The Sons of Jacob Think Tanks

The Sons of Jacob Think Tanks were the clandestine, high-level planning sessions at which the philosophy, social structure, and key policies of the Republic of Gilead were designed and debated before the regime's takeover. Drawing on a range of historical precedents and pseudoscientific theories, these meetings produced the blueprint for Gilead's totalitarian system, including its reproductive policies, its system of social control, and its symbolic apparatus.

Origins and Participants

The Think Tanks were organized shortly after the recognition of the superpower arms stalemate and the signing of the classified Spheres of Influence Accord, which left the superpowers free to deal with rebellions within their own empires. The official records of these meetings were destroyed after the middle-period Great Purge, which discredited and liquidated a number of the original architects of Gilead. However, some information survives through the diary kept in cipher by Wilfred Limpkin, one of the sociobiologists present. The sociobiological theory of natural polygamy was used as a scientific justification for some of the regime's practices. Two key figures emerged from the Limpkin material: Frederick R. Waterford and B. Frederick Judd.

Key Figures and Their Contributions

Waterford possessed a background in market research and was responsible for the design of the female costumes, including the suggestion that the Handmaids wear red, a color he borrowed from the uniforms of German prisoners of war in Canadian POW camps of the Second World War era. He is credited with originating the term "Particicution," which he lifted from an exercise program popular in the late twentieth century; the collective rape ceremony, however, was suggested by an English village custom of the seventeenth century. The term "Salvaging" may also have been his, though by the time of Gilead's inception it had spread from its origin in the Philippines to become a general term for the elimination of political enemies. Judd, by contrast, was less interested in packaging and more concerned with tactics. He suggested the use of an obscure CIA pamphlet on the destabilization of foreign governments as a strategic handbook for the Sons of Jacob, and he drew up the early hit lists of prominent Americans. He is suspected of having orchestrated the President's Day Massacre, which required maximum infiltration of the security system surrounding Congress and without which the Constitution could never have been suspended. The National Homelands and the Jewish boat-person plans were both his, as was the idea of privatizing the Jewish repatriation scheme, with the result that more than one boatload of Jews was simply dumped into the Atlantic to maximize profits. Judd is credited with devising the form of the Particicution ceremony, arguing that it would act as a steam valve for the female elements in Gilead. The idea of using women, the Aunts, to control other women was also Judd's, but the implementation—giving the Aunts names derived from commercial products available to women in the immediate pre-Gilead period—bore Waterford's mark.

Significance and Legacy

The Think Tanks were the crucible in which Gilead's synthesis of disparate elements was forged. As the historical analysis notes, there was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: its genius was synthesis. The policies and symbols devised in these secret sessions—from the red dresses of the Handmaids to the brutal spectacle of the Particicution—became the defining features of the regime. The destruction of the official records during the Great Purge underscores the regime's paranoid and self-consuming nature, while the survival of Limpkin's diary provides a rare, if fragmentary, window into the minds of the men who built the Republic of Gilead.