From fear to freedom
Even the most brainwashed individual can find liberation
A leader of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Natan Sharansky argues in his new book that democratization of the Middle East is a crucial ingredient for a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this excerpt, he describes the common features of totalitarian societies in North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. A citizen of Israel since his release from the Soviet gulag in an East-West prisoner exchange in 1986, Sharansky asserts that the Palestinian Authority must stop its brainwashing of Palestinians, which Sharansky says incites hatred toward Jews and creates a climate for terrorism.
The power of a fear society is never based solely on an army and a secret police. As important is a regime's ability to control what is read, said, heard, and, above all, thought. This is how a regime based on fear attempts to maintain a constant pool of true believers.
The Soviets went to great lengths to shape the minds of their citizens, subjecting the nation's older generations to a mixture of overt and subtle reprogramming while forcing its youth to imbibe the official wisdom of the Soviet government. The voluminous State Encyclopedia in my father's house was a constant reminder of the malleability of Soviet history. Every few years, after a high-profile death or trial, our family received official pages of revision. We were advised by the authorities to put those pages in the appropriate place and burn the ones earmarked for removal.
For those living in a free society, the idea that a state would try to thoroughly brainwash its subjects is particularly difficult to grasp. On my first trip to America, I met with the publisher of Random House, Robert Bernstein, a vociferous critic of the Soviets' human-rights record. He asked me whether people in the Soviet Union could freely enter bookstores and buy books. At first, I couldn't believe he was serious. Then I understood that he simply had no idea how a fear society worked. I explained to him that we were free to go in but that the books were not.
All fear societies are based on a certain degree of brainwashing. State-controlled television, radio, and newspapers glorify the actions of the regime's leaders and incite their populations against those it deems to be enemies. Recently, an officer in the North Korean Army who had defected described how he oversaw experiments at a prison camp in which parents were placed in gas chambers together with their children. Asked how he could take part in such barbarism, the officer told the BBC:
"I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided, and not making progress as a country. . . . It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
advertisement
