Re-education
“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.”
Robert Rubin
In November, 2016, Gulbahar Haitiwaji was in her Paris home and received a phone call from Chinese officials claiming she had unsigned documents that were pertinent to her retirement from the oil company she had worked for in Xinjiang province. Despite warnings from her fellow Uyghurs, she decided to return to China, from where she had escaped with her husband and two daughters ten years prior. She knew that she would be questioned but what could they do at this point?
As expected, upon arrival she was apprehended by police and interrogated. They had a picture of her daughter in Paris holding up a flag of Turkestan, a flag the Chinese government had banned and associated with Muslim extremism and terrorism. The Communist Chinese annexed the Xinjiang autonomous region in 1955, a place home to millions of ethnic Uyghurs who they would attempt to assimilate into one united Chinese nation. Their Muslim faith and desire for independence makes them difficult to be assimilated by the Han majority and therefore they are seen as a threat. The Chinese officials accused Gulbahar’s daughters of being terrorists and they interned Gulbahar for a 7 year sentence in a “transformation through education” camp.
She was placed in a building with no windows, interned with 40 other women in the same room which was guarded by two Han soldiers at all times. They were forced to march and stand for hours in a military style for their “physical education”. They also endured 11 hours a day of reeducation where they repeated Communist propaganda. She recounted a story of a 60 year old woman who closed her eyes out of exhaustion during the “lesson” only to be slapped brutally, removed from the room for an hour and then returned having to read out loud a self-criticism they had forced her to write. Silence was enforced. No one dared yawn or rest their eyes lest they be accused of praying. She was once punished by being shackled to her bed for 20 days although she was never told for what. Two years into her sentence, and after many false confessions and denouncement of her family due to brainwashing, a judge declared her innocent and she was “free”.
The Chinese government instituted “re-education through labour” camps in the 1950s with the idea that minor criminals as well as political dissidents could be conditioned out of their insubordination. The practice was thought to have ceased in 2013 with many camps reportedly being used now as drug rehabilitation centres but accounts like Gulbahar’s have shed light on the establishment of massive internment camps in Xinjiang that currently are holding up to 3 million people.
It’s hard for us in the West to imagine anything like this happening on our turf. The values of liberalism with which most of us have been raised would not allow such gross totalitarianism from our governments. No, we would never allow our government to brainwash us so blatantly. That isn’t to say that we are free entirely from efforts to “re-educate”. On a smaller scale we can be a part of an organization that acts like a totalitarian government, tightly controlling the beliefs of its members. Religions, corporations, and of course, cults are shining examples of top-down thought policing.
While we don’t expect to be sent to education camps it’s hard not to see the various attempts by powerful entities to condition our thoughts and behaviours. And what’s even scarier is more and more people are accepting this as acceptable. The reasoning, as best as I can understand, is that in the hierarchy of social values, safety trumps the intellectual freedom. We are being conditioned to believe that dangerous ideas will hurt us and authorities need to step in on our behalf to protect us. So no, we don’t get sent to reeducation camps in the West but our media diets might set up a fairly effective reeducation camp right in our own minds under the guise of safe spaces and the gated institutional narrative.
Thank you for reading so far. Here is the outline of the manuscript for the book so you can keep track of where you are.
Introduction
Defence against Psyops
What are PsyOps?
What makes us marks?
The power of narratives
Who is behind it?
Kayfabe
Psychological Operations
Propaganda
Diversion of hatred
Character assassination
Re-education (you are here)
Cults
False flags/agent provocateur
Totalitarian regimes
Menticide
Defence
Principled insubordination
The Culture Wars
Ideological possession
Cancel Culture
Postmodernism
Profanity
MAGAstan vs. WOKEistan
Religious Zealotry
Heroes and villains
The Defence
The 21st Century Hero
The Responsibility of Freedom of Speech
Ridicule and Humour
Parallel Polis
Art and doubt
The Information Wars
Political Polarization
Corporate Media
Big Tech and the Post-Truth World
Noise vs Signal
“Woke”Journalism
Hate Hoaxes and victimhood
Collective ADHD
Advertisers
Defence
News/Media Diet
Critical Consuming
Rhetoric
The Slow burn
The Psychological Wars
Bullying
Gaslighting
Shame and isolation
Social contagion/Moral Panic
Safetyism
Social Media and human downgrading
The Meaning Crisis
Defence
Know Thyself
Be Wise
Stoicism
Psychological Immunity
Antifragility
Be Kind
Live Well
Conclusion