The instability of truth Brainwashing, mind control, and hyper-persuasion

From Communist reeducation camps to manipulative media algorithms, mind control is a real and often remarkably effective tool, contends historian Lemov (World as Laboratory) in this trenchant study. She traces the start of modern brainwashing to North Korean and Chinese prison camps during the Korean War, where American POWs endured brutal treatment followed by "struggle" sessions where they were forced to listen to lectures on Maoist theory and criticize American capitalism. Those who parroted the dogma got better treatment, and sometimes ended up believing it enough to defect. This one-two punch of physical trauma and disorientation followed by indoctrination formed a template, Lemov contends, for mind-control techniques in everything from U.S. military survival courses to the recruitment programs of religious cults. From there, Lemov charts a sea change to a subtler, 21st-century style of digital thought control in social media algorithms that instill positive or negative emotions in users by tweaking their feeds. Perhaps most intriguingly, Lemov's deeply researched exploration reveals how the persuasive power wielded by charismatic figures can answer, in a warped way, a person's yearning for self-reinvention and meaning (members of the Manson Family radiated "self-confidence and dynamism," Lemov writes; "They felt they belonged somewhere, and this should never be underestimated as the dangerous heart of what brainwashing is"). The result is a provocative and illuminating look at how powerful ideas can overwhelm one's better instincts. Photos. (Mar.)

An unnerving history. "How could anyone fall for that?" remains a common reaction to wacky ideas promoted over social media, but it's less often accompanied by a chuckle, because such ideas seem to exert an inexorable appeal. The flat Earth society is prospering; vaccine coverage is dropping. Lemov, an associate professor of the history of science at Harvard and author ofDatabase of Dreams: The Lost Quest To Catalog Humanity, teaches a course on brainwashing. Long after the 1950-53 Korean War, when a few American prisoners "fell for" Communism, the word "brainwashing" has revived, as experts try to explain how people are persuaded to believe weird things. The first of many unsettling sections deals with the Korean War period, when Chinese overseers peppered POWs with propaganda, accompanied by treats for those who responded favorably and punishment for the uncooperative. After the armistice, citizens and the media were horrified when 23 Americans refused to return. Over the following decades, most tired of life in China and came back, proclaiming that unspeakable tortures had led to their defection. Learning the wrong lesson, the military aimed to train soldiers to resist brainwashing by inflicting brutal torments on recruits while ignoring ideology. The CIA's ham-handed research on brain manipulation has fascinated popular writers, with an unfortunate carry-over into legitimate brain research. There are few lessons, meantime, to be learned from Patty Hearst's 1974 kidnapping. Her months of confinement, rape, and abuse are no secret, but Americans remain titillated, and most still believe her guilty of her crimes. Matters do not improve as Lemov casts a gimlet eye on mid-20th-century mass media, later and ongoing cults, and today's social media "hyper-persuasion," a more acceptable term for the b-word. A superbly crafted analysis of a universally deplored but seemingly irresistible technique. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.