You are sitting at home, watching some light program, when you look up and find someone has turned off the light, and you find your dearest loved one, your daughter, your son, coming at you with a fixed, horrifying stare, full of rancour and malice and evil, and holding a knife in his hand.

He tells you mechanically and rigidly that he does not know you, and that you are an infidel, and that the earth must be purified of the likes of you, and that he has decided to get rid of you right now. And he pounces on you with his weapon in the darkness, and muffles your mouth with his hand to stifle your screams, and begins to slaughter you.

You feel the blade moving across your neck, and you see your blood spattering on his face while he looks at you with hatred, before the world goes dark in your eyes and you fade out of existence.

A horrifying, frightening image closer to fiction. But unfortunately, it really did happen in reality, to young men who joined terrorist groups and killed their parents or their siblings in cold blood without a shred of hesitation.

We are still with the American intelligence man "Hunter," who stood baffled between the data and the conclusion he had reached, and decided to launch for the first time the term "brainwashing" — the term that today is almost worthless, and is used sarcastically, even though it refers to one of the most dangerous methods of mind control in history.

Hunter thinks about the methods of brainwashing. How do they happen? Through torture? That does happen. You torture a person and melt him in a hell of humiliation and degradation until you break him, and then you reshape him.

This method was presented by George Orwell in his novel titled "1984." Since he was born in 1903, he imagined that the future, the year 1984, would be terrifying. A war that destroyed the nations of the world except Britain, which rules the whole world through a totalitarian system of government, a thought police, and torture cellars.

Rule of the world by a single party.

This party is headed by "Big Brother," whom no one knows and no one sees from the beginning of the story to its end, and who most likely does not exist at all. It is a title invented by the party's leaders.

This party fights individualism, independence and thinking, whatever its cause or kind. To the point that if they announced to you — and this actually happens in the story — that 2 + 2 = 5, then you are forbidden to object.

And there is a skilled worker named "Smith" who begins to think, so he is arrested by the thought police, and subjected to terrifying torture, after which he is re-educated, and he finds himself obedient and submissive and drowning in love for "Big Brother."

The story ends here, and the truth is that it is a possible method, but not guaranteed, and it has losses. First, the idea of torturing soldiers is a bit flimsy, because they are trained professionals and they will exhaust you and cost you and endure to the last extent you can imagine.

After they push you to that extent, they will begin to deceive you. That is part of their training. Second, they actually see their endurance of the enemy's torture as an honour. And finally, this method could lead to the death of the victim, and then you have wasted time and effort for nothing.

So the method of torture for brainwashing is possible, but not entirely effective.

There is a more effective method.

Argument and persuasion.

The battle of the word and of belief.

The truth is that the importance of this method did not emerge with Hunter's research.

It is a very old method.

A method as old as man himself.

For in the Old Testament, the Book of Exodus, Moses, peace be upon him, calls on the Lord to exempt him from debating his enemy because "I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue." And the Lord replies to him, "Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well, and he shall be thy spokesman unto the people."

In the same context in the Holy Quran, Moses asks the Lord in Surat al-Qasas to send "Aaron" with him because he is "eloquent of tongue": "And my brother Aaron, he is more eloquent in speech than I, so send him with me as a helper to confirm me, for I fear that they will deny me."

Not waging war and captivity and torture. No.

Through discussion and persuasion.

And in the Bible there is a similar allusion to the importance of dialogue, when our master Abraham begins to argue with the Lord about the fate of the city of Sodom, the town of our master Lot, peace be upon them. And the Lord tells him that the city can be spared from destruction on one single condition.

That he finds in it ten righteous men.

Unfortunately, in this story there is no one but our master "Lot" as the single righteous man. The story is greatly similar to the Quranic account and Abraham's argument with the angels who carried the terrible tidings of its destruction: "He said, 'Indeed, within it is Lot.' They said, 'We are more knowing of who is within it. We will surely save him and his family, except his wife; she is of those who remain behind.'"

The argument. The dialogue. The persuasion. And — once again — the battle of the word and of belief.

Hunter cited these sacred verses in his book, and moved on from them to thousands of tribes and empires that sent envoys to one another and carried messages to one another through them, and extended bridges of dialogue that preceded any war.

The reality is that "brainwashing" is a term you cannot separate from war or politics.

The game of controlling minds, and therefore controlling nations.

Here the first of the characteristics of the brainwashing process by persuasion appears.

It is "deliberate."

No one brainwashes anyone without intending to. He must understand very well what he is doing.

The person practising this process must also be intelligent, so he begins practising it slowly and deliberately, and gradually with extremely great cleverness.

For example, in order to make you fanatical about a particular religious group, he must first brainwash you and make you fanatical about something less important.

Like a football team.

He brainwashes you and makes you insanely fanatical, and plants inside you the idea that this fanaticism of yours is the one and only correct opinion, that you have no readiness at all to discuss this matter. What will you do? "You will chant repeated, mechanical words devoid of logic, as if recorded on a cylinder." To the point that you might be happy if a player on the opposing team is injured and loses his future, or even dies.

There, he has succeeded. That is the beginning. Your brain has been washed on one subject and has become receptive to the comprehensive process.

Of course, he starts with something trivial, not something powerful, because it would not attract much attention that you are fanatical about a football team. On the contrary, you might find someone telling you with the utmost pride, "My son is a fanatical Ahly or Zamalek supporter!"

But your son has become an imbecile, my friend, and his mental defences have collapsed, and his brain has been washed and fanaticism has therefore been planted in it — fanaticism that any sound, healthy, unafflicted mind rejects. And his journey began for his brain to be fully washed in matters more important and more dangerous.

The intelligence man Hunter tells us:

"The idea here is to change the mind completely, so that its owner becomes like an automaton on a certain subject. You program him with whatever you want, without him sensing you or these evil motives of yours, and he becomes a plaything in your hand, a lump of flesh and blood with beliefs planted inside it that you want, and you put a new way of thinking into a body that has become your captive, and entirely under your command."

Hunter continues:

"The idea is that he can create a new army of slaves to fight with. But not like the slaves of old, who used to run away and object. These are slaves who know nothing but to hear and obey."

Does this story of "fight with them" remind you of proxy wars? Well, does this idea of "hearing and obeying" remind you of terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood?

Well, we had talked about how your enemy begins to brainwash you and plant simple trivialities inside you.

Why does he start with these trivialities? When he could plant his main idea directly in your mind?

That is because the experts of brainwashing learned from their mistakes, and from the experience that occurred in the case of "Patricia Campbell Hearst" — the one in this picture — the granddaughter of the American media tycoon "William Randolph Hearst," who had an astonishing story in the United States in 1974.

Look at the picture carefully and see "Patricia's eyes," dead and glassy in their stare, and remember the first scene with which we began our talk.

Patricia's story alarmed security men and scientists greatly, because of what happened during it and after it, and showed them a practical model of brainwashing more terrifying than the model of the Korean War prisoners.

But we will continue our talk about that later, and there remains more to say.

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References:

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1 - منشورات سابقة:

https://www.facebook.com/hammouda.m.hammouda/posts/2006299959382753

2 - Edward Hunter: Brainwashing: The Story of Men Who Defied It.

3 - Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control - Dominic Streatfeild.