How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique • Hacker News Board

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#31

Post by clicks » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:51 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #27

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give you a tl;dr: the North Koreans started it by rolling over into South Korea, McAuthur went too close to the Yalu in the counter attack, Chinese entered the war, Truman fires McAuthur. Stalement ensues, borders preserved, Kim Jong Un has ex-girlfriend executed. The communists of the 50s were busy starving their own people in great leaps forwards, in the 60s they innovated on that with a cultural revolution;…

I love the rationalization people have to use to explain China's economic success. If what Deng brought was capitalism, then Obama is an anarcho-libertarian.

What was behind China's economic success then? (not snark, genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts)

As far as I know Deng did advocate a more open and free policy when it came to the markets, not in very concrete terms but certainly in veiled terms like "pragmatism" and "we must do whatever works" [1]. I'm not saying Deng made China a Randian libertarian's wet-dream but it seems he did push for free markets a little bit.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/leaders_thinkers_zedong_xia...

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#32

Post by w1ntermute » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:53 AM UTC

anologwintermut wrote: post #26

Volpe wrote: post #9

I thought america WAS the aggressor? (Korea isn't really near the US), and it was quite apparent the US wanted satellite states near russia/china, to potentially launch further attacks. Also did the communists do a bad job in china? That is at most controversial... not "brain washed".

America was in almost no way the aggressor. North Korea Invades South Korea on June 25th 1950. The UN, for probably the first,last, and only time, takes military action (at American behest and because the Russian's were boycotting the UN) led by a US General and primarily American troops. This force and the South Korean Army repel the North Koreans and drive into North Korea (which was suppose to hold open elections…

Nobody has explained to me why Korea was even divided up into the North and South in the first place. It should have been left to its own devices after the Japanese empire collapsed at the end of WW2. That is, the US/UN shouldn't have been occupying the South and the USSR/China shouldn't have been occupying the North. Seems to me that the fault should be assigned to all of those countries/organizations.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#33

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:53 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #28

firstOrder wrote: post #5

If an American POW comes back to the US and says the US was the aggressor in the Korean War, he does not have an opinion, he has been "brainwashed". What kind of mental gymnastics do I have to perform to think this way. It's about a step removed from saying someone who denies Jesus Is Lord has been possessed by a demon. Or the same thing really.

[deleted]

Convincing someone of something that later, under investigation, turns out not to be true, is not brainwashing.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#34

Post by tokenadult » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

I see no one has mentioned so far in this thread that the term "brainwashing" originated in Chinese ( 洗腦 in the original language), and originated as an internal practice in China after seizure of power in China by the Communist Party of China.

I'll paste in here part of the history of the term from Chinese Wikipedia, which has some interesting differences from the parallel article in English Wikipedia:

中华人民共和国[编辑] 中華人民共和國執政黨中國共產黨成立以來，早期通過文藝、宣傳提出的「沒有共產黨就沒有新中國」、「穩定壓倒一切」等口號，被一些人認為是“洗腦”行為。中國共產黨操控媒體、民間沒有輿論自由，又透過教育，局部呈現現代歷史等方式進行“正面意識形態宣傳”也被認為屬於洗腦行為。有評論指，中华人民共和国文革時期大規模和連續的共產主義宣傳教育運動，明顯是洗腦行為；當時中共將視為反對者的人民劃定為「階級敵人」、將這些人強行施以「勞動改造」（勞改）、「思想改造」，強權和暴力使整個社會幾乎所有人都失去了獨立思考的自由意志。 [12]

中华人民共和国官方電視媒體中國中央電視台，被指責所播放的部分內容存在「洗腦」，有中國年輕學者指央視透過辮子戲灌輸皇權專制，打造奴才人格，是毒化了中國走向自由民主的氛圍，存在洗腦意義，而央視的《新聞聯播》選擇性「報喜不報憂」，像是「宣傳聯播」。 [13][14]但中國共產黨及其支持者並不認同這些批評。

英文「brainwash」意指「洗腦」，由中文「洗腦」一詞翻譯而來；沿於上世紀1950年代的韓戰，美國士兵被中国人民解放军俘虜之後，日夜接受中国共产党的思想改造，獲救之後回到美國，竟然幫中国共產黨講好話，於是美國記者Edward Hunter就用brainwash一詞來描述此事。[15][16]

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#35

Post by grandalf » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

comex wrote: post #25

daenz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds more like de-brainwashing to me. If those soldiers go in with this perfect idea of America, how we can do no wrong, and how everything we do is justified, then turning that on its head seems more like...rational thinking.

If an opinion is being slowly but inexorably pushed on you from all sides by your captor over a long period of time, as part of an explicitly designed program of of propagandizing, it's brainwashing, regardless of the opinion's merit!

It could still move the person's mental state toward improved rationality.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#36

Post by tokenadult » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 2:59 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #32

anologwintermut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America was in almost no way the aggressor. North Korea Invades South Korea on June 25th 1950. The UN, for probably the first,last, and only time, takes military action (at American behest and because the Russian's were boycotting the UN) led by a US General and primarily American troops. This force and the South Korean Army repel the North Koreans and drive into North Korea (which was suppose to hold open elections…

Nobody has explained to me why Korea was even divided up into the North and South in the first place. It should have been left to its own devices after the Japanese empire collapsed at the end of WW2. That is, the US/UN shouldn't have been occupying the South and the USSR/China shouldn't have been occupying the North. Seems to me that the fault should be assigned to all of those countries/organizations.

The problem at the time was the Allied Powers (the Western non-Axis powers and the Soviet Union) were not united about how to resolve the issue of the sovereignty of Korea after the end of World War II. Germany was divided, over in Europe, for much the same reason, but there wasn't an invasion across the line of control between the Soviet occupied zone and the Western occupied zone in Germany, as there was an invasion from North Korea to South Korea in 1950. Perhaps if Stalin's plan had succeeded in Korea, an invasion of western Europe would have followed.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#37

Post by 6d0debc071 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 3:01 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #22

andyl wrote: post #13

Brainwashed? If that is brainwashing, then it seems like there's brainwashing everywhere you look. For example: - http://www.foxnews.com/ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBbBfrKsVqY

It sounds more like de-brainwashing to me. If those soldiers go in with this perfect idea of America, how we can do no wrong, and how everything we do is justified, then turning that on its head seems more like...rational thinking.

If you have a mistaken belief, then the inverse of that belief is not necessarily correct. I find it hard to believe those soldiers were in a position - in a prison camp - to reliably determine whether America had used germ warfare, or to assess whether Communism had 'done a fine job in China.'

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#38

Post by mrj » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 3:01 AM UTC

Funny, the course I am in right now covers this book. It is well worth the read.

Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: science and practice (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#39

Post by stephenaturner » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 3:01 AM UTC

This still seems to ignore the fact that even if the Chinese used these techniques differently and didn't explicitly threaten violence, they were still the captors and the prisoners were still the captives and held in confinement and the power relationship there had to contribute to the success of these techniques.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#40

Post by Aloisius » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 3:01 AM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #9

I thought america WAS the aggressor? (Korea isn't really near the US), and it was quite apparent the US wanted satellite states near russia/china, to potentially launch further attacks. Also did the communists do a bad job in china? That is at most controversial... not "brain washed".

> Also did the communists do a bad job in china? That is at most controversial... not "brain washed".

Controversial? Good lord, Mao's Great Leap Forward killed between 23 and 42 million people in just a few years.