Juche as addiction, not ideology

By Jason Lim

A Mother Jones article titled, “Inside the Radical, Uncomfortable Movement to Reform White Supremacists,” Wes Enzinna writes, “de-radicalization activists argue that much of what the left thinks it knows about shutting down racist extremists is misplaced. When it comes to changing individuals, denunciation may counteract rather than hasten de-radicalization. If that seems like surrender, consider that some researchers who study hate groups think we should view violent extremism not only as a problem of ideology, but also as a problem of addiction: a craving for group identity...”

This insight really struck me: white supremacy as a craving for social identity. This reminded me of what Daniel Pink wrote in his book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth of What Motivates Us.”

Pink writes, “When it comes to motivation, there's a gap between what science knows and what business does. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy ― the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery ― the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose ― the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

Just to add my own spin to Pink's insights, I believe that purpose ― or meaning ― is the context in which we seek autonomy and mastery. In other words, autonomy and mastery are relative concepts that cannot be absolutely measured. No one is truly autonomous ― we all need a community in which to depend on, whether we know it or not, in order to function and survive. Mastery is similar. It's a relative concept. Can Lebron James really be the greatest of all time if there was no NBA? Could Albert Einstein really have been the incredible genius if there weren't people like me who struggle with algebra?

To dig a bit deeper into this rabbit hole, it then goes to show that purpose/meaning is actually derived from the community that we join in order to obtain our social identity. This is right in line with the Social Identity Theory that proposes, “Social identity relates to the perception of oneself and others based on the social groups that they belong to… It relates to how one's viewpoint is influenced by the collective values of the group.”

To bring all this back to white supremacy, those who join these hate-groups are basically looking for meaning by searching out a social identity that can articulate a community-based purpose to their lives. By joining such hate groups then, they become radicalized to the group's hate ideology because that's the price of admission ― the cognitive norm ― that you have to pay in order to be a part of the in-group.

Perhaps this viewpoint was best articulated in the 1998 film called, “American History X,” starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong as disillusioned neo-Nazis. It showed the complex communal bond that underpinned the two brothers' involvement in the white supremacist movement from a personal narrative perspective rather than an academic study, showing the human underneath the ideology.

Then how is North Korea like white supremacy? To understand this, you have to appreciate North Korea's birth as a reaction against two traumas in the early 20th century. The first one was the brutal occupation by Imperial Japan that sought to eradicate the Korean culture outright ― this conversely ignited an ethnocentric form of nationalism that continue to drive the North Korean's self-identity to a large extent. The second trauma was a deep sense of betrayal by the people against the ruling elites who, either through sheer incompetence, or outright treason, condemned the people to suffer.

Kim Il-sung skillfully transformed this national narrative into the Juche principle in which the Korean people will no longer be dependent on outside forces and be fully autonomous in all things, especially national security and the people's welfare. Nor will they allow some elite ruling class to betray them again. In essence, he had created both a social identity based on the Korean ethnicity and the associated purpose of independence and autonomy, rising out of self-mastery of their own wellbeing. Pink, anyone?

Juche is an addiction, not an ideology. The Kim regime then reinforced this meaning at every opportunity with every resource that the state could muster, with the U.S. replacing Japan as the big, bad existential threat that sought to make the Korean people slaves once again. In that sense, the North Korean people are suffering from a collective addiction to a specific meaning that imbues their group identity with a deliberate purpose.

Enzinna writes, “contact hypothesis” ― the idea that when people are put in intimate settings with those about whom they hold biased views, their stereotypes dissolve. While some have criticized this as an inverted manifestation of white privilege _ expecting the oppressed to soothe their oppressors' guilty conscience ― it remains an effective tool...”

To North Korea, this means that incentivizing them to engage with the outside world would be the surest and quickest way to wean them from their Juche addiction. Especially in matters of human rights abuses and religious freedom, exposure to the international norm, not denunciation, would probably be the quickest way to address these issues.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.