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If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire min

If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire minutes. The man is talking about ideological subversion. It’s not about nationalism. It’s about the propagation of leftist ideology. McCarthyism was in the 1950’s and by the 80’s had already been “discredited” as some sort of witch hunt. Bezmenov already says in 1985 that the ideological program had succeeded beyond all expectations and that Americans were doing most of the work for them. That, coupled with the collapse of the USSR, would allow that leftist ideology to mutate into the forms we see today. I’m not entirely convinced Yuri is telling the truth here, but I thought it would be useful to clarify and perhaps steelman what he is saying, and what that would imply to us in 2023.

wil421 4y ago
He literally said Communism and USSR are going to take other the world unless the last free country (USA) stops them. 4 years later his entire country fell apart. Almost all of the satellite countries have ran from Communism and Russian ideology except Belarus. He also said we had serval years to live on until we would have no where to defect to, except maybe Antartica. Another comment was all the wealthy businessmen are hanging themselves by trading with USSR and they would pray to be killed but probably sent to Alaska, presumably to a Gulag after USSR takes over.
dale_glass 4y ago
> If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire minutes. The man is talking about ideological subversion. It’s not about nationalism. He's an ex-KGB spook talking about the actions of a foreign government. Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR. He even talks about the "Soviet military complex" that will take over if the US doesn't realize what's happening quickly enough. So said ideology is being propagated to create a crisis that would then allow a foreign state with hostile interests to take over. > Bezmenov already says in 1985 that the ideological program had succeeded beyond all expectations and that Americans were doing most of the work for them. Yes, and living in 2023, we can see he was full of it. Nothing had succeeded. The USSR fell apart, and the current US doesn't have anything approaching a proper left wing, let alone anything resembling Marxism. Soon after that interview, Gorbachov went to the US and had his jaw drop watching a normal supermarket. Even the highest of positions in the USSR had little clue of what was happening in the US back then. They were very far from having the access needed to spread any kind of ideology through entire generations. > That, coupled with the collapse of the USSR, would allow that leftist ideology to mutate into the forms we see today. No, that's the evidence of that he was wrong.
- philwelch 4y ago
  > Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR. The ideology did not exist to serve the needs of the USSR; the USSR existed to serve the needs of the ideology. You can tell because Marxism was a ideological current for decades before the USSR, and because it regrettably persists decades after the fall of the USSR. The USSR exerted a centralized dominance over that ideology--as early as the Spanish Civil War, Soviet-backed groups were purging rival leftist factions on the Republican side. To a less brutal degree, the US has exerted a similar centralized dominance over the liberal democracies of the world.

wil421 4y ago

He literally said Communism and USSR are going to take other the world unless the last free country (USA) stops them. 4 years later his entire country fell apart. Almost all of the satellite countries have ran from Communism and Russian ideology except Belarus. He also said we had serval years to live on until we would have no where to defect to, except maybe Antartica. Another comment was all the wealthy businessmen are hanging themselves by trading with USSR and they would pray to be killed but probably sent to Alaska, presumably to a Gulag after USSR takes over.

dale_glass 4y ago

> If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire minutes. The man is talking about ideological subversion. It’s not about nationalism. He's an ex-KGB spook talking about the actions of a foreign government. Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR. He even talks about the "Soviet military complex" that will take over if the US doesn't realize what's happening quickly enough. So said ideology is being propagated to create a crisis that would then allow a foreign state with hostile interests to take over. > Bezmenov already says in 1985 that the ideological program had succeeded beyond all expectations and that Americans were doing most of the work for them. Yes, and living in 2023, we can see he was full of it. Nothing had succeeded. The USSR fell apart, and the current US doesn't have anything approaching a proper left wing, let alone anything resembling Marxism. Soon after that interview, Gorbachov went to the US and had his jaw drop watching a normal supermarket. Even the highest of positions in the USSR had little clue of what was happening in the US back then. They were very far from having the access needed to spread any kind of ideology through entire generations. > That, coupled with the collapse of the USSR, would allow that leftist ideology to mutate into the forms we see today. No, that's the evidence of that he was wrong.

philwelch 4y ago
> Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR. The ideology did not exist to serve the needs of the USSR; the USSR existed to serve the needs of the ideology. You can tell because Marxism was a ideological current for decades before the USSR, and because it regrettably persists decades after the fall of the USSR. The USSR exerted a centralized dominance over that ideology--as early as the Spanish Civil War, Soviet-backed groups were purging rival leftist factions on the Republican side. To a less brutal degree, the US has exerted a similar centralized dominance over the liberal democracies of the world.