this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2021
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So what's the leftist take on MKUltra, what was it for, did is succeed?
A series of experiments for the purpose of learning how to change people's minds for them using a variety of means, most famously (but not only) chemicals. Since we don't know what other directions the research may have gone in or even if they ever stopped (why would they), whether you think it succeeded depends on what they looked into and how ambitious their goals were. Personally, I doubt they have mind control chemicals or anything like that, but I bet they learned a lot about mass media.
the real result of MKULTRA was that they basically perfected torture
Yea, this is the stuff that comes to my mind when I heard or read about MKULTRA. The CIA has been sued 5 times or so by victims of mind control experiments and they lost each time. Some of these people had minor car accidents and suddenly stared remembering stuff they had forgotten about. So there are some witnesses whose stories match. The big picture of the torture was to create multiple personalities. They found that in situation of extreme sensory depravation and self-inflicted pain, people's personalities can split. And once they create a second one, they thought it was be easy to create more. I don't know how much success they had, but i think one goal at the time was to create assassins who could carry out missions and then completely forget about what they had done.
They must have been doing for other reasons too though, because the photos from Abu Graib in the 2000s show these exact forms of torture. The blindfolds, gloves on the hands and earmuffs are the sensory deprivation. And the electrical shocks connected to outstretched hands is the self-inflicted pain. If you simply shock someone, they will feel pain and anger. But if you tell them to hold their arms out for as long as they can, because lowering them will deliver a shock, then the shock will cause pain and frustration. Its a little different. Anyways, they're clearly doing the same stuff. I can't figure out why they would do that to Iraqi prisoners though. Were they trying to make assassins? Or did they think they could get answers? The thing is, what answers did they want? They already knew there were no WMD. It was all a charade anyways. So why the torture?