Each week, The Extraordinary Times catches up with friends on the historical and cultural scene. This week, we welcome Timothy Melley, Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Center at Miami University. Melley has written more than 30 essays and short stories and two books, Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Cornell 2000), and The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State (Cornell 2012). A teacher of American narrative and cultural history, he is the recipient of four teaching awards and Miami University’s highest faculty honor, the Benjamin Harrison Medallion. He has lectured widely in the United States and abroad, including Britain, Germany, Norway, Canada, South Korea, and Sweden, and his work has been covered by The Nation, BBC, L.A. Times, Village Voice, Le Figaro, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR’s “This American Life.”
His online talk for Miami University Alumni Association, “Brainwashed! How a Myth About Human Programming Changed Human History,” is on February 16, at 12PM EST. Register for this free event here. * When did the concept of “brainwashing” enter the popular imagination? The idea of brainwashing surfaced during the Korean War when a number of returning American POWs confessed to war crimes. Amid the fervor of the Cold War and in the wake of the seemingly forced confessions of Soviet show trials, US lawmakers and military officials worried that US troops had been subjected to some form of “thought control” during their time in Chinese military prisons. The CIA eventually poured millions into the study of brainwashing and into an unsuccessful and deeply disturbing quest for its own mind control weapon. By the 1960s, the notion of a brainwashing as a magical form of human control had circulated in scores of novels, magazines, and movies, most memorably, John Frankenheimer's 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate. * What is the relationship between brainwashing and conspiracy culture? Conspiracy theories are a way of thinking about power. They typically assume that a powerful, secret organization or cabal is manipulating historical events or public perceptions of reality. The idea of brainwashing is not itself a conspiracy theory, only an imagined technique for control, but brainwashing is part of some conspiracy theories, and the notion brainwashing has a lot in common with conspiracy thinking. Most notably, it assumes that human autonomy is fragile and easily coopted by external agents—and this is also often an underlying assumption of conspiracy theories. Most narratives about brainwashing, moreover, are conspiracy narratives. In The Manchurian Candidate, for example, brainwashing is used in a sinister conspiracy to replace the President of the United States with a puppet under communist control. * How did you come by your interest in this area of research? I became interested in this topic while researching Cold War state secrecy. I was surprised to learn that the CIA had invested massive resources in the search for a mind control weapon. It turns out as well that the CIA's propaganda division was largely responsible for the very idea of brainwashing, which it circulated to frighten Americans about the seductive appeal of communism. * What’s your understanding of the events of January 6 at the US Capitol? The storming of the US Capitol was the culmination of a long campaign of propaganda disseminated by the Trump administration with the support of numerous news corporations and flak outfits, domestic and foreign. It is important to remember that Donald Trump alleged “stolen” elections well before he was ever elected to office. He relentlessly repeated this charge throughout his Presidency, even after a commission of his own design found no evidence, and he never ceased to label his political opponents as criminals who should be jailed. The echoing of these claims at rallies, on social media, and in rightwing mass media, was persuasive to a sizable portion of the American electorate. Its hold on the Republican base created enormous pressure for elected Republicans to support unprecedented suspicion of general election results, even in states whose Republican governors and election officials repeatedly confirmed the accuracy of votes. There are of course many distinctive features to this episode, but it is chilling to see how much of it repeats a historical pattern in which authoritarian regimes replaced democracies through the long, slow promulgation of conspiracy narratives and the demonization of marginalized groups. As Sinclair Lewis suggested in his 1935 novel of the same name, it is pure hubris to believe “it can’t happen here.” * How has the pandemic impacted programming at the Humanities Center? Most years, the Humanities Center helps to fund and coordinate more than 100 lectures, discussions, symposiums, readings, and other events. This year, most of our events are online. We are also continuing most of our 15 programs for student and faculty research, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and public engagement. We’ve also done some new things. We launched a series of “Laptop Lectures”—two-minute talks by our faculty on the way their research speaks to pressing social issues. We did one series on pandemic and another on racism. * What’s in the pipeline for 2021? We are excited about the launch of a new lecture series called “Objects that Changed the World.” We are inviting Miami alumni to return virtually to campus to hear faculty reflect on transformative human creations from porcelain and concrete to the birth control pill and the photograph. We are also helping to coordinate Miami's first ever Focus Program on “Race, Racism, & Racial Justice.” Through dozens of public events, special classes, alumni outreach, programs for K-12 education, and critical introspection, our community will spend a year exploring the history of race as an idea, the frustrating persistence of racism in social institutions, and the role of the humanities in creating a more inclusive and just society. As always, all of our events are free and open to the public.
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I recently sat down with interviewer Mike Templeton of Cincinnati's Urban Appalachian Community Coalition (UACC) blog. We discussed what's happening at Miami University's Regional campuses, the challenges of the pandemic, and the importance of public community programs like Appalachian Studies. Read the interview at the link below!
tinyurl.com/c9l89oiz |
AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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