Totalitarian Governments’ Psychological Manipulation Throughout History

***Please note that this article was written just two weeks before the start of the middle-eastern revolution. Especially with Hosni Moubarak completely disconnecting the internet in Egypt, it would have been perfect material to base this essay on.***

Totalitarian Governments’ Psychological Manipulation throughout History

            From past to present, many totalitarian governments have taken advantage of their citizens by psychologically controlling them, removing the truth from their eyes and thus, presenting them with false information. Nations have been heavily manipulated from the era of the Russian Revolution during Joseph Stalin’s power in the USSR, to Hitler’s power over Nazi Germany, and to this present day in the People’s Republic of China. All three of these authoritarian regimes have used censorship to hide politically and ideologically sensitive information from their own citizens, have used propaganda and lies in order for their citizens to believe what their government wants them to believe, and finally, surveillance to monitor them in order to catch those who present a threat to the government.

Censorship

Governments throughout history used censorship exaggeratedly in editing and removing information already published to their citizens, like rewriting history for instance, to even not releasing important information to their own citizens at all. In today’s Chinese society, the communist government is largely censoring politically sensitive information presented in their media, especially through the Internet. The People’s Republic of China is a country that has been going through a great deal of trouble lately and in recent past concerning numerous protests against the government. Information on these political struggles can be found on the Internet. However, Chinese authority have programmed the servers to eliminate politically sensitive information, such as blocking articles and Web sites on China’s human rights, the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, and especially Falun Gong (“China’s Media Censorship”). By doing so, the Chinese government is violating its own rights in articles presented in their Constitution: prevented to violate homes, and any form of intrusion is illegal (“China’s Media Censorship”). This ironic offense to its own citizens is secretly built in China’s routers and “are programmed to channel [...] (URL’s) through proxy servers, which scan for politically sensitive words such as “falun,” [...] and send back an error message (e.g. “file not found”) to the Internet user who requested the page,” (“China and the Internet”). Because of this, China has now the most sophisticated Internet content-filtering in the world, also known as the ‘Great Firewall of China’ (“China and the Internet”). This online filtering program is taking a further step in censorship; in fact, the Chinese government is working on a program that will identify the users who search these politically sensitive past events, and electronically report it straight to the government (“China’s Media Censorship”). In February of 2003, some researchers have in fact announced such censoring system, “that they had it already developed [...] a ‘Falun Gong Content Examination System,’” (“China’s Media Censorship”). This fearful discovery, which removes events from the past off the Internet, is really trying to eliminate the Chinese society’s awareness of those abusive political acts (such as protests, beatings, and killings from police authority, etc.), so that the next generations become unconscious of the cruel government and don’t become influenced in rebelling or recognizing its corruption. This is also to end society’s rebellions, and retaliation methods such as protests, in order for the government to protect itself. Chinese citizens who do post uncensored political information have been threatened by authority, “Journalists have allegedly been harassed, sometimes with violence, and jailed for reporting content that is undesirable or that implicate government officials in corruption,” (“China and the Internet”). This shows how sensitive China’s government is on its people and the consequences of simply typing words in a search engine can cost one’s life in China.