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Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos from this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist subversion. Without taking any side here or agr

Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos from this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist subversion. Without taking any side here or agreeing with him, just listen to when he talks about subversive education (for example he talks about a push for more social sciences and other "unsubstantial" education ) or to what he refers to as demoralization (which is according to his definition is saying stuff like america was never great, we shouldn't feel proud of our past, and just in general a constant push for victimization). It's funny how I guess both sides ended up thinking he is referring to the other side though.

noobermin 5y ago
Bezmenov is ideologically a conservative and pushed conservative ideology once he was in America, so it warrants taking this with a grain of salt. That said, today it feels like Russian misinfo targets anti-establishment groups on both sides, both far-right and far-left types.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Oh I completely agree that he doesn't have a lot of credibility but I guess his message is still theoretically interesting even if it's potentially only fiction.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  This is also from 1984. Things have changed quite a bit from then. Back then, organizations like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were Soviet-influenced.
panzagl 5y ago
Well, to divide a country you need two sides...
8note 5y ago
Is it demoralizing to say that the US was never great? It wasn't, but it was always getting better, and it still is. To me it seems more demoralizing to look back and think things have gotten worse
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Yes but a lot of people actually are starting to think that things have actually gotten worse (especially since 2020, and they are obviously totally wrong imo) And yes of course it's demoralizing, his theory was that if you think your country is evil or based on evil and not much better than anything else why would you ever fight for it? Especially when faced with an enemy who actually believes that he is dying for a great cause, and the best system. From a cold war perspective, if the other side doesn't believe his system to be superior anymore that could've been decisive to win a war. Just look at the vietnam war and how it (thankfully) ended.
  - pempem 5y ago
    The first feeling I had upon reading your comment was that it felt like it was pulled from the Milosevich playbook, who used Russian support and at one point had potential for Russian troops to help him continue to further divide his country and and basically pursue genocide. Then my normalcy bias kicked in and I thought "it would never get that bad"
  - alar44 5y ago
    We're you alive before 9/11? Things are far worse in the US than 20 years ago. Literally everything.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  what does it even _mean_ for the US to have been 'great'. its just some kind of pointless narcissism.
csee 5y ago
Well they clearly changed tactics, didn't they. RT is right-leaning propaganda and all his most dangerous stooges (Tucker Carlson, Bannon) are too.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  I guess bannon has a pretty subversive aim but I don't see how Tucker Carlson, no matter how controversial he is, is subversive when he mostly supports traditional power structures. He's basically pushing a bog standard anti war populist narrative,which he has done consistently in the past 4 years regardless of it involved russia. What I'm essentially saying is that he doesn't really fit into the "demoralize/destabilize/subvert/normalize" framework. But that's not to say he doesn't fit very well in others ;)
  - csee 5y ago
    Tucker clips are being broadcasted right now inside Russia as part of their state sponsored propaganda. His description of Ukraine as a US client state and other pro-Putin propaganda is harming Ukrainians.
    - ttybird2 5y ago
      I think the question is if he is intentionally spreading information which he knows that it is wrong, which is not necessarily true. This seems to be a common perception of the situation. As for whether it is harming Ukrainians I would say that it is debatable.
  - cma 5y ago
    He had on a neofeudalist/neoreactionary/hbd guy just to banter with him (Moldbug).
tablespoon 5y ago
> Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos from this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist subversion. Wouldn't subversion be opportunistic, though? Maybe during Cold War, their tactics had more success on the left, but more recently they've had more success on the right. If your goal is to subvert the whole, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  From what I understood from his speeches, I think he's saying that some leftist ideology is inherently subversive. I guess it makes sense and it doesn't have to be pejorative: conservatives are usually more attached to traditional structures while historically leftist groups push for a transformative change. Subversion is a good way to transform a structure. A good example would be the 1619 projet that, whether you agreed with its message or not, explicitly aimed at undermining the current mainstream narrative on the history of the USA. I can't think of any right wing equivalent
  - kaitai 5y ago
    There is no right wing equivalent because of the structurally different ways in which the right and left position their narratives. The appeal to the right wing in the US is via Christian nationalism and distrust of authority (from scientists to lamestream media to the US gov't). The right wing in the US buttresses its legitimacy by claiming that Christian nationalism is the historically correct point of view and is the "traditional structure". This is in fact false, but the whole point is that the right wing (as you point out) couches its message in terms of "this is the truth and the way it's always been" while the left wing appeals for transformative change. A wholesale move to Christian nationalism would be in fact a transformative change for the US, but you gotta be cognizant of how you sell it, right? The new right-wing distrust for the US military and US intelligence and support for Russia is pretty transformative. It's just good sales.
    - ttybird2 5y ago
      Since when is "distrust of authority" a right wing thing? This has been traditionally been a leftist doctrine (with various ideologies such as anarchism focusing on that, along with revolutionary groups that fight against said authorities).
csomar 5y ago
So it looks like they are subverting both sides now. America is screwed.
kova12 5y ago
Don't forget the "sex cults" he constantly mentioned, that not only came to fruition, even better - everyone is now scared to even discuss how trans should not compete in women's sports for example
rootusrootus 5y ago
> saying stuff like america was never great I'd say it is working. The sheer quantity of anti-American rhetoric online, places like Reddit and even on HN, is astounding. Ostensibly coming from our own citizens, in many cases. If this kind of self-loathing is reality, we have a big problem indeed. The optimist in me likes to assume that a good chunk of it is planted deliberately by America's foes.
- ttybird2 5y ago
  The USA did this to itself though, with its actions both against the citizens of other countries and its own.
- tremon 5y ago
  The sheer quantity of anti-American rhetoric online The only way to make a great country greater is to acknowledge its flaws and strive to correct them. The default mode of communication seems to have been people pointing out US failures, and US people widely shouting them down, regardless of the merit of the claim. That has also been a major factor driving anti-American rhetoric, you can't blame that on foreign influence. Or, in other words: anti-American rhetoric coming from American citizens is a good thing: it makes the country better.
polishdude20 5y ago
The interesting thing is to notice how Putin calls the Ukrainians Nazis. It's like he's thinking that it's an easy word to throw around because our society is so prevalent with people throwing that word around. It's like the subversion tactics were to make it easy to call someone a nazi and make it so commonplace to cancel people that he's literally using that term himself.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It's like he's thinking that it's an easy word to throw around because our society is so prevalent with people throwing that word around. No, it's more like he is a Russian authoritarian leader appealing to the greatest imagery of Russian national struggle to make a war of aggression look like something more noble.

noobermin 5y ago

Bezmenov is ideologically a conservative and pushed conservative ideology once he was in America, so it warrants taking this with a grain of salt. That said, today it feels like Russian misinfo targets anti-establishment groups on both sides, both far-right and far-left types.

mardifoufs 5y ago
Oh I completely agree that he doesn't have a lot of credibility but I guess his message is still theoretically interesting even if it's potentially only fiction.
inglor_cz 5y ago
This is also from 1984. Things have changed quite a bit from then. Back then, organizations like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were Soviet-influenced.

panzagl 5y ago

Well, to divide a country you need two sides...

8note 5y ago

Is it demoralizing to say that the US was never great? It wasn't, but it was always getting better, and it still is. To me it seems more demoralizing to look back and think things have gotten worse

mardifoufs 5y ago
Yes but a lot of people actually are starting to think that things have actually gotten worse (especially since 2020, and they are obviously totally wrong imo) And yes of course it's demoralizing, his theory was that if you think your country is evil or based on evil and not much better than anything else why would you ever fight for it? Especially when faced with an enemy who actually believes that he is dying for a great cause, and the best system. From a cold war perspective, if the other side doesn't believe his system to be superior anymore that could've been decisive to win a war. Just look at the vietnam war and how it (thankfully) ended.
- pempem 5y ago
  The first feeling I had upon reading your comment was that it felt like it was pulled from the Milosevich playbook, who used Russian support and at one point had potential for Russian troops to help him continue to further divide his country and and basically pursue genocide. Then my normalcy bias kicked in and I thought "it would never get that bad"
- alar44 5y ago
  We're you alive before 9/11? Things are far worse in the US than 20 years ago. Literally everything.
convolvatron 5y ago
what does it even _mean_ for the US to have been 'great'. its just some kind of pointless narcissism.

csee 5y ago

Well they clearly changed tactics, didn't they. RT is right-leaning propaganda and all his most dangerous stooges (Tucker Carlson, Bannon) are too.

mardifoufs 5y ago
I guess bannon has a pretty subversive aim but I don't see how Tucker Carlson, no matter how controversial he is, is subversive when he mostly supports traditional power structures. He's basically pushing a bog standard anti war populist narrative,which he has done consistently in the past 4 years regardless of it involved russia. What I'm essentially saying is that he doesn't really fit into the "demoralize/destabilize/subvert/normalize" framework. But that's not to say he doesn't fit very well in others ;)
- csee 5y ago
  Tucker clips are being broadcasted right now inside Russia as part of their state sponsored propaganda. His description of Ukraine as a US client state and other pro-Putin propaganda is harming Ukrainians.
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    I think the question is if he is intentionally spreading information which he knows that it is wrong, which is not necessarily true. This seems to be a common perception of the situation. As for whether it is harming Ukrainians I would say that it is debatable.
- cma 5y ago
  He had on a neofeudalist/neoreactionary/hbd guy just to banter with him (Moldbug).

tablespoon 5y ago

> Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos from this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist subversion. Wouldn't subversion be opportunistic, though? Maybe during Cold War, their tactics had more success on the left, but more recently they've had more success on the right. If your goal is to subvert the whole, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

mardifoufs 5y ago
From what I understood from his speeches, I think he's saying that some leftist ideology is inherently subversive. I guess it makes sense and it doesn't have to be pejorative: conservatives are usually more attached to traditional structures while historically leftist groups push for a transformative change. Subversion is a good way to transform a structure. A good example would be the 1619 projet that, whether you agreed with its message or not, explicitly aimed at undermining the current mainstream narrative on the history of the USA. I can't think of any right wing equivalent
- kaitai 5y ago
  There is no right wing equivalent because of the structurally different ways in which the right and left position their narratives. The appeal to the right wing in the US is via Christian nationalism and distrust of authority (from scientists to lamestream media to the US gov't). The right wing in the US buttresses its legitimacy by claiming that Christian nationalism is the historically correct point of view and is the "traditional structure". This is in fact false, but the whole point is that the right wing (as you point out) couches its message in terms of "this is the truth and the way it's always been" while the left wing appeals for transformative change. A wholesale move to Christian nationalism would be in fact a transformative change for the US, but you gotta be cognizant of how you sell it, right? The new right-wing distrust for the US military and US intelligence and support for Russia is pretty transformative. It's just good sales.
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    Since when is "distrust of authority" a right wing thing? This has been traditionally been a leftist doctrine (with various ideologies such as anarchism focusing on that, along with revolutionary groups that fight against said authorities).

csomar 5y ago

So it looks like they are subverting both sides now. America is screwed.

kova12 5y ago

Don't forget the "sex cults" he constantly mentioned, that not only came to fruition, even better - everyone is now scared to even discuss how trans should not compete in women's sports for example

rootusrootus 5y ago

> saying stuff like america was never great I'd say it is working. The sheer quantity of anti-American rhetoric online, places like Reddit and even on HN, is astounding. Ostensibly coming from our own citizens, in many cases. If this kind of self-loathing is reality, we have a big problem indeed. The optimist in me likes to assume that a good chunk of it is planted deliberately by America's foes.

ttybird2 5y ago
The USA did this to itself though, with its actions both against the citizens of other countries and its own.
tremon 5y ago
The sheer quantity of anti-American rhetoric online The only way to make a great country greater is to acknowledge its flaws and strive to correct them. The default mode of communication seems to have been people pointing out US failures, and US people widely shouting them down, regardless of the merit of the claim. That has also been a major factor driving anti-American rhetoric, you can't blame that on foreign influence. Or, in other words: anti-American rhetoric coming from American citizens is a good thing: it makes the country better.

polishdude20 5y ago

The interesting thing is to notice how Putin calls the Ukrainians Nazis. It's like he's thinking that it's an easy word to throw around because our society is so prevalent with people throwing that word around. It's like the subversion tactics were to make it easy to call someone a nazi and make it so commonplace to cancel people that he's literally using that term himself.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> It's like he's thinking that it's an easy word to throw around because our society is so prevalent with people throwing that word around. No, it's more like he is a Russian authoritarian leader appealing to the greatest imagery of Russian national struggle to make a war of aggression look like something more noble.