Brainwashing/Hitler Youth

Making An Obedient Mass – How and Why these programs work:

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:

People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile purpose in self-advancement…They look on self-interest as on something tainted and evil;…Their innermost craving is for a new life-a rebirth-or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause.  An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both.  If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body…To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.

Dusty Sklar, The Nazis and the Occult:

In the chaos and collapse [after World War I] vast armies of uprooted (in today’s world -tent cities, evicted from houses, immigrants) felt threatened by the war’s economic and social aftermath.  National Socialism (or our Universal National Service Act) gave them a chance for a fresh start…The movement, in turn, encourages self-renunciation.

“I was nothing – and then I was needed -  Karl-Heinz Schwenke, a tailor and Nazi.

Consolidate and control.

The programs will work for desperate people in dire economic circumstances because:

They provide food and shelter.

A sense of belonging.

A sense of accomplishment.

Self-worth as part of a successful group.

As mandatory volunteerism is incorporated into schools and even becomes part of classroom applications, schools will become places of experiences, not knowledge and learning, and the goal of school to work will be achieved.

Orwell 1984:  Freedom is slavery

Hitler:  Work makes free.

Obama:  We will ask Americans to serve.  We will create new opportunities for                   Americans to serve.

Ibid.  A young teacher, the daughter of a liberal professor who joined the Party under pressure:

“At first I just made myself do it.  The Nazi accounts were so fantastic-plots of world-Jewry, etc.-that I could hardy keep from laughing as I read them; but of course I had to be careful.  It was somewhat of a shock to find how readily the children accepted the Nazi fabrications.  But the most amazing thing of all was, that after a few years of going through the routine, I began to believe the stories myself and could no longer distinguish in my own mind between propaganda and truth.

Ibid.  Formula for producing pliant followers:

“Take people, not wholly preoccupied with subsistence, who despair of being happy either in the present or in the future.  They feel the sharp, cutting edge of frustration.  Either through some personal defect or because external condition do not permit growth, they are eager to renounce themselves, since the self is insupportable…’To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resource.’-Eric Hoffer.  The movement, in turn, encourages self-renunciation.  It does not attract the individual who believes in himself, or does it care to; on the contrary he is precisely the individual whom it ridicules.  It popularizes the idea that the private person who finds his own satisfactions is halting the progress of civilization…As Hitler pointed out:  “Monkeys put to death any members of their community who show a desire to live apart.  And what the apes do, men do too, in their own manner.’”

The proselyte is isolated at first.  No free exchange with unbelievers is allowed.  He is cut off from ties of loyalty with the past.  His family and friends are discredited.  Feelings of exclusivity are encouraged…Through conformity, the person who feels inferior is in no danger of being exposed.  He’s indistinguishable from the others…emotional shock, despair, or exhaustion, can bring people into movements.

Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: 

In the new paradigm, work is a vehicle for transformation.  Through work we are fully engaged in life.  Work can be what Milton Mayerhoff called “the appropriate other,” that which requires us, which makes us care.  In responding to vocation – the call, the summons of that which needs doing – we create and discover meaning, unique to each of us and always changing. P.343