Brainwashing

I’m watching this video. It’s interesting.

The video is about Pavlov and coercive persuasion, in prisoner of war camps, and in cults.

I wonder how much brainwashing happens to American people who somehow get associated with a wartime enemy. I’m thinking about the Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WW2, Muslim Americans and Arab Americans during the “war on terror”, and Black people in America in general.

In times of war, the entire society becomes hostile for minorities associated with “the enemy”.

I’ve been reading a book about verbal abuse, on and off, and it’s uncanny, but it’s just like brainwashing: cycles of abuse followed by affirmations of care or love.

Verbal abuse can also be part of controlling someone by deploying verbal aggression against a third party, as a kind of demonstration of rage.

The video doesn’t go into any of that, and I wonder if these scholars even think about the role of abuse and coercive persuasion by Americans against Americans as a normal part of life.