…or “How to Brainwash a Nation.”
I recently watched an interview of former KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov that was recorded back in 1985. He was a very high level KGB agent and risked his life to defect to the West in 1970 when he could no longer stand to live under the inhumanity and oppression of the Soviet Communist system.
His interview was quite illuminating…the following is a transcript I made of that interview. I could have simply posted the YouTube link, but thought that his words needed to transcribed so it could be easily disseminated as text. To those that care to, feel free to copy and paste whatever you like. I care not about receiving credit as the messenger…only about the message reaching more people.
Here’s the transcript as accurately as I could render
(The video I transcribed this from did have edit cuts, so it is not a continuous, unbroken narrative.)
Interview of Yuri Bezmenov by G. Edward Griffin, 1985
Ideological subversion is the process which is “legitimate” — overt and open — you can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes and they can see it. There is no mystery…there is nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage and intelligence gathering looks more romantic…it sells more to the audience…for the advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond type of thrillers.
But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures — Активные мероприятия in the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare.
What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent, that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.
It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and was divided into 4 basic stages. The first one being demoralization…it takes from 15 – 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which it requires to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy…exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism and Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.
The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already. For the last 35 years — actually it’s over-fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Komrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such tremendous success! Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information;the facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with the authentic proof with documents…with pictures…even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camps, he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom! When the military boot crashes his butt…THEN he will understand. But not before that, that’s the tragic of this situation of demoralization.
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The next stage is destabilization. This time, subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption…whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby…it doesn’t matter anymore. This time, (and it takes only from 2-5 years to destabilize a nation) what matters is essentials: economy, foreign relations and defense systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and economy, the influence of Marxist/Leninist in United States is absolutely fantastic…I could never believe it, 14 years ago when I landed in this part of the world, that the process will go that fast.
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The next stage of course is crisis; it may take only up to 6 weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis…you can see it in Central America now. And after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure and economy, you have the so-called period of “normalization.” It may last indefinitely.
“Normalization” is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in ‘68, Komrade Brehznev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized!” This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis; to promise all the people all kinds of goodies, and a paradise on earth. To destabilize your economy…to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a Big Brother Government in Washington D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of things…never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not.
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Your leftists in United States…all these professors and all these beautiful Civil Rights defenders…they are instrumental in the process of the subversion…only to destabilize the nation. When the job is completed, they are not needed anymore…they know too much. Some of them…when they get disillusioned…when they see that Marxist/Leninists come to power, obviously they get offended…they think that THEY will come to power…that will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot. But they may turn into the most bitter enemies of Marxist/Leninists when they come to power. And that’s what happened in Nicaragua.
You remember most of these former Marxists/Leninists were either put to prison or one of them split and now he’s working against Sandinistas. It happened in Grenada, when Maurice Bishop was already a Marxist…he was executed by a new Marxist who was more Marxist than this Marxist. Same happened in Afghanistan…when first there was Taraki, he was killed by Amin and he was killed by Babrak Karmal with the help of the KGB. Same happened in Bangladesh when Mujibar Rahman, a very pro-Soviet leftist, he was assassinated by his own Marxist/Leninist military comrades. It’s the same pattern everywhere.
In summary, the Active Measures to subvert the West are
- Demoralization
- Destabilization
- Crisis
- Normalization
Think about many of the issues we face today. This KGB developed 4 part process has been applied to just about every institution and organization in this country to effect the enormous cultural changes in the last half century. It is at the heart of every action taken by the feminist movement in their efforts to lobby for what we now recognize as the active effort to break the Patriarchal nuclear family as the foundation for our society. The institution of marriage and basic gender roles have been demoralized, destabilized and in a state of crisis for an entire generation now…to the point to where it is now normalized.
As Yuri said, one only has to open their eyes to easily see that we have most assuredly been subverted.
