While I was writing this post…
…this video from the 1980s sprang to mind, and I added it to my list of things to feature at some stage:
And now seems like as good a time as any.
Here is some background, based on the link above:
[In 1984] Soviet defector and KGB operative Yuri Bezmenov, specialising in the fields of Marxist-Leninist propaganda and ideological subversion, warned about the silent war being waged against America as part of a long term plan to take over and destroy the American system and way of life.
Bezmenov was born in 1939 in Mytishchi, near Moscow to a high ranking Soviet Army officer. At the age of 17, he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages, a part of the Moscow State University which was under the direct control of the KGB and the Communist Central Committee. In addition to languages, he studied history, literature, and music, and became an expert on Indian culture.
During his second year, Bezmenov sought to look like a person from India; his teachers encouraged this because graduates of the school were employed as diplomats, foreign journalists, or spies. As a Soviet student, he was also required to take compulsory military training in which he was taught how to play “strategic war games” using the maps of foreign countries, as well as how to interrogate prisoners of war.
As I understand it, the interviewer in the video is G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, who I featured here:
![The Great Taking [2025 re-issue]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jnXC!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb759cd66-2025-4712-a003-6b08c7a9f3af_688x710.png)
Below is a transcript of the interview.
[Interviewer] You spoke several times before about ideological subversion. That is a phrase that I’m afraid some Americans don’t fully understand. When the Soviets use the phrase ideological subversion, what do they mean by it?
[Bezmenov] Ideological subversion is… open. You can see it with your own eyes. All [the] American mass media has to do is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it. There’s no mystery. There’s nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence gathering looks more romantic. It sells more deodorants through the advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond-type 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 calibre, 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 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 interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very [slowly], and it’s divided in four basic stages.
85%… psychological warfare…
I wonder what that percentage is these days.
Demoralisation
[Bezmenov] The first one being demoralisation. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralise a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism-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… American patriotism.
The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the 1960s — drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals — are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behaviour.
In other words… the process of demoralisation is complete and irreversible. To… rid society of these people you need another… 15 years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common-sense people who would be acting in favour and in the interests of United States society.
[Interviewer] And yet these people who have been programmed, and as you say [are] in place, and who are favourable to an opening with the Soviet concept, these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country…
Most of them, yes, simply because the psychological shock when they will see in future what the “beautiful society” of equality and social justice means in practice. Obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy, frustrated people. And the Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously they will join the [ranks] of… dissidents. And unlike in [the] present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America.
Here you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy-rich like Jane Fonda for being [a] dissident, for criticising your Pentagon. In future, these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches. Nobody’s going to pay them nothing for their beautiful noble ideas of equality. This they don’t understand, and it will be [the] greatest shock for them of course.
The demoralisation process in the United States is basically completed already. For the last 25 years — actually it’s over-fulfilled because demoralisation now reaches such areas where previously not even comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to [a] lack of moral standards…
Demoralisation. And humiliation:
[Bezmenov] Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralised is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures… Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it until he’s going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When a military boot crashes his [fat bottom] then he will understand, but not before that. That’s the tragic of the situation of demoralisation.
So basically America is stuck with demoralisation. Even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating [a] new generation of Americans, it will still take you 15 to 20 years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism.
Destabilisation
The next stage is destabilisation. This time [the] 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 two to five years to destabilise a nation — what matters is essentials: economy, foreign relations, defence systems. And you can see quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defence and economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never [have believed] it 14 years ago, when I landed in this part of the world, that the process [would] go that fast.
Crisis
The next stage of course is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now.1
I am reminded of the “climate crisis”:
And of the “covid crisis”…
…when we were told that “The prime minister has been forced to close Britain” at a time when these were the official figures for the number of people dying:
And of the parallels between the two:
Normalisation
And after crisis, with a violent change of power structure and economy, you have the so-called period of normalisation. It may last indefinitely. Normalisation is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, comrade Brezhnev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalised.”
“The new normal”… I am reminded of offerings such as this series from 2020…
…courtesy of the Trusted News Initiative:
And again of Susan Michie, a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London. As a member of both SAGE and SPI-B, and also a long-standing member of the Communist Party of Britain, Michie is on record as stating that she wanted to keep social distancing and face masks going indefinitely.2
[Bezmenov] This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and the paradise on earth, to destabilise your economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington DC with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale3 who will promise loads of things, never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not. He will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins — never mind. He will create false illusions that the situation is under control. The situation is not under control. The situation is disgustingly out of control.
Most of the American politicians, media and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at a [peaceful] time. False. The United States is in the state of war — undeclared total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not comrade Andropov of course. It’s the system — however ridiculous it may sound — the world Communist system or the world Communist conspiracy. Whether I scare some people are not, I don’t give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you.
But you don’t have to be paranoid about it. What actually happens now that, unlike myself, you have literally several years to live on, unless the United States wakes up. The time bomb is ticking. With every second, the disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have nowhere to defect to unless you want to live in Antarctica with penguins. This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.
[Interviewer] Okay, so what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?
[Bezmenov] Well, the immediate thing that comes to my mind is… there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism [and] to explain [to] them the real danger of socialism, Communism, whatever… welfare state… Big Brother government. If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States. You may kiss goodbye to your freedom, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison inmates. All this freedom will vanish, evaporating in five seconds, including your precious lives.
The second thing… the moment [when] at least part of United States population is convinced that the danger is real… they have to force their government — and I’m not talking about sending letters, signing petitions and all this beautiful noble activity — I am talking about forcing United States government to stop aiding Communism. Because there is no other problem more burning and urgent than to stop the Soviet military-industrial complex from destroying whatever is left of the free world. And it is very easy to do. No credits. No technology. No money. No political or diplomatic recognition. And of course no such idiocy as grain deals to USSR. The Soviet people — 270 million Soviets — will be eternally thankful to you if you stop aiding a bunch of murderers who sit now in [the] Kremlin and whom President Reagan respectfully calls government. They do not govern anything, least of all such complexity as the Soviet economy.
So, two very simple, maybe two simplistic answers or solutions, but nevertheless they are the only solutions. Educate yourself. Understand what’s going on around you. You are not living at [a] time of peace. You are in a state of war, and you have precious little time to save yourself. You don’t have much time, especially if you’re talking about the young generation. There’s not much time left for convulsions to the beautiful disco music. Very soon it will go, just overnight.
If we are talking about capitalists or wealthy businessmen, I think they are selling the rope on which they will hang very soon. If they don’t stop, if they cannot curb the insatiable desire for profit, and if they keep on trading with the monster of Soviet Communism, they are going to hang very soon. And they will pray to be killed, but unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska probably, to manage [an] industry of slaves.
It’s simplistic. I know it sounds unpleasant. [And] I know Americans don't like to listen to things which are unpleasant. But I have defected not to tell you the stories about such idiocies as microfilm James Bond-type espionage. This is garbage. You don’t need any espionage anymore. I have come to talk about survival. It’s a question of survival of this system.
You may ask me what is in it for me. Survival obviously, because… I am now in your boat. If we sink together, we will sink beautifully together. There is no other place on this planet to defect to.
The geopolitical sands have obviously shifted in the last forty years. And I am not quite sure what to make of some of what Bezmenov was saying in 1984. But some of the phrases he used resonated with me, particularly re the slow process of demoralisation, which in recent years hardly seems unique to America:
A slow process which we call either ideological subversion… or psychological warfare… to change the perception of reality… to such an extent that, despite the abundance of information, no-one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country… a great brainwashing process which goes very slowly… four basic stages…
15 to 20 years to demoralise a nation… the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students… exposed to the ideology of the enemy… Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of…students without being challenged or counterbalanced…
…people who have graduated in relatively recent years — drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals — now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system… You are stuck with them… You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behaviour… Most of it is done by Westerners to Westerners…
Exposure to true information does not matter anymore… A person who is demoralised is unable to assess true information… Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures… he will refuse to believe it…
I find that last paragraph particularly striking.
Among other things, I am reminded of some people’s response to being shown e.g. that, according to official figures, before the “covid measures” were announced on 23rd March 2020, the number of people dying was at or below normal levels:
And also of various discussions in relation to the “climate crisis”:
I wonder what Bezmenov would say today about the threat of “a world Communist system” and what he would make of e.g. the video featured here:
Related:
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And:
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Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else) homepage
Some posts, including a version of this one, can also be found on Unexpected Turns
Revealing Faith: Seeing and believing the revelation of God
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered as the solution to a problem
For one view of the context, see e.g. this article
Here is what she said: “Vaccines are a really important part of the pandemic control, but it’s only one part. The test, trace and isolate system [and] border controls are really essential. And the third thing is people’s behaviour, that is the behaviour of social distancing, of when you’re indoors making sure there’s good ventilation, or, if there’s not, wearing face masks… and hand and surface hygiene. We’ll need to keep these going in the long term. And that will be good not only for covid but also to reduce other…”
US vice president from 1977-1981 under President Jimmy Carter