SelfDefinition.Org
The Brainwashing Manual
(1955)
L. Ron Hubbard
Chapter VI The General Subject of Obedience
Obedience is the result of force.
Everywhere we look in the history of Earth we discover that obedience to new rules has come about entirely through the demonstration on the part of those rulers of greater force than was to be discovered in the old ruler. A population overridden, conqueror by war, is obedient to its conqueror. It is obedient to its conqueror because its conqueror has exhibited more force.
Concurrent with force is brutality, for there are human considerations involved which also represent force. The most barbaric, unrestrained, brutal use of force, if carried far enough, invokes obedience. Savage force, sufficiently long displayed toward any individual, will bring about his concurrence with any principle or order.
Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people, to be granted by those people the possession of force.
Any organization which has the spirit and courage to display inhumanity, savageness, brutality, and an uncompromising lack of humanity, will be obeyed. Such a use of force is, itself, the essential ingredient of greatness. We have to hand no less an example than our great Communist Leaders, who, in moments of duress and trial, when faced by Czarist rule, continued over the heads of an enslaved populace, yet displayed sufficient courage never to stay their hands in the execution of the conversion of the Russian State to Communist rule.
If you would have obedience you must have no compromise with humanity. If you would have obedience you must make it clearly understood that you have no mercy. Man is an Animal. He understood, in the final analysis, only those things which a brute understands.
As an example of this, we find an individual refusing to obey and being struck. His refusal to obey is now less vociferous. He is struck again, and his resistance is lessened once more. He is hammered and pounded again and again, until, at length, his only thought is direct and implicit obedience to that person from whom the force has emanated. This is a proven principle. It is proven because it is the main principle Man, the animal, has used since his earliest beginnings. It is the only principle which has been effective, the only principle which has brought about a wide and continued belief. For it is to our benefit that an individual who is struck again and again and again from a certain source, will, at length, hypnotically believe anything he is told by the source of the blows.
The stupidity of Western civilizations is best demonstrated by the fact that they believe hypnotism is a thing of mind, of attention, and a desire for unconsciousness. This is not true. Only when a person has been beaten, punished, and mercilessly hammered, can hypnotism upon him be guaranteed in its effectiveness. It is stated by Western authorities on hypnosis that only some twenty percent of the people are susceptible to hypnotism. This statement is very untrue. Given enough punishment, all of the people in any time and place are susceptible to hypnotism. In other words, by adding force, hypnotism is made uniformly effective. Where unconsciousness could not be induced by simple concentration upon the hypnotist, unconsciousness can be induced by drugs, by blows, by electric shock, and by other means. And where unconsciousness cannot be induced so as to make an implantation or an hypnotic command effective, it is only necessary to amputate the functioning portions of the animal man's brain to render him null and void and no longer a menace. Thus, we find that hypnotism is entirely effective.
The mechanisms of hypnotism demonstrate clearly that people can be made to believe in certain conditions, and even their environment or in politics, by the administration of force. Thus, it is necessary for a psychopolitician to be an expert in the administration of forces. Thus, he can bring about implicit obedience, not only on the part of individual members of the populace, but on the entire populace itself and its government. He need only take unto himself a sufficiently savage role, a sufficiently uncompromising inhuman attitude, and he will be obeyed and believed.
The subject of hypnotism is a subject of belief. What can people be made to believe? They can be made to believe anything which is administered to them with sufficient brutality and force. The obedience of a populace is as good as they will believe.
Despicable religions, such as Christianity, knew this. They knew that if enough faith could be brought into being, a populace could be enslaved by the Christian mockeries of humanity and mercy, and thus could be disarmed. But one need not count upon this act of faith to bring about a broad belief. One must only exhibit enough force, enough inhumanity, enough brutality and savageness to create implicit belief, and therefore and thereby implicit obedience. As Communism is a matter of belief, its study is a study of force.
The earliest Russian psychiatrists, pioneering the science of psychiatry, understood thoroughly that hypnosis is induced by acute fear. They discovered it could also be induced by shock of an emotional nature, and also by extreme privation, as well as by blows and drugs.
In order to induce a high state of hypnogogy in an individual, a group, or a population, an element of terror must always be present on the part of those who would govern. The psychiatrist is aptly suited to this role, for his brutalities are committed in the name of science and are inexplicably complex, and entirely out of view of the human understanding. A sufficient popular terror of the psychiatrist will, in itself, bring about insanity on the part of many individuals.
A psychopolitical operative, then, can, entirely cloaked with authority, commence and continue a campaign of propaganda, describing various "treatments" which are administered to the insane. A psychopolitical operative should at all times insist that there treatments are therapeutic and necessary. He can, in all of his literature and his books, list large numbers of pretended cures by these means. But these "cures" need not actually produce any recovery from a state of disturbance. As long as the psychopolitical operative or his dupes are the only authorities as to the difference between sanity and insanity, their word as to the therapeutic value of such treatment will be the final word.
No layman would dare adventure to place judgment upon the state of sanity of an individual whom the psychiatrist has already declared insane. The individual himself is unable to complain, and his family, as will be covered later, is already discredited by the occurrence of insanity in their midst. There must be other adjudicators of insanity, otherwise it could be disclosed that the brutalities practiced in the name of treatment are not therapeutic.
A psychopolitical operative has no interest in "therapeutic means" or "cures". The greater number of insane in the country where he is operating, the larger number of the populace will come under his view, and the greater will become his facilities. Because the problem is apparently mounting into uncontrollable heights, he can more and more operate in an atmosphere of emergency, which again excuses his use of such treatments as electric shock, the prefrontal lobotomy, trans-orbital leucotomy, and other operations long-since practiced in Russia on political prisoners.
It is to the interest of the psychopolitical operative that the possibility of curing the insane be outlawed and ruled out at all times. For the sake of obedience on the part of the population and their general reaction, a level of brutality must, at all costs, be maintained. Only in this way can the absolute judgement of the psychopolitical operative as to the sanity or insanity of public figures be maintained in complete belief. Using sufficient brutality upon their patients, the public at large will come to believe utterly anything they say about their patients. Furthermore, and much more important, the field of the mind must be sufficiently dominated by the psychopolitical operative, so that wherever tenets of the mind are taught they will be hypnotically believed. The psychopolitical operative, having under his control all psychology classes in an area, can thus bring about a complete reformation of the future leaders of a country in their educational processes, and so prepare them for Communism.
To be obeyed, one must be believed. If one is sufficiently believed, one will unquestioningly be obeyed.
When he is fortunate enough to obtain into his hands anyone near to a political or important figure, this factor of obedience becomes very important. A certain amount of fear or terror must be engendered in the person under treatment so that this person will then take immediate orders, completely and unquestioningly, from the psychopolitical operative, and so be able to influence the actions of that person who is to be reached.
Bringing about this state of mind on the part of a populace and its leaders – that a psychopolitical operative must, at all times, be believed – could eventually be attended by very good fortune. It is not too much to hope that psychopolitical operatives would then, in a country such as the United States, become the most intimate advisers to political figures, even to the point of advising the entirety of a political party as to it actions in an election.
The long view is the important view. Belief is engendered by a certain amount of fear and terror from an authoritative level, and this will be followed by obedience.
The general propaganda which would best serve Psychopolitics would be a continual insistence that certain authoritative levels of healing, deemed this or that the correct treatment on insanity. These treatments must always include a certain amount of brutality. Propaganda should continue and stress the rising incidence of insanity in a country. The entire field of human behaviour, for the benefit of the country, can, at length, be broadened into abnormal behaviour. Thus, anyone indulging in any eccentricity, particularly the eccentricity of combating psychopolitics, could be silenced by the authoritative opinion on the part of a psychopolitical operative that he was acting in an abnormal fashion. This, with some good fortune, could bring the person into the hands of the psychopolitical operative so as to forever more disable him, or to swerve his loyalties by pain-drug hypnotism.
On the subject of obedience itself, the most optimum obedience is unthinking obedience. The command given must be obeyed without and rationalizing on the part of the subject. The command must, therefore, be implanted below the thinking processes of the subject to be influenced, and must react upon him in such a way as to bring no mental alertness on his part.
It is in the interest of Psychopolitics that a population be told that an hypnotized person will not do anything against his actual will, will not commit immoral acts, and will not act so as to endanger himself. While this may be true of light, parlour hypnotism, it certainly is not true of commands implanted with the use of electric shocks, drugs, or heavy punishment. It is counted upon completely that this will be discredited to the general public by psychopolitical operatives, for if it were to be generally known that individuals would obey commands harmful to themselves, and would commit immoral acts while under the influence of deep hypnotic commands, the actions of many people, working unknowingly in favour of Communism, would be too-well understood. People acting under deep hypnotic commands should be acting apparently of their own volition and out of their own convictions.
The entire subject of psychopolitical hypnosis, Psychopolitics in general, depends for its defence upon continuous protest from authoritative sources that such things are not possible. And, should anyone unmask a psychopolitical operative, he should at once declare the whole thing a physical impossibility, and use his authoritative position to discount any accusation. Should any writings of Psychopolitics come to view, it is only necessary to brand them a hoax and laugh the out of countenance. Thus, psychopolitical activities are easy to defend.
When psychopolitical activities have reached a certain peak, from there on it is almost impossible to undo them, for the population is already under the duress of obedience to the psychopolitical operatives and their dupes. The ingredient of obedience is important, for the complete belief in the psychopolitical operative renders his statement cancelling any challenge about psychopolitical operatives irrefutable. The optimum circumstances would be to occupy every position which would be consulted by officials on any question or suspicion arising on the subject of Psychopolitics. Thus, a psychiatric adviser should be placed near to hand in every government operation. As all suspicions would then be referred to him, no action would ever be taken, and the goal of Communism could be realized in that nation.
Psychopolitics depends, from the viewpoint of the layman, upon its fantastic aspects. These are its best defence, but above all these defences is implicit obedience on the part of officials and the general public, because of the character of the psychopolitical operative in the field of healing.