Brainwashing is often viewed as a Cold War relic—think '60s films like "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The IPCRESS File." But Rebecca Lemov, professor of the history of science, argues in her recently ...

Brainwashing doesn’t always look dramatic; it often employs subtle tactics to bypass critical thinking and reshape beliefs and identities. Indeed, various models have been proposed over the years to ...

In Orwell's novel, members of the Ingsoc party must accept paradoxical slogans such as "war is peace". Source: Joel Frohlich (created with Midjourney) This post is an adapted except from my Substack ...

Men have always fought for control over the minds of their fellows, but it is only recently—largely because of the furor over brainwashing—that the methods of gaining such control have been openly and ...

From Communist reeducation camps to manipulative media algorithms, mind control is a real and often remarkably effective tool, contends historian Lemov (World as Laboratory) in this trenchant study.

Recent calls to deprogram QAnon conspiracy followers are steeped in discredited notions about brainwashing. As popularly imagined, brainwashing is a coercive procedure that programs new long-term ...