Το κείμενο αποτελεί μέρος μιας συλλογής συνεντεύξεων του Ν.Τσόμσκι, όπου ο κορυφαίος διανοητής διαπιστώνει διεισδυτικές παρατηρήσεις για τους θεσμούς που διαμορφώνουν τη σκέψη του κοινού και οι οποίοι βρίσκονται στην υπηρεσία της ισχύος και του κέρδους.
Πρωταρχικό στοιχείο του κοινωνικού ελέγχου, η τεχνική της διασκέδασης συνίσταται στη στροφή της προσοχής του κοινού από τα σημαντικά προβλήματα και από τις μεταλλαγές που αποφασίστηκαν από τις πολιτικές και οικονομικές ελίτ, με ένα αδιάκοπο καταιγισμό διασκεδαστικών και ασήμαντων λεπτομερειών....
Η τεχνική της διασκέδασης είναι επίσης απαραίτητη για να αποτραπεί το κοινό από το να ενδιαφερθεί για ουσιαστικές πληροφορίες στους τομείς της επιστήμης, της οικονομίας, της Ψυχολογίας, της Νευροβιολογίας και της Κυβερνητικής. «Κρατήστε αποπροσανατολισμένη την προσοχή του κοινού, μακριά από τα αληθινά κοινωνικά προβλήματα, αιχμαλωτισμένη σε θέματα χωρίς καμιά πραγματική σημασία.
Κρατήστε το κοινό απασχολημένο, απασχολημένο, απασχολημένο, χωρίς χρόνο για να σκέφτεται· να επιστρέφει κανονικά στη φάρμα με τα άλλα ζώα». Απόσπασμα από το Όπλα με σιγαστήρα για ήσυχους πολέμους.
2 . Η τεχνική της δημιουργίας προβλημάτων, και στη συνέχεια παροχής των λύσεων
Αυτή η τεχνική ονομάζεται επίσης «πρόβλημα-αντίδραση-λύση». Πρώτα δημιουργείτε ένα πρόβλημα, μια «έκτακτη κατάσταση» για την οποία μπορείτε να προβλέψετε ότι θα προκαλέσει μια συγκεκριμένη αντίδραση του κοινού, ώστε το ίδιο να ζητήσει εκείνα τα μέτρα που εύχεστε να το κάνετε να αποδεχτεί.
Για παράδειγμα: αφήστε να κλιμακωθεί η αστική βία, ή οργανώστε αιματηρές συμπλοκές, ώστε το κοινό να ζητήσει τη λήψη μέτρων ασφαλείας που θα περιορίζουν τις ελευθερίες του. Ή, ακόμη: δημιουργήστε μια οικονομική κρίση για να κάνετε το κοινό να δεχτεί ως αναγκαίο κακό τον περιορισμό των κοινωνικών δικαιωμάτων και την αποδόμηση των δημοσίων υπηρεσιών.
3. Η τεχνική της υποβάθμισης
Για να κάνει κάποιος αποδεκτό ένα απαράδεκτο μέτρο, αρκεί να το εφαρμόσει σταδιακά κατά «φθίνουσα κλίμακα» για μια διάρκεια 10 ετών. Μ' αυτόν τον τρόπο επιβλήθηκαν ριζικά νέες κοινωνικο-οικονομικές συνθήκες (νεοφιλελευθερισμός) στις δεκαετίες του 1980 και 1990. Μαζική ανεργία, αβεβαιότητα, «ευελιξία», μετακινήσεις, μισθοί που δεν διασφαλίζουν πια ένα αξιοπρεπές εισόδημα· τόσες αλλαγές, που θα είχαν προκαλέσει επανάσταση, αν είχαν εφαρμοστεί αιφνιδίως και βίαια.
4. Η στρατηγική της αναβολής (Σαλαμοποίηση)
Ένας άλλος τρόπος για να γίνει αποδεκτή μια αντιλαϊκή απόφαση είναι να την παρουσιάσετε ως «οδυνηρή αλλά αναγκαία», αποσπώντας την συναίνεση του κοινού στο παρόν, για την εφαρμογή της στο μέλλον. Είναι πάντοτε πιο εύκολο να αποδεχτεί κάποιος αντί μιας άμεσης θυσίας μια μελλοντική. Πρώτα απ'όλα, επειδή η προσπάθεια δεν πρέπει να καταβληθεί άμεσα.
Στη συνέχεια, επειδή το κοινό έχει πάντα την τάση να ελπίζει αφελώς ότι «όλα θα πάνε καλύτερα αύριο» και ότι μπορεί, εντέλει, να αποφύγει τη θυσία που του ζήτησαν. Τέλος, μια τέτοια τεχνική αφήνει στο κοινό ένα κάποιο χρονικό διάστημα, ώστε να συνηθίσει στην ιδέα της αλλαγής, και να την αποδεχτεί μοιρολατρικά, όταν κριθεί ότι έφθασε το πλήρωμα του χρόνου για την τέλεσή της.
5 . Η στρατηγική του να απευθύνεσαι στο κοινό σαν να είναι μωρά παιδιά
Η πλειονότητα των διαφημίσεων που απευθύνονται στο ευρύ κοινό χρησιμοποιούν έναν αφηγηματικό λόγο, επιχειρήματα, πρόσωπα και έναν τόνο ιδιαιτέρως παιδικό, εξουθενωτικά παιδιάστικο, σαν να ήταν ο θεατής ένα πολύ μικρό παιδί ή σαν να ήταν διανοητικώς ανάπηρος.
Όσο μεγαλύτερη προσπάθεια καταβάλλεται να εξαπατηθεί ο θεατής, τόσο πιο παιδιάστικος τόνος υιοθετείται από τον διαφημιστή. Γιατί; «Αν [ο διαφημιστής] απευθυνθεί σε κάποιον σαν να ήταν παιδί δώδεκα ετών, τότε είναι πολύ πιθανόν να εισπράξει, εξαιτίας του έμμεσου και υπαινικτικού τόνου, μιαν απάντηση ή μιαν αντίδραση τόσο απογυμνωμένη από κριτική σκέψη, όσο η απάντηση ενός δωδεκάχρονου παιδιού». Απόσπασμα από το «Όπλα με σιγαστήρα για ήσυχους πολέμους».
6 . Η τεχνική του να απευθύνεστε στο συναίσθημα μάλλον παρά στη λογική
Η επίκληση στο συναίσθημα είναι μια κλασική τεχνική για να βραχυκυκλωθεί η ορθολογιστική ανάλυση, επομένως η κριτική αντίληψη των ατόμων. Επιπλέον, η χρησιμοποίηση του φάσματος των αισθημάτων επιτρέπει να ανοίξετε τη θύρα του ασυνείδητου για να εμφυτεύσετε ιδέες, επιθυμίες, φόβους, παρορμήσεις ή συμπεριφορές...
7. Η τεχνική του να κρατάτε το κοινό σε άγνοια και ανοησία
Συνίσταται στο να κάνετε το κοινό να είναι ανίκανο να αντιληφθεί τις τεχνολογίες και τις μεθοδολογίες που χρησιμοποιείτε για την υποδούλωσή του. «Η ποιότητα της εκπαίδευσης που παρέχεται στις κατώτερες κοινωνικές τάξεις πρέπει να είναι πιο φτωχή, ώστε η τάφρος της άγνοιας που χωρίζει τις κατώτερες τάξεις από τις ανώτερες τάξεις να μη γίνεται αντιληπτή από τις κατώτερες». Απόσπασμα από το «Ὀπλα με σιγαστήρα για ήσυχους πολέμους».
8. Η τεχνική του να ενθαρρύνεις το κοινό να αρέσκεται στη μετριότητα
Συνίσταται στο να παρακινείς το κοινό να βρίσκει «cool» ό,τι είναι ανόητο, φτηνιάρικο και ακαλλιέργητο.
9. Η τεχνική του να αντικαθιστάς την εξέγερση με την ενοχή
Συνίσταται στο να κάνεις ένα άτομο να πιστεύει ότι είναι το μόνο υπεύθυνο για την συμφορά του, εξαιτίας της διανοητικής ανεπάρκειάς του, της ανεπάρκειας των ικανοτήτων του ή των προσπαθειών του. Έτσι, αντί να εξεγείρεται εναντίον του οικονομικού συστήματος, απαξιώνει τον ίδιο τον εαυτό του και αυτο-ενοχοποιείται, κατάσταση που περιέχει τα σπέρματα της νευρικής κατάπτωσης, η οποία έχει μεταξύ άλλων και το αποτέλεσμα της αποχής από οποιασδήποτε δράση. Και χωρίς τη δράση, γλιτώνετε την επανάσταση!
10. Η τεχνική του να γνωρίζεις τα άτομα καλύτερα από όσο γνωρίζουν τα ίδια τον εαυτό τους
Στη διάρκεια των τελευταίων πενήντα ετών, οι κατακλυσμιαία πρόοδος της επιστήμης άνοιξε μια ολοένα και πιο βαθιά τάφρο ανάμεσα στις γνώσει του ευρέως κοινού και στις γνώσεις που κατέχουν και χρησιμοποιούν οι ιθύνουσες ελίτ. Χάρη στη Βιολογία, τη Νευροβιολογία και την εφαρμοσμένη ψυχολογία, το «σύστημα» έφτασε σε μια εξελιγμένη γνώση του ανθρώπινου όντος, και από την άποψη της φυσιολογίας και από την άποψη της ψυχολογίας. Το σύστημα έφτασε να γνωρίζει τον μέσο άνθρωπο καλύτερα απ' όσο γνωρίζει ο ίδιος τον εαυτό του. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι στην πλειονότητα των περιπτώσεων, το σύστημα ασκεί έναν πολύ πιο αυξημένο έλεγχο και επιβάλλεται με μια μεγαλύτερη ισχύ επάνω στα άτομα απ' όσο τα άτομα στον ίδιο τον εαυτό τους.
Και όμως για να καταρρεύσουν όλα αυτά αρκεί μια στιγμή αφύπνισης. Το «κόκκινο χάπι» που έλεγε ο Μορφέας στον Νέο στην ταινία Μatrix. Αν υπάρξει έστω μια φευγαλέα στιγμή αφύπνισης όλο το οικοδόμημα καταστρέφεται και πέφτει όπως μια κουρτίνα, και το κυριότερο η κουρτίνα αυτή δεν μπορεί να αναρτηθεί ξανά. Για αυτό σας παρουσιάζουμε τις 10 τεχνικές, μόλις τις παρατηρήσετε ότι συμβαίνουν γύρω σας και εφαρμόζονται κάθε μέρα, η αφύπνιση έρχεται νομοτελειακά. Για όποιον θέλει περισσότερη αφύπνιση ας διαβάσει το «σπήλαιο του Πλάτωνα» και θα ξημερώσει ένας καινούριος κόσμος.
Πηγή: tvxs.gr
UNIVERSITY OF ARTS, BELGRADE
Faculty of Dramatic
Arts
Doctoral Studies
Scientific theory of
Dramatic Arts, Media and Culture
10 strategies of manipulation
Marina Kovačević
Abstract
Psychological
manipulation can be defined as the exercise of undue influence through mental
distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention to seize power,
control, benefits, and privileges at the victim’s expense.
It is important to distinguish healthy
social influence from psychological manipulation. Healthy social influence
occurs between most people, and is part of the give and take of constructive
relationships. In psychological manipulation, one person is used
for the benefit of another. The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance
of power, and exploits the victim to serve his or her agenda.
Key
words:
manipulation, strategy, medi
...There
is no real invader here
We are all irish in all our
different kinds of ways
We must not, now or ever in the future,
show anything to each other
exept tollerance, forbearance
and neighbourly love...
We are all irish in all our
different kinds of ways
We must not, now or ever in the future,
show anything to each other
exept tollerance, forbearance
and neighbourly love...
The propaganda model is a
conceptual model
in
political economy
advanced
by
Edward
S. Herman
and
Noam Chomsky
to explain
how
propaganda
and
systemic biases
function
in
mass
media
.
The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for
economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the
public mind due to this propaganda.
The theory posits
that the way in which news is structured (through
advertising,
concentration of media ownership, government
sourcing and others) creates an inherent
conflict
of interest
which
acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.
Renowned critic and always MIT linguist
Noam Chomsky, one of the classic voices of intellectual dissent in the
last decade, has compiled a list of the ten most common and effective
strategies resorted to by the agendas “hidden” to establish a manipulation of
the population through the media. Historically the media have proven
highly efficient to mold public opinion. Thanks to the media paraphernalia
and propaganda, have been created or destroyed social movements,
justified wars, tempered financial crisis, spurred on some other
ideological currents, and even given the phenomenon of media as producers
of reality within the collective psyche. But how to detect the most common
strategies for understanding these psychosocial tools which, surely, we
participate? Fortunately Chomsky has been given the task of
synthesizing and expose these practices, some more obvious and more
sophisticated, but apparently all equally effective and, from a certain
point of view, demeaning. Encourage stupidity, promote a sense of guilt,
promote distraction, or construct artificial problems and then magically, solve them,
are just some of these tactics.
Psychological manipulation
is a type of
social influence
that
aims to change the
perception
or
behavior of others through underhanded,
deceptive, or
even
abusive
tactics.
By advancing the interests of the
manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered
exploitative,
abusive, devious, and deceptive.
[1]
There
are few groups of mental shortcuts that make us vulnerable, and countless
variations and combinations of them. People are willing to die for them - and
this is not a metaphor. They would go to war, they would take poison, they
would choose a career - the one they hate. They may even create a car accident,
without realizing that they are repeating a scenario described in the
yesterday's newspaper. But mostly they would spend time and money. This is when
the knowlege turns into power, because when we know what can be used against
us, we have a choice.
One way to detect a manipulator is to see if a person acts with different
faces in front of different people and in different situations. While all of us
have a degree of this type of social differentiation, some psychological
manipulators tend to habitually dwell in extremes, being highly polite to one
individual and completely rude to another—or totally helpless one moment and
fiercely aggressive the next. When you observe this type of behavior from an
individual on a regular basis, keep a healthy distance, and avoid engaging with
the person unless you absolutely have to. As mentioned earlier, reasons for
chronic psychological manipulation are complex and deep-seated. It is not your
job to change or save them.
1. The strategy of distraction
The primary
element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert
public attention from important issues and changes determined by the
political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding
continuous distractions and insignificant information. distraction
strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential
knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology
and cybernetics. “Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real
social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the
public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals
(quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”
2.
Create problems, then offer solutions
This method is
also called “problem -reaction- solution. “It creates a problem, a
“situation” referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is
the principal of the steps that you want to accept. For example: let it
unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in
order that the public is the applicant‟s security laws and policies to the
detriment of freedom. Or: create an economic crisis to accept as a
necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public
services.
3.
The gradual strategy
acceptance to an
unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive
years. That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions (
neoliberalism ) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal
state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, massive unemployment,
wages, and do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes that have
brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.
4.
The strategy of deferring
Another way to
accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and
necessary”, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application.
It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter.
First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the
public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will
be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This
gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it
with resignation when the time comes.
5.
Go to the public as a little child
Most of the
advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and
particularly children‟s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the
viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient. The harder one tries
to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone
infantilising. Why? “If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years
or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability
that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12
years or younger (see Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”
6.
Use the emotional side more than the reflection
Making use of the
emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit
on rational analysis , and finally to the critical sense of the
individual. Furthermore, the use of emotional register to open the door to
the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas , desires, fears and
anxieties , compulsions, or induce behaviors …
7.
Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity
Making the public
incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to
control and enslavement. “The quality of education given to the lower
social classes must be the poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap
of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and
remains impossible to attain for the lower classes (See „ Silent
Weapons for Quiet War ).”
8.
To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity
Promote the public
to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar
and uneducated…
9. Self-blame
Strengthen
To let individual
blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence,
their abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the
economic system, the individual autodesvalida and guilt, which creates a
depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action. And, without
action, there is no revolution!
10.
Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves
Over the past 50
years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between
public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks
to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the “system” has enjoyed
a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and
psychologically. The system has gotten better acquainted with the common
man more than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system
exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that
of individuals about themselves.
Theatre
Review: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution
The most
disturbing part of Caryl Churchill's The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution
is the relevance its main themes have today. Set in a psychiatric hospital at
the time of the Algerian war of liberation from colonialism, it explores the
cognitive aftermath of torture on both victims and torturers, and the moral
obscurity under which all this takes place – think Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay.
Since it was
penned in the early 70s, the play has remained unperformed until its world
premiere at the Finborough Theatre in London this April.
Churchill's piece
draws on the work of Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher,
revolutionary and author, whose work The Wretched of the Earth is largely
considered definitive in subject. A psychiatrist in the 50s war for
independence in Algeria, Fanon eventually resigned so he could join the Algerian
National Liberation Front.
His writing does
not only inspire the script, but Fanon (Miles Mitchell) himself features in the
play. Head of the psychiatric unit in an Algerian hospital, he listens to a
series of disturbed patients, all tangled up in the revolution, unload their
experiences of war and colonialism onto him.
A father and
French civil servant "who brings his work home with him" (that is
victims to torture) and his wife attempt to have their daughter Francoise
admitted as being insane, refusing to listen to her. She is clearly perturbed
at what is happening around her, convinced they are trying to poison her.
Two Algerian
patients languish in the hospital, one a self-absorbed, paranoid patriot, the
other a revolutionary. A prop, in the shape of a life-size elderly patient,
offers an unusual and slightly bizarre twist to the set of characters. Another
character is a French policeman so distressed about his role torturing
Algerians for information that it has spilt over into his home life as he becomes
uncontrollably violent towards his wife and daughters.
As the characters
bare their souls to Fanon, it is not only the psychological repercussions of
torture or colonialism on the consciousness that are on display. It is also the
frame of mind in which they place themselves in order to justify their actions
as oppressors.
Francoise's
parents, for example, are defensive and unable to see beyond their
interpretation of reality. When challenged by Francoise, they believe her
simply to be against them. Casual racist, or ignorant remarks enforce the idea
that they must protect themselves from the "savages" or Algerians, in
a manner reminiscent of the governments of apartheid South Africa and present
day Israel.
Although the play
was deep in meaning, it was flat in performance. Perhaps it is the fact that it
started out as a radio piece, or that it took 40 years to reach the stage that
accounts for its drawbacks. The 90-minute performance was generally quite drawn
out and tedious at times; though the play makes a clear statement about
oppression, and delves head first into the themes of racism, colonialism and
psychiatric illness, its way of doing so is far from subtle at times.
But obvious though
they may be, many of the issues raised have certainly proved to be timeless.
About Pedagogy of
the Oppressed
To the oppressed,
and to those who suffer with them
and fight at their side
and to those who suffer with them
and fight at their side
-
dedication of
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
First published in
Portuguese in 1968,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
was translated and published in
English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower
countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire’s
work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe,
where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and
minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Years before he
was “invited” to leave his homeland after the military coup of 1964, Freire had
begun devoting his life to the advancement of the fortunes of the impoverished
people of Brazil. After his twenty-year exile he moved first to Chile, then
emigrated to the United States before returning to Brazil. In the course of his
work and travels, and as a result of his studies in the philosophy of
education, he evolved a theory for the education of illiterates, especially
adults, based on the conviction that every human being, no matter how
“ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” is capable of looking
critically at his world in a dialogical encounter with others, and that
provided with the proper tools for such encounter he can gradually perceive his
personal and social reality and deal critically with it. When an illiterate
peasant participates in this sort of educational experience he comes to a new
awareness of self, a new sense of dignity; he is stirred by new hope.
“We were blind, now our eyes
have been opened.”
“Before this, words meant
nothing to me; now they speak to me and I can make them speak.”
“I work, and working I
transform the world.”
As the illiterate
person learns and is able to make such statements, his world becomes radically
transformed and he is no longer willing to be a mere object responding to
changes occurring around him. The educated are more likely to decide to take
upon themselves the struggle to change the structures of society that until now
have served to oppress them. This radical self-awareness, however, is not only
the task of the workers, but of persons in all countries, including those who
in our advanced technological society have been or are being programmed into
conformity and thus are essentially part of “the culture of silence.”
Over one million
copies of
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
have been sold worldwide since the
first English translation in 1970. It has been used on courses as varied as
Philosophy of Education, Liberation Theology, Introduction to Marxism, Critical
Issues in Contemporary Education, Communication Ethics and Education Policy. It
has been translated into many languages, including German, Italian, Spanish,
Korean, Japanese, and French.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
is one of the
foundational texts in the field of
critical
pedagogy, which attempts to help students question and challenge
domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate.
Inside the
Empire's Closet: Skeletons of War Crime, Mayhem and Murder
Caroline
Elkins's Imperial Reckoning is a study of the British response
to the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya in the 1950s. While the history of the Mau
Mau or, more correctly, Land and Freedom Army, has engaged the attention of
some scholars, the subject has not aroused popular interest in the same way the
independent struggles in Portuguese and French empires have. It is as if
British imperial scholarship, which at one point dominated colonial
historiography, wanted to retain a sanitized version of the empire's
disintegration. After all, India, the jewel of the British empire, gained
independence nonviolently, while minor players such as the Gold Coast were granted
freedom on a silver platter. Elkins's study of the Mau Mau and the British
response to it puts to rest such sanitized interpretations of the fall of the
largest seaborne empire in human history.
As a colony Kenya
provided all the lures of a tropical fairyland: fertile highlands free of
malaria, blue skies year round, exotic wild life, picturesque landscape and all
that within a day's drive from the coast. Unlike the typical working-class
overseas immigrants, whose rationale for leaving Europe included the privilege
that whiteness afforded in the colonies, Kenyan settlers either boasted a
genuine aristocratic pedigree or at least affected some Oxfordian pretensions.
By the time the Mau Mau uprising began in 1952, Kenya had become home to about
50,000 well-entrenched Europeans, notorious for their fanatic race outlook as
much as for their claim to blue blood.
The relationship
between the white settlers and the local African farmers during this period can
be best characterized as that of a zero sum game. In just over a generation,
the latter had witnessed their population reduced to a society of squatters or
altogether pushed into "tribal" reserves. They had lost their
political freedom and become a servile class, not to mention a sense of social
alienation the elders must have felt as their children joined mission schools
by the droves. Their men who fought against the Japanese in Burma, and against
Nazism and Fascism in Europe and Africa, had returned home not as war heroes
but as potential troublemakers that required constant government vigilance.
While postwar
political developments at home can be described as more of the same, few of the
politically conscious Kenyans could ignore the "winds of change"
blowing elsewhere. Indonesia and India had gained independence by the late
forties, followed by the overthrow of the pro-British Egyptian monarchy some
years later. By the early 1950s, in short, Kenya like most other colonies was
ready for some political tremor. What few foresaw was, nevertheless, the level
of violence to which Britain would resort in trying to contain this nationalist
stir.
The exact
circumstances leading to the Kikuyu anticolonial insurgency remain a mystery.
Initiation rites such as the partaking in animal sacrifice and the swearing of
a series of oaths gave the Mau Mau its secretive and almost religious aura.
Members called themselves the Land and Freedom Army, but the British referred
to them as Mau Mau, a derogatory term of unknown origin. Guerilla-style
military operations, aimed mostly at settlers in isolated farmsteads, began in
early 1952. Then came the turning point late that year. On October 21,
following the assassination of a well-known loyalist chief, Governor Evelyn
Baring declared a state of emergency. Immediate victims of the crackdown
included the overseas-educated Jomo Kenyatta and a few more Kikuyu notables,
whom Baring locked up for several years in the desert district of Lokitaung.
As subsequent
investigations would reveal, the conservative Kenyatta had little to do with
the underground resistance. The Land and Freedom Army had in fact been made up
of loosely organized bands of peasant fighters with a sprinkle of World War II
veterans here and there. Baring would provide the forest fighters their
rallying figure, thanks to the trumped up charges that turned Kenyatta into a
nationalist super hero.
By 1953 the colony
had mobilized fully its resources to contain the insurgency. The
well-publicized disproportionate use of military force, including aerial
bombardment, constituted only one half of the story behind the British war in
East Africa. The unconventional other half, little known in the outside world
and now remembered by even fewer Kenyans, is the subject of Elkins's study.
Unconventional anti-insurgency tactics included summary executions; electric
shock; mass killings; mass deportations; slave labor; the burning down of
villages and similar collective punishments; starvation; threatening harm to
wives and children; sodomization and rape; and soaking prisoners with human waste.
When the emergency ended seven years later, African death due to such acts of
cruelty ran perhaps as high as 300,000, almost thirty times the mainstream
figure of 11,000 (p. 366). By contrast, insurgents had killed about eighteen
hundred loyalists as well as thirty-two settlers.
Albeit on a much
more minor scale, the British reign of terror in Kenya almost paralleled Nazi
racial atrocities. Moreover, it happened in just less than a decade since World
War II, as the West was still coming to grips with the horrors of the Jewish
Holocaust. Unlike the gas chambers, however, the world would know little of the
Kenyan concentration camps even half a century after the fact. This collective
amnesia is the background against which Elkins establishes London's colonial
excesses, thereby deconstructing the Pax Britannica image.
Basing her
argument on various sources of evidence, from recently declassified archival
materials to oral interviews with ex-colonial officials and Mau Mau survivors,
Elkins challenges the conventional interpretation of the British response to
Mau Mau as measured and within the realm of "civilized" behavior.
"I've come to believe that during the Mau Mau war British forces wielded
their authority with a savagery that betrayed a perverse colonial logic,"
the Harvard professor writes, adding: "I now believe there was in late
colonial Kenya a murderous campaign to eliminate Kikuyu people, a campaign that
left tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, dead" (pp. xv-xvi).
Anecdotal examples
lend credence to Elkins's argument that the British engaged in more than a mere
anti-insurgency operation. A settler in the Rift Valley province, remembered by
the locals as Joseph Mengele, ran his own interrogation camp where suspects
were castrated and forced to eat their testicles, or burned alive (p. 67).
Another notorious group, popularly known as the Kenya's SS and made up of
mostly South African police, was in charge of the Mbakasi labor camp, now the
site of the Kenyatta International Airport, where tortures and murders happened
regularly behind closed doors (p. 86). Sadists and race fanatics in fact seemed
to have found a common ground in the anti-Mau Mau operation. One American, who
volunteered his service as interrogator, boasted of his preference for the
knife so as to inflict a slow and painful death in full view of other suspects.
Another British officer remembered how he and two other white colleagues stood
and grinned as their Alsatian reduced a healthy prisoner into a heap of blood
and scattered flesh in a matter of minutes.
Of course, there
is no such a thing as a clean war. But the collaborative accounts by over a
hundred informants, whom Elkins interviews in person, demonstrate that such
gruesome mayhems and racist orgies remained the rule, not the exception in
screening centers and detention camps across Kikuyuland in the 1950s.
The campaign for
"hearts and minds," as the officials ironically dubbed the anti-
insurgency war, focused on the detention camps or the pipeline. From 1954 on,
the camps hosted about 80,000 detainees at any given time, which means hundreds
of thousands of men must have been rotated through them by 1960. The pipeline
began in cities or villages where thousands would be rounded up randomly and
put on packed trains and buses for undisclosed destinations. Once in the remote
holding centers, the ordeal of detention life would start, accompanied by hard
labor and punctuated by a series of interrogation or screening tortures. Those
who confessed or "spat back the oath" would be sent to rehabilitation
centers, while hardcore Mau Mau adherents were transferred to special camps
where back-breaking labor and tortures of all sorts claimed many more lives.
Women, while a
small fraction of detainees, made up an important component. Over four thousand
women went through the pipeline each year. About 15 percent of them were
interned with their young ones while many others gave birth in detention (p.
227). In general, men ran the female holding centers with all the consequences
it entailed. In one instance, however, an eccentric female settler, the
notorious Katherine Warren Gash, reigned over the screening process with as
much terror as any of her male counterparts (p. 222).
The frequent
accusations against women dealt with taking the oath or passing information to
the forest fighters. The range of tortures they suffered, from the insertion of
foreign objects in their vaginas to having their breasts cut off by pliers, was
proof that the interrogators made little distinction between actual combatants
and those with supporting roles. In fact, given the presence of children in the
detention camps, the psychological trauma faced by female detainees was much
worse than that suffered by husbands and brothers.
Where Elkins's
study is equally at its best in reconstructing the gender dimension of British
war crime in Kenya is in her discussion of the forced villagization. About 1.5
million Kikuyus, almost the entire population, were resettled in 804 villages.
Barbed wires and spiked trenches surrounded the villages so as to strangulate
the fighters in their forest hideouts by denying them access to civilians.
Since a large number of men were already in detention camps, villagization
affected mostly women, children, the old and the disabled. Evictions, which
often began with the burning down of villages, took place with no advance
warning, with many dying in the process and others barely making it out alive.
In the makeshift villages the excesses from the detention camps were reenacted:
rape, forced labor, torture, diseases, and famine. Villagization would succeed
in severing the fighters' lifeline, but at the cost of tens of thousands of
civilians, mostly women and children (p. 234).
Although Elkins's
central theme is British war crime in Kenya, she also addresses the topic of
African agency, especially the ingenuity with which detainees responded to camp
life. While no doubt many succumbed to tortures and the incessant psychological
warfare, others devised various techniques of resistance: from engaging in
discreet letter writing campaigns to using the prison ground for the
recruitment of new Mau Mau converts. Complementing detainee resistance from
within was the overseas lobby by a small but vocal group of Labour MPs such as
Barbara Castle and Fenner Brockway. However, just as the home guards got in the
way of detainee resistance, so did the stonewalling of the Colonial Office and
the British government against such voices of conscience.
A groundbreaking
contribution to colonial historiography, Imperial Reckoning is
a timely publication in light of the recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo. Methodological questions may be raised about Elkins's liberality
with figures as well as the authenticity of individual testimonies that make up
the bulk of her sources on torture and detention. But one has only to remember
the German genocide in Southwest Africa, the death of millions in Leopold's
Congo, or the Italian use of chemical weapons in Ethiopia, to know that the
onus of disproof for such data lies on defendants of empire.
[1]
Social influence is not necessarily negative.
For example, doctors can try to persuade
patients to change
unhealthy habits. Social influence is generally perceived to be harmless when
it respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject and is not unduly coercive.
Depending on the context and motivations, social influence may constitute
underhanded manipulation.
