[HN Gopher] KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America (1984)
___________________________________________________________________
KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America (1984)
Author : cs702
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-02-25 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| baal80spam wrote:
| I've submitted this in the past but it was mercilessly downvoted
| within minutes. Hopefully it sticks this time!
| rglover wrote:
| Likewise.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This pops up every so often. I've seen this upvoted on here one
| or twice before.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Wow, it's really similar in essence to Naomi Klein's Shock
| Doctrine. I wonder if she listened to him when writing the book.
| thriftwy wrote:
| What kind of concentration camps is he talking about, in 1984?
| donatj wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
| thriftwy wrote:
| In 1984?
| donatj wrote:
| > Political prisoners continued to be kept in one of the
| most famous camps Perm-36 until 1987 when it was closed
| savant_penguin wrote:
| It's bizarre how accurate this is
| alsaaro wrote:
| How do you figure?
|
| This person thought in the 1980's that American left wing
| propaganda will subvert and eventually destabilize the United
| States to a point were they lose a hot war with the Soviet
| Union, and that the American left wing propagandist will be
| summarily executed by the Soviet occupiers, rather than be
| allowed to rule.
|
| Assuming you aren't from a parallel dimension, Bezmenov's
| predictions proved false.
|
| Did you watch the video?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Russia launching a full-scale invasion against a neighboring
| country surely is the complete opposite of the specter of
| some cunning Soviet/Russian intelligence officer who deftly
| turns a whole nation against itself.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It's not really the opposite; what the defector describes
| is the strategy used in the prep work that went into the
| invasion and which made Putin think that the West would
| crumble in the face of it.
|
| It _did_ weaken Western countries internally, and the
| relations between them, but not (at least, I think from
| evidence so far) as much as Putin needed.
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| What jumped out for me is the soft underbelly of free market
| liberal democracies esp like the US today.
|
| We seem to have little continuity in big picture thinking in the
| Govt and most things are on a 2 year cycle of trying to get
| majorities in congress and/or the presidency.
|
| Meanwhile a totalitarian state can plot patiently over two or
| three decades by which time it might almost be too late for the
| other side to make a difference.
|
| The situations around Ukraine and Taiwan seem like good examples.
| denormalized wrote:
| I don't think is true when it comes to foreign policy
| objectives, especially those centered around energy
| infrastructure (oil reserves, pipelines, etc).
|
| Consider policies around strategic alliances (Saudi Arabia,
| Israel) and regime change (Iraq, Syria, Iran, among others)
| from at least the 90s through the present day.
| 8note wrote:
| A totalitarian state is prone to falling apart - the USSR is a
| prime example.
|
| Long term, american bureaucrats stay in the government pushing
| for the same stuff for the length of their career. Even once
| they've retired, people like Robert Muller come back to put in
| bits of work.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > A totalitarian state is prone to falling apart - the USSR
| is a prime example.
|
| That's taken as an article of faith, but I'm not sure how
| true it actually is. Sure some totalitarian have fallen apart
| (the Soviet Union), but others have not (China), and Western
| liberal democracies aren't looking so stable nowadays.
| poxwole wrote:
| Oh look an ex soviet grifter who was a low level employee in
| India and can not speak with any authority on the matters of
| "cultural Leninism"
| zackees wrote:
| motohagiography wrote:
| Having seen this video before, I'm not sure dismissing it because
| of who has taken it seriously is sufficient as an intellectual
| response. It's a useful modern articulation of the totalitarian
| strategy. However, when I think of friends who would never watch
| it because from their perspective, it's just right-wing
| propaganda, here are the arguments I think they make against it:
|
| - even if it was relevant at the time back in the 80s, applying
| it to today is not an accurate comparison
|
| - sovietism wasn't real socialism
|
| - whether what he is saying is true or not it arms ideological
| enemies and undermines the progressive cause, and is therefore
| misinformation
|
| - his whole structure is decorating an underlying set of
| deceptions with facts that make it seem true, but it's not.
|
| - if the soviet agenda is that subtle and complex as he says it
| could have produced him as an equally false disinformation
| source.
|
| - governments need to do and hide things to manage people and the
| economy for the greater good so he's saying normal government
| techniques are evil to make you paranoid
|
| - if you are educated you know this is how politics really work
| anyway and being responsible sometimes means compromising for the
| greater good, etc.
|
| - people use this video to justify their existing racism,
| homophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc.
|
| These have some truth, but I don't think they persuasively
| discredit the systemic process of attacking a culture with the
| predictive power that he describes. They're separate things.
| There is a lot of prior art on the tactics and strategies of
| totalitarian movements, most of it in the form of american cold
| war anti-communist propaganda, which though campy, when you view
| it again from the present perspective of the US having lost it's
| surprisingly prescient stuff. The soviet goal was to destabilize
| and dissolve cultures in the space of a couple of generations,
| and that's what it does.
|
| Sometimes I think the fall of the iron curtain wasn't the end of
| soviet totalitarianism, but rather, its liberation from being
| confined to mere nation states, only to spend the 90's and 00's
| infiltrating western institutions, and we're seeing the fruit of
| that today. Most of our current leadership went to university in
| the 90s and were introduced to a wave of critical theory virus
| then (last one was the 70s), and we are seeing it in the
| milennials now.
| dev_by_day wrote:
| > - sovietism wasn't real socialism
|
| This is one of those funny and illogical arguments that come up
| often and uses a rather common (and ironic) propaganda trick of
| just denying a massive failure ever existed.
|
| This is the equivalent of stating Nazism wasn't "real national
| socialism" or Mussolini wasn't using "real fascism".
|
| You can't just pretend away bad outcomes from a terrible system
| when it doesn't go your way. They deployed socialism and
| communism and the outcomes were exactly what those systems
| always bring.
|
| Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and
| succeeded? Venezuela? Its also a disaster. Was that not "real"
| socialism either?
|
| The reality is Socialism has been most effective while being
| integrated in a hybrid manner with other systems (Social
| Democracy). Socialism on its own is a disaster that hands over
| far too much power to the state and doesn't work economically.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and
| succeeded?
|
| The only place it really worked were small communes like
| Longo Mai. Why? Because they are made by people who want it
| and everybody shares the common spirit. This is only possible
| on a small scale, never on a state scale when it's pushed
| down your throat and often you can't leave.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| If you want to learn about propaganda and indoctrination then
| look no further than Edward Bernays and other PR pioneers.
| People like him came up with a blueprint to manage liberal
| democracies because nominal freedom requires (according to him)
| the management of thought in order to make people _make the
| right choices_ (we are all free to pick between Pepsi and
| Coke).
|
| Propaganda and indoctrination makes less sense in a
| totalitarian society. It's in the name: a totalitarian society
| needs no consent or illusion of choice because the choices have
| been made for you. The same applies to merely authoritarian
| societies to a lesser degree.
|
| Putin had his whole narrative of the Russian Empire becoming a
| thing again. So that was definitely meant to motivate the
| average Russian. But on the other hand it is not crucial that
| Russians buy it; Russians were directly told that people who
| protest the invasion will get arrested.
|
| There is too much fascination with the Orwellian "thought
| crime" type of propaganda and indoctrination. Try to have a
| more pscyhoanalytical approach to it. Like Bernays.
| notalongtimer wrote:
| The documentary Hypernormalisation talks about the strategies
| Bezmenov lines out the four basic stages from a slightly
| different angle. Worth a watch. Things have gotten even more
| frightening since this warning. Bezmenov talks as if it's only
| the left that's targeted by ideological subversion, and maybe
| that was the primary strategy at the time, but it sure seems like
| both sides are are in play now.
|
| https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/hypernormalisation-2016...
| raidicy wrote:
| I wish there were literature or media on the subjects that
| Curtis covers. I find Adam Curtis is more focused on making
| entertaining docus than explicitly informative. On occasion in
| other docs he's made some claims of fact on topics that have
| more nuance than "yes" or "no".
| propagandist wrote:
| Simulation and Simulacra is probably where hypernormalisation
| got its inspiration.
| propagandist wrote:
| It's a great watch for that reason and for laying out just how
| much of our political systems are pure theatre. Fantastic
| production to boot.
| [deleted]
| afrcnc wrote:
| so accurate with what's happening in the US right now
| cs702 wrote:
| The more shocking/interesting aspect of this interview, for me,
| is to hear how the KGB (and its successor organization(s) in
| Russia, I imagine) would work _over multiple decades_ to
| "subvert" the people of a country, in four stages --
| demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization:
|
| 1) demoralize the people of a country over a period of "at least
| 15 to 20 years;"
|
| 2) destabilize the country's institutions over a period of "2 to
| 5 years;"
|
| 3) precipitate a crisis that would normally unfold over a period
| of "up to 6 weeks;" and
|
| 4) normalize the new state of affairs.
|
| Whether the KGB and its successor organization(s) could have or
| might have been successful is of course _debatable_ , but no one
| can deny this kind of persistent effort to subvert another
| country's people over such a long horizon is... audacious (words
| fail me).
|
| In particular, I find the idea of a long-term government-
| sponsored program whose goal is to "demoralize" people a bit
| upsetting: It stands directly against the _let 's-roll-up-our-
| sleeves, we-can-do-it optimism_ for which US entrepreneurs have
| long been known around the world.
| tremon wrote:
| Why specifically _government-sponsored program_? I see
| parallels with how the free press (i.e. not government) of
| England undermined the EU over a period of 25 years with
| misinformation, and then capitalized on the destabilization of
| the Euro (the Greece bailout) to precipitate a referendum.
| augstein wrote:
| With all the right wing support Putin is getting lately, I
| can't help but wonder if they were at least partially
| successful in subverting our society.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| If you want to know who is secretly aligned with who, pay
| attention to language. Whoever's vocabulary is shared is an
| implicit alliance -
|
| Putin has been recently using rhetoric that he must remove
| "neo-nazis" in an effort to "demilitarize" the rightful
| Ukrainian people.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos from
| this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist
| subversion. Without taking any side here or agreeing with
| him, just listen to when he talks about subversive education
| (for example he talks about a push for more social sciences
| and other "unsubstantial" education ) or to what he refers to
| as demoralization (which is according to his definition is
| saying stuff like america was never great, we shouldn't feel
| proud of our past, and just in general a constant push for
| victimization).
|
| It's funny how I guess both sides ended up thinking he is
| referring to the other side though.
| panzagl wrote:
| Well, to divide a country you need two sides...
| noobermin wrote:
| Bezmenov is ideologically a conservative and pushed
| conservative ideology once he was in America, so it
| warrants taking this with a grain of salt. That said, today
| it feels like Russian misinfo targets anti-establishment
| groups on both sides, both far-right and far-left types.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Oh I completely agree that he doesn't have a lot of
| credibility but I guess his message is still
| theoretically interesting even if it's potentially only
| fiction.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is also from 1984. Things have changed quite a bit
| from then.
|
| Back then, organizations like Campaign for Nuclear
| Disarmament were Soviet-influenced.
| 8note wrote:
| Is it demoralizing to say that the US was never great? It
| wasn't, but it was always getting better, and it still is.
|
| To me it seems more demoralizing to look back and think
| things have gotten worse
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes but a lot of people actually are starting to think
| that things have actually gotten worse (especially since
| 2020, and they are obviously totally wrong imo)
|
| And yes of course it's demoralizing, his theory was that
| if you think your country is evil or based on evil and
| not much better than anything else why would you ever
| fight for it? Especially when faced with an enemy who
| actually believes that he is dying for a great cause, and
| the best system.
|
| From a cold war perspective, if the other side doesn't
| believe his system to be superior anymore that could've
| been decisive to win a war. Just look at the vietnam war
| and how it (thankfully) ended.
| csomar wrote:
| So it looks like they are subverting both sides now.
| America is screwed.
| csee wrote:
| Well they clearly changed tactics, didn't they. RT is
| right-leaning propaganda and all his most dangerous stooges
| (Tucker Carlson, Bannon) are too.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I guess bannon has a pretty subversive aim but I don't
| see how Tucker Carlson, no matter how controversial he
| is, is subversive when he mostly supports traditional
| power structures. He's basically pushing a bog standard
| anti war populist narrative,which he has done
| consistently in the past 4 years regardless of it
| involved russia.
|
| What I'm essentially saying is that he doesn't really fit
| into the "demoralize/destabilize/subvert/normalize"
| framework. But that's not to say he doesn't fit very well
| in others ;)
| csee wrote:
| Tucker clips are being broadcasted right now inside
| Russia as part of their state sponsored propaganda. His
| description of Ukraine as a US client state and other
| pro-Putin propaganda is harming Ukrainians.
| cma wrote:
| He had on a neofeudalist/neoreactionary/hbd guy just to
| banter with him (Moldbug).
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Funnily enough, if you watch the entirety of the videos
| from this guy he is pretty clearly talking about leftist
| subversion.
|
| Wouldn't subversion be opportunistic, though? Maybe during
| Cold War, their tactics had more success on the left, but
| more recently they've had more success on the right. If
| your goal is to subvert the whole, it's six of one, half a
| dozen of the other.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| From what I understood from his speeches, I think he's
| saying that some leftist ideology is inherently
| subversive.
|
| I guess it makes sense and it doesn't have to be
| pejorative: conservatives are usually more attached to
| traditional structures while historically leftist groups
| push for a transformative change. Subversion is a good
| way to transform a structure.
|
| A good example would be the 1619 projet that, whether you
| agreed with its message or not, explicitly aimed at
| undermining the current mainstream narrative on the
| history of the USA. I can't think of any right wing
| equivalent
| kaitai wrote:
| There is no right wing equivalent because of the
| structurally different ways in which the right and left
| position their narratives. The appeal to the right wing
| in the US is via Christian nationalism and distrust of
| authority (from scientists to lamestream media to the US
| gov't). The right wing in the US buttresses its
| legitimacy by claiming that Christian nationalism is the
| historically correct point of view and is the
| "traditional structure". This is in fact false, but the
| whole point is that the right wing (as you point out)
| couches its message in terms of "this is the truth and
| the way it's always been" while the left wing appeals for
| transformative change. A wholesale move to Christian
| nationalism would be in fact a transformative change for
| the US, but you gotta be cognizant of how you sell it,
| right? The new right-wing distrust for the US military
| and US intelligence and support for Russia is pretty
| transformative. It's just good sales.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Wouldn't subversion be opportunistic, though? Maybe
| during Cold War, their tactics had more success on the
| left, but more recently they've had more success on the
| right. If your goal is to subvert the whole, it's six of
| one, half a dozen of the other.
|
| Read what I wrote in another comment. It doesn't matter
| if it's left, or right for as long as disturbing random
| discourse keeps your mind jammed, and prevents you from
| seeing things for what they are.
| partiallypro wrote:
| The far Right and far Left (tankies) are both being fairly
| pro-Putin. The Right just has someone like Tucker Carlson
| with a big mega phone.
|
| But if you listen to the video, he is talking about using the
| Left's idealogy as subversion.
| nobleach wrote:
| I keep hearing this on places like Reddit. I see memes
| parroting this. But with all the right-wing folks I know,
| I've yet to hear ONE say they actually think this invasion is
| a good idea, or that Putin is a good guy. I even visited
| Townhall.com for the first time in like a decade just to see
| what "the right wing" had to say. And... it's not there. No
| one other than Donald Trump has actually taken Putin's side.
| I just now went to check Newmax as I was certain THEY would
| be lending this support. But no... it simply isn't there.
| belltaco wrote:
| "A congressman from New Jersey has disclosed that he is
| receiving calls from viewers of Tucker Carlson's primetime
| Fox News show, expressing distress at the Biden
| administration's backing of Ukraine in the tense military
| stand-off with Russia."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/25/tucker-
| carlson...
|
| >But with all the right-wing folks I know, I've yet to hear
| ONE say they actually think this invasion is a good idea,
| or that Putin is a good guy.
|
| How many right wing folks do you know?
|
| Edit: Here's Candace Owens with 3M followers implying that
| the first air strikes in Kyiv were the work of NATO because
| Putin said he's only attacking the eastern parts.
|
| https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1496699449535602696
| mardifoufs wrote:
| If I bring up 2 examples of leftists being as pro putin
| as the 2 examples you have linked does that make both
| sides ( ;) ) pro putin? Because finding anti-Nato
| leftists isn't that hard at all.
|
| Seriously, from everything I have been seeing going from
| meme accounts to trump aligned figure heads, there has
| been an overwhelming support for ukraine (while
| criticizing biden of course but that's still not being
| pro putin). Yes there are some on right who are but thats
| because the right isn't a monolith. Imo it's just
| unhelpful and it reeks of terminal partisanship mentality
| when even a pretty bad situation like this is used to
| score points against the other side using cherry picked
| examples even if it's so easily disproven. Inevitably it
| also turns into a "the other side is not as willing to go
| to war as we are so they are against us"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There are plenty of American leftists taken in by Russian
| propaganda because it plays to their biases, but the
| difference from the right-wingers who have been in that
| the leftists are marginalized politically, whereas a
| number of the right-wingers are influential, several in
| major media, some federal elected office-holders, and
| some people discussed seriously as Presidential
| candidates for 2024.
|
| Now, part of this is the asymmetry of American politics
| where leftists, qua leftists, are generally marginalized,
| but it goes beyond that.
| nobleach wrote:
| So we have a guy saying that he's receiving calls against
| Biden's support of Ukraine. Certainly we have something
| more verifiable than that, right? That insane tweet by
| Candace Owens, yep. That is the type of thing I'm looking
| for. What I'm not seeing is some overall support from
| "the right".
|
| If this were some big Russian support smear campaign by
| the right, certainly we should see it in all their normal
| channels, right? I really do not feel like visiting any
| more right wing sites to prove my point. The simple fact
| is, we read comments like the grandparent, and we're
| supposed to believe that Russian support is wide-spread.
| The truth is, aside from a couple of nut-cases, both
| sides of the aisle seem to overwhelmingly condemn this
| invasion.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| He's actually a genius. Why? Because it's all couched in
| another layer that the audience doesn't have access to. He
| describes the approach being like judo. Rather than meet your
| opponent head on, use their momentum against them. That is a
| tacit admission that the US has momentum in its real
| weaknesses. This is clear to anyone who has dabbled in US
| history. There are consistent historical divisions based on
| class, geography, race, religion, federalism, &c. that defy
| attempts to be mended. A subverter need not create new
| divisions, but rather amplify already existing divisions.
|
| That's why so many of his examples are relatable today - we
| haven't actually fixed anything. And that's why it's unclear
| if the subversion was successful or not, these divisions
| already had momentum. They were already going to happen, the
| subversion, if present, only served to accelerate their
| unwinding.
|
| This part is the most fun. Peeling back the curtain on these
| subversions doesn't do anything to make the subversion less
| effective! He has a reactionary perspective, certainly, but
| it could just as well be framed through the lens of leftism.
| It just happens that this particular framing leverages the
| fears of his audience to a decay of a glorious past whereas
| the leftist version would be the denial of a glorious future.
| That's why I like him so much. He's cementing his audience's
| stance in a way that makes them feel more resolute in their
| defiance to subversion which amplifies the division. It's
| like finding a perfectly crafted puzzle. Pure genius.
| foobarian wrote:
| I am skeptical because of how small the sample size is. This
| could well be a case of, a bunch of "spy architecture"
| astronauts in the KGB come up with this brainy scheme, a bunch
| of years go by, they find one place where it worked, and go "A
| ha! Our thing works!"
| denormalized wrote:
| > It stands directly against the let's-roll-up-our-sleeves, we-
| can-do-it optimism for which US entrepreneurs have long been
| known around the world.
|
| This is an interesting choice of contrast between the KGB and
| US entrepreneurs.
|
| How about when compared to US intelligence agencies?
|
| Do you think they are more similar or different in their
| methodologies?
| jka wrote:
| Here's a thought exercise: next time you're reading a press
| release by the U.S. Department of Defense, try replacing
| "China" or "Russia" with "the CIA", and see whether the
| contents of the announcement continue to make sense.
|
| As with any country, different organizations have different
| missions and philosophies -- and so do the people within
| them.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > How about when compared to US intelligence agencies?
|
| Read my another comment below, by having a whoping 23
| intelligence agencies, USA condemned its leadership to a
| shower of opinions out of which no correct one can be
| synthesized.
|
| Only the size of antenna maters, not how powerful is the
| receive amplifier, or the number of them.
|
| If you link up 23 pre-amps in a row, you will not get a 23
| times clearer signal, but 23 times more noise.
| elahieh wrote:
| If there's 23 times more noise, but the opinions are
| uncorrelated, that's where the random forest approach comes
| into its own for a decision tree based on classification or
| regression. Like time series forecasting, and you can
| choose the weights based on how well the agencies performed
| in similar situations in the past.
|
| "In the multitude of counsellors there is safety" -- Prov
| 11:14
| mantas wrote:
| Democratically elected governments have a very short shelf
| life. 4, 8 years if lucky. Meanwhile authoritarian governments
| have much much more time. And since authoritarian governments
| tend to have nepotistic tendencies, the play can even span
| generations.
| nradov wrote:
| Elected governments come and go, but the "deep state"
| bureaucracy and associated private think tanks serve to
| maintain some level of policy continuity. Very few autocratic
| governments in the modern era have successfully managed a
| transition to the next generation.
| jostmey wrote:
| I don't disagree with the sequence of events, just the cause
| and effect. I don't think these historical events are
| orchestrat- _able_ or controlled by governments; rather, these
| events evolve over time when problems in society are not
| addressed.
| pvg wrote:
| The GRU is an intelligence service that's existed in parallel
| with other ones and is not a 'successor to the KGB'. Perhaps
| you're thinking of the FSB.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thanks. You're right. I meant both. I edited the comment to
| reflect as much.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Putin was in power for around 23 years, during which he
| completely dulled Western sense of danger by constantly blowing
| hot, and cold.
|
| What Russians call "blowing fuflo" was certainly in use by the
| time the second flare up of second Chechnya war - 2003.
|
| They funded a gazillion of cheap academicians, for-profit
| journalists, and think tanks with no apparent goal besides just
| keeping the buzz about it going, no matter what the actual
| argument was.
|
| Basically they reduced the signal-to-noise ratio of sensible
| political discourse to near none, which then swayed the West
| into making bad decisions, and assured no high quality
| leadership can emerge, being outshouted by that cacophonic
| chorus of random opinion leaders.
|
| The inability to take things for what they are, "analysis
| paralysis," politicians, and business leaders not being able to
| put a single coherent paragraph without an army of advisers --
| this is what it is.
|
| They don't care what people keep arguing about for as long as
| they keep talking, and doing nothing.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Whether the KGB (and its successor, the GRU) could have or
| might have been successful is of course debatable, but no one
| can deny this kind of persistent effort to subvert another
| country's people over such a long horizon is... audacious
| (words fail me).
|
| > In particular, I find the idea of a long-term government-
| sponsored program whose goal is to "demoralize" people a bit
| upsetting: It stands directly against the let's-roll-up-our-
| sleeves, we-can-do-it optimism for which US entrepreneurs have
| long been known around the world.
|
| Though, IIRC, their subversion projects use a similar strategy
| to VCs: throw a bunch of efforts at the wall, and see which
| ones stick. For a lot of it, I don't think they had a big
| master plan, but tasked agents with coming up and implementing
| ideas for subversion and disinformation.
| gideonite wrote:
| Sounds like the Soviet form of Edward Bernays.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| This is completely ridiculous.
|
| Consider for one the soft power that the US has.[1] You can just
| limit this to the seemingly frivilous "everyone wants to wear
| jeans" point. It is nowhere near anything that the Soviet Union
| and now Russia could dream of. And the point is even stronger if
| we just consider the West. To propose that the Soviet Union and
| now Russia could psychologically undermine _America itself_ is
| completely outlandish.
|
| Now consider that Russia wasn't even able to psychologically
| subvert their "brother people" the Ukranians. A smaller country
| (although still large) right next to them with a fair amount of
| Russian speakers. Let's just for a moment pretend for the sake of
| the argument that the separatist movements were just
| indoctrinated by Russia. That was still a failure since the
| majority of Ukranians ended up being pro-Western.
|
| [1] And I do mean _soft_ and not the "we'll persuade you to open
| yourself up to penetration by our corporations" kind of
| _influence_.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> To propose that the Soviet Union and now Russia could
| psychologically undermine America itself is completely
| outlandish._
|
| It's not outlandish at all. Many of the things he describes
| have actually happened.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > wasn't even able to psychologically subvert the Ukranians
|
| Well, not all of them, but the there were enough separatists in
| Crimea and Donetsk, etc. to destabilize those regions. Were
| those separatists psychologically subverted, or did they just
| happen to want to re-join Russia?
|
| They don't have to subvert all of America, just enough of a
| subvertable multitude to destabilize things.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Well, not all of them, but the there were enough
| separatists in Crimea
|
| First of all, us Westerners have already questioned how
| democratic the supposed cessation from Ukraine was. So let's
| not get selective now. Russia already had their military
| stationed their. That could have a chilling effect.
|
| Second of all, plenty of people in Crimea speak Russian. And
| a lot of the Crimean Tatars were forcefully deported under
| the Soviet Union. I just bring that up since forceful
| deportation is not exactly, uh, the tool of a governing party
| that feels that they can just manipulate their subjects into
| becoming... whatever the Soviet Union wanted them to become.
|
| > ... and Donetsk, etc. to destabilize those regions.
|
| In your quote you left out the rest of the paragraph where I
| addressed the separatists. Even if we assume--and this is an
| insane hypothetical for the sake of this specific argument--
| that all those separatists were hypnotized by Russia, that's
| still a very lackluster result considering that the majority
| of Ukraine is pro-Western right now. I mean they did commit
| to an _all out war_ with them. So much for subversion.
|
| But let's entertain this point for one more paragraph. The
| separatist conflict started after the 2014 coup which America
| supported.[1] So the separatist sentiment was in part caused
| by America trying to subvert the political process of Ukraine
| (and kind of openly, too). That's in a way more impressive
| than Russian subversion considering how far away the US is.
|
| [1] Page 4, https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
|
| > Were those separatists psychologically subverted, or did
| they just happen to want to re-join Russia?
|
| This feels like a rhetorical question where one of the
| alternatives is the obvious answer. In case it is the former
| which is "correct": it is quite common for peoples and
| ethnicities to _not_ live neatly in each of their own little
| nation state. 25% of Latvia, for example, consists of ethnic
| Russians. Finland has a Swedish-speaking minority. You have
| Transnistria in Moldova. So what makes an ethnic /cultural
| separatist region _at all_ weird or unusual? Especially when
| a major power is willing to unofficially help them out for
| eight years...
| jenkstom wrote:
| Civil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What?
| This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds
| like more disinformation.
| qiskit wrote:
| > Civil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What?
| This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds
| like more disinformation.
|
| Not the 80s but 60s. Nixon blamed the civil rights movement of
| the 60s on the soviets/communism. Nixon's ability to pin the
| civil rights movement on the soviets/communism made him
| extremely popular. People forget how popular Nixon was.
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/...
|
| This guy is all over youtube/social media, but he's just
| stating standard anti-communist propaganda we've had since
| mccarthy in the 40s/50s.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| What about it isn't true today?
| simonh wrote:
| He's looking at things through a KGB lens. He doesn't have any
| real clue what civil rights was about because he's not part of
| western culture, but he was embedded in KGB culture and what he
| says about that is credible.
| akagusu wrote:
| Today, everything different from the "common sense" spread
| through the media is considered misinformation.
|
| Think about this war. Everyone is condemning Russia, making
| statements supporting Ukraine, applying all kind of sanctions
| against Russia.
|
| Why did not governments do the same when US invade Iraq or
| Afghanistan?
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Leftists today love to parrot the Ukraine are neo-nazi dreck.
|
| Obviously, the USSR is gone but it did manage to demoralize
| enough people to shill for Russian foreign policy despite Putin
| being much more fascist adjacent, and enjoying close support
| from the bellicose Orthodox patriarchs who rail against western
| politics instead of sticking to droning on about God.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Strange. I don't know any leftists who argue in favor of the
| capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia. What cave have your
| leftists been living in?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| That's a strawman - it isn't that leftists "argue in favor
| of the capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia", but that they
| make excuses for Putin (blame Nato expansion for causing
| the crisis), and accuse Ukraine supporters of fomenting
| war. The anti-war left is a weird (albeit smaller) mirror
| of the Tucker Carlson right.
|
| _But we also acknowledge that the Russian government,
| oligarchic autocracy as it is, is right to say that endless
| NATO expansion, for which read extended US hegemony, is not
| the security structure Europe needs. The chance was missed
| to abolish NATO when the Warsaw Pact went out of business
| more than thirty years ago; instead we are left with the
| consequences of broken US promises not to extend the
| alliance eastwards._
|
| _So Stop the War aims to provide the opposition that the
| Labour front bench seemingly won't. The Tories have taken
| the lead internationally in talking up the crisis,
| announcing imminent coups, false-flag incidents or
| invasions almost every day, to the point where even the
| government in Kiev has asked them to tone it down a bit._
|
| _More substantively, they have sent fresh arms to Ukraine
| and deployed more British forces into Eastern Europe--all
| the very things which Russia has said it finds most
| menacing. All this pointless provocation seems to speak of
| a government which would actually quite like a war to break
| out, for strategic and doubtless domestic political
| reasons, particularly since it will not involve any British
| forces fighting._
|
| https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/keir-starmer-guardian-
| stop-...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| By this definition, analyzing history and all its actors
| is the same as assigning and/or de-assigning blame.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I mean, Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein makes two, but
| where's the rest of that version of the left in the US? I
| think it's basically nonexistent.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| The cave where they hate the West so much that they shill
| for its enemies who are much more ghoulish.
|
| My leftists are British and Canadian however. YMMV based on
| geography.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You seem to both know some very extreme individuals and
| also enjoy painting with extremely broad strokes.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| In the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016
| election they found that Russia was stoking racial discord and
| supporting Black Lives Matter.
|
| https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/17/18145075/russia-fa...
|
| Anything that divides, causes upset, or is distracting is going
| to be a good propaganda target, regardless of whether the
| underlying cause is good or bad.
| rajin444 wrote:
| > regardless of whether the underlying cause is good or bad.
|
| Yeah, that's the real issue. If we can find a way to be
| neighborly (literally and figuratively) with those who have
| opinions (not actions) we abhor we might get somewhere.
|
| But, all somebody has to do is say some opinion threatens
| their life and that plan is out the window.
| jahewson wrote:
| Not at all. Pivotal figures in civil rights, such as Du Bois
| [1] were anti-capitalist and much of contemporary social and
| legal theory emerged in the 1980s from post-modernism, a direct
| offshoot of Marxism. The general idea being that if you switch
| out "class struggle" for "racial struggle" then you get to
| borrow the rest of Marx's theory about an oppressed proletariat
| and the need for revolution to overthrow an oppressive elite.
|
| Americans like to use "marxist" as a slur and to use it out of
| context to attack political enemies but there is no shortage of
| actual Marxist who label themselves as such, e.g this
| professor, found randomly by my Googling for 30sec:
| https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-as-...
|
| Most people have no idea that they're regurgitating Marxist
| ideology when they repeat the phrases and arguments they hear,
| and of course would never identify as such - but there's no
| sense in which making this observation is misinformation.
|
| Personally I lament the fact that people across the political
| spectrum are digging ideological holes for themselves instead
| of focusing on how we can all help each other.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois
| VictorPath wrote:
| > post-modernism, a direct offshoot of Marxism
|
| The communists manifesto says
|
| "Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however,
| this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms.
| Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two
| great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing
| each other -- Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."
|
| This grand narrative and ideology spoken with objective
| certainty with regards to binary oppositions, is the complete
| opposite of postmodernism.
|
| Milton Friedman's works in a similar vein although on the
| other side are the opposite of postmodernism as well.
| [deleted]
| 1shooner wrote:
| Is there any clear historical evidence that these specific phases
| were ever successfully executed? My impression is that mid-
| century soviet intellectualism loved to put together these kind
| of grand theories of social engineering.
| newacc9 wrote:
| I see Yuri everywhere, but never Sejna or Golitsyn who reveal the
| same plan.
|
| https://jrnyquist.blog/2020/03/26/the-sino-soviet-long-range...
| nabla9 wrote:
| He was not a KGB defector. He was a KGB informant who worked for
| RIA Novosti.
|
| In the west, he earned his money with anti-communist lecturing
| and his stories became more sophisticated over time.
| pelasaco wrote:
| i tried to start a discussion here about it too
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665487
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-25 23:01 UTC)