Brainwashing: Fact vs Fiction

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Brainwashing could be explained through two opposite claims: First, by social traditions that have been victims of authoritarian regimes, and second, by political opponents responding to certain fiascos that contradict their religious and political beliefs by claiming that their citizens are victims of brainwashing or thought reform. Reasons to why brainwashing is an inaccurate phrase is because, prisoners of war tend to claim to have been brainwashed in order not to be held responsible for revealing confidential information, no scientific experiments have found evidence to measure how brainwashing is done and many people couldn’t be brainwashed against their will.

Many scientists, consequently, claim that brainwashing studies are worthless because it is a propaganda technique used by powerful state leaders to manipulate and control citizens under their authority. We compare present Germany to Nazi Germany (1932-45). Although the Germans personal lives have been totally controlled under Hitler’s rule, today they have totally recovered into a democratic peace loving state. There are many reasons to think that, first many German’s perceive the holoc aust and Hitler’s era as a shame for the Germany nation, "The Holocaust fills us with shame," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany after 1945 was able to overcome the terror of Nazi control and to accept approximately 190,000 Jews return to Germany. Second, the continuous support of Germany to the formation of the state of Israel (through helping its economy and military strength) analysis that brainwashing is only a temporarily technique that within time fades away, according to Kathleen Taylor, “a state which expects its citizens to be politically sophisticated,...

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...es such as, persuasion, influence, propaganda that affects a certain individual or group is only defined by psychologist as free will. The following essay nevertheless concludes that real victims of mind-control are those that have been exposed to unethical experiments during the authoritarian regimes and the period of cold war.

Works Cited

Bowart, W. (1978). Operation mind control. U.S.A: Dell Publication Co., Inc.

Merkel, A. ( 2008, March 18). Merkel admits Germany’s ‘Holocaust shame’. CNN. Retrieved

from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/18/germany.israel/

Persinger, M.A. (1938). Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe

function: a general hypothesis. Percept Mot Skills, 57(3 Pt 2), 1255-62

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6664802

Taylor, K. (2004). Brainwashing. University of Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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