…or “How to Brainwash a Nation.”
I recently watched an interview of former KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov that was recorded back in 1985. He was a very high level KGB agent and risked his life to defect to the West in 1970 when he could no longer stand to live under the inhumanity and oppression of the Soviet Communist system.
His interview was quite illuminating…the following is a transcript I made of that interview. I could have simply posted the YouTube link, but thought that his words needed to transcribed so it could be easily disseminated as text. To those that care to, feel free to copy and paste whatever you like. I care not about receiving credit as the messenger…only about the message reaching more people.
Here’s the transcript as accurately as I could render
(The video I transcribed this from did have edit cuts, so it is not a continuous, unbroken narrative.)
Interview of Yuri Bezmenov by G. Edward Griffin, 1985
Ideological subversion is the process which is “legitimate” — overt and open — you can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes and they can see it. There is no mystery…there is nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage and intelligence gathering looks more romantic…it sells more to the audience…for the advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond type of thrillers.
But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures — Ðктивные мероприÑÑ‚Ð¸Ñ in the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare.
What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent, that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.
It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and was divided into 4 basic stages. The first one being demoralization…it takes from 15 – 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which it requires to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy…exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism and Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.
The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already. For the last 35 years — actually it’s over-fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Komrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such tremendous success! Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information;the facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with the authentic proof with documents…with pictures…even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camps, he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom! When the military boot crashes his butt…THEN he will understand. But not before that, that’s the tragic of this situation of demoralization.
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The next stage is destabilization. This time, subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption…whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby…it doesn’t matter anymore. This time, (and it takes only from 2-5 years to destabilize a nation) what matters is essentials: economy, foreign relations and defense systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and economy, the influence of Marxist/Leninist in United States is absolutely fantastic…I could never believe it, 14 years ago when I landed in this part of the world, that the process will go that fast.
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The next stage of course is crisis; it may take only up to 6 weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis…you can see it in Central America now. And after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure and economy, you have the so-called period of “normalization.” It may last indefinitely.
“Normalization” is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in ’68, Komrade Brehznev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized!” This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis; to promise all the people all kinds of goodies, and a paradise on earth. To destabilize your economy…to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a Big Brother Government in Washington D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of things…never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not.
—-
Your leftists in United States…all these professors and all these beautiful Civil Rights defenders…they are instrumental in the process of the subversion…only to destabilize the nation. When the job is completed, they are not needed anymore…they know too much. Some of them…when they get disillusioned…when they see that Marxist/Leninists come to power, obviously they get offended…they think that THEY will come to power…that will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot. But they may turn into the most bitter enemies of Marxist/Leninists when they come to power. And that’s what happened in Nicaragua.
You remember most of these former Marxists/Leninists were either put to prison or one of them split and now he’s working against Sandinistas. It happened in Grenada, when Maurice Bishop was already a Marxist…he was executed by a new Marxist who was more Marxist than this Marxist. Same happened in Afghanistan…when first there was Taraki, he was killed by Amin and he was killed by Babrak Karmal with the help of the KGB. Same happened in Bangladesh when Mujibar Rahman, a very pro-Soviet leftist, he was assassinated by his own Marxist/Leninist military comrades. It’s the same pattern everywhere.
In summary, the Active Measures to subvert the West are
- Demoralization
- Destabilization
- Crisis
- Normalization
Think about many of the issues we face today. This KGB developed 4 part process has been applied to just about every institution and organization in this country to effect the enormous cultural changes in the last half century. It is at the heart of every action taken by the feminist movement in their efforts to lobby for what we now recognize as the active effort to break the Patriarchal nuclear family as the foundation for our society. The institution of marriage and basic gender roles have been demoralized, destabilized and in a state of crisis for an entire generation now…to the point to where it is now normalized.
As Yuri said, one only has to open their eyes to easily see that we have most assuredly been subverted.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
HL,
scary and quite true.
As a kid, in the seventies, my father told me that “women’s lib is a communist plot”. I was at the age when I was dubious about everything he said, but over the last year I have seen the truth is his words.
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Great interview, thank you for that! It just underscores the fact that the “Long March Through The Culture” was indeed a success. What has happened to America today is the Gramscian wet dream. The Hunchback from Sardinia was truly a master strategist.
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That youtube link is just an excerpt. The full interview is here:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cxf_yuri-bezmenov
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wow. scary to see and it’s standing right out in the open from the highest levels of government on down
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America may have been subverted but not in any sort of way that the KGB would have wished. America remains an overwhelming military power and uses its might to dominate the rest of the world. This would hardly have been what the KGB would have wanted. America now has the capacity to bomb anywhere in the world and has shown itself willing to do so. Since 1970 American power has increased not decreased. It has bases in parts of the world where before it was absent. American intends to develop drones which can say in the air from weeks and will be available to bomb at a moments notice. This is hardly the characteristics of a nation that has been weakened by subversion.
Actually if any nation was subverted it was the USSR and its satellites in Eastern Europe. They where completely demolished and remain in a floundering state.
But to be honest I don’t really accept that America has been subverted. To accept this I would have to believe that there is such a thing as an America which is both permanent and unchanging. Clearly all nations change over time . Different groups within society will at one time or another have pre-eminence. Now I don’t like the way the USA is now but if I was to be honest I would have to say it is the MRAs who are the subversives since not only are we a minority but we seek to undermine the feminist orthodoxy which sadly is the defining state of America at the moment.
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Also read Chandler’s Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam.
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Paul, some would argue that our seeming military might is a chimera. The USSR in the late ’70s and early ’80s seemed like an unstoppable military juggernaut, and it all fell apart very quickly. The key to a strong military is a strong economy, and that’s exactly what is being dismantled right now.
Most important of all is that the people who have been softened and demoralized by Marxist ideology are now in positions of power where they can make decisions. Those people regard America not as the rightful world hegemon, but as a sinful nation that needed to atone for its hubris, exceptionalism, militarism, imperialism, greed and excess with humiliation and sacrifice.
They’ve got to be laughing their asses off in Moscow and Peking.
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Paul October 8, 2009 at 9:05 am
“… Now I don’t like the way the USA is now but if I was to be honest I would have to say it is the MRAs who are the subversives since not only are we a minority but we seek to undermine the feminist orthodoxy which sadly is the defining state of America at the moment.”
***
That dominant feminist paradigm is exactly what the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School and Gramscian Strategy set out to accomplish: to win the war from within. IOW, his “Long March Through The Culture”. Your own admission of the state of America attests to exactly that.
See “Gramsci’s Grand Plan”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/823368/posts
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Yep…’marxism’ and ‘communism’ was backed by the banksters as a way of collecting all the wealth to the ‘state’ and controlling everyone.
I am amazed how many people still deny this is the case when we are actually seeing the decline of the west before our eyes. There was another great interview Griffin did where his interviewee claimed that as early as the 50s the purpose of the ‘Ford Foundation’ was to integrate the US and USSR.
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Tarl, there’s no way Russia is “resurgent”. The ideology that ruled it for a century, yes. Russia, no.
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Yeah, I agree with Paul. The United States obviously won the cold war and russia has still not recovered – never mind the pillaging of russia during the 90s. The west was far better than the soviets when it came to soft power. China is a capitalist country and Russia is broken and pitiful. We won. Any other reading of history seems delusional.
The decline of American superiority is a given. China has a much larger population and is approximately equivalent in national IQ. India has lower IQ but is still large enough. With two countries coming online with populations four times the size – obviously America cannot be as dominant as it was once. The best bet is to align with one of the countries weakly, probably India, their rich and our rich go to the same schools. And this is what seems to be happening.
Also, I was hoping that by now, at least, paleocon thought would dominate at least online or on a webpage like this. But it seems Bush the second’s idiotic reign still has its believers.
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Paul October 8, 2009 at 9:05 am
“But to be honest I don’t really accept that America has been subverted”
Dude, time to wake up. America became a totalitarian communist state in 1933 with the great depression. Why do you think they took all the gold off the american people and put it in fort knox and replaced it with fiat ‘money’ which is really just debt notes? They bought it at USD35/ounce in 1936 I believe….and now it is USD1,000 per ounce. Does that give you an idea of how the wealth of the american people was stolen? They sole all the gold and gave people back what has become peanuts. How ‘subverted’ can you get?
Ever since ‘social security’ came in americans have been debt slaves of a totalitarian communist state while being given the semblance of ‘freedom’. Anyone with a SSN can not own anything unless they complete a UCC 1 Financing Statement. You think you own your car? Guess again.
“There are none so enslaved as those who mistakenly believe they are free.”
Once you understand how ‘money’ works you understand you are a slave. Did it not strike you as stange that in all the schooling we receive we are never taught how money really works? Did it not strike you as strange that the government always makes talk of economics sound so complicated and encourages us to ‘leave it to the experts’?
Indeed, americans hate to hear it but the whole revolution was a fake and the brits have been in control the whole time. America was not so much as ‘subverted’ as it was never really free in the first place. Same for India, Australia, Ireland, Canada etc. The ‘European Royalty’ control the world through the money system. You can accept it or not.
Karl October 8, 2009 at 11:01 am
“The United States obviously won the cold war and russia has still not recovered”
Karl, ‘obviously’? Really? What makes you say that? If you knew what was really going on you would know there was no ‘cold war’ to begin with. The only people who ‘won’ were the people who are working day and night on their one world government.
The ‘New World Order’ is being talked about by many world leaders. You can even read about it in the Financial Times. Hell, you can even buy NWO Oakley sun glasses now! LOL! If the New World Order is so good for us why won’t they explain it? If you watched Gordon Browns presentation to the joint session of congress/senate earlier this year you would have heard him talk about many aspects of the New World Order. Especially the one world tax system to make sure there was ‘no where to hide for tax cheats’. That’s pretty lame since tax is voluntary and therefore you can not be a ‘cheat’ for not ‘volunteering’ to pay it. It’s really time to ‘wake up’. 2012 is just around the corner.
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“Yeah, I agree with Paul. The United States obviously won the cold war and russia has still not recovered – never mind the pillaging of russia during the 90s. The west was far better than the soviets when it came to soft power. China is a capitalist country and Russia is broken and pitiful. We won. Any other reading of history seems delusional.”
I agree. Things may have looked different in 1985, but Yuri Bezmenov was wrong.
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I just had a post on the implications of reversing these processes:
Saving the West by Killing the West
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Karl October:
Not every war has real winners. Sometimes only one side loses more badly. It’s silly to claim, for example, that Britain or France came out of the First World War as “winners” in any meaningful sense of the term (though a better case could be made for the U.S.).
As for the Cold War, it was never a true war. From the 1917 Russian Revolution, and all the way until 1991, the American government and the intellectual elites that steer the fashionable public opinion in America have always had a complex love/hate relationship with the Soviet regime — and it’s impossible to deny that the love side of this relationship was always expressed much more clearly and forcefully. On at least two occasions (in 1921 and during WW2), the U.S. aid was a crucial factor in the very survival of the USSR, and the distances between the social networks of the Soviet Communist Party and the American liberal political and intellectual elite were never more than one or two degrees of separation. (Remember, for example, Ted Kennedy’s secret scheming with Andropov in 1983.) On the other hand, every anti-Communist effort undertaken by the U.S., whether military or diplomatic, was half-hearted and viciously denounced and opposed by the fashionable liberal opinion at home. Just look at, say, the Iran-Contra affair — socialist dictators were always aided openly and proudly, but aid to anti-Communist resistance was a matter of shame and secrecy.
Thus, it’s fundamentally wrong to look at the Soviet influence in America as a purely alien ideological corruption coming from the outside. The Soviet experiment was always the pet cause of the American progressives, for which they had great sympathy from day one. Just remember John Reed or Lincoln Steffens (“I have been over into the future, and it works!”). Of course, later there was a lot of positive feedback as the Soviets realized that they could strengthen their position further by returning some help to the U.S. progressives, especially as the American Right started showing some signs of life again after WW2. Tailgunner Joe was, if anything, too moderate and complacent, may God rest his soul. (And may his name once be cleared of all the smear that’s been heaped onto him.)
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Psychology is being used more and more as a weapon. I think most decent honest folk have been slow to realize this (I sure was).
We need to decode psychological abuse, develop naming “systems” to identifity it, and call it out and mock it when it occurs. That freshman orientation at the University of Virginia (google it) was pure psychology practiced on freshmen and explicity white males in order to implement a guilt complex. It was psychologically calibrated and concocted. Every nuance was thought out and the presentation was obviously practiced and rehearsed. Cultural Marxism is the more dangerous enemy than even the old Soviet military arsenal. The true believers in command economies and social systems haven’t abandoned their aims, they have simply mutated their methods and work through different organizations that the old KGB. Their goals are still the same.
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Tarl, there’s no way Russia is “resurgentâ€. The ideology that ruled it for a century, yes. Russia, no.
I suspect that Chandler didn’t choose the title of his book, as is often the case. He does not argue that Russia is “resurgent” in the sense of being a USSR-type military threat. He argues that Russia intends to become a major geopolitical player again, and their strategy is to extinguish capitalism, socialize the USA, separate Europe from America, demoralize the USA with propaganda and disinformation, and reconcile with China.
<i.Cultural Marxism is the more dangerous enemy than even the old Soviet military arsenal. The true believers in command economies and social systems haven’t abandoned their aims, they have simply mutated their methods and work through different organizations that the old KGB. Their goals are still the same.
That is what Chandler argues at length.
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Psychology is being used more and more as a weapon. I think most decent honest folk have been slow to realize this (I sure was).
We need to decode psychological abuse, develop naming “systems†to identifity it, and call it out and mock it when it occurs. That freshman orientation at the University of Virginia (google it) was pure psychology practiced on freshmen and explicity white males in order to implement a guilt complex. It was psychologically calibrated and concocted. Every nuance was thought out and the presentation was obviously practiced and rehearsed. Cultural Marxism is the more dangerous enemy than even the old Soviet military arsenal. The true believers in command economies and social systems haven’t abandoned their aims, they have simply mutated their methods and work through different organizations that the old KGB. Their goals are still the same.
——-
“Psychology is being used more and more as a weapon.”
You mean like what Katz and his tribe do?
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2009/10/10/the-%E2%80%9Ctough-guise%E2%80%9D-scam/#comment-1007
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I’m sure many other people have far better literature on how this all worked out, but in my own reading, on reading this article, I immediately thought of two books: John T Flynn’s ‘While You Slept – Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It (1951)’ and Garet Garrett’s ‘The Revolution Was’ on having a revolution “within the form.”
But, to open randomly in ‘While You Slept’ there is this passage (if I knew how to do html editing in a post… oh well) on p55:
“In the preceding chapter I have listed 29 books that dealt with China and its troubles. Twenty-two of these books were pro-Chinese communist. Seven were anti-Communist. I should think we might well dismiss the whole subject with the following simple statement: Every one of the 22 pro-Communist books, where reviewed, received glowing approval in the literary reviews I have named – that is, in the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, the Nation, the New Republic, and the Saturday Review of Literature. And every one of the anti-Communist books was either roundly condemned or ignored in these reviews.”
I’m going to have to re-read this again it seems.. At any rate, it’s no surprise to me to hear the statements above in 1985, when the views in 1951 in major media outlets were as described by Flynn.
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This may come off sounding aggressive. It’s late, my intent is not to bicker, but rather to suggest to some corridors to look down which may provide very interesting food for thought..
Paul, with all due respect I think that your perspective is somewhat naive and show somewhat of a lack of a comprehensive scope.
Vladimir’s statements, brief as they were, point the way to a more nuanced understanding:
“As for the Cold War, it was never a true war. From the 1917 Russian Revolution, and all the way until 1991, the American government and the intellectual elites that steer the fashionable public opinion in America have always had a complex love/hate relationship with the Soviet regime ”
I’m not saying I agree with him on everything I’ve read – but on a number of posts he’s displayed a knowledge of the history of the Revolution, organized Socialism, and the International that is hard to find. I’m not sure that he would agree with what I’m implying below… but paying attention to his posts is educational.
I honestly recommend doing a bit of research and not rushing to any conclusions, but honestly do research into the history of subversion in the US and Western Europe. What happened is far more nuanced than the simplistic jingoistic “we won the cold war” (factually true, but as Vladimir points out, missing some points) and the “tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist” alternative.
There is some very interesting history that points to third possibilities that I think Dave FH is suggesting.
I highly recommend some of Anthony Sutton’s early works, as well as Norman Dodd’s report on Foundations and Trusts, and the derivative work Foundations Their Power and Influence.
To illustrate the increasingly well documented and complicated nuanced interlocking of some corners of the left and official US policy look at A Cultural Cold War, it is a useful source book. To look at the issue of high level subversion in the UK look at Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher” and the follow-up work on Sir Victor Rothschild (I can’t recall the title, the 5th agent or something to this effect”
Then A. Golitsyn’s two books on KGB subversion published in the mid 80′s and early 90′s.
There are more, some better done and more rigorous, but the above off the top of my head is a decent overview.
Fact: All of these books can be critiqued, as with all books. However it is lazy, and stupid, for people to suggest that views like these have been “debunked’ without putting the serious intellectual effort into really digging into them.
And it is lazy, stupid, and possibly dangerous to your country and community, much less than your own life, to ignore and dismiss the broader possibilities that the very cultural change you decry may have a central organizing principle influencing, if not steering and initiating them.
No long drawn out argument in this comment, just a suggestion that if someone is intellectually honest he will refrain from adopting a “common sense” reflexive “skeptic” mode and actually act like a scientist and examine all available data, all, an its interpretations and weight what seems likely from what seems spurious AFTER really examining the matter.
Most people who make the sort of statements you did have not, in my experience, done this. You could be a suggestion, I certainly cannot speak for you. Either way you may find reading carefully, and considering carefully , these things to be potentially rewarding.
If for nothing else a lot of this stuff beats a Clancy novel..
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