Audiobook9 hours
Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media
Written by Joel E. Dimsdale
Narrated by Eric Jason Martin
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
A harrowing account of brainwashing's pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.
Tracing these developments through many of the past century's major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story-one that hasn't yet ended.
This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.
Tracing these developments through many of the past century's major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story-one that hasn't yet ended.
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Reviews for Dark Persuasion
Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
4/5
10 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5MUST LISTEN POST 2020 plandemic.
Very well written and researched, - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It’s interesting to see the authors political ideology come through. It’s not that he’s wrong, but it’s very much in some points ignorant that both sides are doing the same thing. It’s also interesting to see what he describes as a “delusion” such as the NSA spying on American citizens actually being shown true after the Snowden revelations. Some of what he describes as brainwashing is nothing more than people paying attention to CSPAN. Considering this came out in 2021, I very much believe the author didn’t research some of his examples as well as others.