[mgj-discuss] Nuking the American Mind

[MSRB Admin]

On Monday, September 13, 2004 CNN's newsreader on Today
program announced: “South Korea's Yonhap news agency is
reporting a huge explosion shook North Korea's northernmost
province on Thursday [September 9, 2004] producing a
mushroom cloud over 4 kilometers (two miles) wide.” Two
satellite photos of what appeared to be the aerial views of
an industrial area accompanied the broadcast.

CNN's correspondent in Korea explained that both the South
Korean and US government experts believe that the explosion
was not the result of a nuclear test (mainly because no
radiation or significant seismological activity was
detected.) Further, it was explained that because of the
proximity of the incident area to the Chinese border, it was
highly unlikely that the North Koreans would have tested a
nuclear device.

At the end of the program, however, the newsreader posed the
“today's question.” He asked the viewers to email their
views about the incident: “was the explosion a nuclear test
or not?” He asked the viewers to email CNN and express their
thoughts on whether the explosion was in fact a nuclear
detonation (!)

The implication was that something wasn't quite right with
the official findings of both the South Korean and US
governments concerning the cause of the explosion. For
instance, they were not telling the truth. But you, the
viewer, must know a lot more about this type of explosion
and the political circumstances in North Korea that had led
to the incident (regardless of the geopolitical implications
and despite evidence to the contrary).

The CNN request sounded bizarre. First, because expert
evidence had already suggested that the explosion was not a
nuclear test. Second, even if an independent nuclear weapons
expert, with additional information about the explosion, had
watched the program why would she share secrets with CNN
instead of contacting the authorities?

So, if CNN didn't realistically expect to receive any
additional expert opinions on the “mystery explosion,” why,
then, they invited their viewers, mostly laypersons, to
email their opinion about the highly specialized (and
sensitive) subject of nuclear weapon testing in North Korea?
Why did CNN insist that its viewers make such a trivial
commitment to email the program?

CNN has started a multi-prong psychological assault on its
viewers. Their news anchors no longer talk about bringing
the terrorists to justice; instead they encourage
“killing” – a sinister mind manipulation exercise to
influence the viewer psychology, since the average American
viewer is not an assassin.

In the current milieu of fear, uncertainty and insecurity in
America, however, it isn't difficult to convince the
American public that the act of “killing” is a necessary
requirement of our time [sic.] and by repeating and
reporting this “requirement” frequently the necessity for
killing becomes a part of the viewers’ self-image. All you
have to do then is to apply the “terrorist” label to the
unfortunate subject - anyplace, anytime.

CNN is applying the same technique that the Chinese military
used successfully to indoctrinate the American POWs during
the Korean war.

In “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” Robert B.
Cialdini writes: “During the Korean war, many captured
American soldiers found themselves in the prisoner-of-war
(POW) camps run by the Chinese Communists. It became clear
early in the conflict that the Chinese treated captives
quite differently than did their allies, the North Koreans,
who favored savagery and harsh punishment to gain
compliance. Specifically avoiding the appearance of
brutality, the Red Chinese engaged in what they termed
‘lenient policy,’ which was in reality a concerted and
sophisticated psychological assault on their [American]
captives. After the war, American psychologists questioned
the returning prisoners intensively to determine what had
occurred. The intensive psychological investigation took
place, in part, because of the unsettling success of some
aspects of the Chinese program. For example, the Chinese
were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one
another, in striking contrast to the behavior of American
POWs in World War II. For this reason, among others, escape
plans were quickly uncovered and the escape attempts
themselves almost always unsuccessful.” Cialdini quotes Dr.
Edgar Schein, a principal American investigator of the
Chinese indoctrination program in Korea, about the escapes:
“When an escape did occur, the Chinese usually recovered the
man easily by offering a bag of rice to anyone turning him
in.”  Cialdini adds: “In fact, nearly all American prisoners
in the Chinese camps are said to have collaborated with the
enemy in one form or another.”

How could such thing happen? Surely the American soldiers
were trained to provide no information other than their
name, rank and serial number. Cialdini says, “An examination
of the Chinese prison-camp program showed that its personnel
relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to
gain the desired compliance from prisoners.” [cf., CNN’s
captive audience.]

So how did the Chinese make their American captives, without
physically brutalizing them, “to give military information,
turn in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their
country?”

The answer was quite simple: “start small and build.”

“[P]risoners were frequently asked to make statements so
mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem
inconsequential [
] But once these minor requests were
complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to
related yet more substantive requests.”

This technique is used regularly by many businesses. The
salespeople call a variation of this subtle, yet
astonishingly powerful, approach the-foot-in-the-door
technique.  The technique works by asking the subject to
make a trivial commitment.  Once the subject has made her
initial commitment, it is possible to make her comply with
larger requests, even if remotely related to her earlier
commitment.

The psychologists Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser, who in
mid-1960s became aware of the amazing power of this
technique say: “What may occur is a change in the person’s
feeling about getting involved or taking action. Once he has
agreed to a request [no matter how small or trivial], his
attitude may change, he may become in his own eyes, the kind
of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to
requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he
believes in, who cooperates with good causes.”

Cialdini warns: “What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell
us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial
requests. Such an agreement can not only increase our
compliance with very similar, much larger requests, it can
also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger
favors that are only remotely connected to the little one we
did earlier. It’s this second, general kind of influence
concealed within small commitments that scares me.”

The technique is used to influence both the future behavior
and, more alarmingly, the self-image of the subject. Once
you can influence the subject’s self-image, she would comply
with any and all of your requests that are consistent with
her manipulated view of herself. That is how the subjects
are indoctrinated.

“Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe
comes less from their words than from their deeds.” Cialdini
says. “Observers trying to decide what a man is like look
closely at his actions. What the Chinese have discovered is
that the man himself uses this same evidence to decide what
he is like. His behavior tells him about himself; it is a
primary source of information about his beliefs and values
and attitudes. Understanding fully this important principle
of self-perception, the Chinese set about arranging the
prison-camp experience so that the captives would
consistently ACT in desired ways. Before long the Chinese
[read CNN, FOX, BBC
] knew, these actions would begin to
take their toll, causing the men [also women or children] to
change their views of themselves to align with what they had
done.”

“Writing was one sort of confirming action that the Chinese
urged incessantly upon the men [and CNN urges upon its
viewers]. It was never enough for the prisoners to listen
quietly or even agree verbally with the Chinese line; they
were always pushed to write it down as well.”

So the next time CNN asks you to make a small, trivial
commitment such as voting in their polls or emailing them
about anything, remember this: small, trivial commitments
can turn “prisoners into ‘collaborators’” and viewers into
whatever CNN wants you to be!