Good Soldiers Follow Orders: Mind Control, Indoctrination, and Loss of Self in the Star Wars Saga (and what that means for the balance of the force in The Rise of Skywalker)
Introduction
TW: This series of essays contains several written depictions of documented human rights violations
“After some time, Neilsen introduced the guardian spirit, “X.” X was a guiding spirit who spoke through Neilsen — Neilsen was but the vehicle for the divine counsel of X. Gradually, Neilsen conditioned Palle Hardrup so that it was no longer necessary to induce hypnosis. Hardrup experienced Neilsen as X incarnate speaking directly to him even without hypnosis. Whenever Neilsen spoke, it was X speaking….Although Hardrup was destined to transcend to a higher plane, X said, there was a reason he was born in Denmark at that time. Palle Hardrup was to create the Danish National Communist Party. Through this Party, Hardrup would realize his destiny of uniting all of Scandinavia under one government.” -Dr. Colin Ross describing the hypnosis of Palle Hardrup in 1952, The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists
“Forgive me. I feel it again… the pull to the light. Supreme Leader senses it. Show me again the power of the darkness, and I’ll let nothing stand in our way. Show me, grandfather, and I will finish what you started.” — Kylo Ren speaking to the supposed spirit of his grandfather about his perceived destiny to finish Vader’s mission, The Force Awakens
Brainwashing, mental manipulation, and brain-changing are all prevalent in Star Wars canon as tactics utilized by the Empire and First Order to gain military and political power. The most notable cases are found in the following instances and character journeys:
- The Clone Troopers, the mind control chips, and Order 66
Season 6 of The Clone Wars opens with arguably the two darkest deaths in Star Wars canon. Troopers of the 501st legion, Tups and Fives, die in the arms of their comrades after their minds fail them and in their last moments, each of their characters speak about “the nightmare” that can only be escaped in death. Tups gasps, “this is the end…the nightmare…I’m free.” Fives has similar final words that allude to the terrifying truth that Tups and Fives were exposed to before their deaths. He exclaims, “the mission…the nightmares…they’re finally over.”
The audience is aware of what these “nightmares” are. Tups and Fives discovered the chips in their brain that would lead to Emperor Palpatine’s Order 66 (or the great Jedi purge). Upon activation, the chips would alter the personality and motivations of the clone troopers and turn them over to Palpatine’s control where they would diligently seek out the Jedi and destroy them. As Fives states before his death in Season 6, Episode 3, the chips were “built into our genetic code to make us do whatever someone wants, even kill the Jedi…”
2. The sequel trilogy stormtroopers and the systemic brainwashing and control of child soldiers
50 years after Order 66, dark side regimes continue to use methods of brain control to amass armies against any who would oppose them. In Delilah S. Dawson’s novel Phasma, the First Order’s goal is to turn children into highly controllable war dogs, ultimately creating “brainwashed soldiers, programmed to kill.”
The brainwashing methods began with First Order General Brendol Hux and were carried on by his son, Armitage. Phasma explains that “Armitage Hux grew up at the Imperial Academy on Arkanis, watching his father deliver, manipulate, and program children to become killing machines.” During this process, the novel also confirms that these children “lose all sense of individuality, of self.”
3. Anakin Skywalker and the exploitation of his emotions for personal revenge and political gain
Anakin Skywalker’s shame of being denied the rank of Jedi Master by the Jedi Council, coupled with the guilt of losing his mother and the fear of losing his wife, are exploited by Emperor Palpatine for the purpose of using Anakin as a strong weapon in his war against the Jedi. For example, in The Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover, Palpatine exploits Anakin’s anger when he is unable to save his mother. Palpatine implores:
“Don’t be childish, Anakin. Revenge is the foundation of justice. Justice began with revenge, and revenge is still the only justice some beings can ever hope for. After all, this is hardly your first time, is it? Did Dooku deserve mercy more than did the Sand People who tortured your mother to death?”
Here Palpatine is giving Anakin a way out of his grief. While the Jedi are advising Anakin to suppress the anger and sorrow associated with the loss of his mother, Palpatine is offering Anakin a way to express what he feels while justifying it as the only way to achieve absolute justice. Furthermore, Palpatine allows Anakin to believe that he has already betrayed the Jedi’s teachings by killing Dooku.
Inevitably, Palpatine is successful in drawing out Anakin’s rage and Anakin commits to the dark side in the hopes of saving his wife and exacting revenge on those who had shamed him.
4. Ben Solo and the alteration of emotions and memories for personal revenge and political gain
Unlike Anakin, Ben Solo’s emotions are not exploited by Snoke, but instead are suppressed and altered to carry Ben further away from his attachments to his father and mother. For example, In The Force Awakens novelization by Alan Dean Foster, Snoke tells Kylo Ren, Ben Solo’s dark side persona, that the Empire’s fall and ultimately the death of his grandfather occurred because Vader betrayed his master and saved his son. By saying this, Snoke is equating emotional attachment to death, thereby discouraging any emotion Ben still may hold for his father, Han Solo. In this same scene, Snoke also refers to Ben’s potential lingering love for Han as a “test” that Ben must overcome in order to carry out Snoke’s order to murder him.
The Last Jedi further reinforces Snoke’s emotional suppression of Ben Solo when Snoke shames Ben for feeling guilt over murdering his father and orders him to kill Rey — a woman he clearly has romantic feelings for — in order to pass Snoke’s final training (compare this to Palpatine who encourages Anakin’s love for Padme, knowing that it will lead him further to the dark).
Furthermore, Ben Solo arguably exhibits symptoms of someone who has been brain changed — or symptoms of someone whose memories have been deliberately altered by methods of brain control. The most notable example of this is in The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren, appears to be talking to his grandfather’s ghost. However, we know that Kylo is aware his grandfather died not as Vader but as Anakin and that Snoke uses Vader’s death to reinforce sentiment as something to fear and avoid. Therefore, Kylo pleading to Vader’s ghost to show him the dark side is likely Kylo — without his knowledge — pleading with Snoke to reinforce the dark that Snoke has attempted to push upon him since he was a child.
These methods behind brainwashing and brain-changing the clone troopers, sequel trilogy stormtroopers, Anakin Skywalker, and Ben Solo draw heavy allusions to methods of brain control including American psychiatrist Robert Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform and the goals of highly compartmentalized CIA brain control operations in the 1950s. These programs in particular sought to study mind control and behavior modification in order to create dissociated personalities, full on multiple personality disorder, new identities, and amnesia, according to Dr. Colin Ross, author of “The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychologists,” and documents that have been released to the public from declassified projects.
Several methods were employed including hypnosis, drugging, brain electrode implants, and electroshock therapy. Each of these methods have been alluded to in Star Wars canon and will be addressed within this essay series. These methods were operated under several programs including Project CHATTER (1947), Project BLUEBIRD (1950), Project ARTICHOKE (1951), and Project MKULTRA (1953). For example, MKULTRA Subproject 136 details the use of hypnosis to create dissociative states in children. The document reads that “…drugs and psychological tricks will be used to modify [the subject’s] attitude. The experimenters will be particularly interested in dissociative states, from the abaissment de niveau mental to multiple personality in so-called mediums, and an attempt will be made to induce a number of states of this kind, using hypnosis.”
Additionally, in a Memorandum to Dr. G.E. Estabrooks (according to Dr. Ross), a doctor and academic involved in ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD operations, the memo states that “we are very willing indeed to examine your plans on the possibility of applying hypnotism to certain problems of modern warfare.”
The general objective of these experiments was to create an “army” of soldiers who could be assets in the Cold War against Russia. This “army” would be used primarily for espionage. Evidence for this can be found in “Military Application of Hypnotism” (a document declassified under operation ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD), which revealed the basis for hypnosis and indoctrination in order to create controllable “super-spies” (a term coined by Dr. G.H. Estabrooks in his book “Hypnotism”) for purposes of warfare. The book reads:
“I choose two practical applications from many with which to illustrate my proposition:
1. The safeguarding of the messages entrusted to couriers. In deep hypnosis the subject, military or civilian, can be given a message to be delivered to say Colonel X in Berlin. The subject may then be sent to Berlin on any perfectly routine assignment. The message will be perfectly safe and will be delivered to the proper person because
a. the subject will have no memory whatsoever in the waking state as to the nature and contents of the message.
b. it can be arranged that the subject will have no knowledge of ever having been hypnotized.
c. It can be arranged that no one beside Colonel X in Berlin can hypnotize the subject and recover the message…”
In other words, spies whose minds could be altered would be less likely to divulge information since the information simply did not exist in a hypnotized and controlled state.
More insight into the goals of brain control programs can also be found in Brainwashing in Red China, an account of brainwashing methods utilized in Communist China written by CIA officer Edward Hunter that would go on to influence US intelligence brainwashing programs. Hunter writes that “the intent [of brainwashing] is to change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet — a human robot — without the atrocity being visible from the outside. The aim is to create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs and new thought processes inserted into a captive body. What that amounts to is the search for a slave race that, unlike the slaves of olden times, can be trusted never to revolt, always to be amenable to orders, like an insect to its instincts.”
This idea of a “slave race” holds particularly true to what the First Order and Empire were attempting to achieve by brainwashing child soldiers and by dehumanizing clones. Additionally — while more applicable to Ben Solo than to Anakin Skywalker — both Ben and Anakin were groomed and manipulated to push forward new beliefs and thought processes at the behest of Palpatine and Snoke, two political leaders who wished to gain political power from their falls to the dark side.
This essay series will provide an in-depth analysis of the similarities between Cold-War era brainwashing and brain-changing military tactics and the brainwashing and brain-changing tactics used by the Empire and First Order. In part I, I will be comparing the clone troopers and sequel trilogy stormtroopers’ allusions to brainwashed super spies during the Cold War. In part 2, I will be comparing and contrasting Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo and their allusions to Robert Lifton’s “Eight Criteria for Thought Reform” under totalitarian regimes, along with CIA brain-changing tactics.
In both of these parts, I will be speculating on what these allusions mean for The Rise of Skywalker and why the idea of controlling one’s own identity is important for balance and for the saga’s conclusion. This analysis will ultimately defend and provide further support for the theory that the purpose of the sequel trilogy — and specifically The Rise of Skywalker — is to reverse the wrongs committed in the prequel trilogy that led to the rise of the Empire; a regime that sought to corrupt free will and diminish power over the self. Only by gaining power to control the self and discover one’s own identity by defeating the true evil (in this case Palpatine who now appears to be the mastermind behind all accounts of brainwashing) that seeks to take that control away, can the force be balanced, the prophecy be fulfilled, and our heroes find peace. We see this specifically in Ben Solo, whose fall to the dark serves as a reversal of Anakin Skywalker’s transformation to Darth Vader, and Finn, whose story serves as a reversal of Fives, Tups, and other clone troopers.
Further Reading
Phasma (Star Wars): Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), Delilah S. Dawson
The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychologists (2006), Colin A. Ross, M.D.
Brain-washing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds (1951), Edward Hunter
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), Matthew Stover
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Alan Dean Foster
