The Brainwashers
By LEOPOLD KOHR*
ONE out of every three American prisoners in the Korean War was suspect of having eolktborated with thi! enemy. To prevent a re- eAurrence
of this humiliating experience, the
t. tnerican authorities arranged for an investiga- bic)"; and its results, leading to new anti-colla- „nration and anti-brainwashing techniques, have rw been made available by Eugene Kinkead n II.h.r They Collaborated.t 6 Whether. the conclusions are useful is another i'llestion. The most important outcome of the wilLyestigation seems to be a new 'Code of Conduct' thu°se six brief articles are henceforth to fortify h.e stamina of the American soldier by engaging ,111 in monologues such as these: 'I am an r tnerican fighting man' (I) 'I will never sur- ender out of my own free will' (I)). 'I will make pill) Oral or written statements disloyal to my '43tIntry (v). 'I will, never forget that I am an Af tnerican fighting man' (VI) (presumably he has :rgotten that he has already said so, in [I]. But 6111 this help a soldier's resistance to an enemy ;terrogator who, according to a film dramatising i.nrttete V of the Code, scowls (backlit by spot- svight behind each shoulder): 'Do you know how be torture people? One way is to lash a copper , nwl Upside down on your naked stomach- 41erneath the bowl are large rats, hungry to the 1 13wnint of starvatidn. The rats proceed to eat their out of captivity through your stomach.' 1 c4ve my doubts as to the effectiveness of the !at/de as an antidote to such threats. And so. tr)Parently, have its own formulators; they see t° il that the future victim is fortified against the ke.iThrs of brainwashing not only by talking to ;Ittlself but by viewing frightening films and by
physical submission to anticipated hard-
ships, i 'The trouble is that brainwashing, like seduction (11 love-making. has nothing to do with torture „nnr, as has recently been suggested, with a Ysterious alienation of one's character). As the u 4(1 itself indicates, it is an intellectual process, 1:i4g a gentle rinse rather than a fierce fire-hose. iss Process depends on understanding. Its weapon v"rnpathy. Its aim—to induce agreement "'eh can hardly be achieved by pummelling /our naked stomach. a Por this reason, the new post-Korean resist- rinee techniques elaborated by the US Army will r,(11 tntlY prove inadequate; they will make Corn- ...",.tnist brainwashing even more effective. In his Mons to make his victim agree, nothing can 4 University of Puerto Rico. Visiting Professor of 'llomics at University College, Swansea. t t-ongtnans, 21s.
serve the brainwasher better than an anti- brainwashing training adjusted to the expecta- tion of horror. When, early in the Second World War, Canadian authorities sought to capture an escaped Nazi prisoner, newspapers described him as a strutting. arrogant, goose-stepping in- dividual, speaking English with a heavy guttural accent—the very picture of a Nazi. The result was that within twenty-four hours not one but five characters were caught, all fitting the de- scription, all patriotic Canadians. So the papers sheepishly published a second description, pre- senting him as a well-mannered young man with a flawless Oxford accent. When he was finally discovered in a resort, a host of bewitched teen- age girls clamoured for his autograph. Their mental image of him had been in line with the first description, and when he turned out to look like an ordinary Canadian, the contrast made him appear much nicer than a Canadian. Instead of turning on him, they joined his side. They were brainwashed in his favour without his lifting a finger.
The same effect will be achieved by the hungry- rat theory of brainwashing, according to which a Chinese, a Russian, or any Communist is pictured as a monster. Instead of giving us fortitude, this serves as an ideal Stage I of the three-stage Communist brainwashing process, provided free of charge by our own indoctrina- tion. For when we fall into the hand of the enemy, we find he ekes not fit our image. `To our great bewilderment,' as we can read in Mr. Kinkead's book, he may offer us 'a smile, a cigarette, and a handshake.' He will look like a pleasant American or an English country squire. No wonder that someone we expected to be so crude and found so amiable fails to trigger-off our care- fully prepared resistance mechanism. Instead he surprises, he 'bewilders' us. Our psychological Maginot Line, like the real one, turns out to be an Imaginot Line. its guns trained on positions from which no one fires. Thus, before we are aware of it, the enemy has broken through the only point we left unfortified. He has struck at our centre of sympathy. He has gassed us with nicely scented gestures inducing approval. He has begun to invade our mind and launder our brain before a w ord is spoken.
Now we are ripe for Stage II, the main phase of the brainwashing process. based this time on Marxist inducement techniques, but again quite different from the bullying we expected. Instead of the upside-down copper bowl, our pleasant brainwasher puts a glass of beer before us. And just as we'begin' to quote Afticle I of the Code CI am an American fighting man'), he proposes a toast to the people of the United States. What are we to do? Disagree? Recite Article V ('will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country)? Of course not. Thus he manages to achieve our first consent not by a beating but by a toast. And as the dialectical battle proceeds, he enlarges his beachhead in our brain by feelingly praising our constitution, our heroes, our form of government, our freedoms.
Having put us off guard by his unexpected generosity, he now begins to widen the area of agreement by pointing to the similarities between our institutions, with which we are familiar, and his, with which we are not. And to our con- sternation we begin to realise that our highly publicised egalitarian ideals—our emphasis on community rather than personal pursuits; the subordination of our conduct to the dictate of public rather than private opinion; our collectivist enthusiasm for government for the people rather than the individual; our talk of a new form of people's capitalism—all these ideals, instead of presenting the antithesis of Communism, permit us to agree with it 90 per cent.. reducing the area of difference to a mere 10 per cent. True, this is the vital area. But having been brought up in terms of 100 per cent. opposition, 10 per cent. now seems hardly anything at all.
With this Stage 11 of the brainwashing process ends. Its purpose was to establish rapport; to break through a wide ring of per defences not by torture but by spreading a climate of broad agreement. Stage III is a brief terminal phase, designed to take the central fortress pro- tecting our ideological nucleus, the vital 10 per cent. At this point, the task is not too difficult since, thanks to our indoctrination, this 10 per cent. has been fused with the peripheral 90 per cent. to such an extent that the collapse of the latter has all but annihilated the former. What remains is therefore little more than a mopping- up action. Having found ourselves in agreement with our captor in areas of minor significance so often, we have, like Pavlov's dog, insensibly developed a conditioned yes-saying reflex. So as the brainwasher now cautiously begins to invade our ideological nucleus, he finds our defence equipment atrophied, and we continue to say yes until nothing is left of our position. At this point we are set free, presenting the well- known picture of blank docility indicative of the successful conclusion of our brainwashing.
Though much of the mammoth investigation of the Korean experience hints at the true nature both of brainwashing and the problems it raises, to judge from Mr. Kinkead's earnest effort, neither the American authorities nor the author venture to draw the obvious conclusion: that brainwashing needs not stamina but wits, and that the necessary wits are sharpened not by boy-scoutish Codes of Conduct, but by a realistic and even sympathetic familiarity with the system of the antagonists. Sherlock Holmes caught his criminals not by hating them but through his ability to put himself into their shoes—which honest Dr. Watson, forever baffled, never could. The same is true of Communist brainwashers. But little of this comes through Mr. Kinkead's sociological analysis; it reads as Dr. Watson's accounts would rAttd, had he written about his own exploits rather than Sherlock Holmes's.
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