It is a confluence of a great many things. Here is Bertrand Russell on his meeting with Vladimir Lenin in 1920: https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 https://youtu

It is a confluence of a great many things. Here is Bertrand Russell on his meeting with Vladimir Lenin in 1920: https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 Lenin: Oh we're not establishing peasant proprietorship, it is, you see there are poor peasants and rich peasants and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants and they soon hang them from the nearest tree. *cackle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra It predates modern day Russian, Soviets, or even Bolsheviks. It goes back to Mensheviks who initially developed such psyops to get into and hold power. They had their own inspirations of course but this is really where this evil exploded. It isn't some big secret - the ends justify the means, so lie, make false equivalencies, get people all stirred up and questioning reality and sow distrust as much as possible. Once you get in power you'll put things in order what could possibly go wrong? Things are dire and can't get any worse, so get in power by all means necessary. With the backdrop of the Cold War they turned it outwards, if you aren't familiar you can get a good feel for the vibe from any Adam Curtis documentary, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation The problem is that once trust collapses and nobody believes in the media, the institutions, and everybody is aware that people lie -- the trick really is to get you to lie also, even a little bit -- a society can get completely untethered from reality. > It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions. A lot of conspiracies do end up true, coverups are a thing, who can you trust? What even is real? It is not that your friends are bad people or lack critical reasoning skills. They got shaken out of solid ground and now are in a question-everything mindset. Very effective. Tragically so.