Government agency Stockholm Syndrome

Brainwashing writ large

The titular syndrome is far better known than the event it’s named after. In August, 1973, during a botched bank robbery in the Swedish capital, four employees of Sveriges Kreditbank were held hostage in the bank’s vault for six days. A strange bond developed between the victims and the captors, such that the victims identified closely with the perps, as well as with their agenda and demands.

The phenomenon has been explained as a sort of combination of the survival instinct, and gratitude that their lives have been spared. This gratitude can cause the victims to magnify small acts of kindness amid otherwise horrible conditions as good treatment. This distortion, in turn, morphs into the victims empathizing with the captors, making psychological links between the captors’ happiness and their own.

This empathy can quickly turn into hatred for police or other authorities, who might threaten the captive/captor relationship. And, this sort of brainwashing occurs quickly indeed, given the relatively short timeframe of the Stockholm incident.

Interestingly, the American Psychiatric Association does not include Stockholm Syndrome in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—although the seemingly related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is included.

Indeed, the public has quite a conflicted attitude toward this sort of thing. On the one hand, virtually everyone was quick to blame the 1978 Jonestown mass suicides on 900 people being “brainwashed” by Jim Jones. On the other hand, a jury refused to accept that former hostage Patricia Hearst was anything but a willing participant in the 1974 Hibernia Bank robbery, along with other members of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army.

Compare all this to the anguished cries of (mostly) leftists, who bemoan the fat-trimming currently underway at numerous government agencies. Among these, thousands of layoffs have been announced at the Department of Health and Human Services, including positions in the FDA and NIH.

You will notice that no one is making any sort of argument based on what a great job these agencies have been doing. Rather, the arguments describe generic functions of the positions or departments being cut, as if their mere existence establishes how excellent they must be. Additionally, the fact that the public has been paying through the nose must make the agencies all the more valuable.

Yet, the overall state of American health is abysmal, so why continue in this manner? Simple. Many of us are Addicted to the Process.

Many of us are also afraid to ask the hard questions: Who is responsible for the catastrophic failure of the government’s response to COVID? Why has our military not won a war since 1945? Why is there so much fraud, waste, and abuse in government agencies? Why—until very recently—do we tolerate massive trade imbalances?

Sure, some Beltway Bandits and corrupt politicians have been making money on all the graft, but too many “useful idiots” are defending the status quo. And, in this manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome, the victims have been captives for all of their adult lives.