nerves intended to make him confess what he hadn’t done.
This was the same as ‘mopping away the truth, forcing one
to do what he doesn’t want to do,’ he declared. One night he
swallowed an overdose of sleeping tablets, but was discovered
and sent to the North China People’s Hospital in time to save
his life. Upon recovery he was immediately shipped to a la-
bor university in Chahar Province to continue his idea re-
form under even more strenuous conditions. Two thirds of
the time was spent in hard labor, and one third in classroom
activity of the group discussion and self-criticism type.

“A special name was used to describe this period of inten-
sive inquiry into our attitudes; it was called inspection of
ideas, and at its conclusion, seventeen students were sent to
the People’s New Life Labor School.’’

[...]

“Seventeen girls, so far as I know, were pregnant at gradu-
ation time. Most of them asked for permission to marry, and
I am sure the boys wanted to marry them. Some told me so.
The authorities refused point-blank to give permission for
any of them to marry. The university pointed out that it was
unlikely that any of them would work in the same locality
after they were assigned to their new jobs following gradu-
ation, and so marriage would only handicap their Party ac-
tivities.

“The girls asked, ‘Who will be the father of my child? It is
shameful to have a baby without a father.’ The university
answered that this was a feudal idea. When they asked,
‘What shall I do if a boy is born?’ they were informed, ‘Your
child will be the people’s boy and will be raised by the govern-
ment.' They were told they didn’t have to worry.

“One of the girl group leaders had two children, both boys,
who were being reared in Peiping at a nursery home run by
the Party. I accompanied her there one Sunday by special
permission. We went by bus. She had not been married, and
her two children, aged three and one, were sons of the people.

“I just called her Comrade, the way we all addressed each
other. She was twenty-six, stocky, with a fresh complexion
and an oval face. She came from Hopei Province, where she
had graduated from the Military and Political University at
Shih Chia Chuang. She was a farm girl who had become a
Party member quite young and knew nothing else but Party
work. She never told me the details of her past.

“She made a curious remark to me one day. 'If you would
cut off your relations with your father,’ she said, ‘perhaps our
political affections for each other could he better.’ Whether
this implied a willingness to marry me, or what, I never found
out. The relations between ourselves and our relatives were
controversial points in our group discussions and personal
struggles at that time.

“During this period of inspection of ideas, many sons
were advised to cease all communications with their parents.
A landowner’s son was told, ‘Your father belongs to the ex-
ploiting class, while those who have undergone idea reform
do not belong to the exploiting class.’ The suggestion was
made that he eliminate such antisocial relationships from his
life. This constituted both a warning and advice.

“Efforts were made to discredit family connections gen-
erally. This was during the class-distinction period and co-
incided with the complete right-about-face in the at-
titude of the university toward the mingling of the sexes.
During the class-distinction period the students were told,
‘You must fight against your family and reveal what your
family did in the past.’

“The authorities made an intensive inquiry into my family
ties. They wanted me to cut myself off from my father, to
fight against him.”

This was the turning point in Chi’s own attitude. Except
for the incident of the wall paper at Tsing Hua, which had
been provoked by his inquisitive, essentially fair nature, he
had accepted Communist claims at face value.
 
“My father is only a small merchant and didn’t earn
enough to support the family, so my mother had to go to work
too,” he told the university authorities. “As for me, I have
been wandering since I was nine years old. I feel that my
father himself has been exploited and I’ve spent my child-
hood and youth half in work, half in study. In my thoughts
and feelings I simply can’t cut myself off from my family and
fight against them. If I have to, I can only ask myself what
meaning is there to life in this world and why was there a
revolution.

“My father and mother now are very old,” he had pleaded.

“They have little work and are almost unable to engage in
any business. On what or on whom are they going to depend
in their old lives? Their sole ambition was that I could work
and earn some money with which to support them. If I now
cut off my relations with my family, it means that I want
them to starve to death.

“If the university insists, then I would rather be an anti-
revolutionary. I will do anything the government wants me
to do, but I will not, under any circumstances, separate my-
self from my parents. I will accept any punishment the uni-
versity sees fit to impose on me rather than do that.”

The university assigned a faculty member to have a de-
tailed talk with him about his family situation. “I told him
that my family lived in Shanghai and led a life proba-
bly poorer than that of the working class or farmers, having
no piece of property they could call their own. If the univer-
sity didn’t believe me, I said it certainly could send someone
to Shanghai to investigate.

“A Party member was sent, and on his return reported that
my family’s condition was not as poor as I had made out. ‘His
parents are much better off than the farmers,’ he told the uni-
versity. 'At least they dress much better. If they have no
money, they can borrow some from relatives. His father
and mother, although over fifty, are still able to work.’

"He reported that my parents could be sent to North
China to work on a farm, and that it was not necessary for
me to support them. I was therefore told that from then on I
must understand that I was a son of the people, and not of my
father.

“ ‘In the future you must work for the people, and thoughts
about your family must not be permitted to arise,’ I was in-
structed. The university authorities said they trusted that I
would reconsider my position and let them know my decision.
I told them I would do so and I kept telling them this until
graduation.

“Because I refused to break relations with my parents, the
Communists sent policemen to neighbors of ours in Shanghai
to gather information against them. I learned of three such
instances. They also ashed about my past activities. They
could find nothing against us. From then until I gradu-
ated, some able Party member would come to me every once
in a while to discuss my parents with me and to try to per-
suade me to make the break.

“They asked me whether I considered my country or my
family the more important. Weren’t the lives of the 475,000,-
000 people of China more important than the lives of a few
persons in my family? I just didn’t reply. Actually, I couldn’t
see how my father and mother could be considered outside of
the Chinese people. Weren’t they Chinese too"? The object
of the revolution seemed to me to be the improvement of the
living conditions of everyone, and I believed that the benefit
brought the nation by the revolution should coincide with
the gains made by its people.

“If everyone severed relations with their relatives, it
seemed to me that this would only add to the chaos in China.”

His was not the only such problem. Many students were
married, and had been separated from their husbands or
wives by this training course. They keenly felt the pressure
against their family ties. When a married person entered a
Revolutionary University it usually meant that he was sepa-
rated permanently from his wife, because he knew that after
graduation he almost surely would be sent to work in some
locality where the other couldn’t go. The Communists tried
to persuade such persons to ask for a divorce. They based this
demand on the reasoning that once a man has gone through a
course in idea training, while his wife continued living or
working somewhere else, their ideas would not be alike when
they resumed living together. They would have different
viewpoints on life. So a divorce was recommended as the only
way out.

Married students were told, “This course is giving you a
different political foundation from that of your wife. 'There
can only be two alternatives. If you resume living together,
either you will influence her, or she will influence you. Un-
fortunately, experience has shown that for the most part it
is always the person who does not participate in idea train-
ing who influences the other.”

The students asked why old thoughts should decisively in-
fluence new thoughts and overwhelm them. The answer they
got was; “After spending twenty or more years in the old so-
ciety, you can’t expect idea training to cure your mind of all
that evil past. Remnants of it will still persist in your mem-
ories, and this is what makes it possible for you to suffer a
relapse and return to your old way of thinking.”

A number of the married students were persuaded by this
sort of logic to divorce their wives or husbands. Chi said they
were a pathetic sight when they finally sat down to
write home for a divorce. The able Party member and the
group leader would encourage them during such periods of
intensity. “You are doing right,” they told them. “Don’t
weep; be a man.”


GRADUATION AND ESCAPE

The discovery that his family had been put under police sur-
veillance in Shanghai shocked Chi. Thereafter he was very
careful to say only those things that he thought the Commu-
nists wanted him to say and he no longer raised any questions
that might be interpreted as counterrevolutionary.

Graduation day either sent a student to a job that the Com-
munist Party had decided he was fit to handle, to a stricter
institution for further mind reform, or kept him back in the
university. Even so, the students were told that graduation
after the normal six-month course was only the first step in
mind reform because theories were learned in school and
had to be translated into practical life in the outside world.
The Revolutionary University was considered a bridge from
the old, decadent life to the new life.

As in all group meetings, findings have to be unanimous.
Sometimes, before an opinion is recorded, others in the stu-
dent’s group, or in other groups, are brought in for consulta-
tion, and sometimes the applicant’s entire group joins the dis-
cussion before a decision is reached. There are no marks and
no formal examinations into a student’s knowledge in any
particular subject. All that matters is one’s revolutionary re-
liability. There is a space allotted for remarks above the signa-
tures. Whether the student is graduated, kept over, or trans-
ferred to another idea reform institution is recorded below
the signatures by the class head or higher authorities. The
class head does not vinrite in the remarks section when the stu-
dent is to be graduated, but only when there is something un-
favorable to report.

The student himself has to appear before the council,
where he is called upon to participate in the discussion. “He
often defends himself, as I did,” Chi said, by “reminding the
group of some special revolutionary achievement or some ex-
ample of revolutionary ardor. As it was, I was lucky to
squeeze through. The list of my defects was much longer
than the list of my good points. Indeed, I was judged to have
only one good point, which was described on my form as ‘a
positive attitude toward the laboring class.’ This was judged
sufficient to pass me even though the remarks section of the
form said I was a backward element.

"I was found not steady in my political stand and it was
felt that I hadn’t sufficiently grasped the principles of the
revolution — Marxism-Leninism. This simply wasn’t so. Their
conclusion was based on my refusal to cut myself off from
my parents and was interpreted as a failure to meet the re-
quirements of a relentless class war. It was considered as giv-
ing overemphasis to my own personal situation and showing
an unrevolutionary interest in one’s own profit. I was called
stubborn. Another opinion, which at the time I feared would
destroy me, was that some old ideas were still in my head, not
yet completely eliminated. This, too, was probably an allu-
sion to my attitude regarding my parents.

“Three students fled before graduation. One ran away be-
cause his wife was ill, and the university refused to give him
permission to visit her. Another fled for the same reason that
revolted me, the demand that he fight against his own father.
The third student merely felt that Communist ideas were
nonsense, so far as we could learn. Two other students had
been sent to the New Life Labor School for thought reform.
You rarely mentioned these cases. Of the original twenty-three
students in my group, eighteen were present at graduation
ceremonies.’’
 

ThetanExterior

Gold Meritorious Patron
ESMB rules:

6. Link to long pieces of text where possible.
Instead of copying and pasting long pieces of text, snip the bit you want and link to the rest. Experience shows that the longer your post is the less likely it will be read anyway.
 
Yeah, I know, but I simply found no way to link to a specific section inside a PDF document.
But, yeah I really recommend the entire book, or even both books. There is just so much in there where I went like "wait a minute... I know those tactics!". Of course, the reason it is familiar to me is because as I mentioned in my introduction, I grew up in a Communist environment... but from what I read on this Forum, I am pretty sure I am not the only one who will find those (admittedly extremely frightening tactics) familiar ;-)
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
Emmanuel, you might be interested in Robert Lifton's book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, taken from his studies on how the Chinese technique of brainwashing prisoners of war. There is a main focus known as the Eight Criteria that is used to determine when one is caught in a brainwashing cult.
Funny you should mention this book.

FUN FACT: Did you know that none of the subjects studied in Lifton's book, who were subjected to 'brainwashing', ever became Communists?

In Dick Anthony’s 100 page chapter in Benjamin Zablocki’s book "Misunderstanding Cults", called “TACICAL AMBIGUITY AND BRAINWASHING FORMULATIONS: SCIENCE OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE?” Anthony shows Lifton's book has been re-written by the believers in the superstition of brainwashing.

Here’s 8 clear examples Anthony gave:

“As we have shown, the CIA brainwashing model which had been disconfirmed by the CIA research program, as well as by the research of Lifton, Schein, and others, provides the actual theoretical foundation for all statements of brainwashing theory including cultic brainwashing formulations ....’

“Consequently, [Zablocki's] cultic brainwashing theory, like the earlier statements of this theory, such as those of Singer and Ofshe, is contradicted by its own claimed theoretical foundation, that is the research of Schein and Lifton. My 1990 article demonstrated that eight variables differentiate Singer’s and Ofshe’s brainwashing theory from Schein’s and Lifton’s research. ”

“The present chapter has demonstrated the same set of conflicts between Zablocki’s approach and generally accepted research on Communist thought reform as characteristic of the Ofshe-Singer formulation.”

“As I have shown above, the research of Schein and Lifton on Westerners in thought reform prisons, upon which Zablocki claims to base his brainwashing formulation, confirmed and extended Hinkle’s and Wolff’s earlier findings. As I argued in my 1990 article, their research on Communist forceful indoctrination practices disconfirmed the CIA model with respect to eight variables:’

1 Conversion. None of Schein’s and Lifton’s subjects became committed to Communist worldviews as a result of the thought reform program. Only two of Lifton’s forty subjects and only one or two of Schein’s fifteen subjects emerged from the thought reform process expressing some sympathy for Communism, with neither of them actually becoming Communists. In the remaining subjects, Communist coercive persuasion produced behavioural compliance but not increased belief in Communist ideology (Lifton 1961:117,248-9; Schein 1958: 332,1961:157-66,1973: 295).

2 Predisposing motives. Those subjects who were at all influenced by Communist indoctrination practices were predisposed to be so before they were subjected to them (Lifton 1961:130; Schein 1961: 104-10,140-56 1973: 295).

3 Physical coercion. Communist indoctrination practices produced involuntary influence only in that subjects were forced to participate in them through extreme physical coercion (Lifton 1961:13,1976: 327-8; Schein 1959: 437,33 1961:125-7).

4 Continuity with normal social influence. The non-physical techniques of influence utilized in Communist thought reform are common in normal social influence situations and are not distinctively coercive. (Lifton 1961: 438-61; Schein 1961: 269-82,1962: 90-7,1964: 331-51).

5 Conditioning. No distinctive conditioning procedures were utilized in Communist coercive persuasion (Schein 1959: 437-8,1973: 284-5; Biderman 1962: 550).

6 Psychophysiological stress/debilitation. The extreme physically-based stress and debilitation to which imprisoned thought reform victims were subjected did not cause involuntary commitment to Communist worldviews (Hinkle and Wolff 1956; Lifton: 117, 248-9; Schein 1958: 332,1961:157-66,1973: 295). Moreover, no comparable practices are present in new religious movements (Anthony 1990: 309-11).

7 Deception/defective thought. Victims of Communist thought reform did not become committed to Communism as a result of deception or defective thought (Schein 1961: 202-3,238-9).

8 Dissociation/hypnosis/suggestibility Those subjected to thought reform did not become hyper-suggestible as a result of altered states of consciousness; for example, hypnosis, dissociation, disorientation, and so on (Schein 1959: 457; Biderman 1962: 550)-
 
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Veda

Sponsor
Funny you should mention this book.

FUN FACT: Did you know that none of the subjects studied in Lifton's book, who were subjected to 'brainwashing', ever became Communists?

In Dick Anthony’s 100 page chapter in Benjamin Zablocki’s book "Misunderstanding Cults",

-snip-

Dick Anthony made $21,000 consulting in one court case alone, without ever appearing in court.

Some of his clients include Jehovah's Witnesses, the Hare Krishna movement, the Unification Church, and the Church of Scientology. Scientology & Jim Jones | Ex Scientologist Message Board

There's a stink - like a dirty dumpster on a hot day in August - coming from your "experts."
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
On the subject of brainwashing, here's the link to a brochure on brainwashing by Professor Stephen A. Kent that I believe he created for the German government some years ago:

Brainwashing in Scientology’s Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF)
https://scientologymoneyproject.com...cientologys-rehabilitation-project-force-rpf/

I see that the links on the page are broken, but below that is a PDF which still can be viewed.
Here's an excerpt from the paper: (but I recommend reading from the original PDF if you're able, as some of the formatting might of gotten screwed up):

The ”Brainwashing Debate” within the Social Sciences

The ”brainwashing debate” in the social sciences took place mostly in the 1980s and early 1990s, when several professional organizations, professors, and scholars reacted against American courts accepting arguments that high-demand ideological groups”coerced” members into conversion. Much of the sociological attack targeted psychologist Margaret Singer, PhD, who used a coercive persuasion/brainwashing model to explain to courts how litigants joined and behaved in the groups they now were suing or defending against.The social scientific attacks concluded that the brainwashing term was valid only if the group in question used incarceration and physical maltreatment against members (see Anthony, 1990: 304; cf. Zablocki, 1998: 231-232) in situations of uninformed consent (Young and Griffith, 1992: 93)

This threefold requirement was a minimalist one ,since a brainwashing program also would have to include an intense indoctrination program coupled with personal confessions of past ”sins.” (Confessions of alleged sins are a key element in people’s renunciations of previously held, but now unacceptable, beliefs, along with their associated actions.) Since neither the term’s supporters nor detractors provided concrete evidence that even these minimalist activities uniformly occurred in most groups’ conversion activities, sociologists and others concluded that”brainwashing” was not an appropriate term for describing how and why people join new or controversial ideologies. Of these requirements for using the brainwashing term, the single most important one was ”extreme physical coercion” (Anthony and Robbins, 1992: 20, 25n.11). If such a condition existed, then it would allow both researchers and the courts to isolate brain-washing from other forms of coercive persuasion. As Robbins and Anthony concluded, ”[without] physical force as a boundary, there is no natural or objective cutting point as to when coercive persuasion is potent enough to overcome free will” as the brainwashing model implies (Anthony and Robbins, 1992: 21).One crucial aspect of brainwashing in litigation has been an effort to specify when courts should allow individuals to use the concept as an excuse for deviant or illegal behavior. Researcher Dick Anthony (often working with associate Tom Robbins)developed much of the theory in this area, and served as a consulting expert for lawyers defending the Unification Church, Scientology, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Transcendental Meditation, and the Community Chapel against brainwashing allegations from disgruntled former members (Anthony and Robbins, 1992: 6n.1). Anthony and Robbins concluded that some attempts to utilize brainwashing to justify exemptions from (American constitutional) first amendment protections presuppose that it is a form of ”hard determinism,” which assumes that people are confined in ideological systems whose doctrines they must adopt (Anthony and Robbins, 1992: 23). Human behavior explanations that postulate hard determinism, Anthony and Robbins claim, ”do not have general, or even substantial acceptance in the relevant scientific communities” (presumably sociology and psychology),and they are ”no longer taken seriously in the academic world” (Anthony and Robbins,1992: 25). Consequently, in the future, Anthony and Robbins hope that researchers will focus upon ”the free marketplace of ideas” rather than upon either increased governmental regulation or legal decisions in trials (Anthony and Robbins, 1992: 26). In other words, these respected social scientists believe that research into whether some groups brainwash has concluded that they do not – at least not in a hard deterministic way. This conclusion eliminates any need for discussion about governmental or legal intervention against groups on supposedly now-disproved grounds that they brainwash their members into robots who commit deviant or criminal acts. As sociologist Benjamin Zablocki critically concluded, his colleagues had ”blacklisted” the brainwashing concept, and in so doing had ignored its utility for explaining the ”exit costs” that people feel who attempt to depart high-demand ideological organizations (Zablocki,1997; 1998).

RPF Accounts in the Courts and the Media

Remarkably, however, throughout much of this debate, the popular press, some court documents, and at least one court appellate decision described the forced confinement,maltreatment, and uninformed consent that Sea Org members experienced in Scientology’s RPF program and facilities. These descriptions were of a brainwashing program used in attempts to retain members rather than in attempts to obtain them, and perhaps for this reason social scientists neglected to address these accounts.The first public statement about the RPF seems to have appeared in a January 25, 1980 affidavit by former member Tonya Burden of Las Vegas, Nevada, who described it as”a Scientology ’concentration camp’” (Burden, 1980: 8) and from which she escaped after having been in the program for around three months (Burden, 1980: 9-10). Former member Gerry Armstrong supported Burden’s general description of RPF conditions in a June, 1982 affidavit, stating that he ”personally observed people [including Tonya Burden] in the RPF sleeping on floors, in storage rooms, in the boiler room, and in other sub-human conditions...” (Armstrong, 1982: 3).Armstrong and two other former members, Laurel Sullivan and William Franks, spoke harshly about the RPF in a 1984 article in the Florida newspaper, the Clearwater Sun.Franks called it ”’a horrible thing’” (quoted in Shelor, 1984: 1B), and Sullivan spoke about how ”’rough’” the program was, having ”’to work in 120- degree heat [in the California desert] with a severe case of colitis’” (quoted in Shelor, 1984: 2B). In that same year, Great Britain’s The Sunday Times Magazine carried RPF descriptions from three more former Scientologists – Bent Corydon, Jay Hurwitz, and David Mayo, the latter two having served time in the program: Hurwitz said that for the first five days he and others were kept locked up under guard. ’We were brought our food and we slept on the floor

We had to use the same toilet facilities in the presence of one another’(Barnes, 1984: 38).Hurwitz was in the RPF near Gilman Hots Springs, California in the summer of 1982,along with eighteen other senior Scientology staffers (Barnes, 1984: 38-39).Also in 1984, a British court stated in a written decision that, two years earlier, a woman in Scientology’s English headquarters in East Grinstead was ”required to do at least 12 hours physical work a day (shifting bricks, emptying bins, etc.)” which ”aggravated a chronic back condition” (Royal Courts of Justice, 1984: 27). This same story reappeared in the excellent book written by Englishman Jon Atack in 1990(Atack, 1990: 341), and then in a newspaper article in 1994 (Bracchi, 1994).Back in the United States in 1985, former Scientologist Howard (Homer) Schomer responded in deposition to a query about his time in the RPF on the ship, Apollo, by indicating:[w]ell, we lived separated from the rest of the crew on the ship. We could not talk to them unless they originated something to us, first. Weslept in the lower hold of the ship most of the time on mattresses that were supposed to have been thrown out, but somebody hadn’t carried out their [sic] job per se, luckily they wanted – because otherwise, we would have been sleeping on the floor. We ate after the rest of the crew ate, and ate what was left over. Many times we’d have to maybe fry eggs or something because there wasn’t enough food left over, make rice. We only were allowed to sleep a maximum of seven hours a night. We were– We had to have five hours of study time because we had to become proficient auditors [i.e., Scientology’s version of counselors and therapists] so we could audit ourselves out of the supposed morass we had gotten ourself [sic] into and the rest of the time we worked on the decks scrubbing the decks and painting the ship and washing the ship and cleaning out toilet bowls and, you know, you name it, we did it (Schomer,1985: 21).Even taking into account that this RPF experience took place on a ship in 1974, it still is remarkably consistent with accounts of RPF experiences from later in the history of Scientology and from various parts of the world.Another former member, Don Larson, told Forbes magazine in 1986:he alone brought nearly 300 recalcitrant Scientologists to ’Rehabilitation-on Project Forces’ at Scientology centers around the world over a period of fourteen months, until his departure in late 1983.... In these sadistic detention programs, staff members would be coerced into performing hard labor, eating leftovers out of buckets and sleeping on floors. Somewhere reportedly kept against their will (Behar, 1986: 318).The year after the Forbes article, British biographer Russell Miller (1987) published his account of Hubbard’s life, which contained nearly a dozen references to the RPF.A summary of Vicki Aznaran’s account of her time in the notorious Happy Valley RPF program in California appeared in a December 22, 1988 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, and Oklahoma newspaper editor, Bob Lobsinger, reprinted the story in the July6, 1989 edition of The Newkirk Herald Journal (Koff, 1989). Although Aznaran ”her-self had dispatched dozens of others to the RPF for misdeeds against the church” and”had personally done stints in the RPF on her way up the Scientology ladder,... this time was different, she said. A uterine infection gave her a fever, and the guards wouldn’t let her leave to see a doctor” (Koff, 1989: 6).A 1989 California appellate court decision indicated that, ”continuously for three weeks,” former Scientologist Larry Wollersheim had been ”’baited and badgered’” to enter the RPF, which the judge mentioned as ”evidence [that] Wollersheim accepted some of his auditing under threat of physical coercion” (California Court of Appeal,1989: 9274).
3
The accounts of Franks, Sullivan, and former Sea Org staff member Hana Whitfield appeared again in a series on the organization that the Los Angeles Times published in 1990 (Welkos and Sappell, 1990). The article indicated, ”[t]he RPF provides the church with a pool of labor to perform building maintenance, pull weeds, haul garbage, clean toilets or do anything else church executives deem necessary for redemption” (Welkos and Sappell, 1990: [25]). In the same year as theLos Angeles Times series, Jon Atack’s thorough study of his former group contained significant RPF information (Atack, 1990: 206, 341, 358, etc.; see also Atack, n.d.:9-10).Germans read about the RPF in a December, 1994 article when former American members, (Robert) Vaughn Young and Stacy Young, spoke about it in an interview published in Focus magazine (Gruber and Kintzinger [Interviewers], 1994: 79), and then Robert Vaughn Young referred to the RPF as a ”prison camp” (Straflager) and a”Gulag” in an article that he wrote for Der Spiegel in September, 1995 (Young, 1995:107; see Kent, 1999a: 158-159). The following year, the RPF received attention in as tudy about Scientology produced by former member Bent Corydon (1996). Next, in the Summer of 1997, Germans once again learned about the ”modern concentration camp” (”modernes Konzentrationslager”) as former Danish Scientologist Susanne Elleby described the RPF that she endured in Copenhagen (Kintzinger [Interviewer],1997: 52).That same year, Mannheim journalist and author Peter Reichelt provided German audiences with extensive information about RPF operations in California, including the fact that top Scientology leadership apparently had sent one of Hubbard’s sons (Arthur) to the RPF and then retrieved him after he escaped (Reichelt, 1997: 284-285, see273-285; A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 21 para. # 104). In early 1999, Reichelt and his partner,Ina Brockmann, produced a documentary for German television that showed Scientologists blocking their way as the two researchers attempted to drive to the RPF facility in Happy Valley (near San Jacinto), California (Brockmann and Reichelt, 1999) – a scene that North Americans saw two months earlier on ABC News’s television pro-gram, 20/20 (ABC, 1998). Six days before the 20/20 program, the American television network, Arts and Entertainment (A&E), ran a two-hour Investigative Reports pro-gram on Scientology that contained several dramatic RPF accounts. Not surprisingly,the German parliament’s commissioned study on ”sects and psychological groups
 
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Veda

Sponsor
Are his points factual, or not?
Calm down.

The book's title is 'Brainwashing, The Story of Men Who Defied It'.

16376a1dbd6cd881ba9f0d6aa263c677--book-reviews-men.jpg

This ground has already been covered. Are you not paying attention? Are you so excited that you can't focus?

Edward Hunter is mainly known for having written about re-education and thought control as administered in Communist China during the 1940s into 1950.

He is hated by cult apologists who become very excited at the mention of his name.
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
Calm down.

The book's title is 'Brainwashing, The Story of Men Who Defied It'.

16376a1dbd6cd881ba9f0d6aa263c677--book-reviews-men.jpg

This ground has already been covered. Are you not paying attention? Are you so excited that you can't focus?

Edward Hunter is mainly known for having written about re-education and thought control as administered in Communist China during the 1940s into 1950.

He is hated by cult apologists who become very excited at the mention of his name.
More deflection.
 
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