Ideological Totalism in the Progressive Intelligentsia and their Acolytes: A Discussion

 In 1961, Robert Jay Lifton conducted a study of 40 individuals (25 Westerners and 15 Chinese nationals) who underwent Communist Chinese “brainwashing.” By constructing case histories through personal interviews and then analyzing them, Lifton highlights the thematic patterns that define the process of “thought reform.”Today, Lifton’s seminal work, “Though Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” (hereafter TRATPOT) is a preeminent text in the study of religious cults.   

My intention here is not to exhaustively analyze Lifton’s work nor is it to draft a submission for a peer-reviewed journal. Rather, I intend to catalyze a discussion. In order to facilitate this dialogue, I will outline Lifton’s work as clearly and succinctly as I am able. Feel free to agree or disagree with my opinion and/or the opinion of others commenters. My only request is that your responses be thoughtful and, when applicable, cite your sources the best you can. Many of us have joined steemit in an attempt to seek refuge from the social media ghettos where non-majority opinions are often shouted down with bays of “two legs bad, four legs good.” Let’s not have any of that here.   

Question: To what extent do those in the Progressive Intelligentsia (politicians, artists, writers, journalists, etc. ad nauseum) exhibit totalistic thinking in word or deed.    

Thought reform, Lifton suggests, has a psychological momentum in an individual, the source of which is a complex set of psychological themes. These themes can be grouped under the general heading of ideological totalism which is a binary system of sorts composed of extreme ideology and extreme individual character traits (Lifton 419).   Lifton declares that any ideology, which he defines as “any set of emotionally-charged convictions about man and his relationship to the natural or supernatural world,” can be carried by its adherents in a totalistic direction and that where totalism exists— whether it is a religion, a political movement, or a scientific organization (think the Union of Concerned Scientists and their ilk)— it becomes little more than an exclusive cult (Lifton 419).    

I believe that “The Left” or “Progressives” or whatever you want to call them exemplify this in varying degrees. Some pHd candidates are as totalistic in their thinking a your average North Korean citizen to the extent that they cannot or will not critically reexamine their beliefs in the face of contrary facts and opinions.   

Lifton established eight criteria or psychological themes predominant in thought reform, each of which mobilizes individual emotional tendencies of a polarizing nature. The criteria are: milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession, “sacred science,” loading the language, doctrine over person, the dispensing of existence. What will follow will be a brief explication of the first criterion, followed by my own observations and ideas about how each criterion manifests itself today in the progressive flock. This I hope will catalyze discussion and set the pattern by which will explore the remaining criterion.   

Milieu Control 

Frighteningly, Lifton declares that the foundation of thought reform, “the psychological current upon which all else depends,” is the control of human communication. Through milieu control, dominion can be established over both an individual’s communication with the outside (what is seen, heard, read, written, experienced, and expressed) as well as his own inner communication with himself. Lifton cites Orwell’s 1984 and his “telescreen” and contrasts it with the human recording and transmitting apparatus that is the interrogator.    

Here I feel it’s important to note that when Lifton uses the word “outside,” he’s speaking of outside the walls of a Chinese prison. Progressives are in a much more deceptive prison composed of their chosen social media, news broadcasts, academic and peer circles, art, literature, entertainment outlets etc. When speaking of progressives, I use the term “outside” analogously to define the current of contrary thought coursing around their personal echo chambers, their safe spaces if you will (Lifton 420).   

At the time of writing TRATPOT, Lifton declared that “the Chinese Communist prison and revolutionary university produce[d] about as thoroughly controlled a group environment as has ever existed.” While that may have been true then, I contend that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has probably taken that cake, so to speak. I will say further that today’s adherents to progressive ideology— at least those that consider themselves “politically activated"— are probably the most controlled group that has ever existed in a free society, that is, a society wherein something like the Bill of Rights exists in more than name.   

In America, this control was progressively achieved via the press and institutes of higher learning, at least initially. More recently, social media networks have played a greater and greater role in achieving the kind of lockstep group-think demonstrated by progressives on nearly every issue. Why else would something like Facebook be worth billions of dollars? While data mining for the purpose of consumer targeting is one of Facebook’s products, I believe the true value of social media is its potential to shape public opinion for political purposes.   

Education and media propaganda are really crude tools when you get down to it, blunt instruments by which conformity of thought can be roughly achieved to specific sectors of the population (the consumers of a given media and students, respectively). But they can never achieve absolute milieu control— nothing can. And to someone still capable of critical thought about their own convictions, these tools are invasive, clearly originating outside of the individual and thus can be seen for what they are— alien influencers of thought and opinion. Like the tele-screen in 1984, they tell people how and what to think in kind of a master-slave relationship.   

The beauty of social media is that creates a thought-prison that, with the help of algorithms, is built in partnership with the individual, brick by brick. Once acceptable thoughts and beliefs have been defined by media and education, the user of social media slowly has their scope of thought narrowed based on what they like, view, comment upon, and unfollow. It is self censorship that is a lot like tearing out pages in a dictionary one by one until all that remains is something like Orwell’s dictionary of Newspeak whereby politically incorrect ideas and can no longer be thought because the words to do so no longer exist. In such a way are the useful idiots of 2016 created, the majority of your professors, your doctoral candidates, your journalists, and all social justice warriors, from whom oozes a ceaselessly noxious river of revisionist history, false narratives, and bigoted anti-thought.   

According to Lifton:   “He is deprived of…external information and inner reflection which anyone requires to test the realities of his environment and to maintain a measure of identity separate from it. Instead, he is called upon to make an absolute polarization of the real (the prevailing ideology) and the unreal (everything else). To the extent that he does this, he undergoes a personal closure that frees him from man’s incessant struggle with the elusive subtlties of truth” (Lifton 421).   

Let the discussion begin.  

 jbm