George Keenan was Ambassador to the Soviet Union (for a short time in 1951-52). See also his article from Foreign Affairs, originally appeared as “Article X”, its title is now known as “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”.
Ninna has recently replied to an earlier post of mine on Peirce’s “Fixation of Belief” (November 2021)
… from Ninna: “This is probably the best, certainly the most chilling, and probably the briefest accurate description of a population control template I ever saw.
It was chilling because I didn’t need secondhand history to affirm this template’s accuracy. My own experience recognized all the hall marks. Twice as chilling because what Pierce illustrates so sharply in 1877 has the same crisp resolution 146 years later.”
The Method of Authority (to fix one’s beliefs) spoken of by Peirce I would argue is in full force today and responsible for much of what we experience as “the feeling of what happens” (on this see Antonio Damasio’s wonderful book by the same name).
… reposting of the piece to which Ninna was replying …
In 1877 and 1878 in the Popular Science Monthly (a different periodical now than it was in the late 19th century) C. S. Peirce published a series of 6 articles collectively known as “Illustrations of the Logic of Science”. In the recent Quarterly roundup the question was again raised as to what one might do in order to “protect” against the Epistemological onslaught of “our most recent unpleasantness”. In Peirce’s series there are two pieces, “The Fixation of Belief” (November 1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (January 1878), that I recommend might offer suggestions that might prove to be of some assistance to us in practicing “safe thought” (prevention after all is / are “safe practices” - think prophylactics on cucumbers - if you are old enough to recall a previous Faucigele connected pandemic).
In The Fixation of Belief when discussing “The Method of Authority” Peirce certainly describes the conditions under which we find ourselves in the midst of “our most recent unpleasantness”.
"… so that the problem becomes how to fix belief, not in the individual merely, but in the community.
Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed. Let all possible causes of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehensions. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard private and unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence. Let the people turn out and tar-and-feather such men, or let inquisitions be made into the manner of thinking of suspected persons, and, when they are found guilty of forbidden beliefs, let them be subjected to some signal punishment. When complete agreement could not otherwise be reached, a general massacre of all who have not thought in a certain way has proved a very effective means of settling opinion in a country. If the power to do this be wanting, let a list of opinions be drawn up, to which no man of the least independence of thought can assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions, in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence of the rest of the world.
This method has, from the earliest times, been one of the chief means of upholding correct theological and political doctrines, and of preserving their universal or catholic character. In Rome, especially, it has been practised from the days of Numa Pompilius to those of Pius Nonus. This is the most perfect example in history; but wherever there is a priesthood — and no religion has been without one — this method has been more or less made use of. Wherever there is an aristocracy, or a guild, or any association of a class of men whose interests depend, or are supposed to depend, on certain propositions, there will be inevitably found some traces of this natural product of social feeling. Cruelties always accompany this system; and when it is consistently carried out, they become atrocities of the most horrible kind in the eyes of any rational man. Nor should this occasion surprise, for the officer of a society does not feel justified in surrendering the interests of that society for the sake of mercy, as he might his own private interests. It is natural, therefore, that sympathy and fellowship should thus produce a most ruthless power. In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, …”. - C. S. Peirce, from The Fixation of Belief, Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877), 1-15
My reply to Ninna …
I think it fitting to add this passage from George Keenan as an attachment to Peirce’s thoughts on “The Method of Authority”.
“There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own war propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision of everything else. Its enemy becomes the embodiment of all evil. Its own side, on the other hand, is the center of all virtue. The contest comes to be viewed as having a final, apocalyptic quality. If we lose, all is lost; life will no longer be worth living; there will be nothing to be salvaged. If we win, then everything will be possible; all problems will become soluble; the one great source of evil — our enemy — will have been crushed; the forces of good will then sweep forward unimpeded; all worthy aspirations will be satisfied.
It will readily be seen that people who have got themselves into this frame of mind have little understanding for the issues of any contest other than the one in which they are involved. The idea of people wasting time and substance on any other issue seems to them preposterous." - George Keenan (* mean that the word was italicized in the original text by the author)
In “Russia and the West: Under Lenin and Stalin”, pps. 11-12, (the italics are the author’s) Mentor paperback edition, third printing, 1961.