«The formulation of big propagandistic lies and fraudulent catchwords has a very well-defined purpose in Totalitaria, and words themselves have acquired a special function in the service of power, which we may call verbocracy. The Big Lie and the phoney slogan at first confuse and then dull the hearers, making them willing to accept every suggested myth of happiness.

 

The task of the totalitarian propagandist is to build special pictures in the minds of the citizenry so that finally they will no longer see and hear with their own eyes and ears but will look at the world through the fog of official catchwords and will develop the automatic responses appropriate to totalitarian mythology.

 

The multiform use of words in double talk serves as an attack on our logic, that is, an attack on our understanding of what monolithic dictatorship really is. Hear, hear the nonsense: “Peace is war and war is peace! Democracy is tyranny and freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength! Virtue is vice and truth is a lie.” So says the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s grim novel, 1984. 

 

The words we use influence our behavior in daily life; they determine the thoughts we have.

 

In Totalitaria, facts are replaced by fantasy and distortion. People are taught systematically and intentionally to lie. History is reconstructed, new myths are built up whose purpose is twofold: to strengthen and flatter the totalitarian leader, and to confuse the luckless citizens of the country.

 

The whole vocabulary is a dictated set of slowly hypnotizing slogans. In the semantic fog that permeates the atmosphere, words lose their direct communicative function. They become merely commanding signs, triggering off reactions of fear and terror.

 

They are battle cries and Pavlovian signals, and no longer represent free thinking. The word, once considered a first token of free human creation, is transformed into a mechanical tool. In Totalitaria, words may have a seductive action, soothing or charming their hearers, but they are not allowed to have intrinsic meaning. They are conditioners, emotional triggers, serving to imprint the desired reaction patterns on their hearers.

 

Man’s mental laziness, his resistance to the hard labor of thinking, makes it relatively easy for Totalitarian dictator to bring his subjects into acceptance of the Big Lie. At first the citizen may say to himself, “All this is just nonsense—pure double talk,” but in the very act of trying to shrug it off, he has become subject to the power of the inherent suggestion.

 

That is the trick of double talk; once a man neglects to analyze and verify it, he becomes lost in it and can no longer see the difference between rationale and rationalization. In the end, he can no longer believe anything, and he retreats into sullen dullness.

 

Once the citizen of Totalitaria has accepted the “logic” of his leaders, he is no longer open to discussion or argument. 

 

Something has crept into our mechanized system of communication that has made our modes of thinking deteriorate. People too casually acquire ideas and concepts. They no longer struggle for a clear understanding. The popularized picture replaces the battle of the pros and cons of concepts. Instead of aiming at true understanding, people listen to thoughtless repetition, which gives them the delusion of understanding.

 

Communication has an even more infantile, magic character for the citizen of Totalitaria. Words no longer represent intelligible meanings or ideas. They bind the citizen of Totalitaria to utter dependence on his commander, much as the infant is bound to the word pictures of his parents.

 

Politicians seeking power must coin new labels and new words with emotional appeal, “while allowing the same old practices and institutions to continue as before … The trick is to replace a disagreeable image though the substance remains the same. The totalitarians consequently have to fabric a hate language in order to stir up the mass emotions. We all have experienced how the word peace doesn’t mean peace any more, it has become a propagandistic device to appease the masses and to disguise aggression.”

 

The verbocracy in totalitarian thinking and the official verbosity of demagogues serve to disturb and suffocate the free minds of citizens. We can say that verbocracy turns them into what psychology calls symbol agnostics, people capable only of imitation, incapable of the inquisitive sense of objectivity and perspective that leads to questioning and understanding and to the formation of individual ideas and ideals. In other words, the individual citizen becomes a parrot, repeating ready-made slogans and propaganda catchwords without understanding what they really mean, or what forces stand behind them.

 

This parrotism may give the citizen of Totalitaria a certain infantile emotional pleasure, however. Heil, heil!—Duce, Duce!— these rhythmic chants afford him the same kind of sound-enjoyment children achieve through babbling, shrieking, and yelling.

 

The abuse of the word and the enshrinement of propaganda are more obvious in Totalitaria than in any other part of the world. But this evil exists all over. We can find all too many examples of it in actual conversation. Many speakers use verbal showing off to cover an emptiness of thought, to stir up emotions and to create admiration and adoration of what is essentially empty and valueless. Loudmouthed phoniness threatens to become the ideal of our time.

 

The semantic fog in Totalitaria is thickened by the regimentation of information. The citizens of our mythical country have no access to sources of facts and opinions. They are not free to verify what they hear or read. They are the victims of their leader’s “labelomania”—their judgments are determined by the official labels everything and everybody bears.

 

The urge to attach too much meaning to the label of an object or institution and to look only casually at its intrinsic value is characteristic of our times and seems to be growing. I call this condition labelomania; it is the exaggerated respect for the scientific-sounding name—the label, the school, the degree, the diploma —with a surprising disregard for underlying value.

 

All about us we see people chasing after fixed formulas, credits, marks, ranks, and labels because they believe that if one is to have prestige or recognition these distinguishing marks are necessary. In order to obtain acceptance, people are prepared to undergo most impractical and stylized training and conditioning—not to mention expense— in special schools and institutions which promote certain labels, diplomas, and sophisticated facades.

 

The urge to attach too much meaning to the label of an object or institution and to look only casually at its intrinsic value is characteristic of our times and seems to be growing. I call this condition labelomania; it is the exaggerated respect for the scientific-sounding name—the label, the school, the degree, the diploma —with a surprising disregard for underlying value.

All about us we see people chasing after fixed formulas, credits, marks, ranks, and labels because they believe that if one is to have prestige or recognition these distinguishing marks are necessary. In order to obtain acceptance, people are prepared to undergo most impractical and stylized training and conditioning—not to mention expense— in special schools and institutions which promote certain labels, diplomas, and sophisticated facades.

 

Dissension and disagreement become both a physical and an emotional luxury. Vituperation, and the power that lies behind it, is the only sanctioned logic. Facts contrary to the official line are distorted and suppressed; any form of mental compromise is treason. In Totalitaria, there is no search for truth, only the enforced acceptance of the totalitarian dogmas and clichés.

 

The most frightening thing of all is that parallel to the increase in our means of communication, our mutual understanding has decreased. A Babel-like confusion has taken hold of political and nonpolitical minds as a result of semantic disorder and too much verbal noise.

 

Totalitaria makes the thinking man a criminal, for in our mythical country the citizen can be punished as much for wrong thinking as for wrongdoing. Because the watchful eyes of the secret police are everywhere, the critic of the regime is driven to conspiratorial methods if he wants to have even a safe conversation with those he wants to trust. What we used to call the “Nazi gesture” was a careful looking around before starting to talk to a friend.

 

The criminal in Totalitaria can be an accidental scapegoat used for release of official hostility, and there is often need for a scapegoat. From one day to the next, a citizen can become a hero or a villain, depending on strategic party needs.

Nearly all of the mature ideals of mankind are crimes in Totalitaria. Freedom and independence, compromise and objectivity— all of these are treasonable. In Totalitaria there is a new crime, the apostatic crime, which may be described as the obstinate refusal to admit imputed guilt. On the other hand, the hero in Totalitaria is the converted sinner, the breast-beating, recanting traitor, the self-denouncing criminal, the informer, and the stool pigeon.

The ordinary, law-abiding citizen of Totalitaria, far from being a hero, is potentially guilty of hundreds of crimes. He is a criminal if he is stubborn in defense of his own point of view. He is a criminal if he refuses to become confused. He is a criminal if he does not loudly and vigorously participate in all official acts; reserve, silence, and ideological withdrawal are treasonable.

 

He is a criminal if he doesn’t look happy, for then he is guilty of what the Nazis called physiognomic insubordination. He can be a criminal by association or disassociation, by scapegoatism or by projection, by intention or by anticipation. He is a criminal if he refuses to become an informer.

 

can be tried and found guilty by every conceivable ism—cosmopolitanism, provincialism; deviationalism, mechanism; imperialism, nationalism; pacifism, militarism; objectivism, subjectivism; chauvinism, equalitarianism; practicalism, idealism. He is guilty every time he is something.

The only safe conduct pass for the citizen of Totalitaria lies in the complete abdication of his mental integrity.

 

 

Utdrag fra: Joost A. M. Meerloo. «The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing». 1956

 

The manufacturing of a mass psychosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdzW-S8MwbI

 

“Hva er «Gaslighting?

Sagt på en enkel måte – det er hjernevasking.

Tre stadier av Gaslighting

1. stadium

Det første stadiet avhenger av tillit i situasjonen og troverdige intensjoner fra overgriperens side, en tilstand som har blitt skapt av overgriperens kunstferdige selvbilde og hans innsmigrende propaganda.  Når han har oppnådd denne tilliten vil overgriperen begynne å undergrave den, skape situasjoner og omgivelser der offeret begynner å tvile på sin egen dømmekraft. Til slutt vil offeret stole fullstendig på overgriperen for å mildne sin egen usikkerhet, og for å prøve å gjenopprette sin egen virkelighetsoppfatning som i realiteten er blitt som overgriperens.

2. stadium

Det andre stadium, forsvar, er en prosess der overgriperen isolerer offeret, ikke bare fra hans egen identitetsoppfatning, men også fra verdiene til hans likemenn. Ofrene vil tro at deres meninger er verdiløse, diskrediterte og merkelige. I politiske sirkler vil de bli kalt konspirasjons-teoretikere, dissidenter eller mulige terrorister. Som en konsekvens vil ofrene trekke seg tilbake og slutte å uttrykke seg av redsel for å ha latterlige oppfatninger og for å bli straffet.

Dette stadiet kan sammenliknes med Stockholm-syndromet. Stockholm-syndromet binder ofrene til den aggressive og blir en slags «foreldre».

Begge disse metodene blir hamret inn i offerets overlevelses-mekanisme for å gjenvinne og opprettholde kontroll.

3. stadium.

Det siste stadiet er depresjon. Et liv under et tyrannisk styre driver ofrene inn i en tilstand av total forvirring. De er fratatt all verdighet og selvbevissthet. De eksisterer i et informasjons-vakuum som bare blir fylt med det overgriperen mener er relevant.

Dermed er prosessen komplett, og ofrene har blitt redusert til en villige medsammensvorne i overgriperens bilde av en svært forvrengt realitet.” https://olehartattordet.blogg.no/1474108490_psykopatene_kontrolle.html