The Left's Psychiatric Weapon

From D. F. Mulder on American Thinker.com (Oct. 11, 2021):

It was from the 1940s through the 1970s, the height of the Cold War, that Soviet authorities notoriously politicized the field of psychiatry. One should always be very suspicious of any government official appealing directly to the “science.” Politicians know science like they know ethics. In 1963, Russian-Jewish poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky was twice placed in a psychiatric facility against his will and ultimately charged with the crime of “social parasitism” (according to the lawful authorities, not making sufficient contributions to society). He was eventually expelled from the country.

The Soviet government even went so far as to make up fictitious psychological illnesses like “sluggish schizophrenia” to justify the forcible psychiatric incarceration of people who committed no obvious wrongs but were simply brave enough to criticize the Soviet regime or to reject communism altogether. Not that governments making people into criminals for entirely contrived, inane, power-serving reasons is historically abnormal. Jesus of Nazareth was a famous criminal of course. So were Tresckow and von Stauffenberg. So were all the Founders. This is really quite normal for “law” and “order,” but adding the “crazy” element to the equation (placing people in institutions Russians came to call “psikhushkas”) was really the cherry on top. Using phony science to discredit and destroy enemies of the state for rejecting the state’s official ideology is a quintessentially lefto-Bolshevist tactic.

This is why it is quite interesting that our own government has now entered a very similar business, a softer form of politicizing lunacy to be sure, but no less absurd or sinister. You are all probably familiar with Stuart Scheller, the Marine who famously criticized the sloppy, poorly planned, poorly conceived Afghanistan withdrawal. Our corrupt government’s unconscionable treatment of the man has been nothing short of scandalous, throwing him in the brig, accusing him of a litany of crimes, and refusing to allow him to resign his post. However, what really jumped out at me was that to top it all off they demanded he get a “psychiatric evaluation.” There is absolutely no evidence or reason to think there is anything wrong with Col. Scheller psychologically. None. Zero. So why would the government order him to get a psych eval? Well, Scheller thought his superiors were trying to do him a solid, maybe get him diagnosed with PTSD so that he might be found less than fully (legally and otherwise) responsible for his public statements. I happen to think that is a very naïve take.

This kind of thing is never done with good intentions. Governments are not benevolent entities. This was a tyrannical assault on the state’s critics, just as in the case of Brodsky, Grigorenko, and Solzhenitsyn. It is an attempt to discredit critics of power. The mention of a psychiatric evaluation taints the source of the ideas/critiques, and thereby strengthens the position of the state, especially states run by criminals. [read more]

The Soviets like the Left just use science as a weapon against their enemies.