How Do People Get Brainwashed?

Noam Chomsky explains.

The Background

People are familiar with how people get brainwashed in countries like North Korea and China, where the state controls the information system. But people are less familiar with the process by which people get brainwashed in free countries. Brainwashing, logically speaking, is way more important in a country where the people are free, since you can’t coerce them. And if you can’t coerce them, then you need to make sure that they think the right thoughts.

In a 2003 interview, Chomsky gives an interesting history of how thought-control in free countries evolved (I added hyperlinks):

The first coordinated propaganda ministry, called the Ministry of Information, was in Britain during World War I. It had the task, as they put it, of controlling the mind of the world. What they were particularly concerned with was the mind of America and, more specifically, the mind of American intellectuals. They thought if they could convince American intellectuals of the nobility of the British war effort, then American intellectuals could succeed in driving the basically pacifist population of the United States, which didn’t want to have anything to do with European wars, rightly, into a fit of fanaticism and hysteria, which would get them to join the war. Britain needed U.S. backing, so Britain had its Ministry of Information aimed primarily at American opinion and opinion leaders. The Wilson administration reacted by setting up the first state propaganda agency here, called the Committee on Public Information.

It succeeded brilliantly, mainly with liberal American intellectuals, people of the John Dewey circle, who actually took pride in the fact that for the first time in history, according to their picture, a wartime fanaticism was created, and not by military leaders and politicians but by the more responsible, serious members of the community, namely, thoughtful intellectuals. And they did organize a campaign of propaganda, which within a few months did succeed in turning a relatively pacifist population into raving anti-German fanatics who wanted to destroy everything German. It reached the point where the Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn’t play Bach. The country was driven into hysteria.

The members of Wilson’s propaganda agency included people like Edward Bernays, who became the guru of the public relations industry, and Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century, the most respected media figure. They very explicitly drew from that experience. If you look at their writings in the 1920s, they said, We have learned from this that you can control the public mind, you can control attitudes and opinions. That’s where Lippmann said, “We can manufacture consent by the means of propaganda.” Bernays said, “The more intelligent members of the community can drive the population into whatever they want” by what he called “engineering of consent.” It’s the “essence of democracy,” he said.

It also led to the rise of the public relations industry. It’s interesting to look at the thinking in the 1920s, when it got started. This was the period of Taylorism in industry, when workers were being trained to become robots, every motion controlled. It created highly efficient industry, with human beings turned into automata. The Bolsheviks were very impressed with it, too. They tried to duplicate it. In fact, they tried throughout the world. But the thought-control experts realized that you could not only have what was called on-job control but also off-job control. It’s their phrase. Control them off job by inducing a philosophy of futility, focusing people on the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption, and basically get them out of our hair. Let the people who are supposed to run the show do it without any interference from the mass of the population, who have no business in the public arena. From that come enormous industries, ranging from advertising to universities, all committed very consciously to the conception that you must control attitudes and opinions because the people are just too dangerous.

It’s particularly striking that it developed in the more democratic societies. They tried to duplicate it in Germany and Bolshevik Russia and South Africa and elsewhere. But it was always quite explicitly a mostly American model. There is a good reason for that. If you can control people by force, it’s not so important to control what they think and feel. But if you lose the capacity to control people by force, it becomes more necessary to control attitudes and opinions.

That brings us right up to the present. By now the public is no longer willing to accept state propaganda agencies, so the Reagan Office of Public Diplomacy was declared illegal and had to go in roundabout ways. What took over instead was private tyrannies, basically, corporate systems, which play the role of controlling opinion and attitudes, not taking orders from the government, but closely linked to it, of course. That’s our contemporary system. Extremely self-conscious. You don’t have to speculate much about what they’re doing because they’re kind enough to tell you in industry publications and also in the academic literature.

So you go to, say, the 1930s, perhaps the founder of a good bit of modern political science. A liberal Wilsonian, Harold Lasswell, in 1933 wrote an article called “Propaganda” in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, a major publication, in which the message was, “We should not [all of these are quotes, incidentally] succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.” They’re not, we are. And since people are too stupid and ignorant to understand their best interests, for their own benefit—because we’re great humanitarians—we must marginalize and control them. The best means is propaganda. There is nothing negative about propaganda, he said. It’s as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good or for evil. And since we’re noble, wonderful people, we’ll use it for good, to ensure that the stupid, ignorant masses remain marginalized and separated from any decision-making capacity.

The Leninist doctrines are approximately the same. There are very close similarities. The Nazis also picked it up. If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler was very impressed with Anglo-American propaganda. He argued, not without reason, that that’s what won World War I and vowed that next time around the Germans would be ready, too, and developed their own propaganda systems modeled on the democracies. The Russians tried it, but it was too crude to be effective. South Africa used it; others, right up to the present. But the real forefront is the United States, because it’s the most free and democratic society, and it’s just much more important to control attitudes and opinions.

In my opinion, this is the most fascinating part of all of this:

Extremely self-conscious. You don’t have to speculate much about what they’re doing because they’re kind enough to tell you in industry publications and also in the academic literature.

You would think that people advocating the brainwashing of the public would have the tact to keep such totalitarian viewpoints to themselves, but Chomsky is correct that there is some weirdly candid stuff on the record. Look at Bernays, here, sounding like a villain in a comic-book:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.…

[C]learly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of American democracy.

Can you imagine someone today openly pushing for “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”? Or advocating that the “intelligent minorities” actually “make use of propaganda continuously and systematically”?

This all started with WW1. As Bernays explains:

An important factor in developing the climate of public opinion was the demonstration to the peoples of the world in World War I that wars are fought with words and ideas as well as with arms and bullets. Businessmen, private institutions, great universities—all kinds of groups—became conditioned to the fact that they needed the public; that the great public could now perhaps be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed during the war to the national cause, and that the same methods could do the job.

By “do the job”, he means brainwash the public so that the public can be “harnessed” to the causes that “all kinds of groups” are interested in. Which is a weird thing to openly push for. And Lasswell’s description of propaganda is chilling too:

[R]egard for men in the mass rests upon no democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. The modern propagandist, like the modern psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their own interests.…

[The spread of schooling] did not release the masses from ignorance and superstition but altered the nature of both and compelled the development of a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda…[which] attains eminence as the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques…[and] is no more moral or immoral than a pump handle.…[It is] certain that propaganda will in time be viewed with fewer misgivings.

Lasswell regards this “whole new technique of control” to be “no more moral or immoral than a pump handle”. And he regards the “whole new technique of control” to be “cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques”.

It’s not just the “intelligent minorities” in the Ivory Tower who understood the need for a “whole new technique of control”. Corporate people were very open about this in a way that raises your eyebrows:

J. Warren Kinsmann, chairman of the N.A.M.’s [National Association of Manufacturers] Public Relations Advisory Committee and vice president of Du Pont, reminded businessmen that “in the everlasting battle for the minds of men” the tools of public relations were the only weapons “powerful enough to arouse public opinion sufficiently to check the steady, insidious and current drift toward Socialism.…” S.C. Allyn of National Cash Register…[summarized] corporate objectives. The goal was to “indoctrinate citizens with the capitalist story.”

Just to be clear, this isn’t some purple-haired radical saying this stuff—it’s corporate leaders openly advocating that vast amounts of money be spent to “indoctrinate citizens”.

I asked Chomsky why Chomsky includes advertising—which seems largely apolitical—in the domain of propaganda, since we don’t always think of advertising as propaganda:

The goal of business propaganda (as it was called in more honest days) is very explicit, and on record: creating wants, directing people to “the more superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption,” etc.  That’s a very clear form of indoctrination, with enormous consequences, which is why so much of the GDP goes to marketing—a form of delusion, not providing information about products, plainly.

In future articles, I intend to plunge into this history of thought-control. All of this needs to be established and documented, of course. But I wanted to put on the table what exactly Chomsky is asserting:

• There is a system of thought-control in our society.

• Billions of dollars is spent on it annually.

• A ton of conscious effort goes into crafting the mechanisms of thought-control.

• There’s a rich record of people openly/candidly/frankly recognizing the need for thought-control on the logical grounds that the people are too free in free societies and therefore they’re too dangerous. They must be controlled. They must be “harnessed”.

How Elites Get Brainwashed

In a 1988 Q&A at McMaster University, Chomsky gives a fascinating explanation of how elites get brainwashed (I will upload the audio as soon as I can):

How do you get into an elite institution? How do you become part of the intellectual elite? Just think about it. You become part of the intellectual elite by being extremely passive. Most school-systems are just ridiculous. You’re always getting crazy demands, and silly things to do, and things that have no point, and so on. And if you’re passive and obedient and submissive, you do them. And then if you’re sort of reasonably smart, you work your way through. On the other hand, people who don’t do them are called “rebellious” and maybe they go into drugs or something. They get marginalized somehow. There’s a very strong tendency in that direction. And the end result is that there’s a kind of a pre-selection for passivity and obedience into the intelligentsia. And that has its effects.

And then once you’re in it, other devices begin. Like, just the distribution of rewards and privileges. Which is very significant. Or the possibility of getting a job. And so on.

The whole thing really deserves careful study. It’s a very interesting system. Much more interesting than the totalitarian propaganda-systems discussed by Orwell. Which are really uninteresting.…

It’s not more malevolent than the fact that General Motors tries to get profits. That’s just the nature of the institutions. It’s not that the people are malevolent. They end up internalizing the values of the institutions that they represent, of course, because people just can’t accept that much dissonance.

But it’s really the institutional structure, which works out in a most interesting fashion.

So the basic points behind brainwashing are:

• the education-system filters out non-passive people

• once you make it through the education-system filters, you need to worry about the system of rewards/privileges that is presented to you

• once you make it through the education-system filters, you need to secure a job

• you will internalize the values of the institutions that you represent because you can’t deal with the psychological dissonance of looking in the mirror every day and thinking that you’re a monster—eventually, you start looking in the mirror and believing whatever convenient beliefs will help you get through the workday without feeling bad about what you’re doing

The idea is that people will change their beliefs so that they no longer feel uncomfortable about their actions:

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and is typically experienced as psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.

Chomsky explains the issue of dissonance:

In the public relations industry, which is a major industry in the United States and has been for a long time, 60 years or more, this is very well understood. In fact, that’s their purpose. That’s one of the reasons this is such a heavily polled society, so that business can keep its finger on the popular pulse and recognize that, if attitudes have to be changed, we’d better work on it. That’s what public relations is for, very conscious, very well understood. When you get to what these guys call the institutions responsible for “the indoctrination of the young,” the schools and the universities, at that point it becomes somewhat more subtle. By and large, in the schools and universities people believe they’re telling the truth. The way that works, with rare exceptions, is that you cannot make it through these institutions unless you’ve accepted the indoctrination. You’re kind of weeded out along the way. Independent thinking is encouraged in the sciences but discouraged in these areas. If people do it they’re weeded out as radical or there’s something wrong with them. It doesn’t have to work 100 percent, in fact, it’s even better for the system if there are a few exceptions here and there. It gives the illusion of debate or freedom. But overwhelmingly, it works.…

Then comes the question of the individual journalist, you know, the young kid who decides to become an honest journalist. Well, you try. Pretty soon you are informed by your editor that you’re a little off base, you’re a little too emotional, you’re too involved in the story, you’ve got to be more objective. There’s a whole pile of code words for this, and what those code words mean is “Get in line, buddy, or you’re out.” Get in line means follow the party line. One thing that happens then is that people drop out. But those who decide to conform usually just begin to believe what they’re saying. In order to progress you have to say certain things; what the copy editor wants, what the top editor is giving back to you. You can try saying it and not believing it, but that’s not going to work, people just aren’t that dishonest, you can’t live with that, it’s a very rare person who can do that. So you start saying it and pretty soon you’re believing it because you’re saying it, and pretty soon you’re inside the system. Furthermore, there are plenty of rewards if you stay inside. For people who play the game by the rules in a rich society like this, there are ample rewards. You’re well off, you’re privileged, you’re rich, you have prestige, you have a share of power if you want, if you like this kind of stuff you can go off and become the State Department spokesman on something or other, you’re right near the center of at least privilege, sometimes power, in the richest, most powerful country in the world. You can go far, as long as you’re very obedient and subservient and disciplined. So there are many factors, and people who are more independent are just going to drop off or be kicked out. In this case there are very few exceptions.

This is the key part:

You can try saying it and not believing it, but that’s not going to work, people just aren’t that dishonest, you can’t live with that, it’s a very rare person who can do that. So you start saying it and pretty soon you’re believing it because you’re saying it, and pretty soon you’re inside the system.

The basic point is that what you say, you will eventually come to believe. Unless you’re a rare psychopath who can function with the self-image of: “I’m a total propagandist, and a total liar, and I’m fine with that. It is what it is.” Very few people can live with that self-image, day after day.

Chomsky explains how rare it is for a person to come along who can avoid the issue of dissonance:

It’s a very rare person—very rare, almost to the point of non-existence—who can tolerate what’s called “cognitive dissonance”. Saying one thing and believing another. You start saying certain things because it’s necessary to say them and pretty soon you’re believing them. Because you just have to.

In Understanding Power (2002), Chomsky explains the pressures that shape people’s ideologies:

Or let me tell you another story I heard about twenty years ago from a black civil rights activist who came up to study at Harvard Law School—it kind of illustrates some of the other pressures that are around. This guy gave a talk in which he described how the kids starting off at Harvard Law School come in with long hair and backpacks and social ideals, they’re all going to go into public service law to change the world and so on—that’s the first year. Around springtime, the recruiters come for the cushy summer jobs in the Wall Street law firms, and these students figure, “What the heck, I can put on a tie and a jacket and shave for one day, just because I need that money and why shouldn’t I have it?” So they put on the tie and the jacket for that one day, and they get the job, and then they go off for the summer and when they come back in the fall, it’s ties, and jackets, and obedience, a shift of ideology. Sometimes it takes two years.

Well, obviously he was over-drawing the point—but those sorts of factors also are very influential. I mean, I’ve felt it all my life: it’s extremely easy to be sucked into the dominant culture, it can be very appealing. There are a lot of rewards. And what’s more, the people you meet don’t look like bad people—you don't want to sit there and insult them. Maybe they’re perfectly nice people. So you try to be friends, maybe you even are friends. Well, you begin to conform, you begin to adapt, you begin to smooth off the harsher edges—and pretty soon it’s just happened, it kind of seeps in. And education at a place like Harvard is largely geared to that, to a remarkable extent in fact.

It’s a gradual psychological process:

Well, you begin to conform, you begin to adapt, you begin to smooth off the harsher edges—and pretty soon it’s just happened, it kind of seeps in.

Chomsky explains that the True Believers in our society are the intellectual elites:

In fact, my guess is that you would find that the intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector, for good reasons. It’s their role as a secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense that they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it’s not that crucial that they really believe it. But for the intellectual elite themselves, it’s crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for a very rare person who’s an outright liar, it’s hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you’ve internalized it and come to believe it.

And Chomsky comments about politicians (who do terrible things) that:

Some may simply be total cynics. Most likely they are people who have acquired or had naturally a certain technique which is almost a filter that you have to pass through in order to get to a leadership position. That is that you be capable of erasing totally from your mind anything that conflicts with your need to serve powerful interests. You have got to be able to erase it, and then you don’t have cognitive dissonance.