Millennialism and Violence

Michael Barkun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780714642505
• eBook ISBN: 9781136308482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

As the world approaches the year 2000, many societies are experiencing an unprecedented growth in millenarian movements that anticipate an imminent and total transformation of the world. Many of these movements have been associated with violence, either as a means for producing change or as a response to confrontations with state authority. This book draws together research on this topic from political science, psychology, sociology and history in an attempt to understand the relationship between millenarian movements and episodes of violence.

Religious Totalism, Violence and Exemplary Dualism: Beyond the Extrinsic Model

DICK ANTHONY and THOMAS ROBBINS

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This study presents an alternative psychological model to the 'extrinsic model'. The latter emphasizes the external imposition through brainwashing of a pattern of depersonalization facilitating the enslavement of participants in totalist sects. An alternative approach can be extrapolated from the writings of Robert Lifton and more particularly, Erik Erikson's original conception of totalism. We suggest that contemporary cultural fragmentation exacerbates patterns of identity confusion and narcissistic 'split self dynamics. Some young persons voluntarily attempt to resolve identity confusion through identification with messianic leaders and their apocalyptic absolutist mystiques. The 'Exemplary Dualist' worldviews of such groups facilitate 'contrast identities' which project disvalued elements of self onto 'enemies' including unbelievers. Emergent projective systems are unstable and may require reinforcement through appropriate interactions with outsiders, for example, converting them. Other vicissitudes of interaction between believers and outsiders, including provocative 'cowboy law enforcement', may actualize the potential for violence associated with the more extreme groups.

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In Apocrypha, a fictional episode of the much praised television series, Law and Order, the fanatic prophet of an apocalyptic 'cult' is successfully prosecuted in a homicide. The jury vindicates the prosecutor's theory that the messianic leader had 'brainwashed' his followers, one of whom had perished while planting a bomb. The episode closes with the camera panning the dead bodies of the devotees, the clear implication being that a post-trial collective suicide transpired.¹

Like many episodes of this program (for example, a father killed by a son who claims to be a victim of parental abuse), Apocrypha is loosely drawn from 'the headlines'. The stereotype of the fanatic and violent 'cult' whose members are involuntarily transformed into something akin to robots through brainwashing is now well-established in our culture,² and has, moreover, been reinforced by accounts of recent collective suicides (or murder-suicides) associated with the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas in 1993 and the mysterious Solar Temple group in Switzerland and Quebec.³ In current 'anti-cult' applications of brainwashing and allied concepts denoting mind control (for example, coercive persuasion, thought reform) to formally voluntary religious and therapeutic groups, there appear to be significant continuities with earlier CIA-Cold War formulations based on the contexts of forced confessions and POW camps in totalitarian states. There appears to be an operative model in which alleged cultist psychological coercion is viewed as fully equivalent to physical constraint and forcible confinement such that the 'psychologically coerced' person is as unambiguously under someone else's control as is a physical captive. Basic elements of such a model include: (1) A notion of the total subjugation of the victim who loses the capacity to exercise free will; (2) A rejection of the idea that converts are attracted to cults by virtue of motivations and orientations that render them predisposed to be attracted to a particular type of movement. To the extent that such predisposing motives are acknowledged, they tend to be downplayed or trivialized and denied independent variable status; (3) An emphasis on alleged hypnotic processes and induced trance states and their consequences in terms of suggestibility, dissociation and disorientation; (4) An assertion with regard to the process of conditioning, or other allegedly deterministic influence processes, for example those described in 'attribution theory', which supposedly overwhelm free will; (5) A specification of impaired cognition or patterns of defective thought that allegedly result from conditioning, hyper-emotionality and/or trance-states.; (6) The hypnotic-conditioning-indoctrination process is seen as operating to implant false ideas in a victim's mind, for example false religious doctrines and/or mistaken beliefs in the value of a particular religious organization; (7) Finally, brainwashing is seen as producing a false self ox cultic identity which is superimposed on one's authentic identity.

Although there are may be some valid components of the cultic-brainwashing stereotype, for example authoritarian movements, manipulative leaders, zealous devotees and groups with violent proclivities, there may also be substantial distortions and exaggerations.⁴ In this essay we will develop an alternative to the brainwashing model, i.e. to the extrinsic model of conversion to extreme apocalyptic movements. In the extrinsic paradigm, the recruitment, mobilization and transformation of members is seen as totally instigated and controlled by sinister techniques of persuasion such that intrinsic or individual (for example, personality, predispositional) factors are deemed insignificant. We will question this model both in terms of its posited pedigree in the foundational work of Robert Lifton on ideological totalism and Maoist thought reform, and in terms of its compatibility with recent research on marginal religious movements. In terms of an alternative approach we will posit an interaction between certain 'totalist' movements and ideologies on the one hand, and certain predisposing configurations of personal identity on the other. Totalist milieux and totalist characteristics of individuals may at times interact in such a way that they escalate into violent group actions. Finally, we will consider what kinds of movements and worldviews are most likely to elicit the support of certain predisposed individuals and to facilitate their development of a 'contrast identity' in which an idealized self-concept is combined with projection of negativity on to outsiders and scapegoats, a pattern which may have some implications for possible violence.

I. Foundational Thinkers and the Extrinsic Model

Although the extrinsic brainwashing model has been attacked in terms of its applicability to 'new religious movements', it has often been assumed nevertheless to be an accurate portrait of the coercive persuasion of Western military and civilian prisoners at the time of the Korean War. In brainwashing legal cases in the 1980s experts testifying against 'cults' often cited the prestigious foundational work of Edgar Schein on 'coercive persuasion' and Robert Lifton on 'totalism' or 'thought reform'⁵ as establishing the theoretical basis for cultic brainwashing testimony⁶ as if their research had previously affirmed an extrinsic model of conversion to Communism.

In our view, the research of Schein and Lifton upon Communist totalism is actually significantly at variance with the thoroughly extrinsic brainwashing model. They each describe a manipulative process aimed at producing false confessions and conversions, but such manipulation was unable to influence the political beliefs of most people subjected to it. Those few prisoners who emerged with some degree of sympathy to Communism already were prone to conversion to totalitarian perspectives before being imprisoned because of pre-existing totalistic personality patterns. Lifton's and Schein's research, therefore, clearly repudiates an extrinsic conversion model, but their views have been distorted to the effect that they are said to affirm a highly effective coercive psychological process which is equivalent to physical imprisonment and in which individual predispositions, pre-motives and personality patterns play no dynamic role.

In this study we will be primarily concerned with the totalism concept originally developed by Erik Erikson⁷ and used by Robert Lifton to account for influence in the thought reform process. The Erikson-Lifton totalism concept is more fully developed than the coercive persuasion concept used by Schein,⁸ and the subtle interactions between a totalistic milieu and totalistic personality-identity patterns which pre-exist membership in totalitarian organizations is, in our view, particularly significant in terms of understanding conversions to contemporary cults and in planning future research.

It is not generally realized that neither the totalism concept nor the term originated with Robert Lifton's use of it to account for influence in the thought reform milieu. The totalism concept and term were developed originally by Erik Erikson in a 1953 article which constituted his contribution to the volume which resulted from a historically important conference in 1953 on totalitarianism sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.⁹

Erikson later expanded on the totalism concept in his 1958 book Young Man Luther, in which he also further developed the concepts of 'negative identity' and 'negative external conscience' which are constituent elements of totalism as he defines it.¹⁰ Lifton draws upon both of these discussions of totalism in his use of Erikson's concept in his book, and upon related passages in Erikson's other books and articles as well. At this point we will summarize Erikson's development of the totalism concept in his article before returning to Lifton's use of it in his book on thought reform.

Erikson's Totalism Concept

In 'Wholeness and Totality', the article in which he originated the concept of totalism, Erikson maintained that persons with certain personality characteristics are particularly attracted to movements, governments and ideologies which manifest a characteristically totalitarian ideological and persuasive style. He defined totalism as 'man's inclination, under certain conditions to undergo ... that sudden total realignment and, as it were, co-alignment which accompanies conversion to the totalitarian conviction that the state may and must have absolute power over the minds as well as the lives and the fortunes of its citizens'.¹¹ Note that Erikson defines totalism as a predisposition to convert to totalitarian ideology, that is, as the 'inclination to undergo ... conversion to the totalitarian conviction'. Thus, in Erikson's usage, the totalism concept contradicts the extrinsic brainwashing model by defining totalism as a longing for totalitarianism that long predates contact with an actual totalitarian movement or ideology.

Erikson's paper on 'Wholeness and Totality' represented an attempt to formulate a general model of authoritarianism, namely, a general account of the psychological dimension of totalitarianism which would be applicable to persons attracted to both fascist and Communist movements as well as other totalistic groups. Some persons, Erikson maintains, develop a kind of totalistic or proto-totalist syndrome which bears some relationship to an inadequate resolution of the tensions of the Oedipal developmental stage of childhood. Persons with certain psychological conflicts may develop a self-concept which is polarized between unrealistically positive and negative self-images competing for domination in the person's self-definition. Totalitarian movements appeal to such persons by reinforcing a narcissistically grandiose self-conception and providing a collective foundation for the projection of elements of the polarized negative self-image onto a scapegoated contrast group.

Erikson maintains, on the other hand, that a personality embodying 'wholeness' is characterized by open and fluid boundaries. Moral principles and other differentiations of reality utilized by the ego take the form of somewhat ambiguous continua rather than sharp and dichotomous polarities. The resulting self-concept is not organized in terms of split-off good and bad selves but rather in terms of subtle differentiations of good and bad qualities organized into a single coherent identity. Such a person is 'tolerant of ambiguity' and sees both him/herself and the outer world in shades of grey rather than in sharply polarized black and white categories.

In contrast, the totalistic organization of the personality entails an emphasis on an absolute boundary between good and bad people and between the person and the exterior social environment. The person feels fundamentally separate from the outside world. A sense of relationship is attained by forming intense negative and positive identifications between external people or groups and crudely dichotomized parts of the person. Moral and ideological principles are internalized as absolutes. Impulses, fantasies, behaviors and opinions not fully consistent with positive identifications are denied and dissociated. But this rigid organization tends to be unstable, in part because split-off parts of the psyche may continue to seek expression and threaten the unrealistic and dualistic definition of acceptable selfhood.

Like the authors of the famous volume, The Authoritarian Personality,¹² Erikson maintains that persons with such an implicitly totalitarian personality organization tend to possess a 'negative external conscience' that renders them prone to transferring responsibility for their beliefs and actions to authoritarian hierarchies legitimated by absolutist ideologies and to the projection of anger and guilt on to demonized outgroups.

It is well-known that Erikson broadened and extended the received psychoanalytic schema of individual psycho-sexual development, replacing the tripartite childhood model with eight developmental stages extending through adulthood.¹³ Favorable vs. unfavorable resolutions of the polarity which dominates each stage collectively determine whether a wholistic or totalistic personality pattern evolves. The initial stage features the antinomy of basic trust vs. mistrust. The emergence of 'Basic Mistrust' patterned by recurrent disruptions of an infant's sense of ontological security can produce 'total rage' accompanied by fantasies of total control over the sources of nurturance and consequent apocalyptic-totalist proclivities.¹⁴ Religious worldviews may confer meaning qua metaphysical reality on Basic Mistrust via symbols of ultimate evil, although religious rituals can also help to create a collective restitution of trust.

Resolutions of the polarities of other stages, particularly the third, Oedipal (or guilt vs. initiative) phase which may produce a punitive super-ego ('negative external co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Understanding Millennialism
• Religious Totalism, Violence and Exemplary Dualism: Beyond the Extrinsic Model
• Christian Themes: Mainstream Traditions and Millenarian Violence
• Pai Marire: Peace and Violence in a New Zealand Milienarian Tradition
• Violence and the Environment: The Case of 'Earth First!'
• Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force
• The Politics of the Millennium
• Notes on Contributors