During the “Cold War,” individuals living under Soviet rule would have to be on constant guard against “thought police.”
Children were indoctrinated in school to inform authorities, even on their parents if they spoke critically or even questioningly against the State, even within the privacy of their home.
An entire society was forbidden to follow a bible-based morality.
In political tyranny, rulers manipulate educational systems, the entertainment industry and media outlets to “dumb down” the masses.
Rulers have always found it easier to impose their agenda on a population never trained in the art of critical thinking.
On a collective level, this is not that different from the narcissist who always wants to surround himself with those who “admire” him.
When powerful dictators re-enact their grandiosity on the world stage, the pathology of their narcissism is evidenced by their inability to realize that a free-thinking society views such behavior with disdain.
George Soros devised a method of enticing groups into obedience by using the incentive of unfettered entitlements with simplistic ideologies. All one needed was to co-opt the media into creating confusion through a constant barrage of disinformation. His mentors were Alinsky and Goebbels.
Not only were the architects of a New World Order successful in winning the cooperation of the International Media such as the NY Times, Washington Post, and Guardian, but through carefully devised algorithms on Social Media Platforms like Facebook and Google.
The concept of the “Stockholm syndrome” actually began on August 23, 1973, when Jan Olsson began a bank robbery that would forever transform the spectrum of how the world would view the outcome of hostage situations.
It started with the storming of a local Kredit Bank in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, and the shooting of the police officers who had gone in after Olsson.
Three women and one man were confined to a small room, dynamite was strapped to them, and they were rigged to traps that would kill the hostages during any rescue attempt.
Yet when these captives were released, they appeared to show more sympathy for their captors than the police who had rescued them – going so far as to publicly decry their own rescue. Two of the hostages became friends with the captors, establishing a fund to help pay for their defense fees accrued through the trial. They continue to support their captors against the police even today.
The psychologist Nils Bejerot named the captives’ attachment towards their abusers the “Stockholm Syndrome” (“The Six-Day War in Stockholm,” Published in the New Scientist, 61, 1974).
While the phenomenon of “emotional bonding” between hostages and their captors had been familiar in psychological circles, the use of the term “Stockholm syndrome” became popularized following the publicity of two more high profile hostage cases: Patricia Hearst and Elizabeth Smart.
Both cases involve the kidnapping of a woman to pursue of ideals of their captors.
In the case of Elizabeth Smart, it is believed that at the young age of fourteen, her instincts for survival resulted in the development of a strong bond between her and her captor, Brian Mitchell.
Three days after her kidnapping, Smart had heard her uncle searching and calling for her, not far from her hidden location, but did not call out for help.
There are many theories about why certain hostages remain obedient and even show resistance to being rescued.
Unlike Hearst, Smart did not speak out against her captor for many years after returning to regular life.
In many cases of Stockholm syndrome, families react with disbelief when hostages remain silent about their relationships with their captors, and defensive about their choices to avoid seeking rescue.
It is now believed that an integral dynamic in the Stockholm syndrome is the unique bond of loyalty established between the hostage and his or her captor (”Love Thine Enemy; Hostages and the Classic Stockholm syndrome,” Graham Dee and colleagues, NY University Press, 1994).
Experts postulate that a unique attachment is established between the victim and captor evolving from the exclusive dependence by the former on the latter.
In exchange for the restricted life granted by the captor, these victims are willing to adopt a false reality in which no harm can come to them. In this apparent act of self-deception, victims of Stockholm syndrome believe that their irrational empathy for both their captors as well as their ideologies will protect them.
Similar psychological dynamics dominate subservient bonding patterns observed among molested children and spousal victims of domestic violence, as well as among cult members.
The ensuing ambiguity and psychological enmeshment between hostage and predator pose a unique challenge to caretakers and law-enforcement agencies attempting to free an individual appearing objectively as a victim of trauma-bondage while in a state of denial and pathological attachment to their masters.
In my limited role as a Forensic Psychiatrist I have been bedeviled attempting to assist Federal Prosecutors in cases of sex-trafficking when victims defend their handlers.
In the largest cult recorded in Israel, the cult-leader was deluded into believing himself as being the reincarnation of Reb Nachman of Breslov, a great Rabbinic leader.
Currently three of his four wives continue this to be true, despite his conviction on multiple counts including kidnapping and child-slavery. Under his psychological control he would send the children of his four wives to collect money at the Kotel to support his lavish lifestyle. Disobedience was punished with extended periods of solitary confinement in an outdoor coal-shed with minimal amounts of bread and water and without blankets.
That most of his wives and children refused to testify against him could in several instances be attributed to the Stockholm syndrome. To this day three of his four families regard him as a Saint and fund-raise for a re-trial.
On a more global scale, this pattern of compliance and obedience has been manifesting as bizarre idealization (despite the tyrannical ruler-ship style) in Communist China, since the Mao Revolution, the Soviet Union under Stalin, (who killed 37 million “dissenters”), the Republic of North Korea under three successive tyrants: Kim II-sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Yong-un.
Despite starving the populations and imposing preposterous collective punishment for dissent ranging from public firing-squads to forced slavery-camps, these populations exhibited uncontained grief following the deaths of these human demons. The North Korean government denies that there is a personality cult surrounding the Kims. Rather, it claims that the people’s devotion to the Kims is a manifestation of genuine hero worship. (Jason LaBouyer “When friends become enemies — Understanding left-wing hostility to the DPRK” Lodestar. May/June 2005: pp. 7–9. Korea-DPR.com).
Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, while projecting more of a populist public profile, they still forbid the practice of any religion besides worship of the State or Islam respectively. They demand strict obedience to their proscribed culture, sworn allegiance to their authoritarian style of governance, and dispense justice through courts corrupted by Party officials or Imams. Yet they share the identical idealization of their oppressors observed in the “hard-tyrannies” of Russia, China, and The Republic of North Korea. The observed populism has been embedded into their education and via their Government-controlled Media outlets.
Behind the shield of pervasive threat totalitarian governments disseminate radical ideologies while constantly promoting and idealizing their leaders. Cult-like figures such as the Fidel Castro’s, the Kim Dynasty of the Republic of North Korea, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were idealized for their larger-than-life Personas. Despite the abject poverty, forced labor, and punitive subjugation imposed on their devotees.
Adherents were rewarded by a sense of belonging, a shared sense of psychological security and well-being supported by the promises of endless entitlements. The devotion of their subjects, (or “devotees”) was quenched by vaguely rationalized, lofty, quasi-mystical reassurances of endless benevolence, offered by these omnipotent, idealized leaders of a “Brave New World Order”, articulately-communicated by their tyrannical masters.
One can hence follow a consistent psycho-dynamic thread equating the pattern of domination and obedience characterizing the dyad of the Stockholm dynamic.
This model can be applied to the dynamics of the religious or political Stockholm state, whereby unquestioning dogma is allowed to explain all facets of the victim`s life. Science and critical thought are replaced by the Modern Political Hostage`s “sacred” ideology, constituting a new, soft form of political tyranny (“Psychological Induction into the large-group,” Marc Galanter, Am J Psychiatry,1980).
What I have described until now is a mechanism described by Psychologists and Sociologists, whereby hostage victims, (like the Iran Hostages who became radicalized to Islam).
Or vulnerable individuals under conditions of existential or identity crises, facing crises of identity, (also referred to by the Greek word “Anomie”) are inducted into various cult-groups, where confusion is replaced by a fixed dogma; an otherwise confusing life is replaced by one with a predictable order; random activities are replaced by highly regulated rules and rituals, and the parental vacuum imposed by oppositional-defiance and deficient role-models replaced by the charismatic leader, for whom blind allegiance is traded for the security of (psychological) custody or captivity.
The sequence to this publication addresses the following question:
We are often perplexed by the intense grief, despair and confusion exhibited by victim-survivors following the death of their abusive and tyrannical masters.
This an apparent paradox, but easier to comprehend when grasping the co-dependent nature of the Stockholm dyad.
The next question to arise is to understand the fatal-attraction of the millennia generation to the lure of captivity being offered by the New Socialist-Progressive movement, and its resemblance to the Stockholm Syndrome observed in cults and Communist-Tyrannies.
Tags: authoritarian, charismatic leader, Complex PTSD, cults, Elizabeth Smart, emotional-bonding, Fidel Castro, George Soros, hostage, Hugo Chavez, idealization, Kim Dynasty, Main-Stream-Media, Modern Political-Hostage, New World Order, obedience, pathological attachment, Patricia Hearst, political terrorism, psychological bondage, Reb Nachman, Stockholm Syndrome, trauma re-enactment, trauma-bondage, tyranny