ABSTRACT
To ‘indoctrinate’ originally meant simply to ‘teach’ or ‘instruct’. But today it is generally regarded as a normative term with strong negative overtones. To indoctrinate now implies something like taking over, closing, or controlling the minds of others. Indoctrinated people hold unwaveringly to their views, and we associate them particularly with political and religious extremists. Furthermore, indoctrination seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. We need only look to North Korea, so-called ‘re-education’ camps for the Uighur in China, or the populist nationalism incessantly and insistently instilled around the world. Terrorists who believe unwaveringly that they are justified by their cause, people who are willing to bring death to their own supporters in their unyielding conviction that they alone have access to the truth, people who are incapable of critically examining their religious beliefs, those who cannot see beyond ‘my country, right or wrong’, and those who do not pause to question as they carry out hideous atrocities on fellow humans in the name of some creed, faith, or ideology – all testify to the reality of indoctrination. Nor is indoctrination only to be found in foreign terrorist cells. Some religious and political fanatics in the West appear to be as thoroughly indoctrinated as members of Al-Qaeda or Isis. But what exactly turns religious instruction or political teaching into indoctrination in this negative sense? What is the difference between being committed and being indoctrinated? Is teaching children to salute the flag and believe in the greatness of the nation indoctrination? What are the defining characteristics of indoctrination?
