[HN Gopher] KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview - Idealogi...
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KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview - Idealogical Subversion
Author : iKlsR
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-03-10 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| [deleted]
| orangepurple wrote:
| FSB shills are out in full force on HN on this one trying to
| discredit him with exceptional pilpul and deflection.
|
| I grew up in the Eastern Bloc and find his stories plausible.
| Everything Bezmenov said is true. Watch the entire interview.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Hasn't a lot of this guy's rhetoric and credentials been
| debunked over and over as a bit hyperbolic. I mean... the guy
| made a career out of selling fear?
| orangepurple wrote:
| What career? He died a few years after this interview.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The career he had in the years before this interview and
| then in the remaining years before his untimely death?
|
| I'm not informed enough to say whether his entire career
| was USSR fear mongering, but dying doesn't mean you didn't
| have a career.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| I've done a lot of googling on this guy and either the
| truth is scrubbed, or I'm landing on soviet propaganda, OR
| there's not much evidence that he even worked for the KGB.
| The guy was a journalist and played up this narrative in
| order to get the attention of the public eye. I'm not
| saying that everything he said was bullshit. Do nation
| states at odds actively try to stabilize each other? Of
| course. But seems to me like he was more of a creative
| story teller than anything else.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| He studied foreign languages in the Soviet Union and
| worked abroad at the Soviet embassy - it's safe to say
| that he was a spy and not a journalist.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Uh yeah, just boost topics on tik tok that favours your
| long term goals, if you control tik tok
| [deleted]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Ah yes the classic "everyone who disagrees with me is a shill"
| (non-)argument. Becoming all to prevalent on HN.
| twixfel wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread you say he shouldn't be listened to
| because he's a defector and would naturally be opposed to the
| USSR. So you're doing exactly the same thing that you
| criticise other people for.
| etiam wrote:
| > Watch the entire interview
|
| In fact, watch more! Here's some:
|
| https://archive.org/details/yuri_bezmenov_all_interviews_lec...
| mopsi wrote:
| This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the
| start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russians really did
| think that Ukraine had been subverted to a degree that it would
| just roll over and die; that leadership would run away and local
| resistance would be limited to disorganized pockets that riot
| police could suppress, but their informants and agents just stole
| the money and reported what the Kremlin wanted to hear. Calling
| the invasion a "special military operation" shows how it was
| thought of as a special operation by intelligence services
| instead of conventional war.
|
| But Zelenskiy responded with "I need ammo, not a ride", and
| instead of unarmed protesters, Russian riot police convoys
| driving into Ukraine were met by Armed Forces of Ukraine.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qWthUM_II (Riot helmets and
| shields are clearly visible.)
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Is there a quote of link to the "three days to Kyiv" comment
| from the Russian Federation?
| kranke155 wrote:
| There are reports of captured Russian war plans. Im not sure
| where i read about it but War on the Rocks and Michael Kofman
| are credible experts.
|
| I dont actually remember the details of the plan but It was
| something like:
|
| Massive armor convoy sent to Kyiv alongside the rapid capture
| of Hostomel airport and a then a giant airlift of troops
| towards a point very much close to Kyiv.
|
| The disdain the commenter is showing for the Russian invasion
| plan is misplaced however. Most contemporary reports (Post
| battle of Kyiv) say that the Ukrainians were indeed caught by
| surprise, that Russian cyberwarfare managed to take out
| Ukrainian AA allowing for the helicopter Assault at Hostomel
| and that although Ukraine was sucessful It was a close call
| and losses were heavy.
|
| Again you have to Dig a bit to avoid the propaganda
| narratives. The race to Kyiv was actually a Very Very close
| battle according to what we know now.
|
| The whole 3 days to Kyiv was actually an overstatement. I
| believe it was more 13 days to capture Kyiv, 2-3 months for
| the whole country excluding the West which Russia didnt
| believe It could occupy without heavy resistance. But thats
| just written out from memory and i might be wrong on the
| details.
|
| I believe that the Russian expectation was something similar
| to 2014, where initial Ukrainian resistance just collapsed or
| was innefective.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Whilst I do not have a YouTube link, I do have seen several
| Russian pundits imply that Ukrainians would capitulate in 3
| days, Russia just has to sneeze their way and they'd keel
| over, etc.
| petre wrote:
| It's a common cliche. General Aleksandr Lebed claimed
| during Russia's 1991 intervention in Moldova that his tanks
| would be able to capture Bucharest in just 7 hours.
| cpursley wrote:
| There's not, it was actually General Milley who put this
| number out there and the media and social media ran with it
| as if it were an official Kremlin statement.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-
| fall-w...
| rasz wrote:
| and CIA Director Bill Burns
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085155440/cia-director-
| putin...
|
| TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva claimed two days, so did
| Margarita Simonyan and many others:
|
| https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144
|
| as for russian invasion plans, good old potato man leaked
| them live on national TV
| https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/moldova-next-belarus-president-
| ma...
| [deleted]
| cpursley wrote:
| He might be a huge goober but ethnic slurs are still
| against hn policy.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Yes, they even posted premature victory piece:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240
|
| Link to actual russian piece: https://web.archive.org/web/202
| 20226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
| colpabar wrote:
| I hate talking about downvotes but it is really odd that
| you're being downvoted for asking for a source. Source are
| requested _all the time_ on this website, and only in certain
| cases do they get downvoted like this. Hopefully your comment
| won 't be gray in a few hours when more people participate in
| the thread.
|
| I would like to see a source as well, because I want to see
| sources for all claims I encounter online. Why should I trust
| a random person on a website?
| largepeepee wrote:
| Very strange how anyone asking for sources abt any
| politically charged issue on social media gets immediately
| attacked.
|
| No wonder social media starts to circulate the most bonkers
| things when no one is allowed to question even verifiable
| statements.
| dralley wrote:
| Not from Putin directly. There were a lot of actions taken by
| the Russian government which just imply it. High ranking
| Russian officials that booked reservations for restaurants in
| Kyiv the week after the invasion, troops taking their dress
| uniforms instead of food, a pre-scheduled propaganda essay
| that was accidentally released on the 28th which retained
| language implying that Kyiv had already been taken and so
| forth.
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/09/russia-putin-
| propaganda...
| yencabulator wrote:
| History sure does rhyme. They did the same thing in 1940,
| expecting to hold a parade in Finland with their front line
| troops:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Raate_Road
| teachrdan wrote:
| The US had many of the same expectations about victory in the
| second Iraq war.
| somenameforme wrote:
| And Ukraine... I've been unable to find any meaningful and
| direct quote from Russian military/political leaders
| stating they expected to immediately capture the city, but
| you can find plentiful US sources predicting exactly that:
|
| ---
|
| "The sources said that the initial US assessment from
| before the invasion - which anticipated that the Ukrainian
| capital would be overrun within one to four days of a
| Russian attack - remains the current expectation." [1]
|
| "Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) told
| lawmakers during closed-door briefings on Feb. 2 and 3 that
| a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in
| the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours, and could come at a cost
| of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop
| deaths." [2]
|
| ---
|
| It seems that the narrative largely swapped to this all
| being Putin's plan once it didn't work as out like our
| military/intelligence agencies expected.
|
| [1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/kyiv-
| russia-ukra...
|
| [2] - https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-
| could-fall-w...
| yostrovs wrote:
| Putin didn't say it, but then he said he's not planning
| any invasion anyways. Here you can see various Russian tv
| personalities, we well as Lukasgenko, saying just that:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuR7axsnUjw
|
| And here is Sharij, a pro Russian journalist from Ukraine
| that's extremely popular, mocking all the reports of
| destruction of Russian forces on the first day and
| believing all the Russian lies, such as having destroyed
| all the anti aircraft systems of Ukraine:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7gO6vuI2-BQ
|
| You must also understand that in Russian culture it was
| common to mock Ukrainians as dumb farmer hicks, while
| thinking of themselves as highly technologically
| advanced.
| yucky wrote:
| > This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at
| the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
|
| This is actually a great example of our own propaganda at work.
| This "Three Days" quote came from one of our Generals, not from
| Russia.
|
| Putin's statements from early on are all widely available (with
| English transcriptions) and they do not in anyway sound like
| the words of someone expecting to annex Ukraine into Russia in
| short order.
|
| Which raises the question - why were we all fed this story? To
| what end?
| rasz wrote:
| russians claimed two days. Here Margarita Simonyan
| https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144
| noduerme wrote:
| It's crazy. I know a Russian guy who is exactly like this; I
| debate with him all the time. Almost every night. About the war.
| Bluntly invested in winning, regardless of what the system looks
| like; even admitting that it's a terrible system; using weak
| arguments for why people need structural dominance, while
| simultaneously arguing in favor of "the people" - (and using a
| historical American failings as a way to draw false
| equivalences). It's all _chess_ when you grow up somewhere with
| _nothing_ to gain. Or another way of saying it is, it 's possible
| for a polity to never improve itself but give the illusion of
| relative improvement, if it can poison its enemies down to its
| own level or lower. This, unfortunately, is the same mentality
| we're dealing with now.
|
| [edit] Even so, he still betrays that curious overconfidence in
| the power of central planning...
| illwrks wrote:
| A friend of a friend is exactly like this. Extremely skewed
| opinions on 'facts'. Whenever I meet them I avoid any topic to
| do with politics or the war, I just don't have the time or
| patience, they are too far down the rabbit hole.
|
| An American lady I know, her elderly mother was to the same
| extreme with Trump in the US... Social media and propaganda is
| a curse.
| rasz wrote:
| Good documentary about the level of brainwashing in ru
|
| Disconnection | A film by Andrey Loshak (Razryv sviazi | Fil'm
| Andreia Loshaka)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qmQs2LbnaE
| [english subs]
| sorokod wrote:
| Because "almost every night" I assume he is not mobilized. Why
| would that be so?
| Luc wrote:
| 300k mobilized in a population of 143 million, so about 2 per
| thousand.
| lnsru wrote:
| That's official numbers. There is no chance to check really
| how many were mobilized. Add Wagner prisoners and one can't
| tell anymore anything.
| sorokod wrote:
| A person with moral backbone should not be swayed by mere
| statistics. The official military along with the PMCs
| welcome volunteers.
| watwut wrote:
| He might simply live in region that mobilized less. Of live
| abroad. Most of mobilization happen in poor peripheral
| regions. Moscow and surrounding mobilizes much less.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Good news is Wagner just opened up recruiting centers in
| Russian 42 cities.
| sorokod wrote:
| For sure, but a person with principles should act on them,
| otherwise they are just words.
| rexreed wrote:
| The over-confidence in clearly irrational positions, the
| bluster and bluffing and bullying are all coping mechanisms for
| what their brains detect as cognitive dissonance. "How can my
| life be so bad, dreary, miserable, and inadequate?" "It must
| not be my situation, but it must be everyone else, so I will
| fight everyone else, as I can't change my situation." Rather
| than improve their own lot, they seek to destroy other's,
| because improvement is so difficult, if not impossible, and
| destruction is just so much easier.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| One should ask, though, what makes improvement impossible.
| rexreed wrote:
| A rational person would indeed ask that. Is that what we're
| dealing with tho?
| konart wrote:
| >Is that what we're dealing with tho?
|
| Assuming both side have the same information? No. But
| this is would be a very strange assumption.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What I mean is, when dealing with an irrational or
| antirational person, who is behaving this way because
| other kinds of action are impossible, we should ask what
| constrains them. If they are not actually in control of
| their circumstances, then we can't really pooh-pooh their
| irrationality because they are not free to choose.
|
| We like to assume that we are all masters of our own
| circumstances and can deal with any obstacle or
| misfortune by adjusting ourselves to match it, but this
| presumes a degree of autonomy that does not always exist
| in fact.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I believe you, and as a counterpoint I've known many Russians
| and they uniformly were _not_ like the Russian guy you know.
| Those I knew expressly mocked the incompetence of letting
| essentially mobsters pretend to run a country (their country).
| It reminded me of a much larger scale version of old mobster
| tales from big cities in the US, long before my time.
| Insanity wrote:
| As with everything you indeed can not generalize for an
| entire population. - I'm in the same boat as you with my
| Russian friends and acquaintances :)
| jareklupinski wrote:
| basically my feeling when I logged into Experian today
|
| they are offering a service where they would attempt to erase
| your identity from a list of data aggregators, lest that info
| is used by "bad actors"
|
| gee i wonder who gave those aggregators my info in the first
| place...
|
| "would be a real shame if any of them used your unlocked
| credit score.... oh you have to pay to lock that too :^) "
| rationalfaith wrote:
| I mean all the rainbow stuff is crippling our society from an
| objective perspective. If a war broke out, historically tried
| philosophies and objectively useful skills will take precedence.
| If you see how fragmented the younger generations are based on
| materialistic criterias you'd think it's a psyop operation to
| divide the nation up to the polarized state we're in. Almost
| nothing getting done with stalemates up the wazzouu.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Summary of near-14-minute video, since I certainly wished someone
| else had posted one to help me decide whether to watch:
|
| Says the KGB works mainly at ideological subversion of the enemy
| society, not James Bond stuff. This has 4 stages:
|
| - Demoralization. Slow, takes at least a generation to take hold
| or be reversed. U.S. is 3 generations in, graduates have
| positions of influence, and now it's mostly done by Americans to
| Americans.
|
| - Destabilization. 2 to 5 years.
|
| - Crisis. 3 to 6 weeks. E.g. in Central America at that time.
|
| - Normalization.
|
| KGB considers it total war, and we should too. Americans should
| unify behind stopping their government from aiding communism.
| Education system especially important.
|
| (There wasn't really anything more specific, it was TV. I
| would've liked specifics on not just the claimed strategy, but
| how much real effect they had on mid-20th-C. U.S. education and
| culture. Of course there's only so much one defector would know.)
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| stuckinhell wrote:
| It would certainly explain how "political correctness" a soviet
| concept made it into the american public consciousness far more
| than other nations of the world.
|
| Edited: Since I'm being downvoted. Political Correctness wasn't
| really a thing until around the 80's, the same time period as
| the cold war. It really is acommunist term. The term "political
| correctness" first appeared in Marxist-Leninist vocabulary
| following the Russian Revolution of 1917.
|
| Yuri is saying the KGB was enacting total war decades ago, and
| that it takes several generations to see the change. When you
| can see over the course of 30 years, how political correct
| seeped into the american consciousness, yet somehow skipped
| over many other parts of the world. I think it's worth looking
| into, and thinking critically.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I think it would explain even better why everyone tries to
| shoehorn their least favorite thing about "the other side"
| into every conversation about manipulation by state actors.
| Case in point.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Soviet "political correctness" was about protecting the state
| from any criticism, American "political correctness" is about
| understanding systems of oppression from the standpoint of
| the oppressed.
|
| Couldn't be more different.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| In 2023, disagree heavily. Political Correctness is a way
| prevent open conversation and debate. The Biden admin
| constantly reorients attacks on them as attacks on women or
| the LGBT community.
|
| Political Correctness is used to shut down criticism of the
| modern American State. Wars are now pitched as femininist,
| see afghanistan.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| That is the right wing perspective, yes. And i'm sure PC
| is used at times cynically to deflect real criticism,
| that doesn't change the origins or original meaning I
| described. This alongside "wokeness" is simply
| acknowledging how much of our everyday speech and action
| rob certain members of society of their voice and agency,
| and trying to address it. Addressing it is a hard and
| imprecise process, but it's worth doing imo.
|
| If even it engenders a near constant stream of culture
| war backlash. America wasn't great for far too many
| Americans in the past, that needs to change.
| tokai wrote:
| The two PC terms are not related. In the start of the last
| century political correctness was about the correct adherence
| to ideology. The modern PC is a describer coined by us
| conservatives to label progressive political goals.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I guess I'll weigh in with my lived experience as a
| teenager at the time of the interview. I would've told you
| (maybe a few years later) "political correctness" in the
| U.S. started as an ironic term among lefty types with a
| sense of humor about their own milieu, which resonated more
| widely and got taken as ammunition and shortened to "PC" by
| more righty culture warriors.
|
| I think this was originally a kind of joke but referencing
| a real phenomenon in soviet-style regimes. Like
| http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html
|
| Now just how much this Western lefty culture was influenced
| by deliberate influence ops, that's the question I was
| hoping to learn about from this interview.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > I would've told you (maybe a few years later)
| "political correctness" in the U.S. started as an ironic
| term among lefty types with a sense of humor about their
| own milieu, which resonated more widely and got taken as
| ammunition and shortened to "PC" by more righty culture
| warriors.
|
| Similar to "woke". A term used with semi-seriousness,
| later coopted and weaponized by political opponents.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Actually they are very related.
|
| Political Correctness in the soviet union was very similar
| to what we have today. The "Girl Boss" stuff pushed by
| Sheryl Sandberg is eerily similar to Stalin's "New Soviet
| Woman".
| hellothere1337 wrote:
| Whenever I interact with russian or pro-russian elements the
| story remains the same. They deny that they're doing any
| wrongdoing. If you give them video evidence that they're doing
| something wrong they deny the evidence is real. If the evidence
| has undeniable proof they either say the victims deserved it
| (like the video where they killed civilians around hostomel or
| the one where a ukrainian family and their dog gets gunned down
| with no warning). As a final cope they can also retreat to "Well
| america did it too".
|
| Absolutely disgusting mindset
| xenospn wrote:
| Israelis are very similar. That's nationalism for you!
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yeah, don't put too much stock in this guy's words. Being a
| defector, flipping 180 degrees and becoming the USSR's biggest
| and most popular detractor is a no-brainer. But sadly, he could
| have said that the KGB had pink bunny guns and traveled around on
| marshmallow clouds and many on the right would lap it up, because
| it fits a political preconception.
| twixfel wrote:
| By your logic, we shouldn't ever listen to any defectors, ever.
| That just doesn't make any sense.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| That's like saying, "by your logic, we should never cross the
| road, because we can't possibly look both ways enough times!"
| twixfel wrote:
| You're literally saying he shouldn't be listened to because
| he's a defector. You're not engaging with anything he said,
| just writing him off for being a defector. That is really
| stupid.
| netmonk wrote:
| [dead]
| lostlogin wrote:
| There is a good book on a different defector, Oleg Antonovich
| Gordievsky. The story is excellent - The Spy and the Traitor: The
| Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37542581-the-spy-and-the...
| narrator wrote:
| There is an eerily prophetic work by the high-ranking Eastern
| European military defector Golitsyn called "The Perestroika
| Deception"[1] in which he says that Perestroika is a strategic
| retreat because the Soviets know they are too far behind
| technologically to have any hope of defeating the west. They
| will however use that retreat to acquire modern technology and
| improve their economy so they can ultimately conquer the west.
|
| Only one analyst, J.R Nyquist has been taking this stuff
| seriously, and he was ignored. In fact, the idea that Russia
| could rise from the ashes was considered paranoid right-wing
| conspiracy for much of the last 30 years. He has been pretty
| prescient about the war in Ukraine and developments in Russia
| over the last 20 years. They have rearmed and have some crazy
| weapons now like the hypersonic missiles[2] that we have no
| defense against and the Poseidon system[3] which is a 100mt
| radioactive tsunami fully autonomous doomsday weapon designed
| to foil any attempt by the west to win a nuclear war with anti-
| ballistic missile technilogy.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Perestroika-Deception-Memoranda-
| Centr...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal
|
| [3]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpos...
| jabl wrote:
| > "The Perestroika Deception"[1] in which he says that
| Perestroika is a strategic retreat because the Soviets know
| they are too far behind technologically to have any hope of
| defeating the west. They will however use that retreat to
| acquire modern technology and improve their economy so they
| can ultimately conquer the west.
|
| Such generations lasting grand conspiracies just sound too
| fanciful to take seriously. I think the simpler explanation
| is that, yes, like the communists before him, Putin is a
| Russian imperialist. And rumor has it that Putin hates the
| communists with a fiery passion, for screwing up the grand
| Russian empire. Putin is doing his best to rekindle the
| empire, just using a more traditional authoritarian/fascist
| approach rather than relying on communist ideology.
|
| Much of the old ways of working, the propaganda, supporting
| all kinds of nutjob groups in foreign countries, etc etc.,
| 'maskirovka' if you like, dating back to tsarist times,
| continued through the communist era and is still a tool in
| the arsenal they use. No change here.
|
| As for doomsday weapons with no defense against them, they
| have existed since the 1960'ies or so in the guise of ICBM's.
| somenameforme wrote:
| ICBMs can, at least in theory, be countered by effective
| anti-ballistic defense systems. The point of the 'tsunami
| nukes' is to sidestep that defense.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think this thing of theirs is supposed to beat the
| current systems as Mach 10 is fast. It seems to be
| getting though in Ukraine but I am not an expert and
| Russia makes all sorts of claims. If it's weapons work,
| it would be beating it's smaller neighbour.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-hypersonic-missile-
| stri...
| jemmyw wrote:
| >= Poseidon system[3] which is a 100mt radioactive tsunami
| fully autonomous doomsday weapon
|
| No where on that page does it say it is automated or carries
| 100mt. The only place it mentions tsunami is where it
| discredits the idea this weapon could cause one.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It says both of those things...
|
| - 100 megaton: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oce
| anic_Multipurpos...
|
| - automated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Ocean
| ic_Multipurpos...
|
| The part about it somehow discrediting the idea that
| detonating a nuclear weapon under the ocean would cause a
| tsunami is why it's often a good idea to check sources, and
| not take Wikipedia at face value. From the source they
| cite: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-doomsday-
| weapon-subma...
|
| "A well-placed nuclear weapon of yield in the range 20 MT
| to 50 MT near a sea coast could certainly couple enough
| energy to equal the 2011 tsunami, and perhaps much more,"
| Rex Richardson, a physicist who researches nuclear weapons,
| told Business Insider in March, referring to the Tohoku
| earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people
| in Japan.
|
| "Taking advantage of the rising-sea-floor amplification
| effect, tsunami waves reaching 100 meters in height" --
| about 330 feet -- "are possible," he said."
| lostlogin wrote:
| If the point is to kill people, a 20-50MT weapon killing
| just 15,000 people is a pretty dismal failure. The 16kT
| Hiroshima attack killed about 100,000.
|
| We don't need more inventive ways of killing people, we
| have plenty of options already.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| That's an almost like a sci-fi plot. It doesn't fit from my
| lay perspective though. Putins miracle weapons seems like
| Hitlers - a PR exercise for the masses. The performance of
| the Russian military has been so pathetic it's surely caused
| huge rethinks in many quarters.
| rglover wrote:
| For those who aren't "buying it" his longer-form lecture on this
| topic is a must-watch:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLdDmeyMJls
| tonymet wrote:
| A useful tactic for your belief or disbelief is to follow the
| thread of belief to it's origin and see if you endorse that
| individual.
|
| Many of the pillars of present-day progressivism and conservatism
| can be traced to a few key philosophers , academics & politicians
| from the 20s-60s.
|
| Those ideologies will become more grounded when you see the kind
| of person those thoughts came from.
| diimdeep wrote:
| CIA propaganda.
|
| Detailed explanation from former CIA analyst Frank Snepp about
| how the newspapers and magazines you were taught to regard as
| mainstream and reliable have always eagerly served as
| disinformation megaphones for the CIA and the US Security State.
| That's still true. [1]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1589624331919060997
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| This is not comparable. Reminds me of this joke:
|
| Sure, the Soviet Union has free speech, just like in America.
|
| In the US, you can stand in front of the White House and yell,
| "Down with Reagan," and it's fine. Moscow is like that too. You
| can stand on Red Square and yell, "Down with Reagan." No
| problem at all
| pessimizer wrote:
| The US has banned Russian media, and accuses anyone who
| complains about that of having loyalty to Russia.
| timeon wrote:
| > The US has banned Russian media
|
| You can still access Novaia gazeta from US. Although this
| may change since their rights are continually being
| decreased in Russia where they are based. Anyway my point
| is that your claim is false.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Even worse, the US is about to ban TikTok. At first I
| thought they were only going to ban it for government and
| contractor devices, but it seems now that it will be banned
| for everyone. I don't use TikTok and probably never will,
| but how is this bill even constitutionally legal? I
| understand the concerns about data collection, but the USG
| seems more concerned about _WHO_ is doing the collecting
| rather than the collecting itself. If the concern is about
| the propagation of "disinformation", Amendment I of the US
| Constitution prohibits this sort of censoring. During WWII,
| allied troops in the South Pacific listened to "Tokyo Rose"
| with no interference from the USG. That was back in the day
| when US citizens did not need to be told what to think by
| their government.
|
| The Soviet Union had a strict censorship regime that the
| west referred to as "The Iron Curtain." China has "The
| Great Firewall" now. What will the world soon be calling
| ours?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/7/23629469/restrict-act-
| byte...
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| 1. The US hasn't banned TikTok yet. A lot of steps are
| there.
|
| 2. TikTok has CCP board members. So comparing it US
| companies is not fair.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > the US is about to ban TikTok
|
| There are a LOT more steps to making a bill a law[0] than
| this, so "about to" is pretty disingenuous.
|
| [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Otbml6WIQPo
| anonymousiam wrote:
| It's on the way to Biden's desk, and he has said that he
| will sign it.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/tech/biden-tiktok-
| bill/index....
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > A dozen US senators unveiled legislation on Tuesday
| called the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats
| that Risk Information and Communications Technology
| (RESTRICT) Act. The bill does not target TikTok
| specifically for a ban.
|
| The bill does not target TikTok specifically for a ban. I
| don't see the problem.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I vote for Freedom Fence.
| throwuwu wrote:
| The Democracy Drape
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Which Russian media has been banned in the US?
| jryle70 wrote:
| Ban? Are you in the US? can you access this?
| https://www.rt.com/
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I think you mean that the US banned Russian media companies
| that are controlled by the Kremlin. If there is something
| that we in the west would call a "free press" in Russia
| then those would not be banned. That's my take anyway.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/politics/us-russia-
| sanctions-...
| thr717272 wrote:
| "The US" doesn't accuse anyone.
|
| We who know anything about Russia might however.
|
| And, I think if you look around a little you'll find access
| to outside information and options to distribute it way
| harder in Russia.
|
| Also, the lies they serve are hilarious: just today I saw a
| video with one of the chief propagandists claiming on TV
| that people in the UK hunt squirrels for food :-)
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| From the UK, there are definitely people in the UK who
| hunt squirrels for food. My people!
| stametseater wrote:
| > _The US has banned Russian media_
|
| Some European countries may have, but America has not. I
| can still read RT just fine.
| kneebonian wrote:
| [flagged]
| nlrtpx wrote:
| It is strange how this interview is currently used. Clearly
| Bezmenov alleges that the subversion tactics were promoting
| original left-wing causes since the 1960s:
|
| He cites Hippie culture, pilgrimages to India, cultural marxism,
| etc. Basically everything that Reagan did not like.
|
| Now the ruling party are Democrats, and apparently the same
| interview is used to prove current Russian disinformation, i.e.
| (alleged) right wing propaganda.
|
| Meanwhile even the Pentagon currently implements the original
| (alleged) left wing culture war subversion tactics.
|
| So which is it? Has Russian disinformation pivoted to right wing
| and the Pentagon is behind the curve? Or is the whole Russian
| disinformation issue overblown?
|
| Clearly the original subversion items are pushed by the corporate
| and state woke-washing agenda. So they are apparently good now.
|
| I don't see how right wing propaganda could help Russia, since in
| important foreign policy matters Democrats and Republicans are
| fundamentally the same. Evan Trump has armed Ukraine.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| "cultural marxism" is a far right antisemitic conspiracy theory
| that you're referencing (and as a brand new account with one
| comment)
| norwalkbear wrote:
| It sounds like subversion happened starting in the 80/90s lead
| to rise of the current Democrat party.
| herbstein wrote:
| This interview keeps coming up, and I don't really understand
| why. It's utterly uninteresting. Bezmenov had an inconsequential
| role in the KGB. He was not privy to any large-scale details.
|
| Bezmenov defected in 1970. After his defection would not be privy
| to any new information. The interview is from 1984 and not 1985
| as the title purports. Ultimately, the claims in this video are
| categorically false. We can observe this in two ways.
|
| First, after the collapse of the USSR no information on these
| efforts was revealed. Bezmenov claims 85% of the KGB's efforts
| are spent on this supposed program of ideological subversion of
| the American public. And yet, we have seen no documents. No
| intelligence from the US side. Nothing.
|
| Second, he claims the subversion was put in place to change the
| schooling system and thus indoctrinate the next generation. Keep
| in mind that this program would've had to be in place by 1970.
| And quite a few years earlier than that too since, again,
| Bezmenov was not a particularly privileged member of the KGB. And
| if we were to assume the program is real the changes should
| blindingly obvious in hindsight. But in fact, there are none.
|
| So we must look a little closer at Bezmenov - why would he claim
| these things, and why does the interview keep resurfacing?
|
| At the time of the interview there was a great panic around
| communist influence across the country. We're in the middle of
| Reagan's first term as president. Reagan was hawkish on perceived
| communist sympathies, just like the rest of the Republicans and
| the mainstream American right-wing. The market for people
| claiming that the ideological foundations of their political
| rivals is grounded in communist indoctrination. They wanted to
| hear how homosexuality becoming more accepted, a call for racial
| equality, and a general anti-establishment attitude was, in fact,
| Soviet indoctrination of the schooling systems.
|
| Bezmenov earned his living peddling what this large group of
| conservatives wanted to hear, and that is where his lectures and
| this interview come in.
|
| Today we see claims of "cultural marxism" and "post-modernism"
| infecting universities, and thus infecting the minds of the very
| late cohort of millenials and the early cohort of Gen Zs. It's
| the same dance of comfort we saw in the 80s playing out again.
| The interview isn't someone predicting the future because of some
| special insight. It's someone playing into the 80s "culture war"
| and people recognizing that a similar "culture war" is happening
| again today. A "culture war" that will continue to happen as long
| as societies continue to evolve and re-evaluate their collective
| values.
| orangepurple wrote:
| This has nothing to do with Reagan. Bezmenov defected to
| Canada.
|
| His role in the KGB was so inconsequential that he saw the
| files of journalists who were slated for executed come
| revolution. Got it. I'm sure everyone could freely access
| those.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| He defected to Canada, but in 1970. The interview in the
| 1980s took place during the Reagan administration. The gp's
| argument is that there was a market for Bezmenov's just-so
| explanations, due in part to Reagan's policies. Anti-Soviet
| sentiment in the US was also high at the time, due to the
| USSR's brutal invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
|
| The more serious criticism in my view is that not many of
| Bezmenov's specific allegations have been well-corroborated
| since, although a great deal of information about the KGB
| became available, eg the Mitrokhin archive - although parts
| do remain classified (by the UK).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive
| mahogany wrote:
| The CIA helped him defect and change his name. Years later,
| he appeared on TV in the US repeating neoconservative talking
| points in the 80s. But I guess he was just your ordinary
| Canadian.
| herbstein wrote:
| > This has nothing to do with Reagan. Bezmenov defected to
| Canada.
|
| And the interviewer is an American. They're talking about
| American conditions. Where he defected isn't that important
| within that context. Additionally, he moved to Los Angeles a
| couple of years before this interview was conducted.
| Specifically to have an easier time connecting with his
| audience.
| orangepurple wrote:
| He was back in Canada by 1989 until he died in Canada in
| 1993.
| roundandround wrote:
| He was obviously powerless to influence US politics from
| Canada, but from Russia..
| mattknightlewis wrote:
| I've always felt there's something very Yakov Smirnoff about
| him. He flatters western sensibilities too directly.
| the_af wrote:
| > _So we must look a little closer at Bezmenov - why would he
| claim these things, and why does the interview keep
| resurfacing?_
|
| Bezmenov isn't even alone in this. Defectors are notoriously
| unreliable: they tell their host country whatever they want to
| hear; in this case, because he correctly read the prevailing
| fears of the Reagan era. He is not the only Soviet defector who
| told inconsistent or outright false stories.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Defectors are notoriously unreliable: they tell their host
| country whatever they want to hear
|
| This is almost word-for-word the same rationalization
| employed by the people who denied the Cambodian genocide.
| the_af wrote:
| Maybe, but unfortunately it cannot be used as a strike
| against it.
|
| The Cambodian genocide happened.
|
| Defectors are notoriously unreliable and many Soviet
| defectors told falsehoods their host country wanted to
| believe. (This doesn't mean every defector is unreliable,
| or even that everything an unreliable defector will say is
| false -- it just means what it means, that defectors are
| unreliable as a category.)
|
| Both things are true.
| philwelch wrote:
| Sometimes defectors are unreliable. Other times,
| defectors provide reliable information which people
| choose to dismiss or ignore because it doesn't fit with
| their presuppositions.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > First, after the collapse of the USSR no information on these
| efforts was revealed.
|
| On the contrary, quite a bit of evidence about these "active
| measures" campaigns was later found in the Mitrokhin Archives.
| Thing is, ideologies tend to take on a life of their own long
| after their original cause has subsided. The current "post-
| modern" woke discourse in the Western world can be understood
| as essentially a zombie variant of precisely the sort of KGB
| indoctrination Bezmenov talks about, cross-mutated with the
| highly successful memeplex of the "Great Proletarian Cultural
| Revolution" from China. (For better or for worse, Mao Zedong
| was greatly admired by radical youths in the 1970s and 1980s;
| and the Cultural Revolution - doing away with everything that's
| too old, traditional and counter to revolutionary goals - was
| very much credited to him at the time. Of course, we have since
| learned that the story was more complicated than that.)
| evanwise wrote:
| It gets reposted because it confirms the biases of right-wing
| posters and is an easy way for them to farm positive engagement
| and feel like they have some special insight into current
| events.
| mahogany wrote:
| Did he even work for the KGB? Where does this claim originate?
| Wikipedia says he worked for a Soviet press agency, but I don't
| see a good source that documents his involvement with KGB that
| doesn't ultimately track back to himself.
| mopsi wrote:
| Without any doubt, if this snipped from Wikipedia is true:
|
| > _After graduating in 1963, Bezmenov spent two years in
| India working as a translator and public relations officer
| with the Soviet economic aid group Soviet Refineries
| Constructions, which built refinery complexes._
|
| Soviet citizens could not freely leave the country. All
| travel was subject to very strict background checks several
| generations into your family tree to verify loyalty to the
| state, and travel groups had KGB informants attached to them
| to keep an eye out for any suspicious behaviour.
|
| Not to mention such foreign assignments, which were under
| total KGB control. Either he worked directly for KGB or had a
| curator from KGB. Independently going abroad and working
| there was unthinkable.
|
| Given that he did public relations and was probably visible
| more than most Soviet staff, his posting to India should be
| pretty easy to verify through contemporary newspapers, photos
| from public events and other similar sources. His major at
| Moscow State University is also easy to verify and it's a
| well-known fast-track into intelligence work.
| dale_glass wrote:
| This sounds pretty silly.
|
| Now fuck Russia and all, but this guy is convinced that Russia
| managed to worm into American consciousness in the mid 80s, to
| the point of raising an entire generation of people who believe
| what Russia wants them to believe.
|
| That just doesn't add up to me. Now not being American I don't
| know what things were over there, but at least I can recall that
| in the 80s and 90s, Russians were the standard bad guys in
| Hollywood movies, and the Cold War, and McCarthyism is somewhere
| in that timeline as well. Nothing much seems to indicate this
| "demoralization" step got anywhere close to actually happening.
|
| It also seems very unlikely that at that point in history, USSR
| would have enough access to the US to raise entire generations
| that thought the things the USSR wanted them to.
|
| I think it's more likely he was just opportunistically feeding
| the fears prevalent at the time he was speaking.
| wil421 wrote:
| To say the American people were full of Marxism in the 80s and
| 90s is completely made up. I would say today is closer to what
| he was taking about than the 80s every were.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| He says it takes three generations to reveal, so 80/90s being
| the start of subversion makes perfect sense.
| wil421 wrote:
| He said the subversion was already planted in the 60s
| counter culture stuff and it was coming to fruition in the
| 80s.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > He says it takes three generations to reveal, so 80/90s
| being the start of subversion makes perfect sense
|
| He was saying it takes 2-3 generations to the point where
| it is internal and self-sustaining, and that that had
| already been achieved in the 1980s in America.
| CalChris wrote:
| I agree about the 80s. If anything, we viewed them as a bigger
| threat than they really were, our defense industry in
| particular. But the USSR fell apart in 1989 and Russia was a
| spent force in the 90s. We bought Ukraine's nukes with money
| because we could. But we, George W Bush really, then
| underestimated Russia in the 2000s.
| selectodude wrote:
| Obama far more than Bush.
| sweetbacon wrote:
| Absolutely. As s teen in the 80s I was shocked the USSR
| collapsed as everything around me made them out to be this
| huge Russian bear that could kill us at any moment. Granted I
| was in the Midwest then away from 24h news cycle, and much
| closer to missile silos and military bases so perhaps that
| made a difference.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >But we, George W Bush really, then underestimated Russia in
| the 2000s.
|
| True, but then Obama really fucked it up with "reset". And
| that was after Georgia War.
| CalChris wrote:
| So I suppose that getting Putin to sign off on Gaddafi's
| removal was part of that fuckup. Libya was a Russian
| satellite and Russia has a veto at the UN Security Council.
|
| Given the two dumb wars that Obama was saddled with, I
| thought he navigated things pretty well.
| etiam wrote:
| You're misrepresenting that conviction you allege he has
| though. (Commonly called out as a "straw man" argument here.)
|
| The original post here is pretty vulnerable to both
| misunderstanding and misinterpretation of that sort. Something
| like the lecture video rglover linked
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35099311) gives a clearer
| and more concrete description of the subversion process, and to
| some extent Bezmenov's view on how far it had progressed in a
| few nations at that time.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Now fuck Russia and all, but this guy is convinced that
| Russia managed to worm into American consciousness in the mid
| 80s,
|
| It was a mid-80s interview; he us saying USSR did that _2-3
| generations prior_ to the interview, which would be about the
| birth of the USSR. Most plausibly, the Soviet influence in the
| early 20th century international labor movements would be the
| main channel, though there would be other avenues where this
| was attempted. There certainly _were_ in the 1980s influences
| from that that had become self-sustaining and organic,
| reinforced by continuing influence efforts, but I wouldn't
| describe it as an overwhelming success.
|
| It's possible that the internal perception (whether top-down
| propaganda or just the result of Soviet intelligence community
| resume-burnishing by self-promoting bureaucrats) overstated the
| success, such that the perceptions of a defector would be that
| they were stronger than they were - or its possible that an
| defector who was ideologically opposed to his old regime would
| deliberately overstate the case to try to marshal the US
| against it _before_ it actually got as bad as he described it.
|
| (Its pretty clearly a strategy the USSR had, and that Russia
| continues with, arguably, more success than the USSR ever had,
| but that's...well documented in other sources which don't have
| nearly as dire a description of the level of success it had in
| the 1980s.)
| philwelch wrote:
| 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.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dralley wrote:
| Modern Russian propaganda is not all that similar to anything the
| Soviet Union was interested in. There is no serious ideological
| backbone to it. It's all about putting out multitudes of
| conflicting narratives, giving people the "choice" to latch onto
| the ones they sympathize with most closely, and undermining the
| very concept of truth, democracy etc. "alternative facts", if you
| will.
|
| Timothy Snyder's description is more accurate to what goes on in
| the modern day state of Russia.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-SEQDQidM (particularly
| starting around 18m26s and later at 39m19s)
|
| Also the CIA questioned Bezmenov and found that he couldn't
| answer questions that he ought to know the answers to, about
| basic things like who his chain of command were.
| sorokod wrote:
| _There is no serious ideological backbone to it_
|
| You are too kind, there is no ideological backbone at all.
| jabl wrote:
| Sure there is. I mean, there's no ideology that promises a
| better future for the common man, like communism, but
| ideology there is; Imperialism, glory of the motherland, a
| peculiarly Russian variant of "Manifest destiny", power of
| the state, domination of lesser peoples, etc. Fascism, if you
| like.
| sorokod wrote:
| What motherland can be offered to the about 30% of non
| ethnic Russians? Just more of the corrupt same.
|
| How would motherland that follows a victory (even what
| constitutes victory is not defined by the Russian
| government) differ from the motherland the follows some
| other outcome?
| jabl wrote:
| Sure, it's corrupt shit, no argument there. And really,
| what's being offered for the other 70% if not pain and
| suffering, for the make believe goal of glory of the
| tsar? Sure, they might be treated a lot better than the
| non ethnic Russians, but it's not paradise for them
| either.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Like "choose your favorite lie"?
| philwelch wrote:
| Modern Russia is fundamentally _not_ the Soviet Union. The
| Soviet Union, at least according to its own mythology, was an
| instantiation of communist ideology. Modern Russia is not an
| ideological state in the same way; if it 's motivated by
| anything, it's base nationalism.
| etiam wrote:
| Contemporary Cheka is a direct continuation of the
| predecessors though?
|
| The promised ideology may have been revised and revised
| again, but in practice the implementation of authoritarianism
| seems pretty stable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Modern Russian propaganda is not all that similar to anything
| the Soviet Union was interested in. There is no serious
| ideological backbone to it. It's all about putting out
| multitudes of conflicting narratives, giving people the
| "choice" to latch onto the ones they sympathize with most
| closely, and undermining the very concept of truth, democracy
| etc. "alternative facts", if you will.
|
| The USSR had a core of ideological propaganda, but its
| geostrategic influence operations were more flexible than its
| core propaganda.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| For e ti's shocking how much people are in denial about this. In
| spite of us seeing with our own eyes that this strategy is being
| deployed and it works, it works depressingly well. In spite of
| that, many people I know try to dismiss the video, the speaker,
| and the main message conveyed by it. It is as if we got blind by
| our own request.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Asserting that everyone is "seeing it with their own eyes" is
| kind of weird, since you can only see with your own eyes. It's
| a certain kind of solipsism that I'm personally getting rather
| tired of.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I have no doubt that Russia engages in a lot of shenanigans
| today.
|
| However that back in 1985, what this guy is saying about the
| USSR managing worm into the US to the point of raising an
| entire generation that thought what the USSR wanted them to
| think -- that to me seems extremely dubious.
|
| There may be a kernel of truth there -- yes, the KGB may have
| had such a strategy, and it might have been successfully
| executed in some cases. What I highly doubt is that it actually
| did work on the US in 1985.
|
| You have to consider a conflict in priorities there. This guy
| defected. He burned every bridge there was to burn back home,
| and that means he desperately needs to ingratiate himself with
| where he ended up instead, and given that McCarthyism was right
| around that time it doesn't take a genius to latch on that.
|
| Also, let's be serious here. This is almost 40 years ago. Many
| people of importance from back then are now dead or retired. If
| this interview has anything to do with modern reality it's more
| by accident than anything.
| bilvar wrote:
| On the contrary. Many of those people are now tenured
| professors and deans of universities, which Bezmenov said
| were specifically and overwhelmingly targeted by this
| strategy. Guess which ideology most universities lean on -
| the ideological uniformity and persecution of different
| viewpoints has reached an extreme level there.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Right now, Russia is at _war_.
|
| They hate that Western countries are providing intel and
| armaments to the defense of Ukraine.
|
| There's only one realistic thing they can do to slow those.
|
| FSB poisoning our public discourse by any means necessary.
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