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KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion
- noduerme 4y agoIt's crazy. I know a Russian guy who is exactly like this; I debate with him all the time. Almost every night. About the war. Bluntly invested in winning, regardless of what the system looks like; even admitting that it's a terrible system; using weak arguments for why people need structural dominance, while simultaneously arguing in favor of "the people" - (and using a historical American failings as a way to draw false equivalences). It's all chess when you grow up somewhere with nothing to gain. Or another way of saying it is, it's possible for a polity to never improve itself but give the illusion of relative improvement, if it can poison its enemies down to its own level or lower. This, unfortunately, is the same mentality we're dealing with now. [edit] Even so, he still betrays that curious overconfidence in the power of central planning...
- jjtheblunt 4y agoI believe you, and as a counterpoint I've known many Russians and they uniformly were _not_ like the Russian guy you know. Those I knew expressly mocked the incompetence of letting essentially mobsters pretend to run a country (their country). It reminded me of a much larger scale version of old mobster tales from big cities in the US, long before my time.
- Insanity 4y agoAs with everything you indeed can not generalize for an entire population. - I’m in the same boat as you with my Russian friends and acquaintances :)
- jareklupinski 4y agobasically my feeling when I logged into Experian today they are offering a service where they would attempt to erase your identity from a list of data aggregators, lest that info is used by "bad actors" gee i wonder who gave those aggregators my info in the first place... "would be a real shame if any of them used your unlocked credit score.... oh you have to pay to lock that too :^) "
- rexreed 4y agoThe over-confidence in clearly irrational positions, the bluster and bluffing and bullying are all coping mechanisms for what their brains detect as cognitive dissonance. "How can my life be so bad, dreary, miserable, and inadequate?" "It must not be my situation, but it must be everyone else, so I will fight everyone else, as I can't change my situation." Rather than improve their own lot, they seek to destroy other's, because improvement is so difficult, if not impossible, and destruction is just so much easier.
- anigbrowl 4y agoOne should ask, though, what makes improvement impossible.
- rexreed 4y agoA rational person would indeed ask that. Is that what we're dealing with tho?
- anigbrowl 4y agoWhat I mean is, when dealing with an irrational or antirational person, who is behaving this way because other kinds of action are impossible, we should ask what constrains them. If they are not actually in control of their circumstances, then we can't really pooh-pooh their irrationality because they are not free to choose. We like to assume that we are all masters of our own circumstances and can deal with any obstacle or misfortune by adjusting ourselves to match it, but this presumes a degree of autonomy that does not always exist in fact.
- konart 4y ago>Is that what we're dealing with tho? Assuming both side have the same information? No. But this is would be a very strange assumption.
- _siis 4y agoWell just from my own personal research (which is not nearly as thorough as I'd like), structurally any central power structure receives little benefit from division of labor and the main driver that allows it to work and greese the wheels are corruption, which generally promotes oligopoly or monopoly. Then you have the economic calculation problem, inability to adjust to shortages because the economy is not self-moderating, low to zero visibility (and shame) so responsible parties may not communicate to enact change rapidly or admit there's a problem until its had significant cost. Generally speaking, there is also a lot of indoctrination, and many who grow up in those places see the only solution to failures of socialism as more socialism because it failed because there simply wasn't enough, and it is after all about the group over the whole with identity politics. Improvement is impossible because failures can't be acknowledged or reconciled rationally. Structurally over time its a fundamentally unstable system as people age out of positions of power, newer generations may not be properly educated (they all drink the same coolaid). Rational pragmatic and constructive thought is kind of a requirement to improve. There's also usually a good portion of the population used as disadvantaged labor that supports an aristocratic elite.
- illwrks 4y agoA friend of a friend is exactly like this. Extremely skewed opinions on 'facts'. Whenever I meet them I avoid any topic to do with politics or the war, I just don't have the time or patience, they are too far down the rabbit hole. An American lady I know, her elderly mother was to the same extreme with Trump in the US... Social media and propaganda is a curse.
- sorokod 4y agoBecause "almost every night" I assume he is not mobilized. Why would that be so?
- Luc 4y ago300k mobilized in a population of 143 million, so about 2 per thousand.
- watwut 4y agoHe might simply live in region that mobilized less. Of live abroad. Most of mobilization happen in poor peripheral regions. Moscow and surrounding mobilizes much less.
- sorokod 4y agoFor sure, but a person with principles should act on them, otherwise they are just words.
- watwut 4y agoBut none of his principles implies he should go fight to war. He wants Russia win, but wanting particular outcome does not imply joining army. There is nothing special about that either. I wanted ISIS to loose, I never joined any legions. I want Ukraine to win, but I am not going there to fight either. If he claimed that not going is wrong, then he would be hypocrite. But it sounds more of "I want Russia to win and I accept human sacrifices along the way. That sux for them, but it is what it is" sort of attitude. Not exactly admirable, but also does not imply he should be volunteering.
- rasz 4y agoGood documentary about the level of brainwashing in ru Disconnection | A film by Andrey Loshak (Разрыв связи | Фильм Андрея Лошака)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qmQs2LbnaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qmQs2LbnaE [english subs]
- noduerme 4y agoThis was excellent. Thank you. I'm going to try to get my Russian "debate partner" to watch it, although it's probably pointless.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoFor e ti's shocking how much people are in denial about this. In spite of us seeing with our own eyes that this strategy is being deployed and it works, it works depressingly well. In spite of that, many people I know try to dismiss the video, the speaker, and the main message conveyed by it. It is as if we got blind by our own request.
- dale_glass 4y agoI have no doubt that Russia engages in a lot of shenanigans today. However that back in 1985, what this guy is saying about the USSR managing worm into the US to the point of raising an entire generation that thought what the USSR wanted them to think -- that to me seems extremely dubious. There may be a kernel of truth there -- yes, the KGB may have had such a strategy, and it might have been successfully executed in some cases. What I highly doubt is that it actually did work on the US in 1985. You have to consider a conflict in priorities there. This guy defected. He burned every bridge there was to burn back home, and that means he desperately needs to ingratiate himself with where he ended up instead, and given that McCarthyism was right around that time it doesn't take a genius to latch on that. Also, let's be serious here. This is almost 40 years ago. Many people of importance from back then are now dead or retired. If this interview has anything to do with modern reality it's more by accident than anything.
- bilvar 4y agoOn the contrary. Many of those people are now tenured professors and deans of universities, which Bezmenov said were specifically and overwhelmingly targeted by this strategy. Guess which ideology most universities lean on - the ideological uniformity and persecution of different viewpoints has reached an extreme level there.
- phendrenad2 4y agoAsserting that everyone is "seeing it with their own eyes" is kind of weird, since you can only see with your own eyes. It's a certain kind of solipsism that I'm personally getting rather tired of.
- diimdeep 4y agoCIA propaganda. Detailed explanation from former CIA analyst Frank Snepp about how the newspapers and magazines you were taught to regard as mainstream and reliable have always eagerly served as disinformation megaphones for the CIA and the US Security State. That's still true. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1589624331919060997 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1589624331919060997
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoThis is not comparable. Reminds me of this joke: Sure, the Soviet Union has free speech, just like in America. In the US, you can stand in front of the White House and yell, "Down with Reagan," and it's fine. Moscow is like that too. You can stand on Red Square and yell, "Down with Reagan." No problem at all
- pessimizer 4y ago[flagged]
- stametseater 4y ago> The US has banned Russian media Some European countries may have, but America has not. I can still read RT just fine.
- _-david-_ 4y agoWhich Russian media has been banned in the US?
- jryle70 4y agoBan? Are you in the US? can you access this? https://www.rt.com/ https://www.rt.com/
- genghisjahn 4y agoI think you mean that the US banned Russian media companies that are controlled by the Kremlin. If there is something that we in the west would call a "free press" in Russia then those would not be banned. That's my take anyway. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/politics/us-russia-sanctions-media-companies-consulting-services/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/politics/us-russia-sanctions-...
- reducesuffering 4y agoRight now, Russia is at war. They hate that Western countries are providing intel and armaments to the defense of Ukraine. There's only one realistic thing they can do to slow those. FSB poisoning our public discourse by any means necessary.
- herbstein 4y agoThis interview keeps coming up, and I don't really understand why. It's utterly uninteresting. Bezmenov had an inconsequential role in the KGB. He was not privy to any large-scale details. Bezmenov defected in 1970. After his defection would not be privy to any new information. The interview is from 1984 and not 1985 as the title purports. Ultimately, the claims in this video are categorically false. We can observe this in two ways. First, after the collapse of the USSR no information on these efforts was revealed. Bezmenov claims 85% of the KGB's efforts are spent on this supposed program of ideological subversion of the American public. And yet, we have seen no documents. No intelligence from the US side. Nothing. Second, he claims the subversion was put in place to change the schooling system and thus indoctrinate the next generation. Keep in mind that this program would've had to be in place by 1970. And quite a few years earlier than that too since, again, Bezmenov was not a particularly privileged member of the KGB. And if we were to assume the program is real the changes should blindingly obvious in hindsight. But in fact, there are none. So we must look a little closer at Bezmenov - why would he claim these things, and why does the interview keep resurfacing? At the time of the interview there was a great panic around communist influence across the country. We're in the middle of Reagan's first term as president. Reagan was hawkish on perceived communist sympathies, just like the rest of the Republicans and the mainstream American right-wing. The market for people claiming that the ideological foundations of their political rivals is grounded in communist indoctrination. They wanted to hear how homosexuality becoming more accepted, a call for racial equality, and a general anti-establishment attitude was, in fact, Soviet indoctrination of the schooling systems. Bezmenov earned his living peddling what this large group of conservatives wanted to hear, and that is where his lectures and this interview come in. Today we see claims of "cultural marxism" and "post-modernism" infecting universities, and thus infecting the minds of the very late cohort of millenials and the early cohort of Gen Zs. It's the same dance of comfort we saw in the 80s playing out again. The interview isn't someone predicting the future because of some special insight. It's someone playing into the 80s "culture war" and people recognizing that a similar "culture war" is happening again today. A "culture war" that will continue to happen as long as societies continue to evolve and re-evaluate their collective values.
- the_af 4y ago> So we must look a little closer at Bezmenov - why would he claim these things, and why does the interview keep resurfacing? Bezmenov isn't even alone in this. Defectors are notoriously unreliable: they tell their host country whatever they want to hear; in this case, because he correctly read the prevailing fears of the Reagan era. He is not the only Soviet defector who told inconsistent or outright false stories.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- orangepurple 4y agoFSB shills are out in full force on HN on this one trying to discredit him with exceptional pilpul and deflection. I grew up in the Eastern Bloc and find his stories plausible. Everything Bezmenov said is true. Watch the entire interview.
- j0hnyl 4y agoHasn't a lot of this guy's rhetoric and credentials been debunked over and over as a bit hyperbolic. I mean... the guy made a career out of selling fear?
- orangepurple 4y agoWhat career? He died a few years after this interview.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoThe career he had in the years before this interview and then in the remaining years before his untimely death? I'm not informed enough to say whether his entire career was USSR fear mongering, but dying doesn't mean you didn't have a career.
- j0hnyl 4y agoI've done a lot of googling on this guy and either the truth is scrubbed, or I'm landing on soviet propaganda, OR there's not much evidence that he even worked for the KGB. The guy was a journalist and played up this narrative in order to get the attention of the public eye. I'm not saying that everything he said was bullshit. Do nation states at odds actively try to stabilize each other? Of course. But seems to me like he was more of a creative story teller than anything else.
- wewxjfq 4y agoHe studied foreign languages in the Soviet Union and worked abroad at the Soviet embassy - it's safe to say that he was a spy and not a journalist.
- lostlogin 4y agoThere is a good book on a different defector, Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky. The story is excellent - The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37542581-the-spy-and-the-traitor https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37542581-the-spy-and-the...
- narrator 4y agoThere is an eerily prophetic work by the high-ranking Eastern European military defector Golitsyn called "The Perestroika Deception"[1] in which he says that Perestroika is a strategic retreat because the Soviets know they are too far behind technologically to have any hope of defeating the west. They will however use that retreat to acquire modern technology and improve their economy so they can ultimately conquer the west. Only one analyst, J.R Nyquist has been taking this stuff seriously, and he was ignored. In fact, the idea that Russia could rise from the ashes was considered paranoid right-wing conspiracy for much of the last 30 years. He has been pretty prescient about the war in Ukraine and developments in Russia over the last 20 years. They have rearmed and have some crazy weapons now like the hypersonic missiles[2] that we have no defense against and the Poseidon system[3] which is a 100mt radioactive tsunami fully autonomous doomsday weapon designed to foil any attempt by the west to win a nuclear war with anti-ballistic missile technilogy. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Perestroika-Deception-Memoranda-Central-Intelligence/dp/1899798005/ https://www.amazon.com/Perestroika-Deception-Memoranda-Centr... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpos...
- jemmyw 4y ago≥ Poseidon system[3] which is a 100mt radioactive tsunami fully autonomous doomsday weapon No where on that page does it say it is automated or carries 100mt. The only place it mentions tsunami is where it discredits the idea this weapon could cause one.
- somenameforme 4y ago
- mopsi 4y agoThis ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russians really did think that Ukraine had been subverted to a degree that it would just roll over and die; that leadership would run away and local resistance would be limited to disorganized pockets that riot police could suppress, but their informants and agents just stole the money and reported what the Kremlin wanted to hear. Calling the invasion a "special military operation" shows how it was thought of as a special operation by intelligence services instead of conventional war. But Zelenskiy responded with "I need ammo, not a ride", and instead of unarmed protesters, Russian riot police convoys driving into Ukraine were met by Armed Forces of Ukraine.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qWthUM_II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qWthUM_II (Riot helmets and shields are clearly visible.)
- ImHereToVote 4y agoIs there a quote of link to the "three days to Kyiv" comment from the Russian Federation?
- dralley 4y agoNot from Putin directly. There were a lot of actions taken by the Russian government which just imply it. High ranking Russian officials that booked reservations for restaurants in Kyiv the week after the invasion, troops taking their dress uniforms instead of food, a pre-scheduled propaganda essay that was accidentally released on the 28th which retained language implying that Kyiv had already been taken and so forth. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/09/russia-putin-propaganda-ukraine-war-crimes-atrocities/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/09/russia-putin-propaganda...
- eptcyka 4y agoWhilst I do not have a YouTube link, I do have seen several Russian pundits imply that Ukrainians would capitulate in 3 days, Russia just has to sneeze their way and they'd keel over, etc.
- petre 4y ago
- dale_glass 4y agoThis sounds pretty silly. Now fuck Russia and all, but this guy is convinced that Russia managed to worm into American consciousness in the mid 80s, to the point of raising an entire generation of people who believe what Russia wants them to believe. That just doesn't add up to me. Now not being American I don't know what things were over there, but at least I can recall that in the 80s and 90s, Russians were the standard bad guys in Hollywood movies, and the Cold War, and McCarthyism is somewhere in that timeline as well. Nothing much seems to indicate this "demoralization" step got anywhere close to actually happening. It also seems very unlikely that at that point in history, USSR would have enough access to the US to raise entire generations that thought the things the USSR wanted them to. I think it's more likely he was just opportunistically feeding the fears prevalent at the time he was speaking.
- CalChris 4y agoI agree about the 80s. If anything, we viewed them as a bigger threat than they really were, our defense industry in particular. But the USSR fell apart in 1989 and Russia was a spent force in the 90s. We bought Ukraine’s nukes with money because we could. But we, George W Bush really, then underestimated Russia in the 2000s.
- selectodude 4y agoObama far more than Bush.
- sweetbacon 4y agoAbsolutely. As s teen in the 80s I was shocked the USSR collapsed as everything around me made them out to be this huge Russian bear that could kill us at any moment. Granted I was in the Midwest then away from 24h news cycle, and much closer to missile silos and military bases so perhaps that made a difference.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago>But we, George W Bush really, then underestimated Russia in the 2000s. True, but then Obama really fucked it up with "reset". And that was after Georgia War.
- dralley 4y agoModern Russian propaganda is not all that similar to anything the Soviet Union was interested in. There is no serious ideological backbone to it. It's all about putting out multitudes of conflicting narratives, giving people the "choice" to latch onto the ones they sympathize with most closely, and undermining the very concept of truth, democracy etc. "alternative facts", if you will. Timothy Snyder's description is more accurate to what goes on in the modern day state of Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-SEQDQidM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-SEQDQidM (particularly starting around 18m26s and later at 39m19s) Also the CIA questioned Bezmenov and found that he couldn't answer questions that he ought to know the answers to, about basic things like who his chain of command were.
- sorokod 4y agoThere is no serious ideological backbone to it You are too kind, there is no ideological backbone at all.
- jabl 4y agoSure there is. I mean, there's no ideology that promises a better future for the common man, like communism, but ideology there is; Imperialism, glory of the motherland, a peculiarly Russian variant of "Manifest destiny", power of the state, domination of lesser peoples, etc. Fascism, if you like.
- sorokod 4y agoWhat motherland can be offered to the about 30% of non ethnic Russians? Just more of the corrupt same. How would motherland that follows a victory (even what constitutes victory is not defined by the Russian government) differ from the motherland the follows some other outcome?
- jabl 4y agoSure, it's corrupt shit, no argument there. And really, what's being offered for the other 70% if not pain and suffering, for the make believe goal of glory of the tsar? Sure, they might be treated a lot better than the non ethnic Russians, but it's not paradise for them either.
- rglover 4y agoFor those who aren't "buying it" his longer-form lecture on this topic is a must-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLdDmeyMJls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLdDmeyMJls
- rationalfaith 4y agoI mean all the rainbow stuff is crippling our society from an objective perspective. If a war broke out, historically tried philosophies and objectively useful skills will take precedence. If you see how fragmented the younger generations are based on materialistic criterias you'd think it's a psyop operation to divide the nation up to the polarized state we're in. Almost nothing getting done with stalemates up the wazzouu.
- abecedarius 4y agoSummary of near-14-minute video, since I certainly wished someone else had posted one to help me decide whether to watch: Says the KGB works mainly at ideological subversion of the enemy society, not James Bond stuff. This has 4 stages: - Demoralization. Slow, takes at least a generation to take hold or be reversed. U.S. is 3 generations in, graduates have positions of influence, and now it's mostly done by Americans to Americans. - Destabilization. 2 to 5 years. - Crisis. 3 to 6 weeks. E.g. in Central America at that time. - Normalization. KGB considers it total war, and we should too. Americans should unify behind stopping their government from aiding communism. Education system especially important. (There wasn't really anything more specific, it was TV. I would've liked specifics on not just the claimed strategy, but how much real effect they had on mid-20th-C. U.S. education and culture. Of course there's only so much one defector would know.)
- stuckinhell 4y agoIt would certainly explain how "political correctness" a soviet concept made it into the american public consciousness far more than other nations of the world. Edited: Since I'm being downvoted. Political Correctness wasn't really a thing until around the 80's, the same time period as the cold war. It really is acommunist term. The term "political correctness" first appeared in Marxist–Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Yuri is saying the KGB was enacting total war decades ago, and that it takes several generations to see the change. When you can see over the course of 30 years, how political correct seeped into the american consciousness, yet somehow skipped over many other parts of the world. I think it's worth looking into, and thinking critically.
- z3c0 4y agoI think it would explain even better why everyone tries to shoehorn their least favorite thing about "the other side" into every conversation about manipulation by state actors. Case in point.
- tokai 4y agoThe two PC terms are not related. In the start of the last century political correctness was about the correct adherence to ideology. The modern PC is a describer coined by us conservatives to label progressive political goals.
- phendrenad2 4y agoYeah, don't put too much stock in this guy's words. Being a defector, flipping 180 degrees and becoming the USSR's biggest and most popular detractor is a no-brainer. But sadly, he could have said that the KGB had pink bunny guns and traveled around on marshmallow clouds and many on the right would lap it up, because it fits a political preconception.
- twixfel 4y agoBy your logic, we shouldn't ever listen to any defectors, ever. That just doesn't make any sense.
- phendrenad2 4y agoThat's like saying, "by your logic, we should never cross the road, because we can't possibly look both ways enough times!"
- twixfel 4y agoYou're literally saying he shouldn't be listened to because he's a defector. You're not engaging with anything he said, just writing him off for being a defector. That is really stupid.
- phendrenad2 4y agoAnd you're saying that we should listen to defectors, for no reason whatsoever. Or are you saying that we should listen to defectors, because they are defectors? In that case, how is that different from what you accuse me of? BTW, what I actually said is that we shouldn't blindly believe defectors, because there are compelling reasons for them to stretch the truth. See the difference? There are three ways we can treat a story: We can choose to believe it, we can ignore it, or we can choose to disbelieve it. You wouldn't believe my "pink bunny guns" example, would you? So you're already doing what I suggest, we just differ in degree.
- tonymet 4y agoA useful tactic for your belief or disbelief is to follow the thread of belief to it's origin and see if you endorse that individual. Many of the pillars of present-day progressivism and conservatism can be traced to a few key philosophers , academics & politicians from the 20s-60s. Those ideologies will become more grounded when you see the kind of person those thoughts came from.
- seneca 4y agoThis is literally describing, and endorsing, the ad hominem fallacy. Your point isn't wrong in this case, the roots if modern new-left ideology are unsavory, but that doesn't make it a sound general approach.
- hellothere1337 4y agoWhenever I interact with russian or pro-russian elements the story remains the same. They deny that they're doing any wrongdoing. If you give them video evidence that they're doing something wrong they deny the evidence is real. If the evidence has undeniable proof they either say the victims deserved it (like the video where they killed civilians around hostomel or the one where a ukrainian family and their dog gets gunned down with no warning). As a final cope they can also retreat to "Well america did it too". Absolutely disgusting mindset
- xenospn 4y agoIsraelis are very similar. That’s nationalism for you!
- nlrtpx 4y agoIt is strange how this interview is currently used. Clearly Bezmenov alleges that the subversion tactics were promoting original left-wing causes since the 1960s: He cites Hippie culture, pilgrimages to India, cultural marxism, etc. Basically everything that Reagan did not like. Now the ruling party are Democrats, and apparently the same interview is used to prove current Russian disinformation, i.e. (alleged) right wing propaganda. Meanwhile even the Pentagon currently implements the original (alleged) left wing culture war subversion tactics. So which is it? Has Russian disinformation pivoted to right wing and the Pentagon is behind the curve? Or is the whole Russian disinformation issue overblown? Clearly the original subversion items are pushed by the corporate and state woke-washing agenda. So they are apparently good now. I don't see how right wing propaganda could help Russia, since in important foreign policy matters Democrats and Republicans are fundamentally the same. Evan Trump has armed Ukraine.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago"cultural marxism" is a far right antisemitic conspiracy theory that you're referencing (and as a brand new account with one comment)
- skissane 4y ago> "cultural marxism" is a far right antisemitic conspiracy theory The Frankfurt School was real, not a "conspiracy theory". "Cultural Marxism" was originally used to refer to the Frankfurt School and its intellectual heirs by (left-leaning) academic Trent Schroyer, in his 1973 book The Origins and Development of Critical Theory – long before the term had any currency on the right. And they really have been a significant influence on left-of-centre academia in the humanities and social sciences, which in turn has been a real influence on the broader culture (especially at the somewhat elite level of establishment journalism, NGOs, etc) Do a lot of people on the right overstate and exaggerate that influence, or offer overly simplistic accounts of it? Yep. But, this "it's a conspiracy theory" meme seems to be responding to that with its exact opposite, intentional understatement and denial. And "far right antisemitic" seems to be an exercise in guilt-by-association: Are some people who talk about this far-right or antisemitic? Yes. Are they all? No. Is the idea in itself (however true or false it may be), that "the Frankfurt School has had an outsized influence on contemporary progressivism", inherently "far right" or antisemitic? No. That's not to say I like all this "cultural Marxism" talk – I hate how it treats "Marxism" as a dirty word. It's so cringeworthy when right-wingers (Americans seem especially prone to it) do that. That's not to say I agree with Marxism, or deny that in practice it has caused a lot of mayhem, suffering, evil. But I'd much rather listen to the kind of right-wingers who can see the good in Marxism, even the common ground people on the political right can find with Marxists – I think Compact magazine is a good example of this, which started when two conservative Catholics and a Marxist got together to talk about what they had in common, and ended up founding a magazine to continue that conversation. But to me, "cultural Marxism is a far right antisemitic conspiracy theory" ends up coming across as just as much a brain-dead talking point as "cultural Marxism" itself so often is.
- netmonk 4y ago[dead]
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- DoItToMe81 4y agoBezmenov's claims are not corroborated by any other agents, nor was he ever a high enough position to have learned of them. There also are no hints of them within the Russian archives, which have been used to corroborate a variety of real KGB activities based on claims of defectors, like creating fake KKK threats to drum up racial tension during civil rights. Like most public defectors of the era, he's a bullshitter.
- rasengan0 4y agoContext matters but don't blame the messenger: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/yuri-bezmenov-soviet-defector-canada https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/yuri-bezmenov-s... Amazing video in the backdrop of a divided nation. Where are the united Americans?