The most famous proponent of such tactics in recent years has been the late Saul Alinksy, the intellectual godfather of the modern Democrat Party, but former Soviet journalist and KGB informant Yuri Bezmenov laid out an even more concise strategy for subversion in a 1984 interview.
Alinksy's seminal book specified 13 Rules for Radicals, but Bezmenov had only four "stages of ideological subversion," and they will sound very familiar to anyone following the current wave of left-wing riots, or the politicized final stages of the coronavirus panic before it: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization.
Bezmenov defined ideological subversion, or "active measures" as the KGB preferred to call it, as a "slow brainwashing process" to "change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite their abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country."
Stage 1: Demoralization
Bezmenov said the first stage, Demoralization, could take 15 to 20 years to complete because "this is the minimum number of years it takes to educate one generation of students."
"Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism," he warned in 1984, judging that the demoralization process had been "basically completed" by that point.
"Actually, it's over-fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously, not even Comrade Andropov and all of his experts would even dream of such tremendous success," he added, referring to former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. "Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards."
Bezmenov explained that demoralization is important because it robs the targeted population of its ability to process valid information. Even when demoralization targets are "showered with authentic proof" of contrary positions, they simply "refuse to believe it."
Demoralization is quite obvious among today's young people, whose faith in their country has been systematically destroyed throughout their lives by the education and media establishment. To take a recent high-profile example, the New York Times' fraudulent "1619 Project" argued that "American history" actually began with the arrival of black slaves in North America and the Revolutionary War was fought by the colonists to preserve slavery. Although comprehensively debunked by actual historians, and even the original author has admitted her core thesis was not true, the 1619 Project is now part of some school curricula.
Another word for demoralization is guilt. Americans are routinely compelled to feel guilty about their society and national history. Guilt is the most powerful force in left-wing politics and academia. People will not accept the radical expansion of punitive government power unless they feel guilty and deserving of punishment.
Stage 2: Destabilization
The second stage, Destabilization, is much faster, requiring only two to five years under KGB doctrine. In this stage, the fundamentals of the targeted population's economy, political system, and culture would be attacked, while the demoralized population could not mount much of a defense.
Bezmenov in 1984 found it "absolutely fantastic" how much influence Marxist-Leninist ideas had developed in the American economy and military. In essence, a demoralized population becomes willing to believe the worst criticisms of its own society, while learning to see defenders of that society as their enemies, while avowed enemies become natural allies. The defenders are held to strict standards, while anything goes for the most strident critics.
Whatever Bezmenov saw in the destabilized American society of the early 1980s with respect to the Soviet Union, it's easy to see how the American Left has destabilized entire segments of modern society after demoralizing them. They see enemies everywhere, while no pro-American authority can be trusted. It's hard to imagine a better illustration of demoralization followed by destabilization than hordes of anti-capitalist activists texting each other on their iPhones.
Not coincidentally, hostile foreign powers like Communist China and Iran are reaching out to destabilized American communities and offering themselves as guides and allies. Their sales pitches aren't exactly smooth, but they definitely are making an effort.
A destabilized population becomes obsessed with hypocrisy as the ultimate political sin. They believe the best ideas - individual liberty, sovereign rights, capitalism, even the rule of law - are presented insincerely by sinister powers who seek to exploit and manipulate them. The precious resource of goodwill disappears from society as everyone comes to believe their neighbors hate them and cannot be trusted. Demoralized people lose faith in their nation, history, and ideals; destabilized people lose faith in each other.
Stage 3: Crisis
Once a society has been destabilized, Bezmenov said the time would be ripe to create a Crisis, which he estimated would take six to eight weeks in the Eighties. With turbo Internet speed, the modern era can punch out a crisis much faster than that.
A crisis has the obvious benefit of panicking demoralized, destabilized people into abandoning their legal protections and constitutional ideals. During the coronavirus panic, people who brought up those ideals were treated like lunatics. The pendulum swung the other way with blinding speed during the riots. In the span of one week, the right to peaceable assembly went from a crazed defiance of common-sense lockdown rules to an urgent matter that utterly transcended the deadly pandemic. Suddenly, angry political demonstration magically cured the coronavirus, or made the projected wave of sickness and death into a purely secondary concern. If you wanted to work at the store so you could feed your family in late March, you were selfishly trying to "kill my Grandma to pad your bank account." If you wanted to burn the store down in early June to protest white supremacy, nobody mentioned their imperiled grandmothers.
The more subtle benefit of a crisis is that it tends to de-legitimize aspects of the existing system that have already been softened up by the long process of demoralization and destabilization. Those who control the organs of public communication have the power to decide which aspects of the system are supposedly indicted by the crisis.
For example, the dominant media Left will go to great lengths to avoid painting the coronavirus as an indictment of the flabby, blinkered, bureaucratic Big Government that grew over the past few decades, and it will not discuss the failures of left-wing mayors and governors. On the contrary, the pandemic was used to attack the competence of Republican governors who turned out to be entirely correct in their actions, as in Florida and Georgia. During the riots, the media is completely uninterested in discussing the incompetence of left-wing officials who allowed violence to rage out of control with deadly consequences. Somehow the lesson of wanton violence that killed people and destroyed countless livelihoods became "let's get rid of the police altogether."
The threat of a crisis is essential for terrorizing the middle class into accepting a political agenda that is actively hostile to its interests, which leads to the fourth stage of subversion: the offer to make the pain and fear go away by accepting political domination.
Stage 4: Normalization
"After a crisis, with a violent change of the power structure and economy, you have a so-called period of Normalization that may last indefinitely," Bezmenov said, arriving at the fourth stage of subversion.
"Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda," he explained. Interestingly, it also happens to be the core theme of the 2020 Democrat presidential campaign.
"When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Comrade Brezhnev said, 'Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is 'normalized.' This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and a paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free-market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington, D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of things - never mind whether the promises are fulfillable or not," Bezmenov cautioned.
As things turned out, Walter Mondale never got his chance to be a benevolent dictator, and to some extent Bezmenov's four-step model of subversion could be applied to almost any political campaign. They almost all begin with telling voters things are awful, crises have erupted, and normality can be restored only by voting for the challenger (or preserved only by voting for the incumbent).
Bezmenov, however, was insistent that American left-wing professors and civil-rights leaders were deliberately running Andropov's strategy with a conscious effort to achieve destabilization, the step that truly distinguishes ideological subversion from the usual promises to put a chicken in every pot.
"They are instrumental in the process of subversion only to destabilize a nation," he said of the academics and activists. "When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power, obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot."
The American version of this process probably would not end with the mass execution of inconvenient intellectuals, but there is a parallel in what would happen to the intellectual supporters of the current riots if the Democrats win in 2020. They would discover that the victorious Democrat Party is not at all interested in their systemic criticisms of public union employees, such as police officers. Many bones would be thrown to activist groups to purchase their loyalty - and, much more importantly, the loyalty of their leaders - but not the one concession they ostensibly care about the most: a system that makes it easier to discipline and fire government employees.
This metaphorical lining up and shooting of intellectuals is already happening with Lockdown Forever enthusiasts, who only a few days ago were hammering out passionate arguments that American businesses must remain shuttered for weeks or months to come, and anyone who dared to question their dire warnings was a selfish monster willing to kill other people's grandmothers to pad out their 401k accounts. In the blink of an eye, Lockdown Forever went from the vital engineers of a politically useful crisis to inconvenient obstacles for the new crisis, nationwide riots.
Most of the lockdown gurus sensed this shift in the political winds and quickly trimmed their sails, hammering out new screeds that claimed protesters are probably immune to the coronavirus somehow, or even more incredibly, that another outbreak would be a small price to pay for righteous political activism:
These are the same medical activists who were shrieking in March that the coronavirus could kill millions of Americans if lockdowns were not imposed immediately, and just a few weeks ago, left-wingers were obsessed with calculations that showed COVID-19 is exceptionally deadly to the black community. But suddenly the risk of millions of deaths, 70 percent of them purportedly likely to be black Americans, means nothing compared to the vital urgency of protesting against "white supremacy."
Reader Comments
However, for about 90% of stats as used by the BFM Twain's mantras apply:
"Lies; Damned Lies; and Statistics"; and
"Figures don't lie, but liars figure."
RC
But maybe it was the old white guys fault...maybe he did not 'think' enough...
And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008.That's definitely statiticians showing their white privilege. They weren't murders, they were righteous blows against the empire.
Besides which, even if they were murders, it's the fault of the racist white supremacist society that they live in and whiteness in general for making them murderers in the first place, so no you can't win.
The fact that the white man stole the black man's history from him and that the Encyclopedia Britannica does not acknowledge that the lightbulb, the aeroplane, the automobile, the fridge-freezer, etc, etc, were all Ethiopian inventions, hasn't helped matters either.
Bezmenov, however, was insistent that American left-wing professors and civil-rights leaders were deliberately running Andropov's strategy with a conscious effort to achieve destabilization, the step that truly distinguishes ideological subversion from the usual promises to put a chicken in every pot.
"They are instrumental in the process of subversion only to destabilize a nation," he said of the academics and activists. "When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power, obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot."
R.C.
Things weren't wall-to-wall wonderful in my 60s British childhood. But much was a damned sight better than now.
My school and neighbourhood was complemented with people from all over the world, my parents and most people they knew had friends from many countries. They welcomed all. Our house was frequently visited by all sorts of foreign friends. As a child it was endlessly fascinating. Sounds like a cliche, but I learnt so much about how similar we are. Long before MLK ever had traction, what mattered most amongst everyone in my childhood was an individual's character not the colour of their skin or the god they worshipped.
Then along came the Anti-Racists ®™ and turned everything into a big problem of more-melanin=bad, less-melanin=far, far worse. They made everyone feel bad about the colour of their skins and the gods they worshipped.
Racism ®™ , IMHO, a heinous ongoing crime against all of us - the textbook epitome of divide and rule.
Someone tell me it ain't true!
Albeit, it wouldn't really matter. I just needs the name (and title) to legalize that farce.
(But, as folks will note, perhaps Floyd is playing yardkeeper at wherever Epstein is staying. In the end, all I know is that there are so many damn lies I am certain I don't know.)
But I've taken it back to basics; cogito, ergo sum.
Breathless Lubianka defector whoppers are an old genre. The congenital anti-commies pay good money to eat this crap up. There's a whole industry that profits from the chumperie by pumping this bilge out. Reds from the Red Planet! They're under your bed!
Defectors from somewhere soviet often had very poor prospects in the west. The only available patronage came from the anti-commie racket. Right up there with whacking the injuns, niggers, huns, nips and such.
Anyone who actually knows about the tradecraft of the times including that of the U.S., UK et al just rolls their eyes at this rubbish. Try reading something like "A Spy Among Friends" by Ben Macintyre or "Out of the Night" by Jan Valtin.
No fan Breitbart conceived in Tel Aviv with Bibi at his side but to dismiss cultural Marxism as red meat for the gullible seems a bit rich. Your favorite acnchor Rachel Mad Cow and the entire Democratic establishment made a pretty good living from the “Russians behind every tree..” trope, by the way...
This is all about what liberals or washed up 'progressives' do. So-called cultural Marxism is actually liberals lying as they usually do. Real Marxists despise the liberals.
There are Lords, and then there are sheep.
Why there is this increasing rhetoric to define why the mass of living people on this planet are being put to the test of mass annihilation is the real question, but one that keeps being deflected is a testament to those that hate us all, and those that create and follow a rhetoric.
Anything I write is up against 1000 advertisements per day to a sheeple. Me, my self and I against 1000 other continuing, repeated voices.
What an insurmountable challenge.
It reminds me of prayer. I pray for the betterment of the world and people(s) that would never know me, and then balk at the outcome.
It has never been about fixing the world, which c an never be fixable. It's about fixing one's self, then family, the community then...so on and so forth.
Why there is this increasing rhetoric to define why the mass of living people on this planet are being put to the test of mass annihilation is the real question, but one that keeps being deflected is a testament to those that hate us all, and those that create and follow a rhetoric.That is exactly what it is.
The Malthusian eugenicist psychopaths are still there in the shadows.
Although I didn't know it at the time, his thoughts emulated those of Christ, and he knew little more of such than I do.
It sometimes feels as though I'm here existing in a state of rage which is controlled by God? No! Perhaps by self/soul-directed ?
IDK.
Well, 'Help Me, Dear Dr., I'm Damaged, etc." [Link]
R.C.
The current condition in the world is not an accident, and people generally get the government they deserve. Although it is hard not to be upset and angry about what is going on, I try not to identify with any of it or be attached to outcomes etc, and keep faith in the higher realms, consciousness, cosmic mind and so on. This all has meaning and all one can do is to learn and apply what is learned.
No one is going to fix it for anyone, as everyone has got to learn their own lessons. The EE breathing and meditation programme is helpful. I don't know if you have tried it?
"Your media lies to you . Why? Media is a part of the process of demoralization. They are monopolized today. They are controlled by the same group of people, unelected, super-rich and super-powerful people who trade with murders of my nation in the Kremlin. Interesting isn't it? With one hand these people send you boys to Vietnam for 12 years. With the other they send billions of dollars of credit to the Soviet government to build weapons to kill your boys n Vietnam. Imagine, when people make a mistake once and repeat this mistake- repeats the same mistake three times we call him a dangerous idiot. What would you call people in your establishment who repeat the same mistake, aiding your enemy and the enemy of my people in the Kremlin, over and over again for 68 years? Traitors. And they control your media. I described it here in this booklet "World Thought Police", exactly what your media did for us, for the KGB. One service after the another, how to recognize it in your media, and what to do about it.
What to do about this crazy situation. Believe me, the solution is ridiculously simple. You do not need any more MX -- you may have them, just in case, but you may not need them if you take my solution. If you prefer Dr Kissinger's solution, go ahead. Suit yourself. You've been following the advice of people like Kissinger, Schlessinger, Brezinski, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, for the last observable history. Look where you are now. You lost all your friends in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and you are on your way to losing El Salvador, South Africa, Philippines, Mexico, Canada and on and on and on.
Just for the sake of experiment, listen to Schuman. It costs you nothing. My solution is simple. Stay moral. See how simple? Stay moral. What does that imply? Exactly what CAUSA is telling you. [CAUSA International: an anticommunist educational organisation founded by members of the Unification Chruch established by Sun Myong Moon [Link] Exactly what many millions of sensible Americans who belong to a multiplicity of conservative and religious groups are telling you on TV and radio. These stations grow like mushrooms. Stay moral. bring prayer back to school. No matter what prayer, as long as your children will remember that their grand-grand-grandparents were not monkeys." [Pages 51-53, excerpts.]
It seems his solution is to prevent step 1: Demoralization. What would Bezmenov say today, if at the age of 54 - about two weeks before Bill Clinton came into power - had not died from a massive heart attack.
"I grew up under a communist dictatorship."Hmm.
1) I recall you've said that previously but I forgot. Sorry to hear.
2) But aside from that, I bet it was just like growing up in California and Florida in the no-draft at all, post-Vietnam War era, as a lucky surf dog?* (Sorry. Dark humor is all that seems to be left these days.)
But seriously, how was it? Lord knows that I've read enough memoirs and interviews of folks who grew up in Nazi Germany and survived WWII, and they all say that they pretty much could successfully ignore any formal 'Hitler Youth' regimentation.
In contrast, I recently read 'Behind the Wall' (I thought that was its name, but I can't find it. Was about 1989?) by some poor SOB who grew up in E. Germany to become a Stasi, and at least managed to get out with West sponsorship before the fall / reunification. That sounded like one shitty world to grow up in.
R.C.
*At least I always felt like (recognized) how lucky my timing and locations were**; I still do, thought they're mostly and horrifically sadly gone.
**Thanks to my parents /upbringing.
RC
... by some poor SOB who grew up in E. Germany to become a Stasi, and at least managed to get out with West sponsorship before the fall / reunification. That sounded like one shitty world to grow up inIt was shitty, but eye-opening.
1) I recall you've said that previously but I forgot. Sorry to hear.No need for sorries.
It was a blessing in disguise. I know what a society could be, and what probably comes again in some form (soon to a theatre near you - yes my American friends !).
And seeing it finally disintegrate provided me many insights I would never have got otherwise, and others strive hard for all their live.
E.g. that a state/government can lie to you for years and decades, and keep the monstrous lie going. And all people around you seem to believe it, and play along. I was a pariah for not wanting to get involved, sometimes thinking there is something wrong with me.
What a relief to find out it was not the case.
And it was even more interesting to watch the people wince under shame, suppress their past, and nowadays pretend nothing happened.
I'm sorry for all the people that were deprived of the chance to watch this ...
2) May I ask which country? A general when? If not, simply ignore.
3) The chance to watch 'this' being America's apparent attempt to leap to mass totalitarianism?
R.C.
May I ask which country?Exactly the same like that SOB ...
3) The chance to watch 'this' being America's apparent attempt to leap to mass totalitarianism?I see this in planning for basically all the Western world - say, all that followed the Covid lockdown.
Still having hope that plans fail, for one or another reason.
I was always aware of it - far more than any I knew, and always thought, 'there but for the grace of God go I." (Good parents, upbringing.)
Thanks again. Off to woods.
RC
A pointer to a regularly occuring natural disaster, which seems currently overdue.
I have not much hope in the people waking up. I mean, in sufficient numbers.
I - perhaps better than any other white SOTTite - am aware of what it is like for black folks to be oppressed, and when I see it - and so unlike me - it emotionally tears me apart!
Poet Baldwin said that even black folks couldn't understand what other black were feeling (or such) (which always sounded more of a sound bite than well-cogitated thought - but even granting that, Southerners could and should be reasonably expected to have a better idea about the lives, perspectives, thoughts and hardships of their neighbors (of all colors) than almost all other Americans.
And yet I (who've had ~ 50% black clients and over 40% black employees -; all that I've done for them (which is way more than a lot as I have no children, etc) find my fact-informed perspectives all-too-often denigrated as those of a Nazi / racist / yada, yada, yada, etc., which, these days is sadly SOP...
Well, Tucker Carlson had a black lady's video tonight (at ? - I don't know). See the black lady griping about her looted business, I don't know where it is and I hope it is in this EXCELLENT Tucker Carlson 'whole show' from last night. [Link]
That little old (black) lady {who reminds me of my ultra-beloved grandma from SC, (RIP)} well, that little old black lady? SHE is typical of those I cry for.
Gotta go.
RC
In this chaos they'll be trying to keep the spin going in 3 planes at the same time. Intersectional madness is sure to ensue as those blades meet.Scenes we'd like to see: Maybe the wind will change and all these people will die of embarrassment.
Black Facts Matter
...and settle down, all of you snowflakes...statistics are not racist