The Ludovico Technique

Apparently the thing to do with terrorists is educate them to the right way of thinking.  It may be come new policy here in Orstraya.  Civil libertarians are aghast at what they call brainwashing. 

[the news item is here]

I saw A Clockwork Orange years ago and I have a quote from the movie; the scene is where Alex is on display in a theatre demonstrating the success of the behaviour modification process.

Chaplain: Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrong-doer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

 

Minister: Padre, these are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime. And with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify. Sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly. Reclamation, joy before the angels of God. The point is that it works!

 

Alex (voice-over): And the very next day, your Friend and Humble Narrator was a free man.

As you know Alex is now a good, wholesome character and can go back into society.  He ends up, anonymously, in the house of the man who he crippled and whose wife he raped and killed.  The man - a left leaning writer speaks to his friends, not knowing who it is in the other room;

Recruiting brutal young roughs into the police, proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we've seen it all before in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are, we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism. This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people - the common people - must know, must see. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty is all. The common people will let it go. Oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life - that is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!!

Alex is eventually driven to try to escape and kill himself as a result of his conditioning.

 

So what I hear you say?  Well... nothing really.  Today's politicking just reminded me of a movie from 1971, That's all.

 

[Read a long and interesting analysis of the film A Clockwork Orange here]