Reply #156: My favorite "Anti-Red" quote from the House un-American Activities Committee:

[readmoreoften]

I love this guy. He's like the Dashiell Hammett of Anti-Communist testimony.
On the Chinese "brainwashing" of American troops in Korea. Warning graphic!!! (just kidding) :


<>snip
The Reds selected Americans who had fine intelligence quotients, but with poor education. Their heads were like a good, solid but empty bucket, only waiting to be filled. The Reds did so with their own slanted material. They deprived all these men of reading matter except what was pro-Red, and gave them plenty of that, and lots of time in which to read it. They especially fed the boys the writings of pro-Communist Americans. One of the most corrosive publications was a magazine called The China Monthly Review, published by American pro-Communists at Shanghai. The men couldn’t get over the shock of an American-edited magazine being put out in Red China. They read it out of indignation or curiosity, and because they had nothing else to do. The smoothly written poisons caught them by utter surprise, leaving a deep impression on their minds. In a number of cases, it was the decisive factor in their softening up.

The enemy didn’t neglect the indoctrination process, but used it simultaneously. The one thing the prisoners least expected was to come into a classroom atmosphere. Yet this was what the Communists endeavored to create.
<snip>

*****

Oh the horrors! They gave them reading material!!! But no Highlights Magazine or Readers Digest! It was all commie propaganda! And then they gave them...plenty of time (shivers) Why those Red bastards snuck up on us and turned the POW camp into a goddamn classroom! We thought we were going to be tortured, oh but it was much worse than that. It was reading political ideas!!!!

This was the guy's explanation why 10% of our POWs came back communists and 21 actually refused to return. Actually....I think it had more to do with showing the soldiers pictures of the biowarfare damage they were causing.

Oh shit! Is that what we're doing in Abu Ghraib? Making them read Wired Magazine and Esquire? "Zee hier, Iraqi man. If you convert to chreestianity and vow to love America, you will have many gadget, jeys? And you will be able to read girly magazine. Go America. Say it! Go American!" (inside mind of Iraqi prisoner: This is madness. I thought I was going to be attacked by dogs and tortured with knives. But it appears to be some sort of school... Wow George Clooney lost a lot of weight...is he still with that stripper?...NO! MUST...RE...SIST...)