Fear induction as a means of social engineering
“A culture that cannot distingush beween reality and illusion dies.” — C. Hedges
Infantalization
Torture has three purposes. The first of course is to satisfy a psychopath’s desire to cause suffering. The second is to create a state of confusion and fear in prisoners to such an extent that they are reduced to an infantile state. In this infantile state the prisoners cannot think rationally, protect their own interests, or those of their friends. The third is to send a message to others - ’do not get in our way, or this could happen to you’.
These same three principles can be applied to entire populations.
Suppose some psychopath somewhere wishes to bend an entire population to her will. There are several proven ways to do this, such as
overcoming rationality, or
altering core beliefs. But the the easiest means of controlling large populations, is to create untenable situations. A psychopathic leader must set out to create a state of disorientation, of disassociation. And ultimately a state of infantilism wherein a few key words and phrases - ’change we can believe in’, ’hope for a better tomorrow’, ’patriotic pride’, ’homeland security’, ’they hate our freedoms’, and so on - can be used to trigger a population toward actions normally inimical to rational behaviour.
Historical example
Take the example of the Reichstag fire in the 1930s in Germany. The times where difficult. Many Germans lacked jobs or sufficient funds to put food on the table. There had been a series of shocks to the people - economic, spiritual, political. The people were disoriented and despondent. Into this situation goosestepped a handful of psychopathic Nazis leaders.
With the help of some rather clever but amoral propagandists (some of whom later founded successful public relations companies in the United States), they came up with a plan. They decided that one more shock was needed - the destruction of the historic Reichstag - the seat of German government. These leaders secretly had their people burn the buildings to the ground. Then loudly and with great shows of patriotism, blamed outside forces.
The German people were so shocked and disoriented by this apparent assault on their homeland that they became like children, loosing rational thought... and gave the Nazi leaders power to do as they pleased. Even though there was ample evidence at the time that the enterprise had been an inside job all along.
So the German people, afraid that terrorists (as we know call them) had infiltrated the fatherland, were willing to give up their privacy, their money, their basic human rights, all in order to have the illusion that Hitler and the rest of the psychopaths would save them from the supposed terrorsits.
For under the pressures of repeated shock complete populations do indeed become psychologically similar to torture victims.
Severe economic downturns, pointless wars, repeated job loss, imaginary warnings about potential epidemic diseases, and the like where all used by the Nazis. These shocks created such a background of constant fear that the entire mass of the German people became in a very real way, infantile. The responses of a normally rational citizenry change to those of children, willing to submit to ideas and dogmatism which they would have ordinarily dismissed out of hand as insane.
Lie
Historically, propaganda has been used by dictators solely to convince the population to something they would never ordinarily do. Going to war against a peoples who pose no threat at all, giving tax dollars to multimillionaire bank CEOs, and so on. And as always with all successful propaganda, the target population is almost entirely unaware of that they are being lied to by teams of professional propagandists feeding words to the current leader. Some of these leaders throughout history have even remarked upon the ease with which a population can be controlled. They often voice (in their memoirs) how surprisingly simple propaganda techniques can so easily sway entire populations to do their bidding. Consider for example, the words of one of these leaders:
“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.“ – Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Luftwaffe Commander in Chief
Now compare this to the very similar words of a more recent western politician:
“America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud…This is a difficult struggle of uncertain duration. We hunt an enemy that hides in shadows and caves. There is no room for neutrality … You’re either with us or against us.” — A former United States President, quoted in the London Guardian
Or the words of one of that particular president’s leading officials:
“Look, our strategy is to create chaos, to create a vacuum. We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defence of our great nation.” — a senior member of the U.S. government, quoted in “Plan of Attack” by Bob Woodward
The simplest form of propaganda is anything which creates fear in the mind of the target audience. Why? Because as Hitler’s Goering said so well, “a fearful citizenry is easily led”. Hence the Reichstag fire as discussed above.
Demonize an innocent group
But, such fear generation only works if the mass of the citizenry are kept in ignorance. There are many tools of power to ensure this can occur: via a one-message media such as Pravda in the former Soviet Union, massive censorship such as occurs in North Korea, vicious suppression of dissent such as assassinating whistle-blowers or jailing them on trumped-up charges, ensuring a single religion such the religion of ’communism’, and many others. When most people believe the false narrative of a many-sourced-but-identical message, then they are even more easily led. And controlled.
A trivially simple example: In the mid-20th C people in the United States where made to fear a so-called “communist menace”. They where urged to be on the lookout for “communist sympathisers”, university professors were arrested for discussing Marx’s philosophy in their lectures, Hollywood actors who expressed sympathy with socialism (that is to say, the poor should be helped by the state) where arrested. Many were jailed. Unions were destroyed (because Washington said they where “hotbeds of communism”). People’s homes where ransacked by FBI and police looking for “communist writings”. People were imprisoned for so-called ’though crimes’ such as thinking Marx may have had a few good ideas. And so on... The lives of many people were destroyed, and the majority of the population of that country, under the egregious thumb of the alleged psychopath U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, where kept in a state of perpetual fear.
Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists of our time, was one of the people targeted by the government as a “subversive”. The FBI maintained an 1800 page dossier on Dr. Einstein, and watched everyone with whom he met. Perhaps he was dangerous because 1) He was against war and violence 2) his exemplary work in the pursuit of truth might have set an example for others. Truth of course, just like opposition to war, was inimical to McCarthy and all like him before and since who shared his power-mad psychoses.
If someone of the stature of an Einstein could be targeted, then those not as famous who shared his belief in freedom of thought had more to fear. And in their fear many kept silent, inadvertently thereby acquiescing to the passage of laws which assailed their individual freedoms and rights in ways hitherto unimaginable. Anyone who objected that these new laws were unconstitutional or immoral, was branded a communist sympathiser. Anyone who objected to the wars, incursions, and invasions launched by the U.S. army in “fighting communism” was called unpatriotic or worse, a traitor. Needless to say, many corporations benefited from all of this - arms sales had never been greater, for example. Corporate tax rates where in practise (if not in law), close to zero... and much more.
All while basic human rights were abandoned in favour of combating the imaginary "communist menace".
Social Turbulence
The concept of social turbulance is an old one. The modern version allegedly enunciated by Trist and Emery is to soften up (i.e. break down resistance) of the citizenry through a series of shocks. Shocks such as fiscal collapse, energy shortage, sexual molestation at transportation hubs, obvious social inequality, brutality, attacks on iconic structures, food shortages, and so on. Ir more subtle shocks such as rapidly shifting paradigms (X is good, X is bad, X is good again, etc.) and rapidly oscillating power structures.
Delivering these with increasing intensity according to social turbulance theory, induces a type of mass psychosis in which the citizenry as a whole becomes dissociated from relality. Or more importantly, from the ability to differentiate reality from propaganda. The result is retreat into circuses - elevation of celebrity (Entertainment Tonight), obviously fake ’reality shows’, and other similar infantalizations.
Suppress information
There are three principle reasons for information suppression by a state:
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To limit dissenting opinion;
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to hide illegal activities of those in power;
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to ensure there is no disruption of tax monies from the poor to the rich.
Of course there are other minor reasons - protecting some national secrets, to protect corporate profiteering, and so on. But historically these three are the major reasons in most societies, despite avid and bellicose objection by those in power to the contrary.
Here again, fear is a useful means to suppress information. One of the simplest ways to ensure universal fear and mistrust, is to announce that ’there are enemies amongst us’ and have everyone spy on everybody else. In a society where there is such spying, there is universal mistrust - which is itself simply a form of fear.
Privacy rights
McCarthy knew this well. And so he set up networks of citizen spies. For example children where told to report their classmates or their parents if they expressed “socialist tendencies”. For the first time people were made to fear their neighbours. They self-censored their ideas, activities, beliefs in order to appear ’normal’ and not a socialist of a communist.
Spying on others and reporting what they did became commonplace - one never knew who was secretly reporting to the FBI.
McCarthy’s ideas of universal spying gradually became normative in many countries. For example many years after McCarthyism had been discredited for its trampling of basic human rights and freedoms, one well known country has resurrected his system in nationwide campaign called: ”If You See Something, Say Something”. Television screens in large stores urge shoppers to become unpaid informants for the federal government, reporting any “suspicious activities”.
The Nazis had their “citizen alertness” campaign; the communist Stasi had their “citizen informant” campaign; the North Korean dictatorship had its “inform for the Great Leader” campaign; and many others - all mimicked today in a growing number of countries. Some particularly egregious regimes (North Korea, China, for example) use tools such as hidden CCTV cameras in every community, automated monitoring of all electronic and written communication, satellite systems which track individuals and objects, face recognition systems, intensive data mining through burgeoning coordinated databases, biometric scanning, automated profiling systems, nanometre sized air-delivered inhalable RFID chips at transportation hubs, backscatter virtual strip searches, mass sexual molestation including that of children at airports and other theatre security venues, insect-sized drones equipped with cameras and microphones, private for-profit corporate spy-and-locate systems, and are even experimenting with implantation of barcodes into human embryos... all in order to ensure a docility and unquestioning mind-set.
Dissent
That is to say, to ensure suppression of information through reduction of opportunity for whistle-blowing or indeed, dissent.
Only a fearful, frightened citizenry would accept such Panopticon or prison-like monitoring of their movements, removal of basic human rights, restrictions upon freedom of movement, and so on. The probability of being harmed by a communist during the McCarthy era was less than 1/0000000 of the probability of being harmed in a traffic accident. But by suppressing this information, by making it appear instead (and falsely) that there was a communist under every bush that McCarthy and his corporate cronies were able to profit from the fear and disinformation they promulgated.
The free press
Sharing information about the illegal activities of those in power is an invitation to many forms of information suppression. A single example: The so-called Pentagon Papers were leaked during the United States’ war against Vietnam. This was a time when the prevailing propaganda was that there was a communist under every bed waiting to jump up and murder U.S. citizens in their sleep.
The leak of the Papers however allegedly showed government lying, complicity in law breaking, in misleading Congress, in ignoring civil and human rights, complicity in torture, complicity in a massive propaganda campaign concerning the Vietnam war, and so on. When they were leaked to the press the government of the day said that those responsible for the leak should be jailed, or even assassinated.
A smear campaign accused those who leaked the documents of sexual crimes, and worse. Rather than admit that they were involved in totally unethical, amoral, and illegal behaviour the leaders of the day did everything in their power to a) censor this and other leaks, b) discredit and lie about the people involved in the leaks, and c) bully media and indeed other governments to censor the information.
There are many other examples throughout history and in many countries. Interestingly, in all places where information leaks have occurred concerning information about what use tax dollars were really being put, the government of the day had been actively engaged in fear campaigns. Further, in some countries such as North Korea, the government earnestly suppresses the right of the public to know what is really going on. To such an extent that those who act as journalists providing truthful information to the public (but which shows the leadership for what they really are), are automatically marked for a life time of jail, assassination, and massive propaganda about the ’dangers’ in sharing information. Very sad.
Public Safety
At any rate, there is a well established technique of declaring massive surveillance of citizens as necessary for the theatre security of ‘public safety’. This technique was used extensively by the Nazis’ Goebbels, the U.S.’ McCarthy, Mao’s Red Guard, and others in similar regimes worldwide. It is frequently used merely as means to suppress dissent. And to hide the shenanigans of those in power from the citizenry.
The technique always requires a trumped up bogeyman. Usually one whose country has resources the agressor wishes for himself. For the Nazi’s it was a small ethnic group with fiscal resource. For the McCarthyites it was the “the red menace” of communism which was used as an excuse to seize assets of certain groups. For the Romans it was the Carthaginians whose considerable wealth the Romans wanted for themselves, to such an extent that they propagandised the Carthaginians into unfeeling heathans who hated Roman ways and freedoms. History even in our own time, is unfortunately full of such examples.
Conclusion
“Oderint dum metuant (Let them hate so long as they fear)” – Caligula (Roman Emperor)
Creating an overblown fear of some group imagined or real then using that fear as an aid to information suppression... is an old technique for creating a mailable and easily manipulated citizenry.
Orwell’s, Eulle’s, Faulcault’s, and others’ warnings against the invisible rise of totalitarianism is lost amid the bellicose (albeit silent to those so acculturated) clatter of propaganda, redirection, and induced fear.
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of the United States
