1. Demoralization – 15-20 years duration. Counting backward from now, this would be the early 2000s. In 2001 the world trade center was hit. The country rallied briefly, but can we think of any more demoralizing event? Bezmenov cites the following areas where campaigns of demoralization were typically launched by the KGB: religion, education, social life, the power structure, law and order, labor relations. I’m sure we can all think of examples of how in each of these areas (and others) demoralization has occurred. IMO, the seeds of demoralization were sown at least by the 1980s and the Reagan Revolution. Since then, with the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of the plutocrats, demoralization has been on steroids. Grievances abound, creating a fertile ground of receptivity to subversion.
2. Destabilization – here Bezmenov cites the role of media. We were building a house in 1992, and the work crew was daily listening to Rush Limbaugh. (The alternative was tiresome country music.) I could not convince my friends, (educated professionals i.e. the “liberal elite”), that Limbaugh was dangerous – they only listened to public radio. Air America Radio was launched in 2004 to counter the propaganda of right wing talk radio, but it failed in a few years, and has never been replaced. Why have the “libs” not put in the investment of time and money to create alternative media? We are now fully in the destabilization phase, where Bezmenov says violent clashes are presented as normal (“legitimate political discourse”) and where sleepers are activated.
3. Crisis – It is possible that we are in the first stages of crisis, where legitimate bodies cannot function, e.g. the clown circus that the House of Reps has become. Other bodies have lost their legitimacy – e.g. the Supreme Court. According to Bezmenov, in this stage, the population is looking for a savior, either a strong leader or a foreign nation to step in. As Bezmenov says, crisis leads either to civil war, or an invasion, followed by stage 4:
4. Normalization – where those who precipitated the crisis, i.e. the useful idiots, are eliminated.
It seems that we don't have a lot of time left to save our democracy. We can still do it, and Freedom Academy is one way. I think of the opportunism of an ambitious dictator like Putin (and his counterparts in our own plutocracy) as analogous to the way water fractures rock, seeking and entering minute hairline cracks, and expanding when the freeze comes. If we can get out of our comfortable ivory towers and engage with our susceptible neighbors, listen to their legitimate grievances and work to ameliorate them, maybe we can head off the complete fracture. On a practical level this means narrowing the wealth gap through law and regulation, investing in truthful media, getting honest and thoughtful people into elected office at every level, and actually believing in our own values.
"Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Bezmenov’s explanation of Soviet subversion theory on this basis..."
Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Goebbel's and von Ribbenbtrop's explanation of the Nazi subversion theory on this basis...
The Nazis studied the treatment of Black people in America to develop their "Final Solution". And the Soviets studied Hitler and the Nazis to apply those tactics to undermining the "West".
The Nazis had a large-scale plan to influence all people of German descent everywhere in the world. They were very effective in the US. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were huge supporters of Nazism and Hitler, among others and were fiercely antisemitic.
1. a) Absolutely. b) This is a thought-provoking question. I was immediately thinking, yes, it's still generational because young people are the most avid adopters and users and consumers of social media. But, when I reflected on this I had to take into consideration how effective social media has been in spreading propaganda and lies to older people, too. Trump supporters, QAnon, Vaccine-deniers are mostly older, while, judging by the mid-term results, younger people are not being taken in as easily. So, generational? Maybe, but not quite in the way the Soviets thought it would work.
2. a) No. Try talking to a QAnon! Where's the common ground? Or an election-denier. Sure, you can talk with them about the weather or their health or family, but their world-view isn't based in reality. Period. They are True Believers. b) see answer to a.
3. LOL. Hitler's and Russia's active measures are now on view nightly on US news programs and not only Fox, Newsmax and OAN. ALL our domestic MSM is infected. We call it "fake news". Are you familiar with Hunter Thompson and "Gonzo Journalism"? Conflating fact with fiction, ala "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas"? Now it's become promoting outright lies to minds that soak it up like sponges.
4. I think you mean an *effective* way to disentangle... Possibly by teaching critical thinking and actual history, like we're learning here, to kids. And going back to question 1, this *is* the generational aspect. The young want a livable planet. And they can see that the Right is fighting that. So you know, it's not just Russia. It's also the Kochs, the Mercers, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, etc, etc. Really, really rich people who's power of the purse is beyond comprehension of most people. They are doing their very best - and spending huge sums - to subvert democracy and a real solution to the climate crisis.
"So, a crime…though it’s unclear whether the U.S. would have been willing to publicly disclose the intelligence to back up these charges..." Are you aware that in 1949 John O. Rogge returned from Germany with a trove on information on members of the US Congress who were aiding and abetting Hitler and the Nazis? The head of the DOJ at the time, Jim McGrath, had promised Rogge that it would be made public, but when a couple prominent Senators' names turned up, he quashed the report and refused to make it public.
So why didn't Garland prosecute Meadows for contempt of Congress? Why hasn't Bannon spent a night in jail, even though CONVICTED? Rhetorical questions? If we continue to let money drive our politics and we allow money to equal political speech, we don't even need to be concerned about Russia's active measures. We're destroying democracy ourselves. IMHO the Citizens United decision and the end of the Fairness Doctrine have pretty much meant the end of real representative democracy in our country. Do we really believe prosecuting Trump will have any effect on the true believers or the super-wealthy?
Closing remark: Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching, "When the people behave lawfully (morally), laws (and lawyers) are not necessary." I don't really see that coming back into style, do you?
(Q1) I was born shortly after the country emerged from World War II, and my childhood memories are of a country unified by having a common and well-defined enemy: America was the White Knight that had saved the world from Nazism and was now facing down aggressive communism. We kids pledged allegiance to the flag every morning and hid under our desks in air raid drills. We were unified by common goals, common foes, and common cultural experiences. Everyone watched Bonanza and Gunsmoke, and we all got our news from Walter Cronkite or Huntley & Brinkley.
But that unity went to hell in the late 60's when it was our generation's turn to go to war in Viet Nam. It was hard for those of us of draftable age to believe that we should go off to kill or be killed in a tiny country no one had ever heard of and that posed no threat to us. The generational change was dramatic, abrupt, and lasting. So even in the absence of social media, cultural divisions can happen quickly.
I think the moral of my story is that having a common enemy, or a common purpose, or a common struggle that can best be overcome by cooperative effort leads to cohesion in a group. For my parents' generation, the common enemy was Germany and Japan; for my generation, the common enemy was Nixon, Agnew, and their ilk. Today the country is split along party lines, and --yes--social media and diverse broadcasters exacerbate that split, and it is hard to see how the split can be healed. I have long thought that if the Earth were attacked by Martians, all nations and all parties would come together with a common purpose, but I have waited in vain for that happy scenario to unfold.
I think a common "enemy" is a major factor (our highest levels of social cohesion over the last century was during/after WWII). I think that COVID-19 had the potential to bring us together in a common struggle until it was politicized. And it's funny -- I was joking with someone about the "alien invasion" scenario and that it's really a toss up on whether we'd be able to get it together, lol. Thanks for your comments!
Our response to the pandemic is a particularly baffling example of tribalism overpowering self-interest. Who could have predicted that people who flock to quack remedies and horse medicine would refuse a potentially life-saving vaccine just because the latter is promoted by scientists and pointy-headed intellectual elites?
As a thought experiment, imagine what would happen if Biden tried to restrict vaccine supplies to blue states. Wouldn't the anti-vaxxers furiously demand their right to be jabbed?
My favorite such movie was the satire "Mars Attacks!" with Jack Nicholson as president, and an amazing cast (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116996/fullcredits). I think our love of such fantasies exposes a dangerous inability to admit the possibility of superior forces. We know know that Mars has no superior civilization; probably no multicellular life or life at all for that matter, so it would have to come from another solar system i.e. light years away, so to reach earth they'd have to have superior technology comparable to the Spanish conquistadors vs the Aztecs, Often it is only some oddball Achilles heel that defeats the aliens and saves Earth. In Mars Attacks! it was the fact that when the aliens were exposed to yodeling, their heads exploded.
1) It’s tempting to treat the notion that social media accelerates the process of subversion as axiomatic. But I’m going to take a somewhat contrarian approach. What we learned through both the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s (thankfully) incompetent invasion of Ukraine is that despite easily exploited fissures, democratic societies are more resilient than we once believed and that the tendency for plutocrats and autocrats (whether Trump, Musk, or Putin) to get high on their own supply leads to frequently absurd miscalculations about their own abilities, strategies for promoting their views, and the extensiveness of their audience. Gen Z, the most social media saturated generation ever, has also been the most reliable in repudiating facism and autocracy. This suggests to me that however effective social media has been as a tool for subverting democratic institutions, it’s also been a tool for younger generations to fight back even without formal government support and cooperation (which they would likely distrust in any case).
2) I do think there are some values that transcend particular religions that could potentially unify our society. Anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow coauthored The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity where they examine recent archaeological evidence spanning millennia. They present extensive evidence that human beings gravitate towards what they describe as the three freedoms and summarize these as follows:
• Freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings
• Freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others
• Freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones
It’s a little hard to capture what each of these mean outside the context of their sprawling study, but I’ve been exploring this framework with respect to Christian theology and it works so well it’s a little unnerving. For example, the freedom to relocate is expressed in Abraham’s journey to Canaan and the exodus. Freedom to ignore or disobey commands is one of the first stories we encounter with Adam and Eve. We also see it in the civil war following Solomon's kingdom or with the early Christians refusing to give allegiance to the Roman empire. The freedom to shape entirely new social realities is expressed most clearly in the prophetic traditions of the Old Testament (often standing in opposition to the monarchy) and in Jesus and the gospels. So I’m finding Graeber and Wengrow’s framework of three freedoms helpful in my own reflections on faith and it may be a basis for uniting a society that already expresses freedom as a fundamental value.
3) It’s hard to pick just one! I think the way we most see subversion tactics is in what has become an all out war on the idea of demonstrable fact. In our last office hours meeting, we talked about the phrase “alternative facts” that we heard for the first time from Kellyanne Conway. It occurred to me after the meeting that a precursor to this happened in the 2000 presidential debates. Several times Bush would dismiss Gore’s statistics-laden arguments with the phrase, “fuzzy math.” No one ever bothered to ask what made the math fuzzy or if fuzzy math was dry clean only and wouldn’t that in itself make the math less appealing… It was a different era.
Fast forward to Kevin McCarthy’s endless, failed Speaker elections and we’re perhaps observing an element of self correction. Movements that don’t have a basis in reality tend towards cannibalism, a trait already evident in the way Boehner’s tea-party majority was inherently ungovernable. Paul Ryan had the same exact issue and now McCarthy is finding this out again in the most humiliating way possible.
That doesn’t let us off the hook for pushing back against falsehoods and disinformation, but one of the most important principles is that you don’t treat people who are engaging in bad faith arguments as serious partners in preserving democracy. Hakeem Jeffries is doing an excellent job of standing back and refusing to save the House Republicans from themselves. It’s exactly the right move in this moment.
1. Myself, I have of late, come to understand that my views until recently have been Pavlovianly conditioned via the legacy media to be reactionary. Whatever I believed that came to me through free will I essentially inherited from previous generations attitudes and beliefs. In particular, the attitude that things will work out, aka the happy endings that is so dominate in American culture. Social media has just amped up many of the underlying fallacies that are embedded within whatever passes for a social contract in the U.S.. Like Gordon Gekko said what failings of western democracies social media exposed are there because "it's(were) wreckable". A two party federal political system like the U.S. has always at the base level promoted an "us" vs. "them" mindset. If anything, social media has exposed the need for people to think generationally rather than to be constantly conditioned to react temporally.
The science behind the clicking of "like" buttons is not widely understood. Even, if western societies were more homogenous economically and politically, the algorithm employed by Facebook in particular will always amp up dichotomies. The Dreyfess affair is an example of what can happen in a relatively homogenous society. If social media existed back then, it might've taken less time, fewer trials, but if it had, an argument could be made that its consequences would have been more attenuated as fewer parties would've been morally obliged to act. Social media is good at promoting reactionary elements but like Jan 6th shown, issues peak, and then settle again until the "next time"...the question I have is does social media really change the seemingly undefinable point at which enough critical mass has been reach where real change does happen. What happened when Facebook was introduced into Sri Lanka is a good argument that social media does speed things up, but social media does not seem to have the same legislative potency in Europe or North America. It is a super complicated question....
2. Less money in politics, revoke Citizen United, constitutionally promote human property rights over corporations (recall Kelo and the use of eminent domain ).
3. Legacy media in the U.S. is terrible....too much concentration of ownership has created a generation of infotainers. Russia's war against Ukraine has shown very plainly what happens when questions about national security and human rights is trumped by commercial interests. Recall Thomas Friedman selling global trade using McDonald's as proof of its legitimacy in overruling people's concerns.
Excellent analysis and very good timing (for me) as I have Just recently (Sunday) watched a few lengthy but compelling YouTube Bezmenov videos. I had wondered about some of the background and personal life stuff and also see the qanon relevance to his stages. It’s almost as if trump was acting as a Putin asset and used the qanon org as replacement religion. It sure seems this way. I’m older than most in this group I think. I remember the john birch society and that mindset Bezmenov repeatedly teases. In my youth I would have ridiculed Bezmenov but since the trump admin and Nina’s book you reference and all my life now, I have to say much of what Bezmenov says is timeless. Substitute Putin and Russia for Andropov and USSR and it is quite on target and compelling. Thanks very much for your brain. I have relied on you throughout these last six years. Thank you.
Q 1. I think social media has created a two pronged attack-a short term explosion of propaganda, disinformation, etc. that has immediate results; that subsequently provides a foundation for attacks over the long term. This almost makes the "generational" reach easier.
Q2. The challenge to reach all Americans is incredibly difficult at this time as everyone hates everyone and trust in our institutions has eroded so badly (everything from local police to SCOTUS not to mention our government). I think there has got to be a way to attack all of this erosion with an inundation of information and action to send a strong message that the people will not stand for this any longer. People are fighting back with counter protests and literally erasing hate speech as was recently done in the northeast of our country. We have to stop believing nothing can be done and it's too late.
Q3. Russian measures and tactics poster boy is Tucker Carlson. We need to disentangle ourselves from Russia's efforts by presenting our own actors with the opposite narrative(s). The problem is that the MSM is owned and therefore influenced by people who support these Russian tactics, authoritarianism and autocracy.
This is a stellar lecture. I found myself both impressed, fascinated & infuriated by Bezmenov’s lecture. He reminds me of Ayn Rand, who left totalitarianism & took full advantage of the social safety nets of our democracy even as she publicly decried them as socialism. But it makes sense that he disdained liberals & the liberal media because during his time as a spy, liberals tended to be the most ideologically curious about communism...& were likely the easiest to recruit. Anyway, I guess I’m just “triggered” by hypocrites these days, people who take full advantage of all the amazing & unique qualities American democracy has to offer, then once they have theirs, yank up the ladder & focus on breaking it all so the rest of us can’t ever use them.
Also so furious that “it’s not against the law.” Russia (& now, also her buddies on the right) have not only exploited the self-made wounds & fissures, dark histories & mortal weaknesses of our society, they’ve cynically taken so many of our glorious freedoms and used them to destroy us as well. The first amendment especially. Are we trapped by our own laws? Is there a way to crank up national security & toughen the consequences of malign actions...or are we doomed to die as a democracy because so many of us never saw this coming?
I’m going to look at the questions later - I’ve been behind due to holiday & family craziness & catching up while multitasking, but I wanted to thank you - I’ve listened to this one twice & am going to one more time. So much to think about.
Yes! We will get to the ways that Russia (and other closed countries) weaponize our freedoms/rights against us when I do the lecture on asymmetrical warfare. It's worth noting that part of the reason Barr dropped the case against Pirozghin (who ran the Russian troll farm that interfered in 2016) and his companies and comrades was because they were trying to use discovery to force DOJ to disclose its sources and methods. They were trolling the judge in their pleadings and turning the whole thing into a circus.
1. Does social media change the time horizon necessary to subvert receptive audiences?
If by social media you mean Twitter, Facebook and so forth, and if by subversion you mean creating an undesirable and anti-social change in the way an individual views the world and their place in it, then I think the potential for speeded-up subversion is certainly available through social media, along with its demonstrated efficiency in spreading memes and organizing mobs. The key it seems to me is in the notion of receptivity. To be receptive to subversion, doesn’t a person need to be discontented, either legitimately (e.g. a victim of racial discrimination, poverty etc) or a product of manufactured discontent, which can be accomplished fairly easily through the techniques of psychological manipulation? How effective is social media at psychological manipulation, compared to the power of charismatic leaders? Not having any experience with social media I honestly don’t know.
2. Are there such principles or values that could unite Americans and make them more impervious to the tactics described by Bezmenov? What are they?
I think we are naturally united. It’s disharmony and disunity that is the unnatural state. I don’t think there is a simple remedy: it requires multifaceted education in civics, psychology, history, biology, ecology. Most people probably need education in small, palatable doses. Bring back the ”Fairness Doctrine” and require a portion of the broadcast day to be devoted to truthful, non-partisan, non-propagandistic education in small, digestible doses. Clearly most people today are not going to abandon reason for some supernatural cult! Devote some $ resources to projects that build bridges of understanding within and between communities. It needs to be OUR version of the long game.
3. How have some of Russia’s active measures tactics been adopted by domestic actors?
I was very amused by the photo of the Darryls in their matching shirts, expressing the OPPOSITE of the slogan my John Bircher mother used to express as a counter to the “better red than dead” mantra of the 1960s. Her slogan was “better brave than slave”. So the far right has now gone fully around the bend and is now the far left? What I really don’t fathom is what guys like Carlson, Murdoch et al are really after. They use the tactics, but to what end? Bezmenov was very clear as to the eventual fate of such acolytes. My mother went back to college in her 60s to try to understand the Russian people. She learned the language, studied the literature and history, made friends with refugees. To her dying day she was concerned about their long game. In grad school I had a lab partner who was an exchange postdoc from the USSR. He and his wife were not permitted to bring their children with them: they were hostages. What our domestic apologists for Putin need to do is leave our country and go live in Russia - as an ordinary citizen, not as a member of the ruling class. I’ve met people who have done so, and returned with greater appreciation of our imperfect, but preferable nation. If there are others who emigrated and love it, I haven’t read about them.
In my comment above, I wrote: “Clearly most people today are not going to abandon reason for some supernatural cult!” I have since reconsidered. I’m remembering Bezmenov’s gesture where he swoops his arms, to indicate how propagandists entrain/embed their memes along with the currents of their victim’s emotions and thoughts. I’m also remembering that Putin has embraced religion, as did Trump, with total hypocrisy.
Humans have a tendency to be uncomfortable with the unknown. Religion, and cults in general, give the comfort of certainty, even if the answers are wrong and unsupported by credible evidence. However, to the scientific mind, the unknown is a gift. Life presents a giant box of puzzles just waiting to be unwrapped.
Ed Snowden and his wife... not sure they "loves it", but he just got official Russian citizenship OK'd by Putin. Would he be ruling class...? He's probably very closely "monitored".
Undo Citizens United and reinstate the Fairness doctrine and, IMHO, we have a good chance at saving our democracy and country.
I thought about Snowden. What I read in his statements about Russian citizenship indicates to me that he wistfully wishes to return, but realizes that’s not possible. Of course he’s monitored. And likely relied on for seemingly innocuous information about American social structures and customs. In the words of an old folk song, he’s “making the best of a bad situation”.
Doubtful. I guess you’d call it hillbilly music. The lyrics are quite corny, with a lot of twangy banjo. A rewrite by, say, Roy Zimmerman (or you?) and it could be good.
Hakeem Jeffries did a nice job of expressing American values, many of which I hope we all could agree upon: “benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can’t do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation. “
For question two, I believe our legal system is the way we (imperfectly) effect our values. Good laws serve to bolster ethical conduct in society and keep people’s behavior better than it would otherwise be.
Another way we realize our values is through the stories we tell of American history at its best. For example, books by Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin, and David McCullough on George Washington, Harry Truman, and John Adams, and Doris Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, offer us reminders of what the American experiment is about and how we have tried to sustain it.
I have on my “To read” shelf Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us” and I expect that can offer something as well.
Jan 5, 2023·edited Jan 5, 2023Liked by Asha Rangappa
Hi Asha, thanks so much for putting together this class! I found you through Matt Armstrong's Substack. Have you ever read J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit - The Story of Communism In America and How to Fight It?" 1958 George J. McLeod, Ltd.
Though not as sensational, the examples are easier to follow than the material you have presented, and I'm thinking would be easier to teach. Bezmenov's story is a tough nut to crack for beginners.
Chapter 15 - Mass Agitation, P.197
"... the Party's attack is geared to the wide variety of American life. Communism has something to sell to everybody. And, following this principle, it is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, radical., political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That's the way to soften up a democracy.
--------
The approach always has two sides: (1) The deceptive line designed for public consumption, and (2) the real Party line designed to advance communism."
Hoover then elaborates on how advocating for peace and other liberal causes can have a duplicitous undertone and advance communist interests. A substantial portion of the chapter then expounds on increasing trade with communists and disarmament as examples.
Another worthy quote from P. 201:
"The attack is primarily agitational. Propaganda, although valuable, is a long-range softener, to be handled chiefly on an intellectual level by the educational department; agitation is immediate, inflammatory, conductive to acute discontent, the specialty of the field organizer.
Lenin's distinction is decisive. A propagandist, he says, to explain unemployment must talk about the capitalist nature of the crisis, the need for building a socialist society, etc. 'Many ideas must be expounded, so many indeed that they will be understood as a whole only by a (comparatively) few persons.'
But the agitator, on the other hand, selects one well-known aspect of the problem, such as 'the death from starvation of the family of an unemployed worker.' He will concentrate on imparting a single idea to the masses: why this family died. Or, in Lenin's words, he will show 'the senseless contradiction between the increase of wealth and increase of poverty.' Evoke discontent and revolt NOW. 'Leave a more complete explanation ... to the propagandist.'"
Another thing, a US chart of the subversion process posted above can be found in the Unconventional Warfare Pocket Guide on P.9
Thanks for your awesome tote bag, Asha! It will be a definite conversation starter.
My response to this week’s lecture is that I believe in the USA, the generations that either fought in WW II or were families of those who fought, have mostly passed away or are senior citizens like me. So the majority of current, younger generations in America who serve in Congress and report in the media, DO NOT know the history of war crimes and other atrocities committed by the old USSR during and after WW II, since this is likely barely taught in school, if mentioned at all.
Short of an attack by Russia on the USA or NATO allies, I’m not sure what could “reeducate” tens of millions ignorant, misinformed Americans, the majority being MAGA Republicans, who DO NOT understand that the Russians are using the SAME playbook in Ukraine as they used during in WW II when the Soviet Army invaded and occupied the Iron Curtain or Eastern Bloc countries, and then didn’t leave until nearly 50 years later, with much credit to Reagan for his “white propaganda” and strong anti-Communist views.
My mother’s side of the family fled the Russian occupation of Latvia near the end of WW II and immigrated to the USA, while only my father immigrated to this country and his entire family remained behind in Latvia to live for decades under dark, oppressed Soviet rule until gaining freedom in 1991! Today, my cousins who still live in Latvia love the USA and everything about it, and are thankful that our government never recognized the illegal Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic States, and feel secure that they are now under the protective NATO umbrella and that NATO antagonist Trump is out of office!
But as more and more time passes since WW II and the end of the Cold War, a dwindling number of Americans know the truth and/or possess first-hand knowledge about a country Reagan aptly called the “Evil Empire.” Instead, a growing number of Americans “learn” history from pro-Russian drivel spewed by morons such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump (e.g., Ukraine belongs to Russia because the people speak Russian)!!!
Therefore, I believe it’s NO longer necessary for old KGB-type subversion to influence American viewpoints and undermine our democracy such as what Bezmenov discusses in his YouTube video! Helping to “elect” Donald Trump was Putin’s mission accomplished. Only time will tell if and when the MAGA Republican movement dies and eradicates this growing, ominous threat to American democracy!
I really enjoyed this video - and your background explaining his views on religion and homosexuality. Hearing those views in the middle of an enlightening lecture from a deeply experienced expert was jarring. But that discordance points the way to a solution - if you ignore people’s views on abstract, philosophical subjects, which it’s natural to differ on, you can have productive discussions on specific challenges with anyone.
Q1. I agree that social media speeds up the timeline for social disintegration. But it also makes “normalization” impossible. Unless you prohibit social media or free speech generally (which is the opposite of what the far right wants to do), then no normalization is possible - only perpetual crisis.
Q2. I was surprised by Bezmenov suggesting religion as a unifying force. Christianity is divided into numerous sects. Although in the West these divisions are no longer major political cleavages (though consider the overwhelming support for MAGA among evangelicals compared to other sects), religion remains a major flash point elsewhere (Sunni/Shia for example). My tentative hypothesis is that any principle, ritual or tradition can unit people as long as it feels meaningful. A tradition like Thanksgiving is unifying because it’s connected to an actual practice that people find real and meaningful (meeting with family, eating good food, etc). Jury duty as well often leaves participants with greater faith in civic institutions because they have a meaningful role to play. In contrast, if you don’t have a strong faith in god, the rituals of religion, while perhaps enjoyable or comforting for secular reasons, are drained of larger meaning.
Q3. This was the question (with a little variation) I thought the most about during the lecture. You could retitle Bezmenov’s lecture “how society disintegrates” and it would be pretty accurate. You don’t need Russia to act at all. A question I would like to explore in our discussion is: why do domestic actors find pulling at these divisions so appealing? You are seeing the chaos wrought by this nihilism now in the GOP’s inability to appoint a speaker.
Eyes (Dana Bennett, contd from below). I just listened to Thomas Frank in his video What Happened to America? (Or some rewording of that) I found the term that describes my personal situation - medically bankrupt. And that happens more often than any president (including Obama and his exceptionally lame Affordable Care Act.) It might have been “affordable” but it certainly didn’t cover dire health conditions that go on and on for years of expensive treatments - including an organ transplant. Or worse, death taking a father, leaving medical debt behind for his family to bear. I believe Trump will never be indicted for his many seditious crimes - including collusion with a foreign power. As for this country? As long as most Americans aren’t reading and researching sources, we’re doomed.
That's a great link, Abbie. I'm working on a similar project. Dancing around how to appeal to and de-radicalize BOTH left and right radicalism has been a real challenge. I think it can be done, though. I've got a very rough draft of a book together for it. The trick for me was not naming names or pointing fingers and focusing on improving mental health. YouTube has something similar going on with their Hit Pause campaign.
Further thoughts on receptivity to subversion
I’m looking again at Bezmenov’s stages:
1. Demoralization – 15-20 years duration. Counting backward from now, this would be the early 2000s. In 2001 the world trade center was hit. The country rallied briefly, but can we think of any more demoralizing event? Bezmenov cites the following areas where campaigns of demoralization were typically launched by the KGB: religion, education, social life, the power structure, law and order, labor relations. I’m sure we can all think of examples of how in each of these areas (and others) demoralization has occurred. IMO, the seeds of demoralization were sown at least by the 1980s and the Reagan Revolution. Since then, with the hollowing out of the middle class and the rise of the plutocrats, demoralization has been on steroids. Grievances abound, creating a fertile ground of receptivity to subversion.
2. Destabilization – here Bezmenov cites the role of media. We were building a house in 1992, and the work crew was daily listening to Rush Limbaugh. (The alternative was tiresome country music.) I could not convince my friends, (educated professionals i.e. the “liberal elite”), that Limbaugh was dangerous – they only listened to public radio. Air America Radio was launched in 2004 to counter the propaganda of right wing talk radio, but it failed in a few years, and has never been replaced. Why have the “libs” not put in the investment of time and money to create alternative media? We are now fully in the destabilization phase, where Bezmenov says violent clashes are presented as normal (“legitimate political discourse”) and where sleepers are activated.
3. Crisis – It is possible that we are in the first stages of crisis, where legitimate bodies cannot function, e.g. the clown circus that the House of Reps has become. Other bodies have lost their legitimacy – e.g. the Supreme Court. According to Bezmenov, in this stage, the population is looking for a savior, either a strong leader or a foreign nation to step in. As Bezmenov says, crisis leads either to civil war, or an invasion, followed by stage 4:
4. Normalization – where those who precipitated the crisis, i.e. the useful idiots, are eliminated.
It seems that we don't have a lot of time left to save our democracy. We can still do it, and Freedom Academy is one way. I think of the opportunism of an ambitious dictator like Putin (and his counterparts in our own plutocracy) as analogous to the way water fractures rock, seeking and entering minute hairline cracks, and expanding when the freeze comes. If we can get out of our comfortable ivory towers and engage with our susceptible neighbors, listen to their legitimate grievances and work to ameliorate them, maybe we can head off the complete fracture. On a practical level this means narrowing the wealth gap through law and regulation, investing in truthful media, getting honest and thoughtful people into elected office at every level, and actually believing in our own values.
"Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Bezmenov’s explanation of Soviet subversion theory on this basis..."
Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Goebbel's and von Ribbenbtrop's explanation of the Nazi subversion theory on this basis...
The Nazis studied the treatment of Black people in America to develop their "Final Solution". And the Soviets studied Hitler and the Nazis to apply those tactics to undermining the "West".
The Nazis had a large-scale plan to influence all people of German descent everywhere in the world. They were very effective in the US. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were huge supporters of Nazism and Hitler, among others and were fiercely antisemitic.
1. a) Absolutely. b) This is a thought-provoking question. I was immediately thinking, yes, it's still generational because young people are the most avid adopters and users and consumers of social media. But, when I reflected on this I had to take into consideration how effective social media has been in spreading propaganda and lies to older people, too. Trump supporters, QAnon, Vaccine-deniers are mostly older, while, judging by the mid-term results, younger people are not being taken in as easily. So, generational? Maybe, but not quite in the way the Soviets thought it would work.
2. a) No. Try talking to a QAnon! Where's the common ground? Or an election-denier. Sure, you can talk with them about the weather or their health or family, but their world-view isn't based in reality. Period. They are True Believers. b) see answer to a.
3. LOL. Hitler's and Russia's active measures are now on view nightly on US news programs and not only Fox, Newsmax and OAN. ALL our domestic MSM is infected. We call it "fake news". Are you familiar with Hunter Thompson and "Gonzo Journalism"? Conflating fact with fiction, ala "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas"? Now it's become promoting outright lies to minds that soak it up like sponges.
4. I think you mean an *effective* way to disentangle... Possibly by teaching critical thinking and actual history, like we're learning here, to kids. And going back to question 1, this *is* the generational aspect. The young want a livable planet. And they can see that the Right is fighting that. So you know, it's not just Russia. It's also the Kochs, the Mercers, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, etc, etc. Really, really rich people who's power of the purse is beyond comprehension of most people. They are doing their very best - and spending huge sums - to subvert democracy and a real solution to the climate crisis.
"So, a crime…though it’s unclear whether the U.S. would have been willing to publicly disclose the intelligence to back up these charges..." Are you aware that in 1949 John O. Rogge returned from Germany with a trove on information on members of the US Congress who were aiding and abetting Hitler and the Nazis? The head of the DOJ at the time, Jim McGrath, had promised Rogge that it would be made public, but when a couple prominent Senators' names turned up, he quashed the report and refused to make it public.
So why didn't Garland prosecute Meadows for contempt of Congress? Why hasn't Bannon spent a night in jail, even though CONVICTED? Rhetorical questions? If we continue to let money drive our politics and we allow money to equal political speech, we don't even need to be concerned about Russia's active measures. We're destroying democracy ourselves. IMHO the Citizens United decision and the end of the Fairness Doctrine have pretty much meant the end of real representative democracy in our country. Do we really believe prosecuting Trump will have any effect on the true believers or the super-wealthy?
Closing remark: Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching, "When the people behave lawfully (morally), laws (and lawyers) are not necessary." I don't really see that coming back into style, do you?
(Q1) I was born shortly after the country emerged from World War II, and my childhood memories are of a country unified by having a common and well-defined enemy: America was the White Knight that had saved the world from Nazism and was now facing down aggressive communism. We kids pledged allegiance to the flag every morning and hid under our desks in air raid drills. We were unified by common goals, common foes, and common cultural experiences. Everyone watched Bonanza and Gunsmoke, and we all got our news from Walter Cronkite or Huntley & Brinkley.
But that unity went to hell in the late 60's when it was our generation's turn to go to war in Viet Nam. It was hard for those of us of draftable age to believe that we should go off to kill or be killed in a tiny country no one had ever heard of and that posed no threat to us. The generational change was dramatic, abrupt, and lasting. So even in the absence of social media, cultural divisions can happen quickly.
I think the moral of my story is that having a common enemy, or a common purpose, or a common struggle that can best be overcome by cooperative effort leads to cohesion in a group. For my parents' generation, the common enemy was Germany and Japan; for my generation, the common enemy was Nixon, Agnew, and their ilk. Today the country is split along party lines, and --yes--social media and diverse broadcasters exacerbate that split, and it is hard to see how the split can be healed. I have long thought that if the Earth were attacked by Martians, all nations and all parties would come together with a common purpose, but I have waited in vain for that happy scenario to unfold.
I think a common "enemy" is a major factor (our highest levels of social cohesion over the last century was during/after WWII). I think that COVID-19 had the potential to bring us together in a common struggle until it was politicized. And it's funny -- I was joking with someone about the "alien invasion" scenario and that it's really a toss up on whether we'd be able to get it together, lol. Thanks for your comments!
Our response to the pandemic is a particularly baffling example of tribalism overpowering self-interest. Who could have predicted that people who flock to quack remedies and horse medicine would refuse a potentially life-saving vaccine just because the latter is promoted by scientists and pointy-headed intellectual elites?
As a thought experiment, imagine what would happen if Biden tried to restrict vaccine supplies to blue states. Wouldn't the anti-vaxxers furiously demand their right to be jabbed?
My favorite such movie was the satire "Mars Attacks!" with Jack Nicholson as president, and an amazing cast (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116996/fullcredits). I think our love of such fantasies exposes a dangerous inability to admit the possibility of superior forces. We know know that Mars has no superior civilization; probably no multicellular life or life at all for that matter, so it would have to come from another solar system i.e. light years away, so to reach earth they'd have to have superior technology comparable to the Spanish conquistadors vs the Aztecs, Often it is only some oddball Achilles heel that defeats the aliens and saves Earth. In Mars Attacks! it was the fact that when the aliens were exposed to yodeling, their heads exploded.
Active Measures: Crazy Uncle Yuri Edition
1) It’s tempting to treat the notion that social media accelerates the process of subversion as axiomatic. But I’m going to take a somewhat contrarian approach. What we learned through both the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s (thankfully) incompetent invasion of Ukraine is that despite easily exploited fissures, democratic societies are more resilient than we once believed and that the tendency for plutocrats and autocrats (whether Trump, Musk, or Putin) to get high on their own supply leads to frequently absurd miscalculations about their own abilities, strategies for promoting their views, and the extensiveness of their audience. Gen Z, the most social media saturated generation ever, has also been the most reliable in repudiating facism and autocracy. This suggests to me that however effective social media has been as a tool for subverting democratic institutions, it’s also been a tool for younger generations to fight back even without formal government support and cooperation (which they would likely distrust in any case).
2) I do think there are some values that transcend particular religions that could potentially unify our society. Anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow coauthored The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity where they examine recent archaeological evidence spanning millennia. They present extensive evidence that human beings gravitate towards what they describe as the three freedoms and summarize these as follows:
• Freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings
• Freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others
• Freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones
It’s a little hard to capture what each of these mean outside the context of their sprawling study, but I’ve been exploring this framework with respect to Christian theology and it works so well it’s a little unnerving. For example, the freedom to relocate is expressed in Abraham’s journey to Canaan and the exodus. Freedom to ignore or disobey commands is one of the first stories we encounter with Adam and Eve. We also see it in the civil war following Solomon's kingdom or with the early Christians refusing to give allegiance to the Roman empire. The freedom to shape entirely new social realities is expressed most clearly in the prophetic traditions of the Old Testament (often standing in opposition to the monarchy) and in Jesus and the gospels. So I’m finding Graeber and Wengrow’s framework of three freedoms helpful in my own reflections on faith and it may be a basis for uniting a society that already expresses freedom as a fundamental value.
3) It’s hard to pick just one! I think the way we most see subversion tactics is in what has become an all out war on the idea of demonstrable fact. In our last office hours meeting, we talked about the phrase “alternative facts” that we heard for the first time from Kellyanne Conway. It occurred to me after the meeting that a precursor to this happened in the 2000 presidential debates. Several times Bush would dismiss Gore’s statistics-laden arguments with the phrase, “fuzzy math.” No one ever bothered to ask what made the math fuzzy or if fuzzy math was dry clean only and wouldn’t that in itself make the math less appealing… It was a different era.
Fast forward to Kevin McCarthy’s endless, failed Speaker elections and we’re perhaps observing an element of self correction. Movements that don’t have a basis in reality tend towards cannibalism, a trait already evident in the way Boehner’s tea-party majority was inherently ungovernable. Paul Ryan had the same exact issue and now McCarthy is finding this out again in the most humiliating way possible.
That doesn’t let us off the hook for pushing back against falsehoods and disinformation, but one of the most important principles is that you don’t treat people who are engaging in bad faith arguments as serious partners in preserving democracy. Hakeem Jeffries is doing an excellent job of standing back and refusing to save the House Republicans from themselves. It’s exactly the right move in this moment.
1. Myself, I have of late, come to understand that my views until recently have been Pavlovianly conditioned via the legacy media to be reactionary. Whatever I believed that came to me through free will I essentially inherited from previous generations attitudes and beliefs. In particular, the attitude that things will work out, aka the happy endings that is so dominate in American culture. Social media has just amped up many of the underlying fallacies that are embedded within whatever passes for a social contract in the U.S.. Like Gordon Gekko said what failings of western democracies social media exposed are there because "it's(were) wreckable". A two party federal political system like the U.S. has always at the base level promoted an "us" vs. "them" mindset. If anything, social media has exposed the need for people to think generationally rather than to be constantly conditioned to react temporally.
The science behind the clicking of "like" buttons is not widely understood. Even, if western societies were more homogenous economically and politically, the algorithm employed by Facebook in particular will always amp up dichotomies. The Dreyfess affair is an example of what can happen in a relatively homogenous society. If social media existed back then, it might've taken less time, fewer trials, but if it had, an argument could be made that its consequences would have been more attenuated as fewer parties would've been morally obliged to act. Social media is good at promoting reactionary elements but like Jan 6th shown, issues peak, and then settle again until the "next time"...the question I have is does social media really change the seemingly undefinable point at which enough critical mass has been reach where real change does happen. What happened when Facebook was introduced into Sri Lanka is a good argument that social media does speed things up, but social media does not seem to have the same legislative potency in Europe or North America. It is a super complicated question....
2. Less money in politics, revoke Citizen United, constitutionally promote human property rights over corporations (recall Kelo and the use of eminent domain ).
3. Legacy media in the U.S. is terrible....too much concentration of ownership has created a generation of infotainers. Russia's war against Ukraine has shown very plainly what happens when questions about national security and human rights is trumped by commercial interests. Recall Thomas Friedman selling global trade using McDonald's as proof of its legitimacy in overruling people's concerns.
Excellent analysis and very good timing (for me) as I have Just recently (Sunday) watched a few lengthy but compelling YouTube Bezmenov videos. I had wondered about some of the background and personal life stuff and also see the qanon relevance to his stages. It’s almost as if trump was acting as a Putin asset and used the qanon org as replacement religion. It sure seems this way. I’m older than most in this group I think. I remember the john birch society and that mindset Bezmenov repeatedly teases. In my youth I would have ridiculed Bezmenov but since the trump admin and Nina’s book you reference and all my life now, I have to say much of what Bezmenov says is timeless. Substitute Putin and Russia for Andropov and USSR and it is quite on target and compelling. Thanks very much for your brain. I have relied on you throughout these last six years. Thank you.
Q 1. I think social media has created a two pronged attack-a short term explosion of propaganda, disinformation, etc. that has immediate results; that subsequently provides a foundation for attacks over the long term. This almost makes the "generational" reach easier.
Q2. The challenge to reach all Americans is incredibly difficult at this time as everyone hates everyone and trust in our institutions has eroded so badly (everything from local police to SCOTUS not to mention our government). I think there has got to be a way to attack all of this erosion with an inundation of information and action to send a strong message that the people will not stand for this any longer. People are fighting back with counter protests and literally erasing hate speech as was recently done in the northeast of our country. We have to stop believing nothing can be done and it's too late.
Q3. Russian measures and tactics poster boy is Tucker Carlson. We need to disentangle ourselves from Russia's efforts by presenting our own actors with the opposite narrative(s). The problem is that the MSM is owned and therefore influenced by people who support these Russian tactics, authoritarianism and autocracy.
This is a stellar lecture. I found myself both impressed, fascinated & infuriated by Bezmenov’s lecture. He reminds me of Ayn Rand, who left totalitarianism & took full advantage of the social safety nets of our democracy even as she publicly decried them as socialism. But it makes sense that he disdained liberals & the liberal media because during his time as a spy, liberals tended to be the most ideologically curious about communism...& were likely the easiest to recruit. Anyway, I guess I’m just “triggered” by hypocrites these days, people who take full advantage of all the amazing & unique qualities American democracy has to offer, then once they have theirs, yank up the ladder & focus on breaking it all so the rest of us can’t ever use them.
Also so furious that “it’s not against the law.” Russia (& now, also her buddies on the right) have not only exploited the self-made wounds & fissures, dark histories & mortal weaknesses of our society, they’ve cynically taken so many of our glorious freedoms and used them to destroy us as well. The first amendment especially. Are we trapped by our own laws? Is there a way to crank up national security & toughen the consequences of malign actions...or are we doomed to die as a democracy because so many of us never saw this coming?
I’m going to look at the questions later - I’ve been behind due to holiday & family craziness & catching up while multitasking, but I wanted to thank you - I’ve listened to this one twice & am going to one more time. So much to think about.
Yes! We will get to the ways that Russia (and other closed countries) weaponize our freedoms/rights against us when I do the lecture on asymmetrical warfare. It's worth noting that part of the reason Barr dropped the case against Pirozghin (who ran the Russian troll farm that interfered in 2016) and his companies and comrades was because they were trying to use discovery to force DOJ to disclose its sources and methods. They were trolling the judge in their pleadings and turning the whole thing into a circus.
1. Does social media change the time horizon necessary to subvert receptive audiences?
If by social media you mean Twitter, Facebook and so forth, and if by subversion you mean creating an undesirable and anti-social change in the way an individual views the world and their place in it, then I think the potential for speeded-up subversion is certainly available through social media, along with its demonstrated efficiency in spreading memes and organizing mobs. The key it seems to me is in the notion of receptivity. To be receptive to subversion, doesn’t a person need to be discontented, either legitimately (e.g. a victim of racial discrimination, poverty etc) or a product of manufactured discontent, which can be accomplished fairly easily through the techniques of psychological manipulation? How effective is social media at psychological manipulation, compared to the power of charismatic leaders? Not having any experience with social media I honestly don’t know.
2. Are there such principles or values that could unite Americans and make them more impervious to the tactics described by Bezmenov? What are they?
I think we are naturally united. It’s disharmony and disunity that is the unnatural state. I don’t think there is a simple remedy: it requires multifaceted education in civics, psychology, history, biology, ecology. Most people probably need education in small, palatable doses. Bring back the ”Fairness Doctrine” and require a portion of the broadcast day to be devoted to truthful, non-partisan, non-propagandistic education in small, digestible doses. Clearly most people today are not going to abandon reason for some supernatural cult! Devote some $ resources to projects that build bridges of understanding within and between communities. It needs to be OUR version of the long game.
3. How have some of Russia’s active measures tactics been adopted by domestic actors?
I was very amused by the photo of the Darryls in their matching shirts, expressing the OPPOSITE of the slogan my John Bircher mother used to express as a counter to the “better red than dead” mantra of the 1960s. Her slogan was “better brave than slave”. So the far right has now gone fully around the bend and is now the far left? What I really don’t fathom is what guys like Carlson, Murdoch et al are really after. They use the tactics, but to what end? Bezmenov was very clear as to the eventual fate of such acolytes. My mother went back to college in her 60s to try to understand the Russian people. She learned the language, studied the literature and history, made friends with refugees. To her dying day she was concerned about their long game. In grad school I had a lab partner who was an exchange postdoc from the USSR. He and his wife were not permitted to bring their children with them: they were hostages. What our domestic apologists for Putin need to do is leave our country and go live in Russia - as an ordinary citizen, not as a member of the ruling class. I’ve met people who have done so, and returned with greater appreciation of our imperfect, but preferable nation. If there are others who emigrated and love it, I haven’t read about them.
Great responses! I hope you will be able to join office hours this week as I would love to unpack a lot of the above.
In my comment above, I wrote: “Clearly most people today are not going to abandon reason for some supernatural cult!” I have since reconsidered. I’m remembering Bezmenov’s gesture where he swoops his arms, to indicate how propagandists entrain/embed their memes along with the currents of their victim’s emotions and thoughts. I’m also remembering that Putin has embraced religion, as did Trump, with total hypocrisy.
Humans have a tendency to be uncomfortable with the unknown. Religion, and cults in general, give the comfort of certainty, even if the answers are wrong and unsupported by credible evidence. However, to the scientific mind, the unknown is a gift. Life presents a giant box of puzzles just waiting to be unwrapped.
Ed Snowden and his wife... not sure they "loves it", but he just got official Russian citizenship OK'd by Putin. Would he be ruling class...? He's probably very closely "monitored".
Undo Citizens United and reinstate the Fairness doctrine and, IMHO, we have a good chance at saving our democracy and country.
I thought about Snowden. What I read in his statements about Russian citizenship indicates to me that he wistfully wishes to return, but realizes that’s not possible. Of course he’s monitored. And likely relied on for seemingly innocuous information about American social structures and customs. In the words of an old folk song, he’s “making the best of a bad situation”.
And here’s another link I found interesting and relevant. https://open.substack.com/pub/cobaugh/p/ukraine-is-doing-precisely-what-the?r=2ycvh&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
What folk song is that? I should be including that in my repertoire!
Doubtful. I guess you’d call it hillbilly music. The lyrics are quite corny, with a lot of twangy banjo. A rewrite by, say, Roy Zimmerman (or you?) and it could be good.
Hakeem Jeffries did a nice job of expressing American values, many of which I hope we all could agree upon: “benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can’t do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation. “
For question two, I believe our legal system is the way we (imperfectly) effect our values. Good laws serve to bolster ethical conduct in society and keep people’s behavior better than it would otherwise be.
Another way we realize our values is through the stories we tell of American history at its best. For example, books by Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin, and David McCullough on George Washington, Harry Truman, and John Adams, and Doris Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, offer us reminders of what the American experiment is about and how we have tried to sustain it.
I have on my “To read” shelf Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us” and I expect that can offer something as well.
I have Rather's book on my reading list, too! Maybe I will move it up and do a review. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Then I will read it too :-)
Hi Asha, thanks so much for putting together this class! I found you through Matt Armstrong's Substack. Have you ever read J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit - The Story of Communism In America and How to Fight It?" 1958 George J. McLeod, Ltd.
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Deceit-J-Edgar-Hoover/dp/B000E9UFWU
Though not as sensational, the examples are easier to follow than the material you have presented, and I'm thinking would be easier to teach. Bezmenov's story is a tough nut to crack for beginners.
Chapter 15 - Mass Agitation, P.197
"... the Party's attack is geared to the wide variety of American life. Communism has something to sell to everybody. And, following this principle, it is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, radical., political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That's the way to soften up a democracy.
--------
The approach always has two sides: (1) The deceptive line designed for public consumption, and (2) the real Party line designed to advance communism."
Hoover then elaborates on how advocating for peace and other liberal causes can have a duplicitous undertone and advance communist interests. A substantial portion of the chapter then expounds on increasing trade with communists and disarmament as examples.
Another worthy quote from P. 201:
"The attack is primarily agitational. Propaganda, although valuable, is a long-range softener, to be handled chiefly on an intellectual level by the educational department; agitation is immediate, inflammatory, conductive to acute discontent, the specialty of the field organizer.
Lenin's distinction is decisive. A propagandist, he says, to explain unemployment must talk about the capitalist nature of the crisis, the need for building a socialist society, etc. 'Many ideas must be expounded, so many indeed that they will be understood as a whole only by a (comparatively) few persons.'
But the agitator, on the other hand, selects one well-known aspect of the problem, such as 'the death from starvation of the family of an unemployed worker.' He will concentrate on imparting a single idea to the masses: why this family died. Or, in Lenin's words, he will show 'the senseless contradiction between the increase of wealth and increase of poverty.' Evoke discontent and revolt NOW. 'Leave a more complete explanation ... to the propagandist.'"
Another thing, a US chart of the subversion process posted above can be found in the Unconventional Warfare Pocket Guide on P.9
https://www.soc.mil/ARIS/books/arisbooks.html
One more thing...LOL Where can I find materials from your National Security Law class? That looks really interesting.
Thanks for your awesome tote bag, Asha! It will be a definite conversation starter.
My response to this week’s lecture is that I believe in the USA, the generations that either fought in WW II or were families of those who fought, have mostly passed away or are senior citizens like me. So the majority of current, younger generations in America who serve in Congress and report in the media, DO NOT know the history of war crimes and other atrocities committed by the old USSR during and after WW II, since this is likely barely taught in school, if mentioned at all.
Short of an attack by Russia on the USA or NATO allies, I’m not sure what could “reeducate” tens of millions ignorant, misinformed Americans, the majority being MAGA Republicans, who DO NOT understand that the Russians are using the SAME playbook in Ukraine as they used during in WW II when the Soviet Army invaded and occupied the Iron Curtain or Eastern Bloc countries, and then didn’t leave until nearly 50 years later, with much credit to Reagan for his “white propaganda” and strong anti-Communist views.
My mother’s side of the family fled the Russian occupation of Latvia near the end of WW II and immigrated to the USA, while only my father immigrated to this country and his entire family remained behind in Latvia to live for decades under dark, oppressed Soviet rule until gaining freedom in 1991! Today, my cousins who still live in Latvia love the USA and everything about it, and are thankful that our government never recognized the illegal Soviet occupation and annexation of the Baltic States, and feel secure that they are now under the protective NATO umbrella and that NATO antagonist Trump is out of office!
But as more and more time passes since WW II and the end of the Cold War, a dwindling number of Americans know the truth and/or possess first-hand knowledge about a country Reagan aptly called the “Evil Empire.” Instead, a growing number of Americans “learn” history from pro-Russian drivel spewed by morons such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump (e.g., Ukraine belongs to Russia because the people speak Russian)!!!
Therefore, I believe it’s NO longer necessary for old KGB-type subversion to influence American viewpoints and undermine our democracy such as what Bezmenov discusses in his YouTube video! Helping to “elect” Donald Trump was Putin’s mission accomplished. Only time will tell if and when the MAGA Republican movement dies and eradicates this growing, ominous threat to American democracy!
I really enjoyed this video - and your background explaining his views on religion and homosexuality. Hearing those views in the middle of an enlightening lecture from a deeply experienced expert was jarring. But that discordance points the way to a solution - if you ignore people’s views on abstract, philosophical subjects, which it’s natural to differ on, you can have productive discussions on specific challenges with anyone.
Q1. I agree that social media speeds up the timeline for social disintegration. But it also makes “normalization” impossible. Unless you prohibit social media or free speech generally (which is the opposite of what the far right wants to do), then no normalization is possible - only perpetual crisis.
Q2. I was surprised by Bezmenov suggesting religion as a unifying force. Christianity is divided into numerous sects. Although in the West these divisions are no longer major political cleavages (though consider the overwhelming support for MAGA among evangelicals compared to other sects), religion remains a major flash point elsewhere (Sunni/Shia for example). My tentative hypothesis is that any principle, ritual or tradition can unit people as long as it feels meaningful. A tradition like Thanksgiving is unifying because it’s connected to an actual practice that people find real and meaningful (meeting with family, eating good food, etc). Jury duty as well often leaves participants with greater faith in civic institutions because they have a meaningful role to play. In contrast, if you don’t have a strong faith in god, the rituals of religion, while perhaps enjoyable or comforting for secular reasons, are drained of larger meaning.
Q3. This was the question (with a little variation) I thought the most about during the lecture. You could retitle Bezmenov’s lecture “how society disintegrates” and it would be pretty accurate. You don’t need Russia to act at all. A question I would like to explore in our discussion is: why do domestic actors find pulling at these divisions so appealing? You are seeing the chaos wrought by this nihilism now in the GOP’s inability to appoint a speaker.
Eyes (Dana Bennett, contd from below). I just listened to Thomas Frank in his video What Happened to America? (Or some rewording of that) I found the term that describes my personal situation - medically bankrupt. And that happens more often than any president (including Obama and his exceptionally lame Affordable Care Act.) It might have been “affordable” but it certainly didn’t cover dire health conditions that go on and on for years of expensive treatments - including an organ transplant. Or worse, death taking a father, leaving medical debt behind for his family to bear. I believe Trump will never be indicted for his many seditious crimes - including collusion with a foreign power. As for this country? As long as most Americans aren’t reading and researching sources, we’re doomed.
p.s.I think there's a groundswell of realization starting. C.f. https://www.lwvme.org/civicrm-event/1594?a0=events&a1=
That's a great link, Abbie. I'm working on a similar project. Dancing around how to appeal to and de-radicalize BOTH left and right radicalism has been a real challenge. I think it can be done, though. I've got a very rough draft of a book together for it. The trick for me was not naming names or pointing fingers and focusing on improving mental health. YouTube has something similar going on with their Hit Pause campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/@HitPause