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KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America (1984)
- savant_penguin 5y agoIt's bizarre how accurate this is
- alsaaro 5y agoHow do you figure? This person thought in the 1980's that American left wing propaganda will subvert and eventually destabilize the United States to a point were they lose a hot war with the Soviet Union, and that the American left wing propagandist will be summarily executed by the Soviet occupiers, rather than be allowed to rule. Assuming you aren't from a parallel dimension, Bezmenov's predictions proved false. Did you watch the video?
- avgcorrection 5y agoRussia launching a full-scale invasion against a neighboring country surely is the complete opposite of the specter of some cunning Soviet/Russian intelligence officer who deftly turns a whole nation against itself.
- dragonwriter 5y agoIt's not really the opposite; what the defector describes is the strategy used in the prep work that went into the invasion and which made Putin think that the West would crumble in the face of it. It did weaken Western countries internally, and the relations between them, but not (at least, I think from evidence so far) as much as Putin needed.
- avgcorrection 5y agoSubverting Ukraine would mean to sow so much division internally that a sizable minority of the defending force would be motivated to defect to the other side and to compromise their countrymen. But in actual reality Russia faces a highly motivated and bitterly angry defensive force with a high morale.[1] And those same Ukrainians ousted a democratically elected (although eventually repressive and violent) pro-Russian government just eight years prior. [1] That’s just what I have heard, living in a different European country. Maybe it’s just Ukrainian propaganda.
- dijonman2 5y agoLeft wing propaganda is destabilizing the US from the inside. You can’t be a republican without being called a nut job anymore. We’re more divided than ever.
- savant_penguin 5y agoI have watched the video. The US universities are today full of Marxist propagandists. Left wing politicians who visited and defended socialist dictatorships are elected and reelected. Many tonight shows enjoy calling anyone who disagrees with them the "alt right". This is consistent with Marxist propaganda coming from Americans themselves. The US media pretends there is no burning buildings behind them and call protests 'peaceful'. That is very similar to the idea that people will ignore burning evidence right in front of their eyes. If you make obvious statements about basic biology that contradicts the current insanity you are going to be cancelled. (Again ignoring evidence) Th US is incredibly divided. People who disagree with the left are consistently called Nazis and yelled down. If you are going to make an event with people that disagree with the left protesters will physically stop you from getting in. Where do you think putin took that "attacking neonazis" from? Calling your opponent a Nazi to justify taking them down has been a constant political tool in the west
- jenkstom 5y agoCivil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What? This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds like more disinformation.
- dijonman2 5y agoWhat about it isn’t true today?
- simonh 5y agoHe’s looking at things through a KGB lens. He doesn’t have any real clue what civil rights was about because he’s not part of western culture, but he was embedded in KGB culture and what he says about that is credible.
- akagusu 5y agoToday, everything different from the "common sense" spread through the media is considered misinformation. Think about this war. Everyone is condemning Russia, making statements supporting Ukraine, applying all kind of sanctions against Russia. Why did not governments do the same when US invade Iraq or Afghanistan?
- jhbadger 5y agoLots of governments did criticize the US. However, there is a big difference between regime change and claiming that a country itself has no right to exist and intending to add it to your country.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoLeftists today love to parrot the Ukraine are neo-nazi dreck. Obviously, the USSR is gone but it did manage to demoralize enough people to shill for Russian foreign policy despite Putin being much more fascist adjacent, and enjoying close support from the bellicose Orthodox patriarchs who rail against western politics instead of sticking to droning on about God.
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- pelasaco 5y agoi tried to start a discussion here about it too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665487
- baal80spam 5y agoI've submitted this in the past but it was mercilessly downvoted within minutes. Hopefully it sticks this time!
- poxwole 5y agoOh look an ex soviet grifter who was a low level employee in India and can not speak with any authority on the matters of "cultural Leninism"
- zackees 5y ago
- reactspa 5y agoExactly. Why should we believe this Yuri guy? He'll say anything to excite the TV show's audience. Serious questions to anti-Putin Americans: if Mexico developed a cozy relationship with China and Russia, and, as a sovereign nation, decided it wanted to install their nukes on its (Mexico's) land, would America allow it? (This is a serious question, please don't treat it lightly.)
- missedthecue 5y agoDidn't this scenario literally happen in Cuba? It was resolved with diplomacy, not annexation.
- reactspa 5y ago"Diplomacy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
- missedthecue 5y ago1. That was an attack by native cubans, not the US military. 2. Well before the Soviets put nukes in Cuba.
- reactspa 5y agoAh, you are right about "2". Thank you. "1" is debatable (it was US-backed).
- notalongtimer 5y agoThe documentary Hypernormalisation talks about the strategies Bezmenov lines out the four basic stages from a slightly different angle. Worth a watch. Things have gotten even more frightening since this warning. Bezmenov talks as if it's only the left that's targeted by ideological subversion, and maybe that was the primary strategy at the time, but it sure seems like both sides are are in play now. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/hypernormalisation-2016/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/hypernormalisation-2016...
- raidicy 5y agoI wish there were literature or media on the subjects that Curtis covers. I find Adam Curtis is more focused on making entertaining docus than explicitly informative. On occasion in other docs he's made some claims of fact on topics that have more nuance than "yes" or "no".
- propagandist 5y agoSimulation and Simulacra is probably where hypernormalisation got its inspiration.
- propagandist 5y agoIt's a great watch for that reason and for laying out just how much of our political systems are pure theatre. Fantastic production to boot.
- ta988 5y agoThere is almost no "left" (in the European sense) in the US. So yes, not much to subvert.
- jhbadger 5y agoNot much in office, no. But say, on US academic campuses you'll find lots of people even in the 21st century who still claim to be Marxist. The traditional Left definitely exists in the US as a subculture.
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- cs702 5y agoThe more shocking/interesting aspect of this interview, for me, is to hear how the KGB (and its successor organization(s) in Russia, I imagine) would work over multiple decades to "subvert" the people of a country, in four stages -- demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization: 1) demoralize the people of a country over a period of "at least 15 to 20 years;" 2) destabilize the country's institutions over a period of "2 to 5 years;" 3) precipitate a crisis that would normally unfold over a period of "up to 6 weeks;" and 4) normalize the new state of affairs. Whether the KGB and its successor organization(s) could have or might have been successful is of course debatable, but no one can deny this kind of persistent effort to subvert another country's people over such a long horizon is... audacious (words fail me). In particular, I find the idea of a long-term government-sponsored program whose goal is to "demoralize" people a bit upsetting: It stands directly against the let's-roll-up-our-sleeves, we-can-do-it optimism for which US entrepreneurs have long been known around the world.
- mantas 5y agoDemocratically elected governments have a very short shelf life. 4, 8 years if lucky. Meanwhile authoritarian governments have much much more time. And since authoritarian governments tend to have nepotistic tendencies, the play can even span generations.
- nradov 5y agoElected governments come and go, but the "deep state" bureaucracy and associated private think tanks serve to maintain some level of policy continuity. Very few autocratic governments in the modern era have successfully managed a transition to the next generation.
- baybal2 5y agoPutin was in power for around 23 years, during which he completely dulled Western sense of danger by constantly blowing hot, and cold. What Russians call "blowing fuflo" was certainly in use by the time the second flare up of second Chechnya war - 2003. They funded a gazillion of cheap academicians, for-profit journalists, and think tanks with no apparent goal besides just keeping the buzz about it going, no matter what the actual argument was. Basically they reduced the signal-to-noise ratio of sensible political discourse to near none, which then swayed the West into making bad decisions, and assured no high quality leadership can emerge, being outshouted by that cacophonic chorus of random opinion leaders. The inability to take things for what they are, "analysis paralysis," politicians, and business leaders not being able to put a single coherent paragraph without an army of advisers — this is what it is. They don't care what people keep arguing about for as long as they keep talking, and doing nothing.
- gideonite 5y agoSounds like the Soviet form of Edward Bernays.
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- thriftwy 5y agoWhat kind of concentration camps is he talking about, in 1984?
- ripvanwinkle 5y agoWhat jumped out for me is the soft underbelly of free market liberal democracies esp like the US today. We seem to have little continuity in big picture thinking in the Govt and most things are on a 2 year cycle of trying to get majorities in congress and/or the presidency. Meanwhile a totalitarian state can plot patiently over two or three decades by which time it might almost be too late for the other side to make a difference. The situations around Ukraine and Taiwan seem like good examples.
- denormalized 5y agoI don't think is true when it comes to foreign policy objectives, especially those centered around energy infrastructure (oil reserves, pipelines, etc). Consider policies around strategic alliances (Saudi Arabia, Israel) and regime change (Iraq, Syria, Iran, among others) from at least the 90s through the present day.
- 8note 5y agoA totalitarian state is prone to falling apart - the USSR is a prime example. Long term, american bureaucrats stay in the government pushing for the same stuff for the length of their career. Even once they've retired, people like Robert Muller come back to put in bits of work.
- tablespoon 5y ago> A totalitarian state is prone to falling apart - the USSR is a prime example. That's taken as an article of faith, but I'm not sure how true it actually is. Sure some totalitarian have fallen apart (the Soviet Union), but others have not (China), and Western liberal democracies aren't looking so stable nowadays.
- credit_guy 5y agoTotalitarian regimes have a fundamental problem: succession. Very few empires cracked that nut.
- pleb_nz 5y ago
- motohagiography 5y agoHaving seen this video before, I'm not sure dismissing it because of who has taken it seriously is sufficient as an intellectual response. It's a useful modern articulation of the totalitarian strategy. However, when I think of friends who would never watch it because from their perspective, it's just right-wing propaganda, here are the arguments I think they make against it: - even if it was relevant at the time back in the 80s, applying it to today is not an accurate comparison - sovietism wasn't real socialism - whether what he is saying is true or not it arms ideological enemies and undermines the progressive cause, and is therefore misinformation - his whole structure is decorating an underlying set of deceptions with facts that make it seem true, but it's not. - if the soviet agenda is that subtle and complex as he says it could have produced him as an equally false disinformation source. - governments need to do and hide things to manage people and the economy for the greater good so he's saying normal government techniques are evil to make you paranoid - if you are educated you know this is how politics really work anyway and being responsible sometimes means compromising for the greater good, etc. - people use this video to justify their existing racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc. These have some truth, but I don't think they persuasively discredit the systemic process of attacking a culture with the predictive power that he describes. They're separate things. There is a lot of prior art on the tactics and strategies of totalitarian movements, most of it in the form of american cold war anti-communist propaganda, which though campy, when you view it again from the present perspective of the US having lost it's surprisingly prescient stuff. The soviet goal was to destabilize and dissolve cultures in the space of a couple of generations, and that's what it does. Sometimes I think the fall of the iron curtain wasn't the end of soviet totalitarianism, but rather, its liberation from being confined to mere nation states, only to spend the 90's and 00's infiltrating western institutions, and we're seeing the fruit of that today. Most of our current leadership went to university in the 90s and were introduced to a wave of critical theory virus then (last one was the 70s), and we are seeing it in the milennials now.
- avgcorrection 5y agoIf you want to learn about propaganda and indoctrination then look no further than Edward Bernays and other PR pioneers. People like him came up with a blueprint to manage liberal democracies because nominal freedom requires (according to him) the management of thought in order to make people make the right choices (we are all free to pick between Pepsi and Coke). Propaganda and indoctrination makes less sense in a totalitarian society. It’s in the name: a totalitarian society needs no consent or illusion of choice because the choices have been made for you. The same applies to merely authoritarian societies to a lesser degree. Putin had his whole narrative of the Russian Empire becoming a thing again. So that was definitely meant to motivate the average Russian. But on the other hand it is not crucial that Russians buy it; Russians were directly told that people who protest the invasion will get arrested. There is too much fascination with the Orwellian “thought crime” type of propaganda and indoctrination. Try to have a more pscyhoanalytical approach to it. Like Bernays.
- newacc9 5y agoI see Yuri everywhere, but never Sejna or Golitsyn who reveal the same plan. https://jrnyquist.blog/2020/03/26/the-sino-soviet-long-range-strategy-from-sputnik-to-world-war-iii/#more-1726 https://jrnyquist.blog/2020/03/26/the-sino-soviet-long-range...
- nabla9 5y agoHe was not a KGB defector. He was a KGB informant who worked for RIA Novosti. In the west, he earned his money with anti-communist lecturing and his stories became more sophisticated over time.
- afrcnc 5y agoso accurate with what's happening in the US right now
- avgcorrection 5y agoThis is completely ridiculous. Consider for one the soft power that the US has.[1] You can just limit this to the seemingly frivilous “everyone wants to wear jeans” point. It is nowhere near anything that the Soviet Union and now Russia could dream of. And the point is even stronger if we just consider the West. To propose that the Soviet Union and now Russia could psychologically undermine America itself is completely outlandish. Now consider that Russia wasn’t even able to psychologically subvert their “brother people” the Ukranians. A smaller country (although still large) right next to them with a fair amount of Russian speakers. Let’s just for a moment pretend for the sake of the argument that the separatist movements were just indoctrinated by Russia. That was still a failure since the majority of Ukranians ended up being pro-Western. [1] And I do mean soft and not the “we’ll persuade you to open yourself up to penetration by our corporations” kind of influence.
- pdonis 5y ago> To propose that the Soviet Union and now Russia could psychologically undermine America itself is completely outlandish. It's not outlandish at all. Many of the things he describes have actually happened.
- commandlinefan 5y ago> wasn’t even able to psychologically subvert the Ukranians Well, not all of them, but the there were enough separatists in Crimea and Donetsk, etc. to destabilize those regions. Were those separatists psychologically subverted, or did they just happen to want to re-join Russia? They don't have to subvert all of America, just enough of a subvertable multitude to destabilize things.
- avgcorrection 5y ago> Well, not all of them, but the there were enough separatists in Crimea First of all, us Westerners have already questioned how democratic the supposed cessation from Ukraine was. So let’s not get selective now. Russia already had their military stationed their. That could have a chilling effect. Second of all, plenty of people in Crimea speak Russian. And a lot of the Crimean Tatars were forcefully deported under the Soviet Union. I just bring that up since forceful deportation is not exactly, uh, the tool of a governing party that feels that they can just manipulate their subjects into becoming… whatever the Soviet Union wanted them to become. > ... and Donetsk, etc. to destabilize those regions. In your quote you left out the rest of the paragraph where I addressed the separatists. Even if we assume—and this is an insane hypothetical for the sake of this specific argument—that all those separatists were hypnotized by Russia, that’s still a very lackluster result considering that the majority of Ukraine is pro-Western right now. I mean they did commit to an all out war with them. So much for subversion. But let’s entertain this point for one more paragraph. The separatist conflict started after the 2014 coup which America supported.[1] So the separatist sentiment was in part caused by America trying to subvert the political process of Ukraine (and kind of openly, too). That’s in a way more impressive than Russian subversion considering how far away the US is. [1] Page 4, https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t... > Were those separatists psychologically subverted, or did they just happen to want to re-join Russia? This feels like a rhetorical question where one of the alternatives is the obvious answer. In case it is the former which is “correct”: it is quite common for peoples and ethnicities to not live neatly in each of their own little nation state. 25% of Latvia, for example, consists of ethnic Russians. Finland has a Swedish-speaking minority. You have Transnistria in Moldova. So what makes an ethnic/cultural separatist region at all weird or unusual? Especially when a major power is willing to unofficially help them out for eight years...
- 1shooner 5y agoIs there any clear historical evidence that these specific phases were ever successfully executed? My impression is that mid-century soviet intellectualism loved to put together these kind of grand theories of social engineering.
- nomel 5y agoI think existence of all the Russian troll farms suggests that the first phase is is being attempted. I imagine incremental success would be pretty hard to measure. I assume there's some "good guy" government agency tracking it though.
- qgin 5y agoDefinitely seems like the attempts are still being made. The overly spooky picture being told in this interview seems a bit off since he’s claiming the process had been completed many times over already by the time of the interview in the 80s.
- myth_drannon 5y agoWow, it's really similar in essence to Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I wonder if she listened to him when writing the book.
- fallingfrog 5y agoWhat do you think every major news outlet does all the time?? Go read “manufacturing consent” by Noam Chomsky. The amount of influence Russia has on American thought is negligible compared with the amount of control our own ruling class exerts by setting the terms of what we are allowed to care about. They tell us when to turn a blind eye, when to be upset, what to remember, what to forget. There’s a reason we pay 200 dollars a vial for insulin and everyone seems powerless to do anything about it, meanwhile unlimited funds are always available for dropping bombs on brown people to obtain their oil. For Pete’s sake the enemy is our own ruling elites. They must have decided that a great way to distract the American people from the fact that they’re fucking us with debt and shipping the jobs overseas and torching the climate and leaving nothing for the future is to start another Cold War (worked great the first time, let’s do it again!). They’re kind of out of ideas so they’re going to start doing remakes of old franchises. It’s just the same plot with better special effects. I just thought we were smarter than this. And yet, here we are. I remember the run up to the Iraq war. NBC, cnn and everyone else had a 24 hour running coverage about the evils of the saddam Hussein regime. They pulled the babies out of jthe incubators, we were told. They had weapons of mass destruction. And people were scared. We had just been attacked. We lined up behind George bush and gave him everything he wanted- the patriot act, which ended up being a massive increase in the surveillance state, a declaration of a state of emergency- anything he wanted. And it’s so, so easy for us now to point the finger at the people alive then and say, “what idiots”. But people were scared. They were shocked and afraid, and that is when you really have to be careful, that’s when the public is most easily manipulated. People are shocked and afraid now, which means that this is the worst possible time to trust any of our leaders or anything you see on the major news networks. What kind of new patriot act is Biden going to push through? What new foreign policy disaster? Get a grip! Russia is not some kind of puppet master controlling America! There is only one direction this leads and it’s a bigger and bigger enlargement of the intelligence apparatus. https://youtu.be/EuwmWnphqII https://youtu.be/EuwmWnphqII
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- asguy 5y agoPlease post sources.
- hogrider 5y agoWho can seriously believe this when so called leftists in the us o ly go as far left as center right moderate parties everywhere else. Who cares about xhomsky level professors, they're not in, politics they can't ever get elected.
- hogrider 5y agoWhat this misses is that China had more political reform under a one party system than any democracy on the world.
- qgin 5y agoSo the demoralization process was complete many times over already in 1984 and the other steps only took a year at most? I wonder whatever became of the United States. I guess we’ll never know.
- citrusx 5y agoYou do realize that this speech was actually part of the Russian plot itself? The tell is him calling out Walter Mondale. As we know now, the real "destabilization" started with Reagan.