cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24853237

Some foreigners say that our ideological reform is brainwashing. As I see it, they are correct in what they say. It is washing brains, that’s what it is! This brain of mine was washed to become what it is. After joining the revolution, it was slowly washed, washed for several decades.

What I received before was all bourgeois education, and even some feudal education.

  • Mao Zedong
  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    17·
    11 days ago

    Its such a weird expression right, i wonder where it originates from. There is a non zero chance that its related to europeans famously being allergic to taking showers, thus “washing” is seen as a bad thing.

    • DessalinesOPA
      12·
      11 days ago

      I’ve always heard it in the context of manchurian candidate 1950s-era mind control shenanigans, but it seems to predate that. Wouldn’t surprise me if it has to do with westerners historically hating washing.

    • CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      10 days ago

      The term brainwashing was first used by the US military during the Korean war (a calque from Chinese 洗脑 (xǐnǎo), literally “to wash the brain”) in order to discredit their own pilots who claimed - correctly - that they’d been engaged in biological warfare, specifically dropping bomb cases full of pathogens, infected fleas and crop pests, all over the north Korean cities and countryside.

      When the pilots, who had been shot down and captured by the Koreans, made these public confessions, it was easy to dismiss them by saying they were under duress or threat of torture. But when those pilots returned home and kept making the same claims, the idea of “brainwashing” was invented to explain how actually, the evil communists had taken over their minds through spooky psychological conditioning and persuasion techniques, to make them continue believing lies even without the immediate threat of torture.

    • DessalinesOPA
      18·
      11 days ago

      Holds these up in hands

      This does not spark joy:

      This sparks joy: