Mind Wars includes fascinating stories of:
The inner frontier of the human mind is the last bastion of privacy. But are we really in control of our own minds? The answer may shock you!
Mind Wars includes fascinating stories of:
The inner frontier of the human mind is the last bastion of privacy. But are we really in control of our own minds? The answer may shock you!
Mind Wars: A History of Mind Control, Surveillance, and Social Engineering by the Government, Media, and Secret Societies
240
Mind Wars: A History of Mind Control, Surveillance, and Social Engineering by the Government, Media, and Secret Societies
240Paperback(First Edition)
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Overview
Mind Wars includes fascinating stories of:
The inner frontier of the human mind is the last bastion of privacy. But are we really in control of our own minds? The answer may shock you!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601633583 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 04/20/2015 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 632,985 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Larry Flaxman has been actively involved in paranormal research and hands-on field investigation for over thirteen years, and melds his technical, scientific, and investigative backgrounds together for no-nonsense, scientifically objective explanations regarding a variety of anomalous phenomena. He is the President and Senior Researcher of ARPAST, the Arkansas Paranormal and Anomalous Studies Team, which he founded in February of 2007. Larry is also active in the development of cutting edge custom designed equipment for use in the field investigating environmental effects and anomalies that may contribute to our understanding of the paranormal.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
(Keep on Playing Those) Mind Games: Mind Control for the Masses
Brainwashing is a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him. He loses touch with reality. Facts and fancy whirl round and change places....
— Edward Hunter, Brainwashing
The most dangerous of all sciences is that of molding mass opinion, because it would enable anyone to govern the whole world.
— Talbot Mundy
In a world that leaves little to the imagination, where everything from our bodies to our sex lives is readily available for all to see via the new reality of social networking, where what we had for dinner and who we are divorcing becomes global information for whoever has the time and the inclination to care, where our photos and posts and e-mails are being perused not only by family and friends and colleagues, but secretive government agencies, we are as transparent as Saran Wrap. Yet, perhaps naively, we believe that the inner sanctum of the mind is our last bastion of privacy, where our most deepest, darkest secrets can remain buried in shadows, and our hopes and dreams and how we really feel about our mother-in-law or boss will never see the light of day (unless we choose to post it on our social networking!). The mind, to us, is ours and ours alone, and even our closest loved ones only get to know what we choose to share with them.
We and we alone control our behaviors, think our thoughts, plan our actions, and express our emotions, as autonomous beings in a conform-crazy world.
Our minds are our minds.
Yet from the beginning of time, others have desired to make us think, believe, and behave according to their minds, and the desire to control the most private and powerful part of our identity was a Golden Fleece, a Holy Grail, to those whom, for whatever motive or purpose, would benefit from being the puppet-master to our puppet.
Mind control is probably as old as our awareness that we each had a mind of our own.
Throughout the course of history, there are a number of names for mind control that describe a common goal: to take over a person's innermost thoughts and control his or her behaviors and actions. Brainwashing, coercion, thought reform, mental manipulation, psychological warfare, programming, conversion, gas lighting, indoctrination methods, psychic driving, crowd control: They all describe a method by which a person's individual thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions are disrupted, dismissed, and destroyed — even replaced with the thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions of someone else. Whether designed to create the perfect assassin or super soldier, indoctrinate prisoners of war, recruit members into a cult or religious belief system, or control the consuming masses and direct their behaviors in accordance to the political whims of the day, mind control has been used extensively in our past, is in use today, and no doubt will be used in the future.
And lest you think that the academic and scientific communities look upon mind control as a "tin foil hat" conspiracy, that is not the case. In fact, cult members have often spoken at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, calling for informed discourse on the need for more understanding of mind control victims, especially those involved in destructive cults and religious movements (including terrorist groups). In "Mind Control: Psychological Reality of Mindless Rhetoric," for the November 2002 APA's President's Column, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo writes: "A body of social science evidence shows that when systematically practiced by state-sanctioned police, military or destructive cults, mind control can induce false confessions, create converts who willingly torture or kill 'invented enemies,' engage indoctrinated members to work tireless, give up their money — and even their lives — for 'the cause.'" Zimbardo also goes on to say: "Understanding the dynamics and pervasiveness of situational power is essential to learning how to resist it and to weaken the dominance of the many agents of mind control who ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts."
Those many faces and fronts include trusted authority figures, people in power, famous celebrities and world leaders, religious and spiritual figureheads and gurus, corporate giants, advertising agencies, the media, politicians, and even our own family and friends. We are assaulted on all fronts by people eager to take a piece of our minds and make them their own, for whatever purposes suit their agenda.
Pop Culture Mind Control
Our popular culture is filled with stories and images of what we think goes on when someone is brainwashed or under the influence of mind control tactics, whether by some mysterious government agency or a Svengali-like master manipulator on a more personal scale. War movies depict POWs being tortured and abused by their captors, even starved and deprived of sunlight and water, for the purposes of switching allegiances or coughing up valuable information. As a form of interrogation, manipulation of the mind and exposure of the body to extremes, such as heat, cold, deprivation, and beatings, can bring out the truth in even the most resisting person.
The term brainwashing actually comes to us from the Chinese, who used the phrase during the Maoist regime to describe the coercive techniques being used on individuals to get them into "right thinking" with the new social order. Brainwashing was first used in the English language in an article for the Miami News in October 1950 titled "Brain Washing Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party," by reporter Edward Hunter. Hunter was actually a propaganda operative for the CIA working undercover as a journalist. Once the headline hit, the term stuck throughout the Cold War era and still is used to describe mind control techniques that literally "wash" the brain of thoughts, beliefs, and ideals, leaving it a clean slate for whatever those in control seek to write on it.
There has been a lot of controversy over whether or not POWs during the Korean War were victims of brainwashing tactics, which included prolonged interrogations designed to exhaust the victims, torture, and other abuses. The Army's own 1956 documents included in "Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War" state that there is no verifiable proof of brainwashing and mind control as the reasons behind any POW abuse. Abuse did take place, no doubt, but was it for purposes of changing the minds of the captors? That has not been proven, although many people continue to propose that American GI POWs who defected to the enemy camp of the Chinese were brainwashed into doing so.
Even the CIA has been accused of creating the whole concept of brainwashing, as a means to explain why some POWs cut and ran, and sided willingly with the enemy camp. Yet there are those who believe the CIA was, and still is, actively involved in mind control experimentation of its own (as we dig into in a future chapter).
Licensed counselor and former member of the Unification Church Steven Alan Hassan, who now runs the Freedom of Mind Center, states on his Website that the most destructive forms of mind control are those that take the "locus of control" away from the individual, and that four basic tactics are used to manipulate and even change another person's individual identity: behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. Tactics involving these four aspects prove to be the most successful in achieving control over another's entire mental reality and experience. This is most obvious in religious cults (which we explore in a later chapter), where isolation and the manipulation of information exposure can literally create an altered reality for the cult members — and not necessarily one they would choose voluntarily.
Our vision of mind control, brainwashing, and the possible reasons behind it often come from movies and spy novels, as well as headlines that scream of deadly cults and extreme religious indoctrination (you can join, but you can never unjoin!), satanic ritual abuse of children to create slaves with no independent will, the creation of the ultimate super soldier or warrior/spy, and the horrific human experimentation on unwilling victims in prisons or death camps using LSD or electroshock therapy. Rarely does anyone look deeper into the fiction and the media headlines to find the seeds of truth, or just the facts, ma'am. But the continuing popularity of conspiracy-related pop culture is a testament to the desire to know if we are being manipulated, how, and by whom.
From the earliest portrayals of mind control manipulators as strange, mad scientists performing hypnosis on poor, equally mad victims, to the more sophisticated stories today that combine fact and fiction and often feature actual technology being utilized by the manipulators (patented, too!), we love a good mind control story. Only when we stop, step back, and ask, "How much of this is story and how much might be real?" do we begin to grasp the serious nature of the subject and the depth of the rabbit hole it might take us down.
Probably the most well-known mind control–themed movie is The Manchurian Candidate, which began as a political thriller novel by Richard Condon and was adapted for the big screen twice: in 1962 featuring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in key roles, and in 2004 with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in the same roles. The story focuses on the son of a very prominent political family who is brainwashed into becoming a secret assassin. Set during the Korean War, Major Bennett Marco (played by Sinatra and later Washington) is kidnapped along with his platoon and taken to a place called Manchuria, where he and his unit are brainwashed. Later, upon returning to the States, Marco has horrible nightmares of betrayal and murder, at the hands of his sergeant, a man he thought was a hero. To avoid too many spoilers, basically Marco discovers others in his platoon suffering from said same nightmares, and uncovers a huge conspiracy involving brainwashing, sleeper assassins, and the potential assassination of a key political figure.
Behind it all is a powerful and quite evil bitch of a woman (played by Lansbury and later Streep), pulling the strings and the triggers behind the scenes.
The movie achieved critical acclaim for its acting, but also touched a nerve with audiences who had read about and heard of actual sleeper assassins and government-backed programs to create super soldiers (i.e., MKUltra; we will discuss that further later).
Another movie, Conspiracy Theory, introduces the MKUltra phenomenon to mainstream audiences courtesy of a crazy cab driver named Jerry, played by Mel Gibson, who tries to convince Alice, a lovely lawyer at the U.S. Justice Department, played by Julia Roberts, that his conspiracy blabberings are real, to tragic results. Sometimes, the crazy babble of a cab driver can actually be hiding the shattered memories and broken identity of a true MKUltra survivor — one who is starting to remember more and more. When he starts identifying men who are following him as CIA, Alice begins to pay attention, embroiling herself into the rabbit hole of conspiracy, which plays out with deadly results. This movie is chock full of classic MKUltra dialogue, torture, drugging, beating, stalking, harassment, terminology, and even triggers, which in this case is a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Triggers serve to "activate" sleeper assassins or agents into action, just as a trigger like clapping your hands might activate someone into (or out of) a hypnotic state.
Story Device
Using mind control as a device for story-telling purposes is not only popular, but deeply affecting, because these pop culture offerings suggest that we are all potential victims, and that, if "they" choose to control us, there is often nothing we can do but sit back and be controlled. Other films of note that come to mind include the spooky and mind-twisting Shutter Island, a 2010 psychological thriller, directed by the great Martin Scorsese, in which star Leonardo DiCaprio struggles with his own sanity, and identity, while investigating a strange disappearance at a remote asylum devoted to brain and mind manipulation studies. Another DiCaprio movie, Inception, suggested that we can even master the means of getting inside people's dreams and stealing their ideas.
Just a short sampling of some mind control/sleeper assassin/thought programming–themed entertainment would no doubt include:
* Trilby by George du Maurier
* The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein
* Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
* 1984 by George Orwell
* Firestarter by Stephen King
* The Bourne Identity book series by Robert Ludlum (also motion pictures)
* A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, later adapted into the classic Stanley Kubrick mindbender
* The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton
* The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
* Telefon, starring Charles Bronson
* Gaslight
* The Matrix
* Scanners
* Dreamscape
* The Guyana Tragedy
* Jacob's Ladder
* Salt, starring Angelina Jolie
* The Long Kiss Goodnight
* The Sleep Room
* Hannah
* Femme Fatale
* Kill Bill
* Closet Land
* The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney
* Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
* The X-Men comic book series
* The Prisoner TV series
* Falling Skies TV series
* Dark Skies TV series
* The X-Files TV series
* La Femme Nikita TV series
* The Pretender TV series
* Nowhere Man TV series
* Fringe TV series
* Homeland TV series
* Dollhouse TV series
* Legends TV series
* Blacklist TV series
Even Star Wars gets in on the mind control action, with Jedi mind tricks allowing safe passage in dangerous places and control over both droids and humans. And good old Dr. Who wasn't above using the story device, either, with The Master controlling minds by a form of hypnosis. Star Trek offered us the alien Borgs creating a hive mind of subservients. It appears that, once again, our entertainment industry mirrors reality, because many of these shows, books, and stories feature elements that are actually true, buried amid the more imaginative — leaving we, the audience, to wonder and grow ever more paranoid over whether what we are seeing could really happen, or did happen, or is just the made-up stuff of the writers' minds. In the television series Fringe, lead scientist Walter Bishop sums it up in one episode, saying, "The brain is a computer, it's an organic computer. It can be hijacked like any other."
The previous list doesn't even begin to cover the use of mind control as a device in modern young adult (YA) dsytopic literature, and in various movies and television shows. Whether it is used as a means for controlling lesser classes of the population, or as a type of hypnosis to get someone to have sex with you, or as a means by which someone can make another person crazy — or even a killer — the theme is rampant and indicative of its importance to our struggles with individualism in a world that seems hell bent on keeping us all in one safe and submissive state. It is a struggle that speaks to our deepest psyche, where we exist in our most raw state, even as we fight for freedom of expression among our peers and our enemies.
Basically, it scares the shit out of us. Even as it empowers us. Knowledge is power, so they say.
And therein may lay the fascination with mind control–themed entertainment. We are uber protective of our bodies and our material goods, yet only when confronted with these stories, often ripped from actual headlines or conspiracy Websites, or declassified government documents, do we realize we may have forgotten to protect our minds.
Though we can somewhat understand the desire for finding workable mind programming techniques during wartime on behalf of authority figures eager to win at all costs, it becomes a bit harder to swallow why mind control might continue to be a goal in times of general comfort and calm. Certainly, we hear the conspiracy theories about a new world order or one mind/one religion, and about government and corporate entities that want to control the masses and even decide for them how they will vote, purchase, and consume. Yes, we hear the theories about how dumbing us down makes us a more compliant public. Yes, we know that there are people who want nothing more than to use the populace as puppets to help generate more wealth and power for the very few, who already have so much of it. But when it comes to really examining the reasons why mind control might be just as pervasive today as it always was, maybe even more so, the answer is always the same: People want to control other people.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Mind Wars"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Authors' Note 15
Introduction 17
Chapter 1 (Keep on Playing Those) Mind Games: Mind Control for the Masses 21
Chapter 2 Rituals and Rites: Mind Control in Our Past 35
Chapter 3 Of Monarchs, Bluebirds, and Artichokes: MKUltra and Mind Control in Modern Times 45
Chapter 4 Triggered: The Tools and Techniques of Control 71
Chapter 5 The Cult Connection: The Use of Mind Control in Cults 101
Chapter 6 Weapons of Mass Distraction: The Media, Advertising, and Social Programming 135
Chapter 7 Mind Power-Activate! The Positive Side of Mind Control 155
Chapter 8 Get Out of My Mind!: V2K, Electronic Harassment, Directed Energy Weapons, and Targeted Individuals 165
Chapter 9 Somebody's Watching You: The United States of Surveillance 187
Conclusion: Who Owns Your Mind? 209
Bibliography 219
Index 229
About the Author 235