The term “brainwashing” may harken back to the Cold War, but lately, it’s come back into fashion. Why? One potential answer is the rise of technologies suspected of having mind-controlling powers, chief among them social media. Another is the entrenched political polarization of our time. When your cousin starts spouting unhinged certainties about viruses, vaccines, and climate change, you might wonder: What happened to him? Could he have been . . . brainwashed? Don’t get smug; he’s wondering the same thing about you.

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The term “brainwashing” may harken back to the Cold War, but lately, it’s come back into fashion. Why? One potential answer is the rise of technologies suspected of having mind-controlling powers, chief among them social media. Another is the entrenched political polarization of our time. When your cousin starts spouting unhinged certainties about viruses, vaccines, and climate change, you might wonder: What happened to him? Could he have been . . . brainwashed? Don’t get smug; he’s wondering the same thing about you.
Accusations of brainwashing aren’t neutral claims; they offer a particular explanation for why someone holds beliefs we find preposterous. That explanation attributes those beliefs to deliberate manipulation instead of rational argument or personal conviction. In doing so, it may recast those with “deplorable” beliefs as victims rather than agents, deserving of not just condemnation but sympathy—and, perhaps, treatment.
Labelling people as brainwashed casts them as lost souls whom we, as saviors, must redeem. Yet it might be our own savior complexes that we need to shed. Nikhil Krishnan reckons with the term, and the disturbing possibility that the problem isn’t that millions have been brainwashed—it’s that they haven’t.
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