Blackwater Founder Accused in Court of Intent to Kill

By Jerry Markon

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 29, 2009

The founder of Blackwater USA deliberately caused the deaths of innocent civilians in a series of shootings in Iraq, attorneys for Iraqis suing the security contractor told a federal judge Friday.

The attorneys singled out Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is the company's owner, for blame in the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007. Six former Blackwater guards were criminally charged in 14 of the shootings, and family members and victims' estates sued Prince, Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) and a group of related companies.

"The person responsible for these deaths is Mr. Prince,'' Susan L. Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "He had the intent, he provided the weapons, he provided the instructions, and they were done by his agents and they were war crimes.''

Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed deep skepticism about the claims. "Are you accusing Mr. Prince of saying 'I want our boys to go out and shoot innocent civilians?' '' he asked the attorneys."These are certainly allegations of not engaging in very nice conduct, but where are the elements that meet the elements of murder? I don't have any doubt that you can infer malice. What you can't infer, as far as I can tell, is intent to kill these people.''

Attorneysfor the former Blackwater company denied the allegations at the hearing, which was called to consider their motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Ellis said he would issue a ruling "promptly.''

The hearing -- combative in its words but respectful in tone -- was the latest fallout from Blackwater's controversial actions in Iraq. The North Carolina company, which has provided security under a lucrative State Department contract, has come under scrutiny for a string of incidents in which its heavily armed guards were accused of using excessive force.

The deadliest was a September 2007 shooting in central Baghdad in which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqis in a crowded street, killing 17 civilians. The company has said the guards' convoy came under fire. Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted on federal charges in 14 of those shootings. A sixth guard pleaded guilty.

The lawsuit cites that incident and other shootings to accuse the company of "lawless behavior." A consolidation of five earlier lawsuits, it says the company covered up killings and hired known mercenaries. In sworn affidavits recently filed by the plaintiffs' attorneys, two anonymous former Blackwater employees also say -- without citing evidence -- that the company may have conspired to murder witnesses in the criminal probe.

Attorneys for Blackwater say the lawsuit should be dismissed on a variety of legal grounds and that although the deaths were tragic, the guards were closely supervised by U.S. government officials. The allegations "go far beyond describing the harm allegedly suffered by Plaintiffs,'' the Blackwater attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss. "They include an encyclopedia of vituperative assertions.''

The Blackwater attorneys are also calling on the judge to strike the affidavits from the former employees from the court record, calling them "scandalous and baseless" and designed to get publicity. Ellis has yet to rule on that motion.

Cheney ‘OK’ with violating felony torture statute

By Muriel Kane

In an interview with Fox News to be aired this Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is “OK” with CIA interrogations that violated Justice Department guidelines and condemned the prospect of any investigation of abuses as potentially “devastating” to morale.

The 2004 Inspector General’s report released on Monday cited numerous cases of possible violations of the felony torture statute, which prohibits both “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering” and “the threat of imminent death.”

Beginning on page 69 of the report (pdf) is a list of “Specific Unauthorized or Undocumented Techniques,” in some of which the facts “warranted criminal investigations.” Among the cases cited are one in which a CIA officer repeatedly choked a shackled prisoner until he almost passed out and several examples of mock executions. These are the cases that Cheney is now defending.

“The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’” Cheney stated. “Instead, they’re out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions.”

Calling the extreme interrogation techniques “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives,” Cheney insisted, “It was good policy, it was properly carried out, it worked very, very well.”

Cheney has consistently asserted that when reports on the interrogations are released, they will show that torture of detainees worked. However, recently declassified documents show no such thing.

For example, Cheney’s claim that “the individuals subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided the bulk of the intelligence we gained about Al Qaeda” does not necessarily mean that any usable intelligence resulted from the use of torture on those individuals rather than more conventional techniques.

As Raw Story reported two days ago, even a former homeland security adviser to President Bush has admitted that “it’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied versus when that information was received.”

Cheney further described Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to proceed with a probe of detainee abuse as an “outrageous political act.” He blamed President Obama for “trying to duck the responsibility of what’s going on here” when he indicated that the decision was the attorney general’s to make.

A story in Friday’s Washington Post, in contrast, describes Holder’s decision to proceed with the investigation of detainee abuse as signaling a “new dynamic.”

“In this and other big battles,” the Post writes, “including the decision to release memos this year by Bush administration officials giving the green light to harsh interrogation tactics, Holder and his Justice Department have prevailed over strong objections from the CIA and the intelligence community.”

“The victory signals a dynamic that could play out on a range of sensitive issues that will come to define the Obama administration and its differences from the Bush era, including the detention of terrorism suspects and the protection of state secrets.”

Christian Organizations Shame and Coerce Women into Giving up Their Children

Christian Organizations Shame and Coerce Women into Giving up Their Children

By Kathryn Joyce, The Nation. Posted August 29, 2009.

Many Christian adoption agencies are far more concerned with artificially producing "orphans" for Christian parents to adopt, than helping birth parents care for wanted children.

Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She'd already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under "crisis pregnancies" for Bethany Christian Services. Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany's local office to discuss free housing and medical care.

Bethany, it turned out, did not simply specialize in counseling pregnant women. It is the nation's largest adoption agency, with more than eighty-five offices in fifteen countries.

When Jordan arrived, a counselor began asking whether she'd considered adoption and talking about the poverty rates of single mothers. Over five counseling sessions, she convinced Jordan that adoption was a win-win situation: Jordan wouldn't "have death on her hands," her bills would be paid and the baby would go to a family of her choosing in an open adoption. She suggested Jordan move into one of Bethany's "shepherding family" homes, away from the influence of family and friends.

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to "choose life" but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany's case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.

Bethany guided Jordan through the Medicaid application process and in April moved her in with home-schooling parents outside Myrtle Beach. There, according to Jordan, the family referred to her as one of the agency's "birth mothers"--a term adoption agencies use for relinquishing mothers that many adoption reform advocates reject--although she hadn't yet agreed to adoption. "I felt like a walking uterus for the agency," says Jordan.

Jordan was isolated in the shepherding family's house; her only social contact was with the agency, which called her a "saint" for continuing her pregnancy but asked her to consider "what's best for the baby." "They come on really prolife: look at the baby, look at its heartbeat, don't kill it. Then, once you say you won't kill it, they ask, What can you give it? You have nothing to offer, but here's a family that goes on a cruise every year."

Jordan was given scrapbooks full of letters and photos from hopeful adoptive parents hoping to stand out among the estimated 150 couples for every available baby. Today the "birthmother letters" are on Bethany's website: 500 couples who pay $14,500 to $25,500 for a domestic infant adoption, vying for mothers' attention with profuse praise of their "selflessness" and descriptions of the lifestyle they can offer.

Jordan selected a couple, and when she went into labor, they attended the birth, along with her counselor and shepherding mother. The next day, the counselor said that fully open adoptions weren't legal in South Carolina, so Jordan wouldn't receive identifying information on the adoptive parents. Jordan cried all day and didn't think she could relinquish the baby. She called her shepherding parents and asked if she could bring the baby home. They refused, chastising Jordan sharply. The counselor told the couple Jordan was having second thoughts and brought them, sobbing, into her recovery room. The counselor warned Jordan that if she persisted, she'd end up homeless and lose the baby anyway.

"My options were to leave the hospital walking, with no money," says Jordan. "Or here's a couple with Pottery Barn furniture. You sacrifice yourself, not knowing it will leave an impact on you and your child for life."

The next morning, Jordan was rushed through signing relinquishment papers by a busy, on-duty nurse serving as notary public. As soon as she'd signed, the couple left with the baby, and Jordan was taken home without being discharged. The shepherding family was celebrating and asked why Jordan wouldn't stop crying. Five days later, she used her last $50 to buy a Greyhound ticket to Greenville, where she struggled for weeks to reach a Bethany post-adoption counselor as her milk came in and she rapidly lost more than fifty pounds in her grief.

When Jordan called Bethany's statewide headquarters one night, her shepherding mother answered, responding coldly to Jordan's lament. "You're the one who spread your legs and got pregnant out of wedlock," she told Jordan. "You have no right to grieve for this baby."

Jordan isn't alone. On an adoption agency rating website, Bethany is ranked poorly by birth mothers. Its adoptive parent ratings are higher, although several adopters described the coercion they felt "our birth mother" underwent. But neither is Bethany alone; in the constellation of groups that constitute the Christian adoption industry, including CPCs, maternity homes and adoption agencies, Bethany is just one large star. And instances of coercion in adoption stretch back nearly seventy years.

Ann Fessler, author of The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, has meticulously chronicled the lives of women from the "Baby Scoop Era": the period from 1945 to 1973, when single motherhood was so stigmatized that at least 1.5 million unwed American mothers relinquished children for adoption, often after finishing pregnancies secretly in maternity homes. The coercion was frequently brutal, entailing severe isolation, shaming, withholding information about labor, disallowing mothers to see their babies and coercing relinquishment signatures while women were drugged or misled about their rights. Often, women's names were changed or abbreviated, to bolster a sense that "the person who went away to deliver the baby was someone else" and that mothers would later forget about the babies they had given up. In taking oral histories from more than a hundred Baby Scoop Era mothers, Fessler found that not only was that untrue but most mothers suffered lifelong guilt and depression.

The cultural shift that had followed World War II switched the emphasis of adoption from finding homes for needy infants to finding children for childless couples. Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, founder of the Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative, has compiled sociological studies from the era, including Clark Vincent's speculation in his 1961 book Unmarried Mothers that "if the demand for adoptable babies continues to exceed the supply...it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed mothers will be 'punished' by having their children taken from them right after birth"--under the guise of protecting the "best interests of the child."

The Baby Scoop Era ended with Roe v. Wade, as abortion was legalized and single motherhood gained acceptance. The resultant fall in adoption rates was drastic, from 19.2 percent of white, unmarried pregnant women in 1972 to 1.7 percent in 1995 (and lower among women of color). Coinciding with this decline was the rise of the religious right and the founding of crisis pregnancy centers.

In 1984 Leslee Unruh, founder of Abstinence Clearinghouse, established a CPC in South Dakota called the Alpha Center. The first center had opened in 1967, but in 1984 Unruh's CPC was still a relatively new idea. In 1987 the state attorney's office investigated complaints that Unruh had offered young women money to carry their pregnancies to term and then relinquish their babies for adoption.

"There were so many allegations about improper adoptions being made and how teenage girls were being pressured to give up their children," then-state attorney Tim Wilka told the

Argus Leader

, that the governor asked him to take the case. The Alpha Center pleaded no contest to five counts of unlicensed adoption and foster care practices; nineteen other charges were dropped, including four felonies. But where Unruh left off, many CPCs and antiabortion groups have taken up in her place.

It's logical that antiabortion organizations seeking to prevent abortions and promote traditional family structures would aggressively promote adoption, but this connection is often overlooked in the bipartisan support that adoption promotion enjoys as part of a common-ground truce in the abortion wars. In President Obama's speech at Notre Dame, he suggested that one solution to lowering abortion rates is "making adoption more available." And in a recent online debate, Slate columnist William Saletan and Beliefnet editor Steven Waldman proposed that unmarried women be offered a nominal cash payment to choose adoption over abortion as a compromise between prochoice and prolife convictions.

Compared with pre-Roe days, today women with unplanned pregnancies have access to far more information about their alternatives. However, Fessler says, they frequently encounter CPCs that pressure them to give the child to a family with better resources. "Part of the big picture for a young woman who's pregnant," she says, "is that there are people holding out their hand, but the price of admission is giving up your child. If you decide to keep your child, it's as if you're lost in the system, whereas people fight over you if you're ready to surrender. There's an organization motivated by a cause and profit. It's a pretty high price to pay: give away your first-born, and we'll take care of you for six months."

Christian adoption agencies court pregnant women through often unenforceable promises of open adoption and the option to choose the adoptive parents. California's Lifetime Adoption Foundation even offers birth mothers college scholarships. Additionally, maternity homes have made a comeback in recent years, with one network of 1,100 CPCs and homes, Heartbeat International, identifying at least 300 homes in the United States. Some advertise almost luxurious living facilities, though others, notes Jessica DelBalzo, founder of an anti-adoption group, Adoption: Legalized Lies, continue to "bill themselves as homes for wayward girls who need to be set straight."

Most homes are religiously affiliated, and almost all promote adoption. Many, like Christian Homes and Family Services (CHFS), reserve their beds for women planning adoption. Others keep only a fraction for women choosing to parent. Most homes seamlessly blend their advertised crisis pregnancy counseling with domestic and international adoption services, and oppose unmarried parenthood as against "God's plan for the family."

Religious women may be particularly susceptible to CPC coercion, argues Mari Gallion, a 39-year-old Alaska mother who founded the support group SinglePregnancy.com after a CPC unsuccessfully pressured her to relinquish her child ten years ago. Gallion, who has worked with nearly 3,000 women with unplanned pregnancies, calls CPCs "adoption rings" with a multistep agenda: evangelizing; discovering and exploiting women's insecurities about age, finances or parenting; then hard-selling adoption, portraying parenting as a selfish, immature choice. "The women who are easier to coerce in these situations are those who subscribe to conservative Christian views," says Gallion. "They'll come in and be told that, You've done wrong, but God will forgive you if you do the right thing."

Mirah Riben, vice president of communications for the birth mother group Origins-USA, as well as author of The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry, says that many mothers struggle for decades with the fallout of "a brainwashing process" that persuades them to choose adoption and often deny for years--or until their adoptions become closed--that they were pressured into it. "I see a lot of justification among the young mothers. If their adoption is remaining open, they need to be compliant, good birth mothers and toe the line. They can't afford to be angry or bitter, because if they are, the door will close and they won't see the kid."

Such was the case for Karen Fetrow, a Pennsylvania mother who relinquished her son in 1994 through a Bethany office outside Harrisburg. Fetrow, a formerly pro-adoption evangelical, sought out a Christian agency when she became pregnant at 24. Although Fetrow was in a committed relationship with the father, now her husband of sixteen years, Bethany told her that women who sought to parent were on their own.

After Fetrow relinquished her son, she says she received no counseling from Bethany beyond one checkup phone call. Three months later, Bethany called to notify her that her legal paperwork was en route but that she shouldn't read it or attend court for the adoption finalization. "I didn't know that the adoption wasn't final and that I had three months to change my mind," says Fetrow. "The reality was that if I had gone, I might have changed my mind--and they didn't want me to."

Although for thirteen years Fetrow couldn't look at an infant without crying, she continued to support adoption and CPCs. But when she sought counseling--a staple of Bethany's advertised services--the director of her local office said he couldn't help. When her son turned 5, she stopped receiving updates from his adoptive parents, although she'd expected they would continue until he was 18. She asked Bethany about it, and the agency stalled for three years before explaining that the adoptive parents had only agreed to five years of updates. Fetrow complained on Bethany's online forum and was banned from the site.

Kris Faasse, director of adoption services at Bethany, said that while she was unaware of Fetrow's and Jordan's particular stories, their accounts are painful for her to hear. "The fact that this happens to any mom grieves me and would not be how we wanted to handle it." She added that only 25-40 percent of women who come to Bethany choose adoption, which, she said, "is so important, because we never want a woman to feel coerced into a plan."

Shortly after Fetrow was banned from Bethany's forum, the local Bethany office attempted to host a service at her church, "painting adoption as a Christian, prolife thing." At a friend's urging, Fetrow told her pastor about her experience, and after a meeting with the Bethany director--who called Fetrow angry and bitter--the pastor refused to let Bethany address the congregation. But Fetrow's pastor seems an exception.

In recent years, the antiabortion push for adoption has been taken up as a broader evangelical cause. In 2007 Focus on the Family hosted an Evangelical Orphan Care and Adoption Summit in Colorado Springs. Ryan Dobson, the adopted son of Focus founder James Dobson, has campaigned on behalf of CHFS and Unruh's Alpha Center. Last year 600 church and ministry leaders gathered in Florida to promote adoption through the Christian Alliance for Orphans. And a recent book in the idiosyncratic genre of prolife fiction, The River Nile, exalted a clinic that tricked abortion-seeking women into adoption instead.

Such enthusiasm for Christians to adopt en masse begins to seem like a demand in need of greater supply, and this is how critics of current practices describe it: as an industry that coercively separates willing biological parents from their offspring, artificially producing "orphans" for Christian parents to adopt, rather than helping birth parents care for wanted children.

In 1994 the Village Voice investigated several California CPCs in Care Net, the largest network of centers in the country, and found gross ethical violations at an affiliated adoption agency, where director Bonnie Jo Williams secured adoptions by warning pregnant women about parenthood's painfulness, pressuring them to sign papers under heavy medication and in one case detaining a woman in labor for four hours in a CPC.

There were nineteen lawsuits against CPCs between 1983 and 1996, but coercive practices persist. Joe Soll, a psychotherapist and adoption reform activist, says that CPCs "funnel people to adoption agencies who put them in maternity homes," where ambivalent mothers are subjected to moralistic and financial pressure: warned that if they don't give up their babies, they'll have to pay for their spot at the home, and given conflicted legal counsel from agency-retained lawyers. Watchdog group Crisis Pregnancy Center Watch described an Indiana woman misled into delaying an abortion past her state's legal window and subsequently pressured into adoption.

Literature from CPCs indicates their efforts to raise adoption rates. In 2000 the Family Research Council (FRC), the political arm of Focus on the Family, commissioned a study on the dearth of adoptable babies being produced by CPCs, "The Missing Piece: Adoption Counseling in Pregnancy Resource Centers," written by the Rev. Curtis Young, former director of Care Net.

Young based the report on the market research of consultant Charles Kenny, who questioned women with unplanned pregnancies and Christian CPC counselors to identify obstacles to higher adoption rates. Young argued that mothers' likelihood to choose adoption was based on their level of maturity and selflessness, with "more mature respondents...able to feel they are nurturing not only their children, but also, the adoptive parents," and "less mature women" disregarding the baby's needs by seeking to parent. He wrote that CPCs might persuade reluctant women by casting adoption as redemption for unwed mothers' "past failures" and a triumph over "selfishness, an 'evil' within themselves." Though Young noted that some CPCs were wary of looking like "baby sellers," he nonetheless urged close alliances with adoption agencies to ensure that the path to adoption was "as seamless and streamlined as possible."

Young was speaking to a larger audience than the FRC faithful. Care Net runs 1,160 CPCs nationwide and partners with Heartbeat International to host a national CPC hot line. Kenny is tied to the cause as a "Bronze"-level benefactor of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the most prominent adoption lobby group in the country, in the company of other benefactors like Bethany; Texas maternity home giant Gladney; the Good Shepherd Sisters, a Catholic order serving "young women of dissolute habits"; and the Mormon adoption agency LDS Family Services.

The federally funded NCFA has a large role in spreading teachings like these through its Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program, a Department of Health and Human Services initiative it helped pass in 2000 that has promoted adoption to nearly 18,000 CPC, school, state, health and correctional workers since 2002. Although the program stipulates "nondirective counseling for pregnant women," it was developed by a heavily pro-adoption pool of experts, including Kenny, and the Guttmacher Institute reports that trainees have complained about the program's coercive nature.

In 2007 the FRC and NCFA went beyond overlapping mandates to collaborate on the publication of another pamphlet, written by Kenny, "Birthmother, Goodmother: Her Story of Heroic Redemption," which targets "potential birthmothers" before pregnancy: a seeming contradiction of abstinence promotion, unless, as DelBalzo wryly notes, the abstinence movement intends to create "more babies available for adoption."

Even as women have gained better reproductive healthcare access, adoption laws have become less favorable for birth mothers, advancing the time after birth when a mother can relinquish--in some states now within twenty-four hours--and cutting the period to revoke consent drastically or completely. Adoption organizations have published comparative lists of state laws, almost as a catalog for prospective adopters seeking states that restrict birth parent rights. Among the worst is Utah.

Jo Anne Swanson, a court-appointed adoption intermediary, has studied a number of cases in which women have been lured out of their home states to give birth and surrender their children under Utah's lax laws--which require only two witnesses for relinquishments that have occurred in hotel rooms or parks--to avoid interstate child-placement regulations. Some women who changed their minds had agencies refuse them airfare home. And one Utah couple, Steve and Carolyn Mintz, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the director of their adoption agency flew into a rage at a mother in labor who'd backed out of their adoption, and the mother and her infant ended up in a Salt Lake City homeless shelter. Many complaints have been lodged by birth fathers who sought to parent their children but were disenfranchised by Utah's complicated system of registering paternity.

Utah isn't alone in attacking birth fathers' rights. From 2000 to 2001, a Midwestern grandmother named Ann Gregory (a pseudonym) fought doggedly for her son, a military enlistee, to retain parental rights over his and his girlfriend's child. When the girlfriend became pregnant, her conservative evangelical parents brought her to a local CPC affiliated with their megachurch. The CPC was located in the same office as an adoption agency: its "sister organization" of eighteen years. The CPC called Gregory's son, who was splitting his time between home and boot camp, pressuring him to "be supportive" of his girlfriend by signing adoption papers. The agency also called Gregory and her ex-husband, quoting Scripture "about how we're all adopted children of Jesus Christ."

What followed, Gregory says, was "six weeks of pure hell," as she felt her son and his girlfriend were "brainwashed" into adoption. She researched coercive adoption and retained a lawyer for her son. When the mother delivered, the attorney had Gregory notify a hospital social worker that parental rights were being contested, so the baby wouldn't be relinquished. Two days later, as the adoption agency was en route to take custody, Gregory filed an emergency restraining order. The matter had to be settled in court, where Gregory's son refused to consent to adoption. The legal bill for two weeks came to $9,000.

Both parents went to college, and though they are no longer together, Gregory praises their cooperation in jointly raising their son, now 8. But she is shaken by what it took to prevail. "You've got to get on it before the child is born, and you'd better have $10,000 sitting around. I can't even imagine how they treat those in a worse position than us. They say they want to help people in a crisis pregnancy, but really they want to help themselves to a baby."

"A lot of those moms from the '50s and '60s were really damaged by losing their child through the maternity homes," says Gregory. "People say those kinds of things don't happen anymore. But they do. It's just not a maternity home on every corner; it's a CPC."

See more stories tagged with: christians, adoption, christian adoption agenci, pregnancy crisis center

Kathryn Joyce is the author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Beacon, 2009).

Big Oil Gets in on Right-Wing Astroturf Game

Big Oil Gets in on Right-Wing Astroturf Game

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted August 29, 2009.

Since Astroturf itself is made up of petroleum, there's a certain poetic symmetry in having Big Oil produce the silliest astroturf campaign yet.

Protests are back! All across America, angry demonstrations are popping up like mushrooms on moldy Astroturf.

Similar to the plastic "grass," political astroturf is the corporate version of grassroots -- instead of ordinary citizens organizing and mobilizing themselves for political action, astroturf campaigns are well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.

We've seen a surge in these plastic uprisings this year, all directed at policy changes being put forth by Barack Obama. First come the April 15 "teabag" rallies to oppose Obama's economic recovery package. Billed as a spontaneous people's rebellion against BGS (Big Government Socialism), the events turned out to have been spawned and coordinated by a corporate-financed anti-government outfit in Washington called Freedom Works, headed by former GOP majority leader Dick Armey.

Next up were this month's rancorous confrontations at local town hall meetings that had been convened by assorted congress-members to discuss Obama's health care proposals. Various groupings of red-faced, mostly elderly, mostly Republican citizens stormed these discussions, turning them into yell-a-thons. Again, BGS was the core theme of the seniors' screeds, including numerous versions of this muddled thought: "I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare."

Their talking points (yelling points, actually) were straight out of the litany-of-hokum that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Co. chant daily -- including repetition of the ludicrous lie that Obama intends to deploy cadres of federal death agents to show up at bingo halls to euthanize granny and gramps.

Coordination and funding of this senior-scare campaign has come from such corporate front groups as Conservatives for Patients' Rights. CPR was created and financed by Rick Scott, the multimillionaire former-CEO of the huge hospital chain Columbia-HCA. In 1997, Scott was dumped by Columbia because of corporate policies developed on his watch to defraud patients, doctors and Medicare. Columbia pled guilty and had to pay $1.7 billion to settle the fraud charges. Now, Scott is bringing this "expertise" to the health care debate.

The latest line of astroturf, however, is being peddled by an old flim-flammer: Big Oil. In a series of 20 mass rallies during the August congressional recess, a group called Energy Citizens is purporting to be a rebellion of common folks against Obama's climate change legislation. Who are these rebels? ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil giants.

Energy Citizens was created and funded by the industry's chief lobbying organization, the American Petroleum Institute, which has already spent $3 million this year lobbying to kill the climate-change initiative. "We are about giving citizens a voice," declared a spokeswoman.

But, how many ordinary Joes and Jills really want to rally behind Big Oil? Practically none. No problem, though -- in a memo to oil chieftains, API urged them to "put a human face" on the industry's self-serving opposition by putting their employees out front. Even API recognized the cynicism in this ploy, so it warned executives to "please treat this information as sensitive, (for) we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Call it what they will, Energy Citizen was a corporate show from the get-go. API hired an events management company to stage the rallies, put a field coordinator in each state, ran the PR campaign and served as general manager of the game plan. Attendance essentially came from Rent-a-Crowd: oil company employees in Houston, for example, were "invited" by their bosses to attend, were given paid time off for the event, were bused to and from the rallies, were entertained by corporate-hired performers, were served a free lunch, were given yellow T-shirts to wear and were asked to wave placards declaring, "I'm an Energy Citizen."

Since Astroturf itself is actually made up of petroleum, there's a certain poetic symmetry in having Big Oil produce the slickest and silliest astroturf campaign of them all -- so far.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

See more stories tagged with: right-wingers, conservatives, big oil, astroturf

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

New Documents Describe in Extraordinary Detail Process of "Rendition," Torture

truthout

New Documents Describe in Extraordinary Detail Process of "Rendition," Torture

Thursday 27 August 2009

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

At Guantanamo Bay's Camp 6 detention facility, a US trooper guards a door. (Photo: Brennan Linsley / AP)

Among the treasure trove of documents released on Monday related to the CIA's detention and torture program is a 20-page background paper that, for the first time, describes in extraordinary detail the process of "rendition" and the torture prisoners are then subjected to when they are flown to "black site" prisons.

The document was turned over to the ACLU in response to the civil liberties group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government late on Monday evening along with numerous others, including previously undisclosed Justice Department legal opinions.

The background paper clearly illustrated that the torture of detainees was systematic and micromanaged by the top officials at the CIA, the Justice Department, medical professionals and, likely, the White House. Previously, the CIA had refused to disclose any details of its rendition program, citing state secrets.

That the torture was overseen by medical professionals is a violation of international laws and treaties and, additionally, a breach of numerous professional ethical codes, including the United Nations Principles of Medical Ethics and the Declaration of Tokyo.

The background paper said the use of torture at the CIA's "black site" prisons "is essential to the creation of an interrogation environment conducive to intelligence collection."

High-value detainees "are well-trained, often battle-hardened terrorist operatives, and highly committed to jihad. They are intelligent and resourceful leaders and able to resist standard interrogation approaches."

"However, there is no template or script that states with certainty when and how these techniques will be used in combination during interrogation," the background paper stated. "The interrogators' objective is to transition the HVD [High-Value Detainee] to a point where he is participating in a predictable, reliable, and sustainable manner. Interrogation techniques may still be applied as required, but become less frequent.

"This transition period lasts from several days to several weeks based on the HVDs response and actions. The entire interrogation process outlined above, including transition may last for thirty days."

The December 30, 2004, document was prepared by the CIA for Dan Levin in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The background paper included an unsigned note on the fax cover sheet that said, "Dan, A generic description of the process. Thank you."

"The background paper is a profoundly disturbing document that illustrates, as well as anything could, how far the CIA strayed from the law and from values that are integral to our democracy," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project. "That the barbaric methods outlined in the paper were approved by the country's senior-most officials is particularly appalling."

The background paper reads as an instructional manual for interrogators on how and when to implement the "combined use of interrogation techniques" after a terror suspect is captured and "renditioned" to a "black site" prison in another country.

"The purpose of interrogation is to persuade High-Value Detainees (HVD) to provide threat information and terrorist intelligence in a timely manner, to allow the US Government to identify and disrupt terrorist plots and to collect critical intelligence on al-Qa'ida," the background paper said. "In support of information previously sent to the Department of Justice, this paper provides additional background on how interrogation techniques are used, in combination and separately, to achieve interrogation objectives ..."

The background paper then describes what happens after a terror suspect is captured and turned over to the CIA. The background paper described this as "rendition."

"The HVD is flown to a Black Site ... A medical examination is conducted prior to the flight," according to the background paper. "During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs, and hoods. There is no interaction with the HVD during this rendition movement except for periodic, discreet assessments by the on-board medical officer. Upon arrival at the destination airfield, the HVD is moved to the Black Site under the same conditions and using appropriate security procedures."

The so-called "Reception at Black Site" that follows involves a medical assessment and "administrative procedures." Detainees' head and faces are then shaved and they are photographed while nude to "document the physical conduction of the HVD."

"The medical officer also determines if there any contraindications to the use of interrogation techniques." Contraindications is defined as a pre-existing condition or other factors that would increase the risk of either using a specific drug, carrying out a medical procedure or engaging in a particular activity.

Detainees are then interviewed by psychologists, who prepare reports about detainees' mental states and if there are any "contraindications to the use of interrogation techniques."

At this point, interrogators begin to question a detainee - "in a relatively benign environment" - to gain an understanding of the prisoner's "resistance posture" and if he would be willing to cooperate in providing CIA interrogators with immediate information about terrorist plots against the United States.

"The standard on participation is set very high during the Initial Interview," the background report said. "The HVD would have to willingly provide information on actionable threats and location information on High-Value Targets at large - not lower level information - for interrogators to continue with the neutral approach."

The interrogation process, according to the background paper, is broken down into three categories: conditioning techniques, corrective techniques and coercive techniques.

The background report describes the detention conditions detainees are subjected to and states that, while that is not considered an interrogation technique, the conditions of their confinement will have an impact when they are interrogated.

The next phase is referred to as "conditioning techniques," where a detainee is reduced to a "baseline, dependent state" as a result of a combination of tactics that leaves the detainee feeling he has no control over basic human needs. The "baseline state" is crucial, according to the background report, because it is supposed to make the detainee feel that his welfare is more important than the "information he is protecting."

The combination of interrogation techniques, approved in Justice Department legal memoranda, to reduce a detainee to a dependent state includes nudity, sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation.

The paper noted that merely introducing these techniques alone won't bring immediate results. Rather, it's the repeated use of these techniques and using their combined use "which achieves interrogation objectives."

Clinical descriptions of how to effectively administer these methods is then described. The background paper said that high-value detainees remain nude for an indefinite period of time. Detainees then are deprived of sleep and are placed in the "vertical shackling position to begin sleep deprivation."

"Other shackling procedures may be used during interrogations," the report said. "The detainee is diapered for sanitary purposes, although the diaper is not used at all times."

Dietary manipulation then follows, whereby a detainee is fed Ensure Plus "or other food at regular intervals." Detainees receive a "target" of 1,500 calories a day based on guidelines from the CIA's Office of Medical Services.

A high-value detainee who, presumably, is uncooperative, then goes through the "corrective techniques" phase, which involves the "insult slap," "abdominal slap," "facial hold" and "attention grasp." The report said these methods are not administered simultaneously during an interrogation, rather they are interchangeable.

The insult slap "is often the first physical technique used with an HVD once an interrogation begins."

"As noted, the HVD may already be nude, in sleep deprivation and subject to dietary manipulation, even though the detainee will likely feel little effect from these techniques early in the interrogation," the report said. "The insult slap is used sparingly but periodically throughout the interrogation process when the interrogator needs to immediately correct the detainee or provide a consequence to a detainee's response or non-response.

"The interrogator will continually assess the effectiveness of the insult slap and continue to employ it so long as it has the desired effect on the detainee. Because of the physical dynamics of the various techniques, the insult slap can be used in combination with water dousing or kneeling stress positions. Other combinations are possible but may not be practical."

The same methods are employed when an interrogator uses the abdominal slap, the attention grasp and the facial hold. The next phase involves what the report called "coercive techniques," some of which were first disclosed in Justice Department legal opinions released in April. Those methods include, walling, water dousing, stress positions.

Cramped confinement, according to the report and the CIA's Office of Medical Services, calls for placing a detainee in a large box, no more than eight hours at a time, for "no more than 18 hours a day." The report also said interrogators can use a small box, no more than two hours at a time, and no more than 18 hours per day.

Because of the "unique" aspects of "cramped confinement," it cannot be combined with other torture methods.

The process that follows next is a sort of checklist for interrogators or, as the report said, "a day-to-day look" at the interrogation process.

Here's what the report said:

A hooded high-value detainee is taken to the interrogation room and, under the direction of interrogators, is stripped, placed into shackles and positioned with his back to the "walling wall." Interrogators approach the detainee, place the walling collar over his head and around his neck and stand in front of him.

The detainee's hood is then removed and the interrogator explains to the prisoner that he will do "whatever it takes to get important information" from him. If the detainee begins to resist he is immediately slapped across his cheek. If that doesn't work, the prisoner is then slapped on his stomach.

Once it became clear to interrogators that a detainee was "lying, withholding information, or using other resistance techniques," the interrogator would repeatedly slam the prisoner head first into a wall. Then the detainee would be placed in the center of the interrogation room - nude - diapered, and shackled and deprived of sleep. White noise not exceeding 79 decibels would then be played to as a tool to keep the detainee awake.

"This first interrogation session may last from 30 minutes to several hours based on the interrogators' assessment of the HVD's resistance posture," the background paper said.

Another torture session follows and the time lapse could be as short as one hour or as long as a day. Between the first and second sessions, medical and psychological personnel observing the torture must advise "there are no contraindications to another interrogation session."

The second round of torture follows the exact same pattern as the first; the detainee is placed in front of the "walling wall" and asked a series of questions and, depending on the answers, is slammed into the wall, slapped on his face and stomach. Except during this session, a detainee who fails to respond in a satisfactory manner is doused with water for several minutes. Stress positions and wall standing are also integrated.

Sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation and white noise are repeated again if a detainee does not provide information his interrogators believe he has. The detainee is nude at all times.

And then the process is repeated for a third time, with the methods and line of questioning becoming more intense. For example, slamming a detainee into a wall would be repeated multiple times. Or, if a detainee placed in a stress position fails to remain in that position, he would be slammed into the wall. The only way for a detainee to stop this brutal treatment, the background paper noted, is by "cooperating with interrogators."

Interrogators can then decide, after the third round of torture ends, to put a detainee in either a large or small box if it will have "the appropriate effect."

Sleep deprivation can then continue for five days straight "or possibly beyond for the hardest resisters," but it cannot exceed 180 consecutive hours.

"Sleep deprivation will end sooner if the medical or psychologist observer finds it necessary," the background paper noted. "On average, the actual use of interrogation techniques can vary upwards to fifteen days based on the resilience of the HVD."

If interrogators need to exceed a 30-day preapproved period, the interrogation team would need to submit a new interrogation plan to CIA headquarters in Langley.

»

---

Jason Leopold is editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.

Cracks in the Wall, Part III: Escape Ladders

Orcinus

Cracks in the Wall, Part III: Escape Ladders

by Sara Robinson


Assorted polls -- usually focused around questions such as belief in evolution, strict opposition to all abortion, self-identified fundamentalism, voting patterns, and so on -- have in recent years put the number of hard-core religious and political conservatives at somewhere between a quarter and a third of American voters. Wherever the number actually falls within that range, there are certainly enough of them in the voting base to dominate our political landscape. (To put it in a historical perspective: in 1932, when Hitler was elected president of the Reichstag, the Nazi party was consistently garnering 31 to 38 percent of the German vote. That's all it takes for an organized, passionate group to take control of a country.)

I've looked in vain for hard evidence that these percentages have grown or declined in the past 30 years (and would appreciate a pointer to this kind of data if it exists). However, there's no doubt that this group carries far more clout when it comes to defining our politics, our economics, and our culture than they've had at any point in the past 80 years. Good political organizing, coupled with the fulsome noise of the Mighty Wurlitzer, have indeed added former liberal constituencies -- blue-collar workers, Catholics, and so on -- to the Republican column. Many of these former moderates were drawn into the far-right fold by targeted political messaging that played up their fears and activated (to at least some degree) the fear-and-submission response characteristic of right-wing followers, as well as expansion-oriented conservative religious groups that replaced fraying community, family, social, recreational, and personal support networks.

Which is not to say that there weren't very real reasons for increasing levels of social fear. InWealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips laid out the economic fact that American middle-class prosperity peaked in 1972, and has been in decline ever since. For all but the richest, the dollars (in real terms) are fewer, and they don't go as far as they used to. In the late 70s, decades of misbegotten foreign policy in the Middle East came home to roost, shattering a sense of American invulnerability that had already been severely dented by Vietnam. By the early 80s, Reagan's promise of "morning in America" sounded forced -- but a disheartened and newly fearful middle class was eager to believe. 9/11, of course, put whole new factions of the country into a fear-induced malaise. Republican messaging since the mid-70s has kept all these threats uppermost in the American imagination, creating a climate of fear that supports authoritarian thinking even in people who should know better. And, as mentioned above, Republican hostility to any kind of investment in social capital has left these people a) enraged at the foreclosure of opportunities their parents took for granted and b) left with nowhere to turn but churches.

All these issues, and others, provided ripe openings for the disciplined organizers of the authoritarian right. It's like they've slapped stick-on hot buttons onto all of us -- and now keep pushing them for all they were worth to activate a Pavolvian fear response. ("Abortion! Faggots! Affirmative action! Brown people! Flag-burning!") There has always been -- and probably always will be -- a hard core of natural authoritarian leaders and followers in any society. But their numbers have almost certainly been swelled (my non-supportable guess is that it's been at least doubled) by tens of millions of "soft-core" authoritarians who've been shanghaied onto the authoritarian bandwagon over the past three decades.

John Dean tells us that we are not likely to change the hearts of the authoritarian leaders. And their hardest-core followers may be lost causes, too: most of them grew up with that model, have lived their entire lives by it, and in many cases have been so damaged by it that getting them to accept any other way of viewing reality is likely to be futile.

However, those two factions probably don't comprise even half of the current horde that's commandeered our country. And the rest -- the "normal folks" who got swept up in the right-wing hysteria of the past three decades -- have already demonstrated a certain fluidity: many of them have crossed the Wall once already and have at least some memory of life on the other side. Not all of them will return, of course (though it's always surprising to see which ones decide to make the jump) -- but bringing a good slice of this group back may not be as hard as we've been prone to think.

The experiences described by people who've left authoritarian religious systems point to possible ways we might convince individual authoritarians (of whatever type) to at least take a peek over onto our side of the Wall. This installment talks about some of the ways we can create the conditions that will encourage individual authoritarians to come take that look.

Save Your Breath
The angry hard-core authoritarians -- especially those raised in acutely authoritarian homes, and those with a long history of active participation in authoritarian movements -- are not likely to be interested in reality-based thinking. And people with a long history of addiction may actually do better in the highly-structured, rule-bound culture of authoritarianism -- at least, until they do the hard work of resolving their core issues. Remember the old caution about pigs and singing lessons, and be realistic about your limits.

On the other hand (and as a gross generalization), there are a few groups of people who are more likely to be open to change. Women, whose worldview tends to be more nurturant and relationship-oriented, may be more open than men to liberal points of view. Even those who've spent their entire lives in authoritarian systems get frustrated at times with their lack of power and privilege, the unfairness of the men who outrank them, and the overt bullying. In addition, women are generally less conforming than men, and more likely to reject one-size-fits-all moral systems in favor of ones they see as more just and fair.

People who are under stress without a support system -- college students, single mothers, travelers, prisoners -- are often open to anyone offering ideas for how they can increase their sense of security and connectedness. While this drives many of them straight into waiting authoritarian arms, it could just as easily become an opportunity for them to learn to trust their own inner authority instead.

Those undergoing major life transitions may be similarly receptive: the newly married, new parents, the recently relocated, career or job-changers, the newly divorced or widowed, people who've just lost a parent, and the recently retired are all in positions where the old answers are up for questioning, and the prospect of the larger world outside the wall may look very welcoming. And, of course, people undergoing major self re-creations -- emerging gays and lesbians, new immigrants, and those in the midst of large-scale socioeconomic change -- are likely to be very open to new way of strengthening their confidence, and learning to navigate their brave new worlds.

Fear Is The Mind-Killer
In talking to right-wing authoritarians (RWAs) -- in any situation -- the first and greatest challenge is to reduce the level of fear and increase the level of trust. They cannot hear or see you at all until this happens. A few thoughts on how to accomplish this:

Stand on Common Ground -- Keep the conversation focused on the things you agree on. You may find more in common than you might have imagined, especially with "classical conservatives" who are outraged by the Bush Administration's spending, foreign policy blunders, and neglect of important domestic infrastructure. (Small businesspeople, in particular, can give you a real earful.) Move away from potential areas of conflict as soon as they appear, or state your position in a non-threatening way and then move right back to the safe zone. Remember, you're trying to reduce fear, not arouse it.

Avoid Ambiguity (yourself) -- The liberal penchant for seeing life in infinite shades of grey annoys the hell out of conservatives in general, and authoritarians most particularly. It's the main reason they think we don't stand for anything. "It depends" is not an answer they find comfort in, and long explanations are seen as obfuscation, not clarification.

Yet there are things we do believe in -- fervently, and with great passion. We should not be afraid to state our moral principles, especially the ones that can be fairly articulated in near-absolutes and with a certain amount of zeal. They're impressed by zeal, and are often surprised to find that we have our own share of it. If you can unambiguously and firmly state a principle that you share with the RWA (marriage, family, and community are great topics for this kind of commonality), you'll find them warming to you quickly.

Affirm Ambiguity (in them) -- Once in a while, you'll hear the RWA start to give a long, hairsplitting answer (for, in sooth, many of their odder theories of the world have no short explanation). In these moments, they're embracing exactly the kind of ambiguity they usually go way out of their way to avoid (and criticize in us). When this happens, note it: "You're so right. This world is a pretty complicated place, and the answers aren't always easy, are they?" The key here is to create a comfortable, easy, give-and-take atmosphere in which reasonable people can reason together -- and remain friends even if they don't agree on the ultimate answer.

This isn't an experience that most RWAs are used to having, even within their own precincts. Having it with someone who can be fairly classified as the enemy can be a life-changing experience, for reasons I'll discuss further below.

Appeal to "Legitimate" Authorities -- When citing authorities, try wherever possible to refer to authorities they recognize as legitimate. RWAs have far more respect for established authority than liberals do; but, at the same time, they usually don't accept our reality-based authorities (and often hold them in total contempt). The only way around this is to support your points by finding and citing authorities they accept.

You need to get creative here. An RWA may not regard Al Gore as an acceptable authority on the environment; but Richard Nixon (who passed the Endangered Species Act, and founded the EPA) might well be.

If you must quote an authority they're likely to regard as dubious, do what you can to establish that sources' bona fides. "Did you know that Bill Moyers is a Southern Baptist minister?" It won't always work among the harder core -- Moyers isn't in the SBC now, and therefore has forfeited any authority he may have had -- but for the softer core, this at least puts a little grease on the ball. If you can't find a direct source they'll respect, at least try to find a source that's been vetted and given the Seal of Approval by someone they do trust.

For religious RWAs, there's nothing more authoritative than God's own literal words. Biblical literalists are often astonished when a knowledgeable liberal starts quoting unfamiliar passages back at them. While they've usually been inoculated by their preachers with "correct" interpretations of difficult passages, the fundie reading of the Bible is highly selective, and it's not hard to find passages they're completely unaware of. They may not like it -- but they've got no choice but to accept it, at least until their pastor can "set them straight" again. If the pastor can't do that (they're only trained to respond to the most common objections), then you've undermined the pastor's omniscient authority, and set up a pattern of questioning that may not stop until the RWA is safely on the other side of the wall. (A large subset of ex-fundamentalists started their exodus just this way.)

Keep it Literal
As I mentioned in the last post, fundies (and most other flavors of authoritarian) do not think in abstracts. While they can usually summon empathy for people in their own belief communities -- people who are very much like them -- they have a very hard time imagining themselves in the shoes of people who are different. And the greater the difference, the harder this is.

This inability to empathize makes it very easy to demonize outsiders, accuse them of all manner of vile motives and outrageous actions, and eventually move toward dehumanization and eliminationism. In turn, this can come back around to feed a very active persecution complex. The fear that results from this failure of imagination is the driving force that keeps them huddled behind that Wall.

This is why it's important to keep any critiques of ideas and people as personal and literal as possible. You need to draw a clear, bright line connecting the negative personal harm that particular RWA has sustained as the direct result of a policy, and the specific leader who implemented it. As we know all too well, there's no limit to the amount or degree of abuse a determined RWA will forgive; but making people see the concrete damage their leaders are inflicting on them personally may in time re-direct their sense of persecution, and undermine the legitimacy of their accepted authorities.

Literal, personal critiques work in a wide range of situations. They're useful in getting across the effects of bad policy, the policies of bad leaders, hypocrisies and contradictions, and inaccurate information. Any time you can frame a point in terms of, "This person/policy/action has harmedyou , this much and in this way," you're more likely (though still far from certain) to get your point across. If you can't say, with proof, that "Bush did this to you, you probably won't get through.

It's important to note that positive attributes can also be presented this way. "We should do this because it's fair to minorities" cuts no ice at all with RWAs. "We should do this because it's in your own self-interest" will get you a lot farther. And don’t neglect to spell out every possible benefit, as clearly and specifically as possible. Don't assume they'll make the logical leaps to see those on their own. These are very concrete thinkers: leaping isn't their strong suit.

Sometimes, keeping communication personal and literal can even short-circuit the guilt-evaporation mechanisms Dean discussed. God may have forgiven you, or you may have just been doing what you were told and following the rules, or the person who harmed you may merit forgiveness -- but the fact remains that your actions (or a third party's) have demonstrably harmed someone who matters to you, or created problems in your own life. Absolution may clear your conscience, but it doesn't clean up the mess. Associate personal actions with their direct results, and you may stand a chance of making them realize the full brunt of their behavior.

Be an Enlightened Witness
The great psychologist Alice Miller, who did seminal work on the role child abuse plays in shaping authoritarian personalities, often discussed the importance an "enlightened witness" plays in preventing an abused child from becoming an amoral or abusive adult:

"When I began to illustrate my thesis by drawing on the examples of Hitler and Stalin, when I tried to expose the social consequences of child abuse, I encountered fierce resistance. Repeatedly I was told, "I, too, was a battered child, but that didn't make me a criminal." When I asked for details about their childhood, I was always told of a person who loved them, but was unable to protect them. Yet through his or her presence, this person gave them a notion of trust, and of love.
"I call these persons helping witnesses. Dostoyevsky, for instance, had a brutal father, but a loving mother. She wasn't strong enough to protect him from his father, but she gave him a powerful conception of love, without which his novels would have been unimaginable. Many have also been lucky enough to find enlightened and courageous witnesses, people who helped them to recognize the injustices they suffered, to give vent to their feelings of rage, pain and indignation at what happened to them. These persons never became criminals."

The enlightened witness not only affirms the child's better character; s/he also models a higher standard of behavior. Dave has often discussed the importance of providing a clear, positive standard of expected community behavior as the first response to hate crime or petty terrorism. The offenders must understand, in no uncertain terms, that they are not expressing the will of the community, and that their actions are considered unacceptable. As far back as Stanley Milgram's study, it's been understood that people are far less likely to misbehave -- and far more likely to rise to the expected standard -- if someone else is there upholding a higher moral standard.

RWAs are sadly accustomed to subordinating their own needs to those of their superiors; in fact, one of the struggles we often see in recovering fundies is a complete inability to even acknowledge that they have needs of their own, let alone identify them, let alone act to meet them. They simply don't know where to begin. Also, because their own authorities use guilt and shame to control them, they've seldom been allowed to see themselves as truly good and moral people.

Giving an RWA permission to recognize, give voice to, and take action to satisfy his or her own needs is a powerful act. In affirming that they are not just allowed, but entitled (in the name of fairness) to feel their own emotions, own their own goodness, indulge a few harmless appetites, enjoy themselves, assert their boundaries, or stand up and say "no" to overweening authority, you are being an enlightened witness to their true self -- something many of them have seldom if ever had. In the process, you are also giving them a direct view over the wall. Often, it's a view that they never forget, and will keep coming back to until they're persuaded to go over it for good.

This admittedly requires a strong belief in our own best liberal ideals -- most particularly, in meeting with people where they are, and dealing with them as they are. If they believe that their goodness and strength flow from the grace of God, don't quibble. At least they're focusing on their strength, instead of leading with their fear! They have a right to whatever moral context they're comfortable with. It's the core of their moral reasoning, and often of their identity.

Focus on the Family
We need to be having much more open conversations with the RWA community about our views on family. Weird as it sounds, they honestly, literally believe that we don't care about families, don't really have them ourselves, and are out to destroy theirs as well. I know, it sounds ridiculous -- but it's true.

The best writing on this I've seen comes from Unitarian writer Doug Muder, who has taken George Lakoff's model of "strict father" versus "nurturant parent" politics one step further, and uses it to explain precisely how the right wing came to believe this preposterous notion. (Hat tip to the estimable Trefayne.) Muder asserts that, while Lakoff's right that family models are the right frame, the real dialectic is between families of "inherited obligation" versus those based on "negotiated commitment". Go read the article, then come on back. We'll be here.

Muder's thesis highlights very specifically where and why our divergent models of family lead to disagreements on everything from abortion to homosexuality (and also answers our exasperated questions about how these particular issues became such hot political potatoes in the first place). At the same time, it also points up the places in which we have strong commonalities with RWAs that they don't typically see. For example, authoritarians typically don't believe that those of us who assemble families of choice feels as committed to those families as those who are bound to their kin by blood ties and birth. And they tend to view "family" as a stage script, with set roles for mothers and fathers and grandparents. If you don't have people filling all the roles, it is, by definition, not a family.

Being aware of the way RWAs model and value their families allows us to present our own family values in ways that they can begin to understand. There is a lot of common ground here, most of which they're apparently totally unaware of. It also gives us a clear view of the ways in which progressive "negotiated commitment" families can indeed be seen as a threat to their worldview. With this understanding, we can begin to acknowledge those fears directly, address them head-on, and perhaps begin to defuse one of their biggest sources of fear and mistrust.

Make the World Bigger
Anything that gets RWAs interacting with people outside their narrow realm is a good thing. Travel, formal or informal education, community interactions with unknown and feared groups (especially those based on shared concerns, interests, and values), and activities that increase a sense of personal achievement and competence all enhance their ability to trust themselves and others, without having to rely on the rules of their system to maintain their fragile sense of safety.

If we're serious about reducing the number of authoritarians in our midst, we need to greatly increase the number and frequency of our engagements with them. As noted in Part II, are very literal thinkers, and capable of tremendous loyalty. An RWA who knows just one gay person, up close and personal, often finds that their sense of loyalty will force them to resist their leaders' generalizations of gays as evil. The more contact they have with the demonized Other, the greater the cognitive dissonance grows, and the more their accepted authorities are discredited.

We need to actively start creating ways for the authoritarians in our midst to make contact with people outside of their cocooned communities. The means and methods are many; but this is perhaps the most important work we can do. Start by committing random acts of kindness (just to mess with their assumptions, if nothing else). They need to see us as trustworthy allies, valuable contributors to their own well-being -- and perhaps, in time, friends.

Landing Zones
Finally: we need to make safe landing zones for those just arriving from the other side of the Wall.

It takes courage, time, and support to come out of an authoritarian mindset. Most RWAs are used to having people tell them what to think, where to be, what to do, and who to trust. In the reality-based world, we tend to assume that people can do this for themselves. While exiting fundies typically feel exhilarated with the freedom they feel in the first weeks after leaving; they've also got a huge new world to navigate, and acquiring the necessary skills takes time. They're often wobbly on their feet for a while until they get the hang of it.

There is the emotional work of learning to trust your own perceptions, accept your own feelings, and act on your own judgment -- something people in authoritarian systems never really learn to do. There's also the business of learning to navigate in a looser, more do-your-own-thing social structure, which can be hard for someone used to ready-made social hierarchies. There are the practical matters of telling family and friends on the other side of the Wall that you've left, and coming to terms with their reactions. There's all the work involved in sorting through all your new intellectual and moral options, and deciding for yourself which values you're going to build your new life on.

It helps tremendously to have friends and guides who understand what you're going through, and can supply guidance and hugs when it all seems overwhelming. They are far more likely to succeed if we offer them consistent (but not hovering) friendship and support -- and a bit of patience while they make their first steps into the reality-based world.

Micro to Macro
The above discussion, long as it is, is just a beginning. The more time we spend talking to soft-core authoritarian followers, the better we'll get at understanding their motivations, calming their fears, and framing our arguments in ways they can clearly understand.

However: as kum-bay-yah (and stereotypically liberal) as all this talk of "understanding" individual RWAs may be, it doesn't mean that we stop holding the authoritarians in our midst accountable for the misbehavior of their public figures and the recklessness of their policies. It doesn't mean that we stop correcting the media when it misrepresents our views, or aggressively fight for solutions that will ultimate break the cycle of right-wing authoritarianism that now dominates American politics. While the work of bringing these missing Americans back into the larger fold is gentle and slow (we may well spend a decade or more bringing the bulk of them back), the work of recovering America as we knew her requires a fierce energy that draws firm boundaries, demands an honest reckoning, and requires constant and determined assertion of our own good values.

In the fourth and final part of this series, I'll look at some of the ways authoritarians can be turned back at the community, state, and national level.

Cracks In The Wall, Part II: Listening to the Leavers

Orcinus

Cracks In The Wall, Part II: Listening to the Leavers

by Sara Robinson

Who Follows? Everyone, Sometimes
After all these decades of research and inquiry, it can be said fairly that we're starting to get a decent handle on what makes people gravitate toward authoritarianism.

Alice Miller points to abusively authoritarian child-rearing practices, which teach the child anger and fear, and train out compassion or respect. George Lakoff points out the ways in which Strict Father conservatives try to apply this same logic to government. Emmanuel Todd points out that a nation's family structures are almost always mirrored in its political structures, as well as its tendency towards imperial ambition. Several observers, including Kevin Phillips, point to the authoritarianism inherent in certain religions, and in the regions of the country they dominate; other historians have contrasted the relative levels of social hierarchy countries that were colonized by Catholic versus Protestant countries.

Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanius, who developed social dominance theory and the SDO scale, might tell you that, for some of us, at least, such tendencies appear so early in life that it's hard to credit nurture alone. Milgrim and Zimbardo both found that while most subjects participated more or less eagerly in their experiments, there were a few who were so offended by the scenarios that they outright refused. Nurture plays a huge role; but humans under stress have gravitated toward strong-man dictatorships since the beginning of history; and we've never been too short of would-be high-SDO strong men eager to step up and oblige us.

Taken together, this chorus seems to paraphrase the Bard: some are born authoritarian, some achieve authoritarianism, and some have authoritarianism thrust upon them. Most of us fall somewhere along a wide continuum of willingness to follow authoritarian leadership. Our place on that scale is determined by the culture and religion we grew up in, how our parents treated us, our education and life experiences, and our inherited temperament. These things conspire to make a few of us desperate to follow, and a few others obstinate in their outright refusal of all authority. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in between, open to seduction only in certain circumstances.

We know something about those circumstances, too. We know, for example, that fear can transform the behavior of otherwise rational and not particularly authoritarian people. Fear creates physiological changes that impair the brain's ability to reason, and drives people to fall in behind whatever leader presents himself without asking too many questions. Like all herd animals, we are biologically driven to close ranks tightly behind the alpha in times of trouble. Resisting that impulse sometimes means fighting our own evolutionary imperatives. And, as we are now too well aware, unscrupulous leaders will not hesitate to create, manipulate, and perpetuate fear in order to activate that instinct and keep their followers at heel.

Thus, some people who've never been natural followers sometimes get caught up in authoritarian religion and politics in the wake of deep personal losses: unemployment, divorce, a death in the family, arrest, and so on. Entire populations (or, at least, a good fraction of the whole) can take the same path when faced with large collective losses. Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy,, points out that the South's authoritarian streak (which always ran deep) grew rigid and hard after their loss in the Civil War. Karen Armstrong, in The Battle for God, points out that fundamentalist movements commonly begin in communities that perceive themselves under economic, political, or geographic siege. The way America came together under FDR after Pearl Harbor is the stuff of national legend. And the Bush Administration has exploited this tendency shamelessly in the wake of 9/11.

Cut loose from our moorings, in over our heads, we all look for something solid to hold onto. No matter how strong we are, we've all got areas where we are brittle and vulnerable. It's hard for any of us to say for sure that we'd walk away from an authoritarian leader who promised us precisely the right kind of salvation in precisely the wrong moment. This is something to bear in mind whenever we deal with authoritarian followers: they have simply responded to an impulse that exists -- at least to some degree -- in all of us.

Pushed To The Wall
For the past five years, I've been a member of a large and busy online community of former fundamentalists. Through years of discussion, we've learned a lot from each other about how and why people become fundamentalists -- and also how and why they find themselves inspired to leave authoritarian religion behind. We've noticed patterns in the various ways people are seduced into fundamentalism; and also a predictable progression in the steps they go through in the agonizing months and years after enlightenment dawns. We've also discovered that we seem to fall into readily-identifiable subgroups, and that each of these subgroups wanders down somewhat different paths and uses different techniques as they approach the wall, determinedly hoist themselves over it, and then set about coming to terms with life here on the reality-based side.

Two or three times a week, we find new members on our doorstep. Safe in the anonymity of the Internet (and often under cover of night -- these missives are typically time-stamped in the wee hours of the morning, usually posted furtively after weeks or months of lurking) we're often the first people they've ever whispered their doubts out loud to. Their introductions are often heartbreakingly miserable: "I can't believe this any more -- but my husband will leave me if he knows." "My whole family is fundie. I can't tell my parents I've stopped going to church -- it will kill them if they ever find out." "I'm a deacon at my church. If I start asking these questions, I'll lose my whole community."

These people know that the tiny flicker of enlightenment kindling in their minds is about to set their entire lives ablaze. And yet -- with a courage that I always find astonishing -- almost all of them forge ahead anyway. Some race for the wall. Others pace back and forth for months, planning their escape. A few disappear for a while, but return again a year later, having put their lives in order and ready to go at last.

We must never, ever underestimate what it costs these people to let go of the beliefs that have sustained them. Leaving the safety of the authoritarian belief system is a three-to-five year process. Externally, it always means the loss of your community; and often the loss of jobs, homes, marriages, and blood relatives as well. Internally, it requires sifting through every assumption you've ever made about how the world works, and your place within it; and demands that you finally take the very emotional and intellectual risks that the entire edifice was designed to protect you from. You have to learn, maybe for the first time, to face down fear and live with ambiguity. On the scale of relative trauma, it's right up there with a divorce after a long marriage; and it requires about the same amount and kind of grieving.

Over the years, I've talked to scores of former fundies about the moment that the light first sparked. Through their stories, I've discerned a few patterns, most of which map very neatly onto John Dean's list of traits for authoritarian followers. What follows is far from science; it's more akin to clinical experience, or a scouting report from the front on battlefield conditions. The degree to which any of this might apply to non-religious authoritarians is open for discussion -- though my reading of Altemeyer's work is that all forms of authoritarianism come from the same deep character traits, and so it seems sensible that politically-based authoritarian followers might undergo a recognizably similar process. It's a topic for discussion, anyway.

Depending on why they became fundie in the first place, the moment of exodus generally dawns in one of the following ways:

1. Betrayal by Authority
Dean notes that authoritarian followers voluntarily choose their leaders, usually on the basis of how strongly those leaders support the follower's belief system. Cultural or political leaders who don't support the belief system (for example, federal court judges, scientists, progressive celebrities) are seen as illegitimate authorities, and become targets of followers' aggression.

We've all come up against these people, and have been totally confounded with their "my leader can do no wrong" attitude. They believe outrageous lies, and forgive all manner of sins. Democratic strategists keep trying to run campaigns that will reach these people on the basis of evidence and fact -- and are perplexed to find their attempts at education totally rebuffed. George Bush may have lied us into a war, wrecked our economy, saddled our great-grandchildren with debt, savaged the poor, and alienated the entire world; but he is Our Leader, and we will always take his word over anyone else's. We do not accept you as a legitimate authority. We don't care what you have to say, because you have no standing at all in our little world.

Mere political or cultural betrayal, no matter how destructive, does not cut through this piece of the wall. The guilt-evaporation process applies to both followers and leaders: you must forgive all wrongs committed by someone inside the fold. Our leader didn't lie; he was misunderstood, his words distorted by our enemies. Besides, he would never lie to us. Besides, he is just following orders -- or God's will, which is beyond our understanding. Besides, our own forgiveness depends on our ability to forgive, and so we will -- never mind the contradictions.

And yet, even so: There is one -- and only one -- sin so heinous that it cannot be rationalized away by the authoritarian thought process. It is this: the leader's main job is to protect his abused and terrified horde from personal harm (or, for that matter, any sudden negative change to their immediate status quo). A leader who wantonly allows one of his followers to intimately experience such harm breaks that contract. It is in that moment of betrayal that some followers come to their senses, and start looking for a reckoning.

It's important to note: the betrayal must be an intensely personal breach that has a deep, immediate, life-changing impact on the individual follower. Fundies don't think in abstracts. Big national debts, epic political prevarications, and other people's suffering (even on a global scale) do not impress them. But there are plenty of authoritarian parents across the country who proudly sent a son or daughter off to war -- and later received that precious child home under cover of darkness, in a wooden box, with minimal explanation. That's the kind of personal and profound loss I'm talking about. For many of these patriotic parents, it was also the searing moment of deep betrayal that broke the spell and shoved them off in the direction of the Wall.

Among fundies, the most common perpetrators of these betrayals are parents -- particularly fathers -- and pastors. As the most intimate authorities in their followers' lives, they're at close enough range to inflict the kind of high-impact personal damage that's necessary to create the first crack. Many of the ex-fundies I know made their break in the aftermath of sexual abuse, ruinous financial treachery, public humiliation, or power grabs that threatened their marriages or children. They saw, in devastatingly vivid color, what their leaders were capable of. Their endless loyalty was shattered, because they realized it was not being returned in kind.

Such betrayals break through because they offend several of the follower characteristics Dean lists. The betrayed follower is no longer bound to submit to or give loyalty to an unworthy authority. Nor are they bound by the rules, because the authority charged with enforcing them has broken them. (While this was forgiveable in the abstract, in this case the consequences are too personal and acute to ignore.) They are brought face-to-face with the contradictions and hypocrisies in a shocking and unforgiveable way. Having felt the sting of the leader's aggression, they may realize the true cost of aggressively defending that leader -- and thus become more acutely sensitized to intolerance, bullying, and mean-spiritedness.

Perhaps most importantly: having their own boundaries so heinously violated makes them suddenly aware (as most authoritarian followers are not) that they have their own legitimate emotional, physical, and social needs; and that they deserve to have those needs respected and met. Once that self-awareness is awakened, the soon-to-be-ex fundie can be seen making a beeline for the Wall.

2. Permission from Authority
A cute twist on the above scenario is the fundie who gets subtle or overt permission from an established authority to go over to the Wall and push on it.

These authorities aren't easy to come by. Everything in authoritarian society is set up to identify heretics and preachers of false doctrine, and eject them forcefully from the community immediately upon discovery. Still, the occasional and quiet non-authoritarian can be found in positions of leadership within a fundamentalist community -- for example, young pastors from more liberal seminaries, Christian counselors with some secular psychological training, missionaries who have returned from exotic far-away places, or church-affiliated social services people whose sense of compassion has overwhelmed their fear of church leadership.

Because these people are operating under color of Established Authority, if they suggest that it's OK to ask questions, the followers will accept that as valid permission to open their minds. One recovering fundie recalls a fateful meeting with a Christian counselor: "He told me that fundamentalist Christianity was toxic," she said. Her exodus began with that brief comment. Later, she remembers finding still more affirmation: "I told my Christian college professor that I no longer believed that there was one way to spirituality, and was now pro-choice. He applauded me." Since she accepted both these men as valid religious authorities, their encouragement gave her the freedom to approach the Wall with a clearer conscience.

Such authorities are rare birds -- both because fundies don't breed many of them, and also because they quickly banish the ones they discover in their midst. But for the brief season they are allowed to operate, they can plant the seeds of open-mindedness in hundreds of willing followers, facilitate education, bypass zealotry and dogma, promote open examination of hypocrisy and contradiction, and enhance self-awareness.

3. Life Gets Bigger
Fundamentalist parents work overtime to keep their children from "the things of this world." Your average Yuppie helicopter parent is a slacker compared to these people, who obsessively vet all incoming media, homeschool, seek out Christian colleges, chaperone all "courtship" activities, and otherwise ensure that their children receive no information about the world that doesn't support their belief system.

This willful narrow-mindedness continues on into adulthood and right through life. Church members spy on each other with the enthusiasm of Stasi informants; deacons call miscreants in for disciplinary meetings to keep the faithful on the path of righteousness. One wonders if Jesus intended them to take the metaphor of shepherd and sheep quite so literally, but they do.

This anti-intellectualism appears on Dean's list in several guises: Moderate to little education, narrow-minded, intolerant, dogmatic, uncritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic. They are precisely what you'd expect from people who've had minimal exposure to the world, and hence lack the basic skills -- including flexibility, risk-taking, and spontaneity -- that most of us rely on to deal with it.

Still, the world is big and insistent, and sometimes it comes flooding through that wall of denial despite their best efforts. The most common culprit is education -- either formal, or informal -- that allows the follower to see with clarity that the outside world is not nearly so evil as they've been told. This education can take many forms -- some obvious, some not so obvious.

Many, if not most, fundie youth who end up at secular colleges soon find themselves enjoying the view from the top of the wall. This happens so reliably that most fundie parents regard secular universities as the worst nightmare this side of hell. They know they're not gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen State U.

Travel, especially outside the country, is another major eye-opener for people who have long believed that their way is the only way. We're not talking bus tours and chain hotels here -- it needs to be a style of travel that demands plenty of individual interaction with local people and their language, customs, and culture. Homestays, where the connections can become personal, are particularly potent -- which is why missionaries-gone-native feature largely on the list of permissive authorities discussed above.

Authoritarian upbringing is not designed to foster a sense of personal competence. But any kind of training that builds a creative skill -- especially one that will be valued by the secular world -- will tend to increase the follower's sense of self-worth. Even if s/he gives all the glory to God (an expected modesty among fundies), mastering one's craft imparts a sureness and independence of mind that reduces susceptibility to authoritarian logic. Knowing your stuff cold, even in one limited area, imparts confidence to call people on their bullshit in other areas.

Events that bring fundies together, one-to-one, with people from other groups in common cause can be very effective at lowering defenses. For one woman in our group, the door through the wall was an innocuous Christian women's sewing circle. She writes:

"I got involved in a small community volunteer sewing group and was around some women from different churches…It started to open my eyes to the possibility that other people might have a good thing going too…Basically it was that they were loving, caring women just wanting to reach out and touch someone's life with their sewing ability, and they weren't some evil people on the dark side like my pastor tried to tell us in sermons about those outside our church and belief system.

"When my husband wanted me to stop going because someone had seen me going to this interfaith ministry center which they graciously let us use for the sewing meetings and the pastor thought it would look bad for me to be seen there, I realized how foolish that was. Weren't we just trying to help others regardless of our religious beliefs? I also had a good talk with the woman in charge of the group and she seemed understanding about my concerns and assured me that we weren't there to discuss religious topics so it shouldn't be a problem."

Political action plays a role here, too. On the rare occasions that authoritarians make common cause with more progressive folk -- usually on non-partisan local issues such as land use and utility management (but not schools!) -- there's an opportunity to find common ground and build a foundation of trust on it.

Placing authoritarian followers in relaxing, non-threatening situations where they can safely explore the common ground they share with others can be a liberalizing experience. Most fundies are taught to keep outsiders at a discreet arm's length. They generally won't accept invitations to visit non-believers in their homes, unless they're intending to proslytize. But meetings on neutral ground, based around shared concerns and values, can lead to individual friendships that will in time increase their general trust in outsiders -- and, more importantly, put the lie to their leaders' insistence that reality-based folk are pure evil.

For some in our group, the first glimmer was the stunning realization that "the Jews" included "my friend Rachel, who I met at the gym". "The gays" included "my kids' dance teacher". "The French" included "that darling family we met on the train last summer". And those "frivolous" women who have abortions included "my neighbor, who already had four kids and a husband with no job". Through repeated exposure, these followers' superb sense of loyalty attaches itself to someone outside the circle -- and, in very short order, their awareness of the smallness of that circle becomes too stifling to endure.

4. Resolution of Fear
Once in a while, our little cyber-halfway house takes in a befuddled spouse whose wife or husband -- heretofore a sane, decent, and resolutely secular individual -- has suddenly, without warning and for no apparent reason, pitched themselves headlong off the religious deep end. These partners are usually distraught: there's a familiar body in the house, but the person who once inhabited it has vanished. In their place is someone they have never met; can no longer have a rational conversation with; and can't imagine spending another week with, let alone their entire lives. (Too often, these terrified spouses are also afraid for their children -- and watching their retirement funds disappear into church coffers at an astonishing rate.) They're looking for advice -- anything that will bring back the beloved person they knew.

On further questioning, it almost always comes out that the wayward spouse has recently (usually within the past year) sustained a loss or trauma that simply overwhelmed every resource s/he had. Afraid, alone, and often clinically depressed, this poor soul was a sitting duck for the depredations of an authoritarian religious leader.

This is hardly news, of course: it's also why cult leaders prey on college students, travelers, the inner-city poor, single mothers, prisoners, and other people under stress and cut off from their support systems. What's important to note is that this also works (at least sometimes) in reverse: identifying and addressing the stress and restoring the support system can create the conditions for the broken self to heal, and eventually perhaps usher the return to the reality-based world.

We tell the grieving spouse to identify the initial source of the loss, and do whatever it takes to help their partner address it as directly and concretely as possible. We stress that this is a five-alarm family emergency (though they usually already know that, it helps to have it affirmed) and getting appropriate help for the underlying issue needs to be the first priority -- whether this involves professional counseling, medical treatment, or moving the spouse to another town, far away from the leader and church. We stress the importance of family and social support networks, and of taking steps to protect themselves legally in case the worst should happen.

We give this advice because we've seen it work among ourselves. Most of the adult-onset fundies in our group joined up because they were in a similar place of sheer overwhelm. Leaving was not even possible until this sense of panic and loss subsided, and the sense of personal competence (already higher in people who weren't raised in authoritarian homes) began to reassert itself. When it did, those people found that it got easier to question authority, and eventually to contemplate moving on.

And it's an ongoing battle, at least for a while. That three-to-five year transitional period is full of stress-inducing unknowns; unsurprisingly, recent ex-fundies are strongly tempted to deal with unfamiliar situations by reaching for the old familiar tools. In those cases, too, we need to look for the underlying causes of our distress, and find ways to address the fear directly rather than resort to the old superstitions. Anything that ratchets down the fear factor makes it harder for authoritarianism to get and keep its hold on people's minds.

5. Turning Points
Ironically, though, even though stress is a path into authoritarianism, it can also provide a path out. A number of our members decided to make their break during these same kinds of traumatic stress events -- especially major life transitions. The death of a parent, a move, a job loss, marriage, parenthood, mid-life crises, and widowhood have all come up as key exit points for people who left. Typically, these situations dramatically illuminated the ways in which the predictable authoritarian answers were no longer working for them. They needed more help than their leaders could offer, and decided it was time to look outside the wall for it. Or a natural breaking point occurred -- their old life was past, and they quietly resolved to reach out and see what a new one might hold. In major life transitions, everything is up for grabs -- even for authoritarian followers.

Next Steps
This report from the front is admittedly incomplete: I'm looking forward to hearing from readers about various other conditions that led them (or people they knew) towards daylight. We cannot create truly effective solutions to the problem of authoritarianism until we understand not only the situation that drive followers into that system, but also the situations that open the door for them to leave it.

In my next post, coming Monday or Tuesday, I'll build on the above observations (and any others that crop up in the comments) to draft a rough outline of specific approaches we might use to begin disarming and constructively engaging the authoritarians in our personal and political lives.

Thanks again to everybody who has posted such terrific comments. Keep 'em coming: this is a mutual-education effort, the beginning of a dialogue I hope we'll all keep having until we collectively get this figured out.