What Do Domestic Abusers and Chinese Communists Have in Common?

You'll be surprised at the answer ...

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The manipulative techniques of domestic abusers have been well documented not only by psychologists, advocates, and researchers, but by countless survivors. In articles, books, studies, videos and more, the same patterns keep popping up again and again in discussions about domestic violence. Isolation, threats, gaslighting, crazy-making, degrading remarks, and the occasional indulgences are all familiar tactics to keep a victim in a state of foggy, self-doubting, trauma-bonded confusion.

But what does this have to do with Chinese Communists?

Albert D. Biderman was a veteran who, after the WWII ended, worked as a research social psychologist for the U. S. Air Force. He specialized in studying American POWs during the Korean War, and in 1956 he delivered a crucial document to the Air Research and Development Command at Maxwell AFB in Alabama.
In his article, “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War,” Biderman describes the tactics Chinese Communists used after the Korean War to coerce, confuse, and psychologically torture their America POWs.
As I was reading the article I felt a sudden, deep dread of understanding. The tactics the Chinese Communists developed are eerily similar to those of the domestic abuser. And the responses of the POWs mirror the responses of victims of intimate partner violence.

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