Writing the book on mass indoctrination
This book by Buck Sexton sounds worth reading: Manufacturing Delusion: How the Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda Against You. From the Amazon blurb:
Some of history’s greatest empires have devolved into genocidal lunacy—often with shocking compliance from their own people. What methods can create this madness?
In Manufacturing Delusion, acclaimed conservative commentator and former CIA officer Buck Sexton offers answers. Drawing on his intelligence experience, expertise in crowd psychology, knowledge of propaganda, and research into some of history’s darkest totalitarian chapters, he equips you to identify mind control tactics used to form compliant citizens. He explores the eight tactics of mass delusion through examining:
— How Stalin used Pavlovian mind games to establish absolute control
— How Chinese thought reform transformed opposition into terrorized pawns
— How Jihadist preachers replace shared humanity with weaponized fearUsing these examples and others, Sexton walks you through a history of controlling regimes and the methods they used to create passive citizens. More importantly, he shows you how some of the early stages of mass delusion have already occurred right here in the United States of America, on issues of public health, gender, and racial justice.
I heard about the book through this interview with the author. Although the book’s title only mentions the left, he says in the interview that he also sees it on the right (or the former right, or the pretend right – aka Carlson and Owens). However, that is still a fringe group on the right, whereas it’s a widespread and mainstreamed tool of the left.
Here’s the interview:
In the interview, Sexton also mentions a much older book, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost A. M. Meerloo. It was first published in 1956 and this is from Amazon’s description:
In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective “truth” on their victims’ minds. In “The Rape of the Mind” he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The “Rape of the Mind” is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov’s Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom — Our Mental Backbone
I think “our mental backbone” has gone rather squishy lately.
The reason I have highlighted the Meerloo book, though, is that – strangely enough – I read it when I was about ten years old. Did I understand it? Certainly not deeply. But the topic already interested me so much that I plowed through it.
How did it fall into my hands? My family had received a free and unsolicited catalogue in the mail from Marboro Books, which was (according to Google AI) “a notable discount book retailer and publisher founded in 1947, famous for selling remainders and overstock books at steep discounts through retail stores and mail-order catalogs, the chain was acquired by Barnes & Noble in 1979.” When the catalogue came, I pored over it, fascinated. It was the first time it occurred to me that I could order an adult book – and by “adult” I certainly don’t mean anything to do with sex.
My childhood interests were a portent of things to come as a blogger, because not only did I order that Meerloo book with my allowance, but I also ordered Charles MacKay’s classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. That one was first published in 1841:
The subjects of Mackay’s debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetisers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics.
I think I’m going to order the Sexton book. I seem to have lost the others along the way, although I had them for a long long time.
As a mainly historical reader this does sound interesting. Read a book on the Soviet Show trials, The Prosecutor and Judge were in cahoots, and would get defendants to admit to crimes they didn’t do but they bowed down admitted them and often executed for these fake crimes.
That they could do this amazed me while reading that book.
The head protector actually survived after Stalin died being in New York at the time.
I think “our mental backbone” has gone rather squishy lately.
Squishy minds: I recall when terrorists bombed a large passenger train in Spain right before an election, killing many. I believe the terrorists were leftists, and the election suddenly shifted hard left. (I might have the politics that wrong, but it seemed that way to me at the time.) I thought, “Oh my, I don’t think something like that would happen here. Don’t you want to fight back at the ballot box? Would it happen here now? I’m not sure.
The election swung towards the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).
— Copilot
I heard some hot shot investor guy on air recently respond to all activity and success for socialist DSA candidates. To the voters, he said, “Read a history book.” 😉 He might have added, “An honest and accurate one.”
Nice. Buck Sexton looks like a writer who can update Dutch named Merlot book, I can see why you’re eager.
The understanding from psychology and media has changed a lot in 70 years. If Buck misses certain topics or relevant realms that deserve mining, I hope others will attempt a tome like this on.
As for Charles MacKay’s well-known classic, I doubt that any social psychologist has adequately covered the history of scape-goating. Of course, it’s a large and varied phenomenon.
I think Rachel Wilson has taken care to update witch persecutions in her book “Occult Feminism: The Secret
History of Women’s Liberation.” Wilson writes from a post feminist ans critical Christian perspective.
Buck’s book does very much look worthwhile! Added to my buy list.
I have bought and read all three of those books, and recommend them. Rapes of the Mind is a bit of a slogan, but well worth the trip.
It boils down to, he might.be a.SOB but.he’s my SOB.
From Wikipedia I am reminded that In 1922 Walter Lippmann wrote “Public Opinion” in which he popularized the phrase “the manufacture of consent.” In 1988 Noam Chomsky co-authored “Manufacturing Consent.” Now comes “Manufacturing Delusion.” Probably adding more substance and new developments to a rich field. Rich, I would argue, because we are such a vulnerable species. We live in our heads, rush from fear to greed (a different form of fear) and thus are prey to panic and disorientation. And once we are knocked silly or made fearful, we busy ourselves with denial, repairing the shock or papering over the contradictions.
Modern practice uses tools developed over millennia and augmented with a century and more of mass electronic media.
Don’t forget The True Believer by Eric Hoffer who discusses the same thing.
This post by Dr. Brian Joondeph illustrates one of the indoctrination methods at work.
The media is well-versed in the techniques, and uses them constantly.
Usually we just call it “spin” – but it is still indoctrination.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/06/the_denver_post_s_wolf_pup_problem.html
Personal trivia anecdote: We often see professionals who have media platforms append a notice such as, “I am a lawyer but I am not YOUR lawyer,” to indicate that they are not offering personal legal advice.
I have been reading Dr. Joondeph’s posts for several years, especially the ones with a Colorado angle. Last month, I began treatment for wet macular degeneration (which has been expected for various reasons but is still a bummer) and was surprised to find that the clinic had assigned me to his practice.
So he is not only an ophthalmologist, he is MY ophthalmologist!
A troubling pair of in-depth revelations, written by insiders—think Whittaker Chambers:
“The Long Classroom;
“How Soviet and Chinese Intelligence Subverted Western Education — and What the Results Look Like”—
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/07/11/the_long_classroom_1193902.html
“I Watched the DSA Go Crazy. The Democrats May Be Next.
“The anti-democratic far Left is using the same strategy that helped them capture the Democratic Socialists of America”—
https://www.city-journal.org/article/dsa-democratic-party-left
H/T Powerline blog (for both).
We have Trump
And lots and lots of guns.
It will end with a bunch of dead commies. I asked copilot the other day how many AR-15s are in private hands. The high number which I believe is correct is 32 million. Then I asked how many AR-15s built from 80% receivers (not included in the 32m) and copilot said the answer was unknowable which is what I was expecting.
All one need do is look at the curricula and textbooks in the required reading syllabus at any college and one will find the mother lode of leftist indoctrination. Of course, the local public school system is where these ideas are introduced. Why any parent would allow their child to be so manipulated is beyond me. Stupid, lazy or both should be a disqualifier against rearing children, but the demographics clearly demonstrate that the opposite is the rule.
OTOH, there has been an explosion in home schooling.
In addition, charter schools have been gaining in popularity, since they apparently offer a decent alternative, everything being relative (though the bar is, all too often, not terribly high).
The popularity of charter schools with parents can be gauged by the vehemence with which those schools are targeted and attacked by teachers’ unions and left-leaning administrations in blue states and cities, both groups brooking NO opposition or alternatives to their policies of top-down, massive propaganda—that is, if they can get away with it.
That being said, there are still some very good, even excellent public schools around the country, despite the political (and other) challenges. One example is the handful of special high schools in NYC, whose extraordinary administrations and staffs have, for generations, provided their students with extraordinary educations; but these may be entirely subverted if Madmani gets his way—and as he is a tenacious and vicious extremist, these exemplary schools may not be around much longer, at least not in their current format. S
Re Barry Meislin @ 7:25 am –
I agree that homeschooling is a positive trend. OTOH it’s disgusting that taxpayers are paying for disfunctional and anti-American schools!
My impression is that charter schools can be better than public schools (what couldn’t be better?), but are not immune to the rot which public schools spread.
In Chicago the Democrat teachers union successfully agitates for higher pay, while enrollment declines, many schools are half-full or less, and most students can’t read or do math at grade level. The union is all about more pay and less work for teachers; the students are merely collateral damage.