I can’t help placing a mirror between where we are today and the 1930s. Looking at the works of sociologists and psychoanalysts who were interested at that time in mass psychology, I think there are important questions and insights for our own period.
Now nobody likes the term brainwashing
Brainwashing, it conjures up the impression of deprivation techniques and an invasive take over of your brain. No, the preferable term is coercive persuasion. A whole country persuaded to believe in a pandemic and have themselves injected. A whole country persuaded into world war three convinced they’re the good guys. A whole country persuaded into doing whatever is planned next?
However, the concept of brainwashing has held fast. Especially, as it’s used by most ordinary people to explain/understand the behaviour of the German people under Nazi rule.
Fear and the Growth of Authoritarianism
In his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich examines the links between authoritarian rule and unconscious fears. In his book Reich focuses on sexual repression, patriarchy and fear of sex and how it was exploited by the Nazis to ‘coercively persuade’ the German people.
Reich also defines fascism, which is always useful;
It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system (totalitarian), where power takes precedence over objective interests and facts are distorted for political purposes.
There was a pervasive feeling among social scientists that control of the masses was being carried out. This is reflected in the words of sociologist Willi Schlamm in 1935;
In truth, the epoch is gone in which we had the impression that the masses of society could be guided by reason and by insights...In truth, the days are gone in which the masses have a function in shaping society. It has been shown that the masses can be completely molded, that they are unconscious and capable of adapting themselves to any kind of power or infamy.
This displays the early belief that modern scientific methods could be used to “improve” man. For example, the Bolsheviks were interested whether new social structures would be accompanied by a corresponding change in man’s ideology. However, Edward Bernay’s 1926 work entitled Propaganda, unfortunately demonstrated the wide ranging tools at the disposal of the ruling class, against which the common man has little, to no, defence.
Stupidity Theory
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, contemplated in the 1930s about what had happened to his fellow countrymen. He concluded that it was not evil itself that was the most dangerous enemy of the good, but stupidity;
Against stupidity we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use. Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied. In fact, they can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make them aggressive. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
He was taken away by the Nazi authroities in 1943 shortly after writing these words and died in a concentration camp two years later.
Bonhoeffer noted that, as it seemed to him that it manifested itself most in social situations, he concluded that stupidity was a group phenomena. Furthermore, when a group acts stupidly this can compound the entire effect. In other words, being part of the herd can lead to stupidity, especially when mixed with fear.
This has obvious implications for us.
Many of us have been asking ourselves the question “when are people going to wake up?” So far, big events have only been accompanied by a sharp increase in ‘coercive persuasion’ techniques and many people have descended deeper into this collective mass psychosis. All the time believing it is us who have been brainwashed. The irony.
It is one of mass psychology’s basic tenets that it does not proclaim an “objective truth” simply because it is a truth. It first asks itself how the average person of the working population will react to an objective process. W. Reich
Writing about the Soviet Union, Reich says the mood of the average Russian in 1929 was imbued with heroic sacrifice and high hopes. However, by 1935 there was an “evasive, unsteady and embarrassed oscillation” in the feelings and thinking of the population.
In trying to understand why socialism failed from a mass psychoanalytical position, Reich wrote about what he termed the masses fear of responsibility, referring to it as “structural helplessness”. Similarly, patriarchal oppression resulted in authority-craving structures. Yet, Reich, whilst recognising these disabilities remains optimistic that man has suppressed potential. Remembering those time when people showed they had the capacity for freedom, such as the American Revolution.
Reich’s books were banned and burnt by the Nazis in the 1940s, and then again by the FDA in the 1950s.
In terms of when are people going to wake up, or is it even possible? Who knows. I do know I prefer Reich’s optimism to Bonhoeffer's stupidity though.