Manufacturing Delusion – Mind Control, Media & The Battle for Reality
Buck Sexton, former CIA counterterrorism analyst and author of Manufacturing Delusion, compares Soviet brainwashing, Maoist China’s "thought reform," and modern leftist tactics—like Pavlovian conditioning on college campuses over transgender debates—to identity destruction and forced conformity. He ties jihadi indoctrination (e.g., Boko Haram) to similar degradation methods, then critiques the SAVE Act as a misrepresented voting restriction targeting women with name changes. The episode blends historical parallels with current political battles, framing ideological control as a systemic threat echoing totalitarian pasts while previewing guests like Ted Cruz and Riley Gaines. [Automatically generated summary]
If you want to be a part of the program, it's 800-941 Sean, if you want to join us.
Joining us now, Buck Sexton.
Now, he is the co-host of the Clay and Buck Show, the Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show.
Very, very successful.
What you may not know or remember about him, and you should, he's a former CIA analyst, and he's written a new book.
It's called Manufacturing Delusion, How the Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda Against You.
And he draws on that experience the years that he was in the CIA, you know, combating at the time jihadi terror movements and the history of totalitarian regimes to do this.
Now, I'm fascinated with this topic.
Years and years ago, I read, it wasn't a book.
It was like, I don't know, like a 20-page, 30-page leaflet, a history of Russian mind control techniques.
And if you think back throughout history and you look at, you know, how is it that, you know, people, entire populations can be indoctrinated by radicalism.
You can see it, for example, videos of Hitler speaking to large crowds in Germany and indoctrinating and brainwashing people to go out and kill their fellow human beings.
It's mind-numbing.
You see it in countries like Iran.
These are stark examples.
The Russians back in the day in the former Soviet Union times were probably the masters at disinformation, indoctrination, brainwashing.
And they, in many ways, still are today.
It's a means by which these countries and these dictators are able to control populations.
And if you look at the last century alone, over 100 million human souls slaughtered in the name of some ism.
You know, look at Mao and China and Stalin and Russia and Hitler and Germany and Pol Pot in the killing fields and Mussolini and fascism and Tojo in Japan.
I mean, they have this one common theme, which is indoctrination, brainwashing, propaganda.
And now the question is, is it happening in America?
And Buck is here to answer that question.
And he does answer it in his new book.
By the way, it's on Amazon.com, Hannity.com, and in bookstores around the country.
All right, let's focus in on this, how the left uses brainwashing, indoctrination, propaganda against you.
I mentioned my background and fascination with this topic.
Am I wrong in my analysis?
And how is it applicable today?
No, in fact, I love Sean that you started off with talking about the Soviets because the first chapter in the book, Beyonce, the introduction into the overall theme and thesis.
I mean, the thesis is mass hysteria, mass mind control is the single most dangerous and most challenging thing that we face now.
And when you add technology and AI and robotics and all this into the equation right now, I think it's inevitable that people going mad in masses or in herds and only coming to their senses one by one, this is how societies can fall.
I mean, this is something that we have to be very cognizant of.
And I start off in the first chapter with conditioning and Pavlov and the origins.
You went right through that, the origins of understanding how the brain processes outside stimuli, information, and how that can affect the actual physical body, which is what Pavlov was looking at, right, with the dogs, salivation as a result of a buzzer when they had been fed.
And then Lenin and the early leadership of the Soviet Union were fascinated by the possibilities here.
And they engaged in, in a sense, the biggest mass conditioning experiment of human beings in history to bombard people with propaganda, to force them to lie, to force them to accept an unreality.
And there are tactics and there are procedures that they go through.
And then I, by the way, in other chapters, I go through other variations of this, but the Soviets really started it.
And yes, I mean, today there are things happening in this country that borrow very much from the mind control tactics of whether it's the Soviets or Maoist China and the Cultural Revolution, North Korea, cults.
I get into cults like Om Shinrikyo and Jim Jones and how they do this and why it's so dangerous.
And obviously coming out of COVID, Sean, people lost their mind.
I mean, hundreds of millions of people lost their mind and they went completely nuts.
And I think we still need to come to grips with how that happened so recently and how it can happen again.
Let's talk about it on the macro level and then the micro level.
And we talk about societies and I mentioned a few of them and I mentioned reading a synthesis of Russian mind control techniques.
It was fascinating to me, which is why I'm so interested in your book.
But then you look at Mao, China, Stalin, Russia, Hitler, Germany, Tojo, Japan.
You can look at even the Ayatollah and the power structure in Iran and how people will beat themselves bloody.
How do people get in that state?
It's almost like a hypnotic state.
Well, that's exactly what they try to achieve.
And I get into this.
I mean, jihadi indoctrination, jihadi mind control is what I was dealing with in the CIA counterterrorism center.
Actually, the very, very opening of the book, Sean, I had the CIA had to clear this because it's been long enough that I could talk about these things.
At the time, I got sent as a very junior analyst.
I mean, this is like something out of a movie.
I was absolutely not qualified in terms of like years on the job or anything.
And I admit that.
They sent me in because I said I'll go anywhere.
And one of the kind of gray hair, wise guys in my office who had been there a long time was like, fine, kid, we'll send you to chase down these leads in Nigeria about a group that, by the way, would become Boko Haram and one of the biggest terrorist threats in the world, actually.
I mean, when Boko Haram was at its peak about a decade ago, the only group that was more deadly on the world stage was the Islamic State, which of course then Trump came in and waxed those guys in Syria and all the rest of it.
But the reality here is the process of indoctrination, the process of propagandizing for jihadis is very similar.
I mean, it is a totalitarian belief.
It's a totalitarian ideology.
You have to give yourself over entirely.
And it begins with confusion and degradation.
Those are two of the primary tactics.
They also work on things or bring things in like false confession.
And then there's, of course, identity construction.
Once you've been broken down, then they remold you.
They rebuild you in this image or in this framework that is useful to them politically.
So you see this with the Ayatollahs in Iran.
You see this, though, in any country where there is a total grasp of power over the media, over the apparatus of information and communication.
And then in this country, I mean, I just bring this down to you, you want to talk about confusion and degradation as tactics of mind control.
Look what's going on with the transgender situation, the transgender debate.
We don't know what words we're supposed to use, what pronouns we're supposed to use.
You got these mass shooters now who have completely, obviously, lost their minds that everyone's known for a long time.
But we are all supposed to celebrate their lives.
We are all supposed to say that what they are going through and what they're doing is actually a wonderful thing.
And medicine has been supporting this up to this point.
So it's a mandatory lie that is, in fact, the heart of the mandatory delusion that they're enforcing on people here.
And it is a totalitarian belief system, right?
I mean, if you can't name someone what their name was 10 years ago because they changed it and they went from Steve to Susan and you can get kicked off of a platform, that is a totalitarian ethic if it's not necessarily the Soviet Union.
It's still refusing free open debate and discussion.
And I think the left in this country is captured by this.
How do you convince somebody, an individual, a young person, assuming that they were born and they weren't born evil?
I mean, if my religious beliefs tell me we were born in sin, but there is redemption and forgiveness and salvation.
But putting that aside, how do you convince somebody that would otherwise grow up, maybe even agnostic or whatever, that if they go out and kill large numbers of people, that God, or in the case of Islamic radicals, Allah will reward them with 72 virgins when they kill themselves, and then convince them to strap a bomb on themselves and go into a crowd and kill innocent people.
Well, what you're asking is really it's at the heart of how a delusion is manufactured.
Obviously, the book is manufacturing delusion.
It gets to this.
And it goes through these various stages.
And each chapter, Sean, so I mean, maybe one way to answer the question is to just say that when I pulled together the chapters, it's conditioning, it's brainwashing, it's isolation, it's forced phobia.
That's a big one, by the way.
And that's essentially, you know, phobia is an irrational fear.
And forced phobia would be when they put you through the belief that, oh, if you don't show up and blow yourself up as a suicide bomber, you know, there are British guys who are watching videos on YouTube showing up in Iraq when I was there to blow themselves up, right?
I mean, you look at these things, I mean, you're asking, how does an otherwise normal person go through this process to the point where they believe, whether it's for Hamas or for al-Qaeda or for whomever, that not only should they do this, it is the highest moral good that they are pursuing.
And it's because they have been put through the delusion has been manufactured.
They've been put through this process of conditioning, isolation, identity construction, menticide, which is killing of the mind.
And I go through all these are like the different tactics.
This is the patchwork.
It's kind of a cycle.
And these things all lead into each other.
But the psychology on this is fascinating, Sean.
There's this guy, Robert Lipton.
I talk about him extensively in the book, who was a psychologist, who traveled to Hong Kong to do a series of interviews with Westerners who had been in the early days of Maoist China had been put through their, what they called thought reform.
And thought reform is actually what gave us brainwashing.
We call it brainwashing.
The Chinese called it thought reform.
We came up with actually a journalist named Edward Hunter came up with this term brainwashing, which just really caught on.
But he sat down with these Westerners, priests, you know, people that had been there teaching school, who in some cases had been abused for months or even a few years in these cells.
And when they first came out, they were willing to defend their captors and their treatment.
They were willing to talk about how maybe they did do the crazy things that they were forced or they confessed to doing as part of this process.
They were so broken down, the conditioning was so extreme that for a period of months after they escaped to freedom out of Maoist communist China, they weren't themselves at all.
And this is where you get into at what level can our circuitry be rewired?
At what level can this stuff be controlled?
And it always varies.
You know, there's the, to bring it back to Pavlov for one second, this sort of seminal story I tell about Pavlovian conditioning and how Lenin and the Soviets were like, this guy's really onto something.
There was an incident at one of Pavlov's labs where in St. Petersburg, the river has a history of rising, creating tremendous flooding.
And Sean, as we know, he had all these dogs.
Pavlov had these dogs in cages.
And they were in these cages, frantic, trying, you know, knowing that they're going to drown.
And at the last moment, a lab worker managed to get to the lab and actually, happy ending in a sense that the dogs were saved, but they were put through so much trauma over the hours of the water rising that it changed their personalities.
And Pavlov noted this, that the trauma of facing this death for these animals, some of them became aggressive when they had formerly been passive.
Some of them became deeply fearful of certain members of staff when they had been very close to them.
It had redone their wiring.
And Pavlov had this aha moment.
So, you know, some of it is through force, Sean, and some of it is through messaging, right?
There's locking people in a cell, there's making them repeat the same thing over and over again.
That's a lie.
And those things combine together.
And this was, it was really like a machine.
I mean, it was, that's why I say it's manufactured.
The Soviets did it.
The Chinese did it.
And college campuses do it today to left this.
I mean, this is the thing.
They don't do it with you in a cell, but there are similar tactics that are applied.
And that's why people can believe things like, you know, women can have male genitalia and they say these things out loud in our society.
It all ties in.
It's hard to imagine, you know, that it's been five years since the passing of Rush LeBron.
It really is.
And I said at the time, and I stand by this today, that nobody can ever replace Babe Ruth.
Never Rush Great Things00:11:12
I mean, that's what he was.
I mean, what's amazing about his life to me is that he forged a path and he took so much heat throughout his career.
And all of us in talk radio, all of us even on cable news, everybody in the podcast arena, everybody, you know, we owe a debt of gratitude to him because he took opinionated programming and he went national and he became a phenomenon.
And he did it with a great sense of humor, always had his tongue in his cheek, and with amazing analysis and insights that you could never get from anyone else.
I used to listen to him and think, man, why didn't I think of that?
Because he had a way of looking at things that was just on a different level, a different dimension, even.
And anyway, it's hard to, you know, think that it's been five years already since we lost him.
And I said at the time, and I'll say again today, that I know what Rush would want.
I knew him personally.
And I'm not saying I was his best friend.
I wasn't.
But I'm telling you, he would want all of us to do what we're doing now, which is to fight for liberty and freedom and individualism and to be the best you can be and to fight for our country and to battle the radical left.
I don't think you'd like a lot of the, quote, infighting that's going on.
You notice, Linda, I've stayed out of a lot of that crap.
I don't want any part of it.
I really don't.
No, that's, I mean, listen, first of all, you know, you have 78 jobs.
You're a little busy.
You don't have time to get caught up in any of the crap.
No, I just, but I really don't care what other people do or say.
I mean, that's why, you know, Fox PR tells me that they're going to write a story that you're jealous of.
I'm like, jealous of what?
I don't pay attention to what most people are doing.
I'm like, go do your thing.
I'm going to do my thing.
And my goal is to create the best content I can produce.
We try, we all work so hard to do a great three hours of radio every day.
And we work hard for TV.
And I'll work hard on this video podcast that we're releasing a couple of days a week.
It gives me a chance to do something different, long form, not rushed, less interruptive.
People complain about interruptions, but you have five minutes on TV.
You got to get answers from people sometimes.
But in, you know, remembering Rush yesterday, last night, President Trump put this message out, and I want to play it for you.
Well, this is the fifth anniversary of the loss of a really great man, a great conservative, somebody that loved our country, loved his family, loved a lot of things.
But he was a friend of mine, Rush Limbaugh.
I'd never met Rush when I announced that I was running.
I'll never forget 2015.
And I got a call all excited that Rush Limbaugh just endorsed you.
I never met him.
He liked my opening speech.
He liked when I got up in June and I said, you know, we got bad borders.
We got bad crime.
We got bad everything.
And he liked it.
I came down the escalator with now our first lady, and he thought it was great.
And he endorsed me.
And then I got to know him.
And I realized what a great guy he was.
But it's five years that we miss Rush.
As Sean Hannity would often say, there will never be another Rush Limbaugh.
So to his family, his great wife and family, I just want to say we miss you all.
We miss him.
And there'll never be anybody like him.
Thank you very much.
There'll never be anyone else like him.
He was fun to hang out with, too.
The times I hung out with him.
Remember, we went, we'd go down to Palm Beach and we'd go in his studio and I'd interview him for an hour for TV.
Listen, when we went down to the compound, and it was before you had like officially moved all the way there, and it was crazy to see the EIB network.
It was a beautiful place.
They had really nice people there.
He couldn't have been more gracious, you know, and he just, when you saw the operation, all the, it reminds me of you.
Like, you know, you had a stack of stuff and it was just papers everywhere.
It's like when I say to you, hey, I handed that to you and three seconds later, you're like, you never gave that to me.
I'm like, well, it's missing in the mountain of paperwork.
But it's a real thing when people are hosting and they're actually doing research and then they make notes and they go back to it.
You know, he was the, he was the OG when it came to that.
Oh, big time.
Big, big, big time.
You know, he syndicated in 1988.
I started him radio in 1987.
And I will never forget where I was.
I was actually at that college radio station that ran me out of town.
And some guy comes in, you got to listen to this guy, Rush Limbaugh.
And he was on KTMS in Santa Barbara at the time when I lived out in California.
And this is in the 80s for crying out loud.
And he did a homeless update like the first time.
And he was talking about Santa Barbara.
It became huge out there.
And there was a lot of people.
Was he talking about you because you used to lean up against the trees and drink with the homeless?
Was it you?
I did do that occasionally.
I'm like, did you see Sean Annity?
You know what?
I learned a lot about homeless people back then.
A lot of them were vets.
A lot of them, you know, just use the old phrase down on their luck.
And when you have conversations with them, I just, I learned a lot.
I felt sorry for them.
I wish, you know, we'd talk to the, I'd talk to them about, well, how are you going to get out of this hole you're in?
Anytime I run into a homeless person now, at one point in my life, I was stubborn and stupid and I thought I'd never give money to like somebody that is asking for money.
Now I will stop and I will talk to them.
And if they seem sober, I will last them.
Are you going to spend this money on drugs or alcohol?
I just want you to tell me the truth if you are.
And inevitably, I've yet to have one person say, well, actually, no, I did have one guy say, you know, I'm going to probably buy some beer if it's okay.
He did say that.
That's not so bad.
Okay.
So my usual practice is to give them like 20 bucks so they don't have to stand out there all day getting a dollar here, 50 cents there or whatever.
And I'm like, please don't waste my money on drugs and alcohol.
Please get some nourishment in your body, get some food.
And then I talk to him about, you know, how maybe they might want to come up with a plan to get out of the situation that they're in.
And I'll ask them if they work and I'll ask them if they have a place to live and I'll ask them a bunch of questions.
And sometimes you have long conversations.
Remember, I was outside of 7-Eleven not far from where I live, and I was talking to this guy for a half hour.
Another guy walks by and says, Sean Hannity.
I said, yes, sir.
And he's like looking at me like I'm crazy having this long conversation with this homeless guy.
But I, you know, I talked to him about God and about addiction and about getting a job and getting a small studio apartment and getting his life on track.
And I went through it all.
I don't know if I have the time.
I like to do that.
You wouldn't give a homeless person a penny, would you?
I would give them a sandwich.
I would give them food.
That's cool.
I will not give them a huge money.
I actually gave a homeless guy money one time when I was living in Chelsea.
And it was the same guy.
And I saw him and it was very cold.
And I went up and I tried to give him a sandwich and he threw it in my face.
And he called me a bunch of disgusting words.
And he said, if you're not going to give me cash for crack, keep it moving.
I said, all right, good talk.
Give me the sandwich back.
He took this.
It was in tinfoil, so no harm was done.
I'm like, fine, you don't want the sandwich?
Fine.
It's just, you know, there is a real mental health and drug abuse problem in the homeless encampments.
You know, literally, like I came through the subway today, and I mean, there were people just rolling their drugs up on like the shelves of like there's like little like areas you can stand in on the platform.
I have one guy shooting up, one guy with a pipe, one guy rolling his next joint.
I was like, I cannot believe where we're at.
This is a real thing.
Well, I mean, you have to assess the situation and make sure that it's safe.
I just happen to be in a position I can protect myself.
I wouldn't recommend everybody do this.
And I don't know.
I just, I feel compelled to do it.
And I don't know why, but I do.
And many a time I've been with my kids and they're like rolling their eyes.
And or if we pass somebody on the street, you know, I'll take money out of my pocket.
My kids will be betting how much I'm going to give them.
And I don't think it's a bad idea, but I don't.
I'm not saying it because I think I'm able to afford it.
What's the worst that can happen?
They can lie to me and they're going to get the money.
They're going to get the drugs.
They're going to do the drinking anyway.
What's the worst that can happen that I try to give them a little help?
But more importantly, I find the talking part is what surprises them.
Like in New York, I think I was less inclined to do it because there's so much danger among those that are mentally ill, that are homeless, that are begging.
You know, the tendency towards violence if somebody's on crack or heroin and it just was not the right environment.
But I find down here, it's, you know, you can have conversations with people, and I do.
Aren't you proud of me?
Listen, it's a sunshine state for a reason, my friend.
People are happy.
It's cold, gloomy, foggy, and snowy.
Maggie in Michigan.
Hey, Maggie, how are you?
Hey, Sean.
Great, great to talk to you.
Hey, I called.
I wanted to just talk to you a little bit about how I'm feeling.
Very disconcerted about the changes with the SAVE Act and how the left is actually trying to use this now as a mechanism for making people feel like they are trying to put against the women's vote because the women now have to go back and find their marriage license if their name is different than their birth certificate.
Or they've had to do that for like if they've gone through a divorce and had their name changed or something.
And I've seen so many posts of my friends and other family members that have said that this is only a conspiracy against trying to keep women from voting.
Nancy Grace Tonight Eastern00:02:08
And we need to get rid of the SAVE Act because of this.
And, you know, I'm like, what is the deal, people?
Let me play one Democrat doing exactly what you're saying.
This is Jared Maskowitz.
Having an ID to vote would be in step with the law.
So are you going to vote for the law?
If they put forward a bill that says you can use your driver's license or your state-issued identification to vote, I support that.
We have that in Florida.
But the SAVE Act goes way beyond that.
It would affect women whose birth certificate doesn't match their driver's license.
It will depress turnout by requiring people to go and re-register to go get the turnout.
That's true, Congressman.
That's not true.
It is absolutely true.
This is about depressing turnout.
It's not about making sure non-citizens vote.
Absolute lie.
The 32-page legislation in the SAVE Act specifically addresses that issue.
They're lying.
So you're right.
He's wrong, Maggie.
Crazy.
So keep doing what you're doing.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Thank you.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity tonight, 9-Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Now, by the way, we do have an update in the search for Nancy Guthrie.
Apparently, some internet users searched for Nancy Guthrie's address and Savannah Guthrie's salary before the mother vanished.
Don't you think that's odd, Linda?
I got to be honest with you, Sean.
I think this whole thing is odd.
There are so many things that are more wrong than right.
It is, it's really overwhelming.
Unbelievable.
I don't know.
We'll have that with Nancy Grace tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Also, tonight, we have Senator Ted Cruz writes previous tonight, Riley Gaines, Dr. Drew.
Caroline Sunshine is going to join us and much, much more.