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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32640 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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https://digitalagency.substack.com/p/compliance-and-the-erosion-of-agency

During the Korean War, captured American soldiers found themselves in POW camps run by Chinese Communists. The Red Chinese engaged in what they called “lenient policy,” which was a sophisticated psychological assault on their captives... The Chinese were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in contrast to the behavior of American POWs in WWII.

The Chinese answer was to start small and build. Prisoners were asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential "The United States is not perfect." "In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem." Once they complied with these minor requests, the men were pushed to submit to more substantive ones. A man who had agreed that the United States is not perfect might be asked provide examples. He might then be asked to make a list of "problems with America" and sign his name. Later, he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe, isn’t it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.

Suddenly he would find himself a "collaborator."

Leftists have understood and exploited the nature of human weakness and malleability to power structures for over a century. They are very good at it. Every lie they tell and every middle school bullying tactic is carefully tailored to warp their victims into a shape the torturer wants. They see themselves as sculpting the human mind the way dog trainers condition dogs. "Engineers of The Soul" as one essay put it.

How would you describe the way society worked for millenia before the leftists?

There was no Foucault and no panopticon, just brutal violence and local suppression.

More brute force, fewer mind games

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