Libya has no developed polling industry and given the long history of violence by the Gaddafi regime it is doubtful that people in Benghazi, let alone Tripoli, would given honest answers to polling. So, whence derives my eerily precise figure? I can assure you it is based on years of solid scientific research.
Before I explain the research, I invite you to recall the statements of Muammar Gaddafi and Saif al Islam Gaddafi. They claimed that the young people engaged in the uprising against Gaddafi were on drugs: that they had been actively drugged by a coalition of the US, the UK and al Qaeda. Yep, those guys are all really friendly behind the scenes.
Now look at footage of the pro-Gaddafi demonstraters: waving pictures of Gaddafi, waving the green flag, huge delirious grins on their faces. They are the ones who looked like they were on drugs. But they were not. They were suffering from a recognised mental illness: Stockholm Syndrome. It is from this that the 27% figure derives. The FBI has established over several decades that approximately 27% of hostages suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
There are three conditions necessary for Stockholm Syndrome:
- The hostage taker has to threaten the victim’s life and then spare it. Syndrome sufferers come to view this as the hostage taker ‘giving’ them life.
- The hostage has to endure isolation, with only the captor’s viewpoint available.
- The captor has to exercise some degree of ‘kindness’ towards the hostage.
When you think about, all these apply in the case of a sufficiently tyrannical regime. Sufficiently violent governments always threaten their citizens, and frequently kill people merely to cow the remaining population. Through censorship, governments isolate their people from external viewpoints. It is very notable that the Arab uprising began in the tourist cities of Tunis, Cairo and Alexandria, where people are less isolated. Governments always exercise apparent ‘kindness’ by monopolising some essential services such as police protection and education.
The spread of the Internet and international news channels such as Al Jazeera have played an enormous role in breaking down this isolation.
Fortunately, Stockholm Syndrome breaks down very quickly. Within a few years of Hitler’s defeat there were only tiny numbers of Nazis left in Germany. When Gaddafi is gone, there will only be small numbers of his loyalists, but right now he has a substantial number of supporters who are, quite literally, mentally deranged.
Brandjack News 