A person who systematically changes another person's thoughts or beliefs, often through repeated messaging, isolation, or manipulation rather than honest persuasion.
Compound of 'brain' and 'washer'; the term 'brainwashing' was coined by American journalist Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe Chinese Communist interrogation techniques, creating this agent noun with '-er' suffix.
Brainwashing was officially defined during the Korean War when soldiers seemed to change their political views—but later research showed people are actually harder to manipulate than originally feared, and that critical thinking is surprisingly resilient.
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