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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 14, 2021 0:29:08 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 14, 2021 3:25:57 GMT -5
Divide-and-rule, cognitive dissonance and the Stockholm syndrome
Divide-and-rule is a technique as old as empire, and perhaps older. In the age of competing empires its purpose was to encourage willingness to fight and often die in the interest of the empire of which one happened to be an inhabitant. Antagonism towards one's "equal" could act as a catalyst for hostility towards one's master's enemy.
The reflex persists into the present, even if today there is no longer more than one empire. (Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn't.) In the preceding period of Cold War between "the West" and "Communism" nuclear weapons were a central part of the divide-and-rule mechanism. Initially nuclear weapons were unequivocally "good" because they "ended the war". With the passage of time a division was fomented between "our" (good) nuclear weapons and "their" (bad) nuclear weapons. Then the anti-nuclear movement itself, which had started as a fan club for one side, the weaker side, of the nuclear arms race, divided into two. A competing ("independent" or "non-aligned") anti-nuclear movement was elaborated from an accusation of bad faith against the self-declared possessors of "good" nuclear weapons. (There is no such thing, you see. Weapons of mass destruction are bad. Full stop. "Nuclear deterrence" is a fraud, a mechanism for the generation of counterforce scenarios and so of escalation.)
The "official" vs "non-aligned" dichotomy persisted through the nineteen eighties up to the collapse of the weaker side, which in accordance with the credo of the "non-aligned" anti-nuclear movement should have triggered a demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament of the defeated weaker side. againstthecurrent.org/atc075/p1816/
But it didn't. Instead it generated a revival of scenarios of "nuclear deterrence".
In the 2020s "divide-and-rule" is embodied in a bipolar scenario of "vaccinated" versus "anti-vaxxers". William Engdahl has introduced an interesting new insight with his observation that divide-and-rule is activated through cognitive dissonance. Is one's life more threatened by the "pandemic" or by the "measures against the pandemic". Argue about it. Feel free.
Engdahl says: "Cognitive dissonance is a term in psychology for a person’s experience of two contradictory or inconsistent experiences whose inconsistency causes them great stress. The stress is resolved in the brain by the person playing unconscious tricks to resolve the contradiction. The Stockholm Syndrome comes to mind."
The Stockholm Syndrome was first named in 1973 by Nils Bejerot, a criminologist in Stockholm, Sweden. It is a way of understanding the emotional response some people have towards a captor or abuser.
Someone who has Stockholm syndrome might have confusing feelings towards the abuser, including:
• Love
• Sympathy
• Empathy
• Desire to protect them
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