Psychologists and socialists developed a system of questionnaires and interview questions, “extreme vetting,” that could identify radical Islamic terrorists; and the terrorists will be unaware that they have been identified. “Extreme vetting” could also identify those unable to assimilate into our society. After WWII, social scientists developed questionnaires and interview techniques to identify and quantify traditional family dynamics and antisemitism in the Europe and United States. The same techniques could serve as a model for extreme vetting. Discussion of this extreme vetting model is based on research described in The Frankfurt School Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (TFS) by Rolf Wiggershaus translated by Michael Robertson.
Since The Frankfurt School, as this group of scholars was known, made significant contributions to the left’s Marxist, socialist, progressive, liberal, Democrat agenda in Europe and North America, an introduction is warranted. The Frankfurt School was the only group of scholars whose contribution to Marxist thought was considered collectively significant by the editors of A DICTIONARY OF MARXIST THOUGHT (ADMT). Indeed, several books have been dedicated to the evaluation of the contribution of this group to modern Marxism and the Progressive Liberal movement. This group of German scholars of largely Jewish descent was extremely influential in assuring Marxism’s “assimilation into modern social sciences.” After realizing that the communist revolution was not progressing as expected, this group of Marxists saw the need for a different more inclusive, multidisciplinary, incremental approach to social revolution. They saw that the contradictions between the philosophy of Marx and the realities of communism under Lenin, and later, Stalin in the Soviet Union were largely responsible lack of progress of the revolution in Western Europe and the United States. The group sought to accomplish this goal without stressing either the nature of the principles they promoted or their relationship to the widely discredited Stalinist version of Marxism by eliminating obvious Marxist terminology (ADMT p. 182-188), Stealth Marxism.
In 1923, the Institute of Social Research was established in association with faculty members and academic leaders of Frankfurt University to counter Soviet Communism and pursue an alternate path toward Marxism. In 1933, the group was exiled from Germany and moved to the United States where its principle leaders became faculty members at Columbia University. The group was directed by Max Horkheimer. His two principal associates were Friedrich Pollock and Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno. Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, and Herbert Marcuse were significant, but lesser associates of the group. Walter Benjamin, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Jurgen Habermas were also important but even less integrated associates of The Frankfurt School. Publications by this diverse group included works in the areas of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, economics, national planning, musicology, psychoanalysis, political science, law, pop culture, literature, political economics, essays, and literary criticism. The motivation of this group was to promote an interdisciplinary approach, which became known as Critical Theory, for incremental transformation of society to one based on Marxist principles. With time, this approach has been expanded to include many aspects of the biological and ecological sciences, and whenever possible the physical sciences.
The Frankfurt School was at the forefront developing a model for extreme vetting. From the outset, research projects used psychological and sociological questionnaires and polling techniques as the basis for their critique of society. Their project methods included both written questionnaires and leader driven interview and discussion group methods. Their pioneering work in this area began in the early 1930’s. Eric Fromm was initially responsible for development of the questionnaires and interview techniques. According to Wiggershaus, he expected three categories of information to emerge from analysis of the data. First, he expected to develop a perspective of the political, social, and cultural views of respondents. Second, he sought to formulate social-psychological types and their relationship to various political party groups. Third, he hoped to discern methodological capabilities of questionnaires and further refine the procedures.
Fromm’s ideas for a methodology to accomplish these tasks were to infer the character structure of each person from the whole questionnaire. Questions, that would promote conclusions about the hidden, unconscious tendencies and instincts of each respondent which would reveal their character structure to trained observers, were embedded in the questionnaires. The exhaustive questionnaires included sections containing apparently innocent questions which would permit conclusions about hidden personality traits. The conclusions were validated by comparison with the general impression given by a person’s answers (TFS, p. 113-116). Accordingly, character structures should have a basis in explicit psychological theory, influenced by the empirical material of the research itself, and consistently differentiated. The purpose of these ideas was to develop a methodology that would fulfill the goals of analytical social psychology as he saw them (TFS, p.170-171). The methodology could be used for “extreme vetting” that would identify individuals with strong affinity for radical Islamic terrorism and an inability to assimilate.
Paul Lazarsfeld, was the primary empirical data analyst for the The Frankfurt School with an in-depth understanding of Marxist philosophy. He was a pragmatic and methodical social scientist. His experience evaluating, categorizing, and statistically analyzing psychological and sociological research data based on questionnaires and interviews was extensive. In guidance for interviewers and assistants Lazarsfeld noted that none of our assistants should appear in the role of a reporter or observer, but rather that each of them should blend into life naturally by means of some function or other useful to the people. His guidance was consistent with a previous statement about research involving interviews and questionnaires where he noted that
Only a researcher who is so close to the problem in his own life that he only needs to practice introspection to be able to produce a conceptual and methodological apparatus and possesses the scientific brutality to translate this experience into data and formulae which can be checked can help to make problems less opaque than they are at present (TFS, p. 166-167).
Lazarsfeld’s research was well received by the Rockefeller Foundation which financed a trip to the United States and resulted in an eventual position at Columbia University where he became the first Director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research which was the predecessor of the modern Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. This group could be contracted to develop a tool for “extreme vetting.”
Studies on Authority and the Family was an import result of the collaboration between Fromm and Lazarsfeld. Fromm claimed that the authoritarian, patricentric, bourgeois (Capitalist) Protestant society and family resulted in character types essential for authoritarian and capitalist societies. In Fromm’s view, these character types enjoy accumulating property and capital without regard for the effect of their accumulation on fellow human beings and feel that acquisition of power is even more important than accumulation of property and capital. Studies on Authority and the Family may be one of the most significant assaults on the paternal Judeo-Christian family and Christianity of the first half of the twentieth century. Fromm used the study to formulate his sado-masochistic character type as a product of the patricentric, bourgeois-Protestant society and family. Although data from the questionnaires was not referenced by Fromm, the study appears to be the basis for a great deal of subsequent psychological research designed to demonstrate the adverse effects of the traditional Judeo-Christian family, Christianity, and religion on individuals and society under both capitalism and authoritarian governments. Again, the methodology could be adapted to accomplish “extreme vetting” of immigrants.
Although the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation were approached for antisemitism research grants, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee provided financing for the project. One aspect of the project dealt with antisemitism from the perspective of psychology of the masses including the instincts and thoughts of men. The project was also designed to continue development of experimental psychological research methods. The questionnaire and interview methodology developed required interviewers who know the interviewees and whom the interviewees trust. Questions included, How do you distinguish a Jew from another person?, What do you think about the Detroit Riots?, and Do you go to church? The questions established the attitudes of respondents about Jews and anti-Semitism. The interviewers were told that the openness of everyday conversational situations would allow both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the material collected in a pioneer experiment in social research that would provide insight into what working people honestly are thinking about the whole Jewish question’ and why they feel that way. Polls and interviews could not provide the insights that would be gained from conversations. Obviously, techniques are know to develop tools that would work well for “extreme vetting.”
Wiggershaus reviewed collaboration between The Frankfurt School and a group of psychologist from the University of California at Berkley, R. Nevitt Sanford, Else Frankel-Brunswik, and Daniel J. Levinson, which was a key part of the anti-Semitism project. The Berkley researchers, who referred to themselves as the Public Opinion Study Group early in the project, developed a unique combination of questionnaires, interviews, and projective psychological tests. These collaborators concluded that an indirect means of assessing anti-Semitism would be advantageous and started working to develop a method to accomplish the task. The indirect questions were formulated by using two questionnaires given consecutively to various test groups. The first questionnaire contained no obvious anti-Semitism questions or questions related to other forms of prejudice. The second questionnaire contained a mix of questions related to Jews and ethnocentrism and other subjects mixed in a manner designed to disguise the intent of the questions. The purpose of this format was to find questions in the first questionnaire with high correlation to anti-Semitism displayed in the second questionnaire and develop a highly reliable indirect research tool. Wiggershaus observed that years later Adorno made the following statement about the process of developing the questions:
We spent hours waiting for ideas to occur to us for individual items for the questionnaire. The less their relation to the main topic was visible, the prouder we were of them. We then checked these items in constant pre-tests to restrict the questionnaire and exclude those items which proved not to be sufficiently restrictive (TFS, p. 373).
One result of the collaboration between The Frankfurt School and the Berkley Public Opinion Study Group was development of the F-scale (Fascism Scale). The scale was an effort to measure psychological dimensions, variables, and syndromes, providing evidence of a connection between anti-Semitism, fascism and the destructive character in experimental proof of the threat that anti-Semitism poses to democratic civilization. Similar methodology could be developed that would provide an IT-scale and an A-scale for Islamic terrorist tendencies and assimilation potential, respectively.
The questionnaires included questions such as, Jews seem to prefer the most luxurious, extravagant, and sensual way of living; and The Jews should make a sincere effort to rid themselves of their conspicuous and irritating faults if they want to stop being persecuted. To access the level of anti-Semitism, respondents registered three levels of agreement or disagreement to each question. As in previous questionnaires, projective questions such as, What great people, living or dead, do you admire most? were inserted to evaluate respondent personality structures. Clinical case study methods including use of pictures of groups of people were used to evaluate reactions to various types of people and interpersonal relationships. Initially, seventy-seven women students participated in questionnaires ten of whom were evaluated in the clinical tests. These methods were used to reveal the groups concept of the personality which included determining modes of behavior and conscious convictions, deep-seated, often unconscious, tendencies influencing behavior and convictions, and overt and covert anti-Semitism.
According to Wiggershaus, one result of this research was A Scale for the Measurement of Anti-Semitism. The research also revealed two distinct modes of antisemitism. Affluent Jews, bankers, brokers, and merchants, etc., were viewed as oppressors by middle and lower class non-Jews who saw them as the immediate cause of their misery. Middle class Jews who usually embraced individual achievement while maintaining Jewish ethical and religious values — such as learning, intellectual achievement, social betterment, and things of the spirit contrary to the social behavior customary to their social setting were viewed as non-conformists and also experienced anti-Semitism.
The methodologies and questions exist to determine whether an individual is hiding their ties to radical Islamic terrorism and would support the Constitution of the United States over preference for Islamic enclaves governed under Sharia Law. This process would be extreme vetting. Psychologist and sociologist have developed questionnaires and interview methods that identify conscience and unconscious personality and cultural characteristics associated with what Fromm called the sado-masochistic character type which appears to be consistent with the personality type of radical Islamic terrorists. They developed a scale to measure antisemitism indicating that a scale to can be developed measure conscience and unconscious tendencies and attitudes necessary for an individual to become a terrorist. Similarly, a scale like the Fascism Scale can be developed to measure psychological dimensions, variables, and syndromes to evaluate a potential conscience and unconscious connections between radical Islamic terrorism and Islam. For conversational, individual, and group interviews, undercover intelligence officers and Special Forces operatives have the training and experience to blend into subject groups and conduct casual and non-threatening interviews necessary for effective extreme vetting. In my opinion, an effective system of extreme vetting could be implemented in a relatively short period of time. Such a system would provide far more confidence among We the People regarding immigration of people from areas known to produce radical Islamic terrorists.
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