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KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

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Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#161

Post by lostlogin »

narrator wrote: post #154
lostlogin wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one view, the other is that the Russian military and its supplies have been decimated, it’s military smashed and the west has spent a fraction of a fraction of its reserves and none of its armies. Do you really think that Russia isn’t trying to advance? China may come out in the best position, but surely that’s the best that the non western world can hope for?

Russia isn't trying to advance. They withdrew in Kherson in an orderly fashion because they believed the supply lines were too vulnerable. The Ruble did not crash vs. the U.S dollar. In fact it strengthened for a while and it's back to its long-term average[1]. Anecdotal reports from inside Russia from average Russians that I read on other forums seem to show that there is not a lot of economic stress. [1] https://ww…

Yes, but that wasn’t a victory, its was a loss. The earlier retreats were complete collapses.

What would you describe the carry on in the Bakhmut region as? That’s chewing up Russian resources at a far higher rate than the western ones, and for a ruined town of little strategic significance.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#162

Post by DoItToMe81 »

Bezmenov's claims are not corroborated by any other agents, nor was he ever a high enough position to have learned of them. There also are no hints of them within the Russian archives, which have been used to corroborate a variety of real KGB activities based on claims of defectors, like creating fake KKK threats to drum up racial tension during civil rights.

Like most public defectors of the era, he's a bullshitter.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#163

Post by phendrenad2 »

twixfel wrote: post #134
phendrenad2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying, "by your logic, we should never cross the road, because we can't possibly look both ways enough times!"

You're literally saying he shouldn't be listened to because he's a defector. You're not engaging with anything he said, just writing him off for being a defector. That is really stupid.

And you're saying that we should listen to defectors, for no reason whatsoever. Or are you saying that we should listen to defectors, because they are defectors? In that case, how is that different from what you accuse me of?

BTW, what I actually said is that we shouldn't blindly believe defectors, because there are compelling reasons for them to stretch the truth. See the difference? There are three ways we can treat a story: We can choose to believe it, we can ignore it, or we can choose to disbelieve it. You wouldn't believe my "pink bunny guns" example, would you? So you're already doing what I suggest, we just differ in degree.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#164

Post by phendrenad2 »

twixfel wrote: post #88
phendrenad2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes the classic "everyone who disagrees with me is a shill" (non-)argument. Becoming all to prevalent on HN.

Elsewhere in this thread you say he shouldn't be listened to because he's a defector and would naturally be opposed to the USSR. So you're doing exactly the same thing that you criticise other people for.

Shills exist, but not everyone in the universe other than you is a shill. This produces a difficulty in people's minds because people think in absolutes. They prefer to either ignore the existence of shills, or choose to believe that everyone who disagrees with them is a shill. The truth is somewhere inbetween, but it takes work to thinks things through on an individual level.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#165

Post by yucky »

rasz wrote: post #122
yucky wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is actually a great example of our own propaganda at work. This "Three Days" quote came from one of our Generals, not from Russia. Putin's statements from early on are all widely available (with English transcriptions) and they do not in anyway sound like the words of someone expecting to annex Ukraine int…

russians claimed two days. Here Margarita Simonyan https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144

She's...a blogger lol

The claim is that the Russian government said they would take Kiev in 3 days which of course was not a claim ever made. IN fact, nothing close was ever said. It was a a US general (Milley I believe) who popularized the "3 days to take Kiev" meme.

It came from us, not them. So why do you think we've been told otherwise?

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#166

Post by zozbot234 »

skissane wrote: post #160
zozbot234 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The historical Frankfurt School was quite socially conservative and far from what is now described as "woke". The actual issue with the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is not that the Frankfurt School somehow didn't exist; it's that they were, quite simply, not involved in the kind of conspiracy that they're sometimes clumsily accused of. Did Western radicals rip off some broad ideas from the Frankfurt School back…

If we want to debate exactly how much influence the Frankfurt School had - that’s the kind of thing about which reasonable people can disagree-although I still think it had greater influence than you do. See https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/just-becaus... For me, the big issue is that labelling one side of the discussion as a “far right antisemitic conspiracy theory” is not conducive to having a nuanc…

The Tablet article you link to engages in a regrettably common misconception of what Marcuse was actually up to with his Repressive Tolerance. The point there was not to defend society against anything ideologically problematic, but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. That's why it was proposed to favor the most strongly censored and unfashionable ideas at any given time and strive to platform them everywhere, even irrespective of their actual merits. It's quite simply a "chaos monkey" approach to the whole problem of what we now call communication 'filter bubbles' and 'echo chambers'-- or pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name. It's really sad that more people don't give Herbert Marcuse the credit he is due for that whole idea.

Anyway, the broader point is that Zubatov is not taking a very nuanced view of the historical Frankfurt School here, and critically he's missing their loosely socially-conservative leanings - something that scholars seem to broadly agree on, and a key reason to dismiss purported links between the School and what often passes today as "radical" or sometimes as "socially progressive" thought.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#167

Post by [deleted] »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #53
mopsi wrote: post #32

This ties well into the "three days to Kyiv" expectation at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russians really did think that Ukraine had been subverted to a degree that it would just roll over and die; that leadership would run away and local resistance would be limited to disorganized pockets that riot police could suppress, but their informants and agents just stole the money and reported what the Kreml…

Is there a quote of link to the "three days to Kyiv" comment from the Russian Federation?

[deleted]

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#168

Post by malaya_zemlya »

colpabar wrote: post #79
ImHereToVote wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a quote of link to the "three days to Kyiv" comment from the Russian Federation?

I hate talking about downvotes but it is really odd that you're being downvoted for asking for a source. Source are requested all the time on this website, and only in certain cases do they get downvoted like this. Hopefully your comment won't be gray in a few hours when more people participate in the thread. I would like to see a source as well, because I want to see sources for all claims I encounter online. Why sh…

Quite a few sources were provided after all.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#169

Post by skissane »

zozbot234 wrote: post #166
skissane wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to debate exactly how much influence the Frankfurt School had - that’s the kind of thing about which reasonable people can disagree-although I still think it had greater influence than you do. See https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/just-becaus... For me, the big issue is that labelling one side of the discussion as a “far right antisemitic conspiracy theory” is not conducive to having a nuanc…

The Tablet article you link to engages in a regrettably common misconception of what Marcuse was actually up to with his Repressive Tolerance . The point there was not to defend society against anything ideologically problematic, but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. That's why it was proposed to favor the most strongly censored and unfashionabl…

Does Zubatov misunderstand Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School more broadly? Maybe you are right that he does.

But even if he does – that's a long way off being a "far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory". People, on both left and right, misread history (and especially intellectual history) all the time. Just because someone's got their history wrong, doesn't make them a "conspiracy theorist", much less a "far-right antisemitic" one.

> and critically he's missing their loosely socially-conservative leanings - something that scholars seem to broadly agree on, and a key reason to dismiss purported links between the School and what often passes today as "radical" or sometimes as "socially progressive" thought

I don't think that necessarily follows. Coming back to what I said about Foucault – on the one hand, it is true that attempts to blame Foucault for "wokeness" tend to greatly oversimplify him. On the other hand, I don't think the right has any monopoly on misreading him – I think a lot of people on the left are guilty of reading him in overly simplistic ways, and if one was to claim that some of the excesses of contemporary progressivism have their (partial) origin in left-leaning misreadings of Foucault–that doesn't seem so implausible to me. But if that might be true of Foucault, might not it also be true of Marcuse and the Frankfurt School?

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#170

Post by than3 »

largepeepee wrote: post #102
colpabar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate talking about downvotes but it is really odd that you're being downvoted for asking for a source. Source are requested all the time on this website, and only in certain cases do they get downvoted like this. Hopefully your comment won't be gray in a few hours when more people participate in the thread. I would like to see a source as well, because I want to see sources for all claims I encounter online. Why sh…

Very strange how anyone asking for sources abt any politically charged issue on social media gets immediately attacked. No wonder social media starts to circulate the most bonkers things when no one is allowed to question even verifiable statements.

Its not strange at all, you have a ratio of bots mixed in with people, and quite a number of them seem like those broken Chat-GPT narratives you see.

Political warfare is nothing new. Any intelligent person knows, if it doesn't have sources its not credible.

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