2024-02-09 at 6:58 AM UTC
Thomas Narut was a staff psychologist who operated out of the US Naval Hospital in Naples and the Navy Neuropsychiatric Laboratories in San Diego in the 1970s. He ran a program with the goal of creating 'assassins' who had no qualms with killing whatever they were told to, and was working on a three-stage process to do it.
The first stage was selection - he'd attempted to recruit subjects out of the regular forces but found he had the most success with convicts, specifically murderers taken from military prisons. Over time he found that the most effective selection criteria was of men who were deemed 'passive-aggressive' by the prominant psychological personality-typing tests of the time.
The second (and main) stage was to desensitise the subjects to violence. As a civilian in university he'd previously researched and experimented with anxiety, specifically exposing subjects to violent videos depicting deaths and mutilations while physically distracting them with other tasks. Stage two of the project was similar - almost exactly the same as the Ludavico Technique depicted in A Clockwork Orange, where their heads were restrained in place and they were forced to watch progressively more gruesome videos - starting with a crude tribal circumcision and industrial accidents where a man loses his fingers or hand, and moving on to executions and murders. After each viewing the subject would be asked questions about details such as the colour of the man's belt or the design of a knife, forcing them to rewatch the videos if it's deemed that they did not pay close enough attention. During the viewings each subject's stress levels would be monitored: heart rate, perspiration, brainwaves and similar were recorded, and the subjects would only 'progress' if they were able to keep progressively more calm as the testing went on.
Once they were able to watch the most violent media available while simultaneously remaining calm and focused, they were moved on to the third stage, which was meant to dehumanise the people that the subjects may be given as targets - given it was the early 70s they likely targeted Arabs, Vietnamese, South Americans etc. The method here was to use specially-crafted videos that were meant to reinforce their (American) cultural superiority, showing those peoples' customs and superstitions as ridiculous and their behaviour as 'less' than human.
It's not clear how successful these people were or what happened to them after their 'training', but Narut himself stated that they should be attached to US embassies as lethal assets and at one point mentioned that several of them had been sent to the embassy in Athens.
The program itself doesn't seem like it lends itself to creating obedient soldiers, though - it starts with people who display passive-aggressive traits, implying they are already vindictive and sadistic, then their resistance to using direct violence is broken down, and finally killing is psychologically justified to them. It seems far more likely to create spree or serial killers.
I'll write more later, but consider how these techniques might affect people on a larger scale - internet communities that exist only to create, share and evaluate gore videos. Supposed 'war' channels on Twitter, Telegram etc. that only exist to distribute demoralisation propaganda of people being torn apart by mines, drones and autocannons, or Chinese industrial accidents, or bizarre Indian shit fetishism.
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this
post didn't die in a fire!
2024-02-09 at 9:30 AM UTC
doing the ludicovocp on a butt
2024-02-10 at 5:42 AM UTC
what if the fear and trauma in the general population resulting from a constant barrage of these antisocial events is specifically cultivated to make a population more receptive to bureaucratic authoritarian power structures slowly exerting more control over the individual, and naturally-forming social structures?
that individuals are being intentionally primed to conduct killings with no sensible motives in order to undermine trust and community; to politically atomise people so that they willingly trade their sovereignty for protection from an increasingly powerful and unaccountable authority?
behavioural control through altered mental states and sustained trauma, specifically trying to detach how a person is anchored to reality is what the famous MKULTRA, MKARTICHOKE and MKNAOMI projects were all about
2024-02-10 at 8:09 AM UTC
This place makes me want to go on a male-targeted spree but I think targeting a few of you can prevent that/keep me content.
2024-02-10 at 8:13 AM UTC
If Sophie does manage to get revenge then that's a good incentive, so I need to quickly capture one of you.
2024-02-10 at 8:17 AM UTC
yeah you probably are the kind of person who's extremely susceptible to this kind of manipulation
2024-02-10 at 8:22 AM UTC
Solstice being sent to a ward could be enough. Aldra and Lanny are the other targets. It doesn't have to be violent.
2024-02-10 at 8:41 AM UTC
Mass shooters are people who don't let go of past injustices, they have a cumulative effect. Add a bleak future outlook and that's when they go off.
2024-02-10 at 8:42 AM UTC
So being desensitised isn't enough for someone to do that.
2024-02-10 at 9:17 AM UTC
Some part of me wanted to kill Sophie when I was going to meet him because he had said he had a sword hanging over my head, but I brushed it off as insanity. If he does manage to get revenge then that voice would have been right, it would be validated and that's scary.
