We jump ahead now in this military manual to a section that deals not with how to communicate with foreign enemies but how Air Force instructors should relate to their Air Force students.
In this first quote we come back to an idea mentioned earlier in the text and discussed in my last post, but this time in this new context. [I use all-caps where there is an underline in the original as I'm not sure how to create underlines here.]
"SLANTING, DISTORTION, AND THE STRATEGY OF THE 'BIG LIE' help destroy an individual's anchor in reality. Decisions and adaptive efforts, based on unrealistic information, decrease rather than increase ability and will to continue to fight. Slanting of test results to make an individual 'look better than he really is' in order to bolster his confidence or 'making him look worse than he is' in order to dissuade him from a choice the counselor considers unwise ultimately can only undermine ability and will to continue the fight. The fact that the counselor's intentions are good does little to help matters. FACING THE FACTS almost always contributes most to strengthen ability and will to continue adapting. Furthermore, students consider this type of pressure as not legitimate and right and there are always chances of boomerang effects of lasting consequences." (p. 65)
It's as if they're saying, in short, that if A is good, then the opposite of A is bad. What I mean is that this method is used destructively with enemies and is to be avoided with our own. Forget the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" ((Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:39, Luke 6:31) thing, that's passe. We have a new commandment for you: Do unto others exactly the opposite of what you would have them do unto you"!
With this text (the military text, not the Scriptural one) in mind, it does sort of explain how the missions could actually be sort of two-faced in the deceptiveness of their work. I wonder if they actually got it from the military? I'm sure there are other possible sources too, but it is revealing that even if the military wasn't the original source the practice was in keeping with military protocol (this is an official Air Force publication, after all).
But this text brings up the different contexts - relations with enemy foreigners vs. with new inductees. I assume everyone here has heard of "boot camp", which is the arduous military "socialization" process for new recruits. I'm not sure if the instructions here for relating to students was used in boot camp as well as other training/educational settings in the Air Force, but I'm going to assume that it also applies to boot camp relations.
In Vienna, there was no formal equivalent to boot camp, but there was a socialization process which I believe was tailored somewhat to each individual new recruit. It's clear to me that the mission used the 'big lie' with outsiders regarding their work and the like, but I think they may also have used this technique some with new recruits, new arrivals to Vienna. In this case, they were treating the newcomers as foreigners, or, in the military context of this book, treating them as foreign enemies.
Sometimes being graphic helps explain things, so let's look at this more succinctly:
Military use of the 'big lie'
> with foreign enemies, yes
> with new inductees, no
> with seasoned members, no
Vienna mission use of the 'big lie'
> with outsiders ("enemy" or not), yes
> with new inductees, yes (at least sometimes)
> with seasoned workers, no
As I wrote the above I thought of one possible exception not mentioned in the text, that I know would apply to the mission in Vienna, although I'm not sure about the military. That is, with the segmentation of information/knowledge in the Vienna mission (which I'm sure also exists in the military), I think that in Vienna there may have even some use of the 'big lie' internally as one of the ways that they tried to control security and maintain the divisions of knowledge. I'm not sure if the military would do that or if, as the text seems to suggest, using the 'big lie' could undermine trust which in the long run would be counter-productive. I don't know that such a concern existed in effect in Vienna. They had other means to build trust, involving the faith-related mission of the organization.
***
The next quote is preceded by a discussion of attempts by the North Koreans in the Korean War to disrupt groups that formed in their POW camps.
"Since it is the enemy's objective to cause the prisoner to doubt his own perceptions and change his attitudes, the prisoner's best anchor in reality is the store of information and convictions he brings with him." (p. 69-70)
Ironically, I felt like this in many ways in my relations with some of the leadership at the mission in Vienna. And you can see by my discussions of these texts how even subsequently I've tried to develop a rational understanding of what was going on there. Unfortunately, my knowledge of their tactics, other than a broad knowledge of techniques used by Communist governments with dissidents and believers. Before my arrival in Vienna I hadn't gone into depth like I'm doing now; in fact it was actually several years later that I began this research. Even so, I had studied ethics and politics and had some strong ideas about right and wrong. Also, one thing my parents did in raising all of us kids is give us critical thinking skills. I remember analyzing TV commercials while we sat around watching our favorite shows together. So I did have some strong information and convictions, that helped me deal with what I experienced in Vienna. But outside of keeping me from completely falling apart, it didn't help my relations with the mission in the long haul.
But, wait, I shouldn't be comparing my experiences in Vienna to POW experiences in Korea, should I?
***
This section is part of an examination of efforts U.S. soldiers used while in Korean POW camps.
"One of the most frequent counteractive devices was social isolation of the suspected, or proven informer or collaborator. If such a person had been permitted to remain in the confidence of the group, he would have created suspicion in his every relationship and could have continued to destroy these linkages." (p. 77).
I've discussed this before in the context of social control methods, and isolation is a very common - common in society as a whole - method of protecting social norms and values and showing disapproval to something.
But the second part of this text might not be so common, as it would apply mainly in situations where trust was especially necessary. I suppose gangs, for example, might be another place where the trust issue would be strong. I've already alluded to, if not in any detail, how there was some suspicion of outsiders in the Vienna mission. At the end of my time in Vienna I felt like I was very much not trusted, like an informer in this text being isolated and shunned by his fellow prisoners of war.
***
And thus ends another book... at least what I want to get out of it. we just have one more book to go before moving on to something else, though.
I have a lot to do today and the day is well spent, so I'm going to have to let you go again.
~ Meg
