Lecture: Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism

November 10

Lecture: Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism
Prof. Robert J. Lifton M.D. (Senior University Lecturer, John Jay College)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 8:00 PM
In 1995, members of a little known Japanese religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo stunned the world with a poison-gas attack in the Tokyo subways, leaving 12 people dead and more than 6,000 injured. The trials of cult leader Asahara and his followers have moved slowly through the Japanese legal system and memories of the terrorist attack will continue to have a corrosive effect on Japanese society for many years to come. Psychiatrist and psycho-historian Dr. Robert J. Lifton has studied the psychology of the terrorists and the apocalyptic vision of their leaders in his new book Destroying the World to Save It. His previous books include Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961), Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967),  Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1968), America and the Asian Revolutions (1970), History and Human Survival (1970), Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans–Neither Victims Nor Executioners (1973), Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers  (1975), Six Lives Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (1979), Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986), Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (1990), Hiroshima in America:  50 Years of Denial (1995).

Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute