Psywar Quotes

It was Lippmann who gave us the concept of the “stereotype” (1922), which was basically a continuation of the Jungian concept of the archetype (1919) by other means. To Lippmann, the world outside our borders exists in a different space, consciously, from our own. We develop notions about life in those countries, their cultures, attitudes, and values, without ever go­ing there. Yet, their political situation affects our own; they exert a political influence—either through trade, communications, or transportation—on life in our own country even though we live in a constant state of unawareness of those countries, cultures, politics. The effect of these forces on us is invis­ible, but real. We then develop mental images—stereotypes—of the citizens of these countries, and it is upon the stereotypes that we act. The stereotypes determine our actions and reactions; like the stereotypes of the Islamic fun­damentalist, the Vietcong revolutionary, the Red Peril, they are easy targets, and the stereotype communicates a specific message, is, in terms familiar to the deconstructionism of Derrida, a text. Stereotypes can be created, and manipulated, by the gurus of mass com­munication and psychological warfare. Stereotypes are culturally-loaded and therefore not “value neutral.” We make snap judgments based on the nature of the stereotype; in the hands of the psy-war expert, a stereotype does not contain much complexity or depth. The idea is not to make the target think too clearly or too profoundly about the “text” but instead to react, in a Pav­lovian manner, to the stimulus it provides.

Anyway, here I am still waiting for troops, with everybody in the highest places issuing orders that I am to have them and no one in the lower quarters taking the slightest step to obey. The result is that we are months and months back on our programme and God knows when we will begin to do anything. Once patience gets frayed to tatters, and the loathing that one engenders for this country and its unbelievable military system reaches a stage impossible to describe. I am due for repatriation and often feel like applying. The only thing holding me back, and will no keep me here in spite of everything, the feeling that one hates to go home a failure, and secondly, the knowledge that if I got back home I would not be able to contribute one iota to the defeat of the enemy, whereas here I do know him and given the tools I can do something to finish him off. It's often so difficult though to fight (very metaphorically speaking), with one bare hands, and physically one gets exhaust. And one feels that one will never forgive or forget the stupid people who stood in the way, all the time wondering how one can be so petty, for they are certainly not worth remembering for their own sakes and not to forgive them is to take them far too seriously. I suppose really that war, especially when it is waged far away from public criticism and almost out of the public mind, is the highest form of inefficiency known to man. Hundreds more, thousands of gentlemen, in fact, who would be failures in any normal business and in peacetime would be kept in their places commercial travellers, et cetera, are now in positions of responsibility and yet sabotage anybody who has energy and ideas, and in spite of it all, I think that I still have a bit of both, and that no number of years in India will knock or dry them out of me.