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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

#141

Post by philwelch »

the_af wrote: post #95
philwelch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Defectors are notoriously unreliable: they tell their host country whatever they want to hear This is almost word-for-word the same rationalization employed by the people who denied the Cambodian genocide.

Maybe, but unfortunately it cannot be used as a strike against it. The Cambodian genocide happened. Defectors are notoriously unreliable and many Soviet defectors told falsehoods their host country wanted to believe. (This doesn't mean every defector is unreliable, or even that everything an unreliable defector will say is false -- it just means what it means, that defectors are unreliable as a category.) Both things…

Sometimes defectors are unreliable. Other times, defectors provide reliable information which people choose to dismiss or ignore because it doesn't fit with their presuppositions.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#142

Post by [deleted] »

rasz wrote: post #120
cpursley wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s not, it was actually General Milley who put this number out there and the media and social media ran with it as if it were an official Kremlin statement. https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-w...

and CIA Director Bill Burns https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085155440/cia-director-putin... TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva claimed two days, so did Margarita Simonyan and many others: https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144 as for russian invasion plans, good old potato man leaked them live on national TV https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/moldova-next-belarus-president-ma...

[deleted]

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#143

Post by cpursley »

rasz wrote: post #120
cpursley wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s not, it was actually General Milley who put this number out there and the media and social media ran with it as if it were an official Kremlin statement. https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-w...

and CIA Director Bill Burns https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085155440/cia-director-putin... TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva claimed two days, so did Margarita Simonyan and many others: https://twitter.com/ruinwanderer/status/1622142324015878144 as for russian invasion plans, good old potato man leaked them live on national TV https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/moldova-next-belarus-president-ma...

He might be a huge goober but ethnic slurs are still against hn policy.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#144

Post by Redoubts »

watwut wrote: post #89
sorokod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "almost every night" I assume he is not mobilized. Why would that be so?

He might simply live in region that mobilized less. Of live abroad. Most of mobilization happen in poor peripheral regions. Moscow and surrounding mobilizes much less.

Good news is Wagner just opened up recruiting centers in Russian 42 cities.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#145

Post by philwelch »

dale_glass wrote: post #116
philwelch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire minutes. The man is talking about ideological subversion. It’s not about nationalism. It’s about the propagation of leftist ideology. McCarthyism was in the 1950’s and by the 80’s had already been “discredited” as some sort of witch hunt. Bezmenov already says in…

> If you listened to the entire interview, I don’t know how you managed to mentally substitute the term “Russia” for the term “Marxism-Leninism” for 15 entire minutes. The man is talking about ideological subversion. It’s not about nationalism. He's an ex-KGB spook talking about the actions of a foreign government. Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR.…

> Of course it's about nationalism. Said ideological subversion is there to serve the needs of the USSR.

The ideology did not exist to serve the needs of the USSR; the USSR existed to serve the needs of the ideology. You can tell because Marxism was a ideological current for decades before the USSR, and because it regrettably persists decades after the fall of the USSR.

The USSR exerted a centralized dominance over that ideology--as early as the Spanish Civil War, Soviet-backed groups were purging rival leftist factions on the Republican side. To a less brutal degree, the US has exerted a similar centralized dominance over the liberal democracies of the world.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#146

Post by bilvar »

dale_glass wrote: post #51
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #4

For e ti's shocking how much people are in denial about this. In spite of us seeing with our own eyes that this strategy is being deployed and it works, it works depressingly well. In spite of that, many people I know try to dismiss the video, the speaker, and the main message conveyed by it. It is as if we got blind by our own request.

I have no doubt that Russia engages in a lot of shenanigans today. However that back in 1985, what this guy is saying about the USSR managing worm into the US to the point of raising an entire generation that thought what the USSR wanted them to think -- that to me seems extremely dubious. There may be a kernel of truth there -- yes, the KGB may have had such a strategy, and it might have been successfully executed i…

On the contrary. Many of those people are now tenured professors and deans of universities, which Bezmenov said were specifically and overwhelmingly targeted by this strategy. Guess which ideology most universities lean on - the ideological uniformity and persecution of different viewpoints has reached an extreme level there.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#147

Post by fortuna86 »

norwalkbear wrote: post #139
fortuna86 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet "political correctness" was about protecting the state from any criticism, American "political correctness" is about understanding systems of oppression from the standpoint of the oppressed. Couldn't be more different.

In 2023, disagree heavily. Political Correctness is a way prevent open conversation and debate. The Biden admin constantly reorients attacks on them as attacks on women or the LGBT community. Political Correctness is used to shut down criticism of the modern American State. Wars are now pitched as femininist, see afghanistan.

That is the right wing perspective, yes. And i'm sure PC is used at times cynically to deflect real criticism, that doesn't change the origins or original meaning I described. This alongside "wokeness" is simply acknowledging how much of our everyday speech and action rob certain members of society of their voice and agency, and trying to address it. Addressing it is a hard and imprecise process, but it's worth doing imo.

If even it engenders a near constant stream of culture war backlash. America wasn't great for far too many Americans in the past, that needs to change.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#148

Post by tlear »

dale_glass wrote: post #41

This sounds pretty silly. Now fuck Russia and all, but this guy is convinced that Russia managed to worm into American consciousness in the mid 80s, to the point of raising an entire generation of people who believe what Russia wants them to believe. That just doesn't add up to me. Now not being American I don't know what things were over there, but at least I can recall that in the 80s and 90s, Russians were the sta…

I think it is more of a coincidence. It is was not and is not KGB fault that US colleges are filled with every stripe of "ist" from your garden variety Maoist to Trotskyiest to some normalized now America is DEVIL repent NOW types. Whoever was responsible for what he says if he is still alive is probably completely dumfounded by Americans taking down Lincoln statues and destroying monuments to abolitionists who fought against slavery. I mean holy shit did we do KGB good job or what? (for the record I do not think they had anything to do with it, empire rots from the core)

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#149

Post by narrator »

lostlogin wrote: post #138
somenameforme wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICBMs can, at least in theory, be countered by effective anti-ballistic defense systems. The point of the 'tsunami nukes' is to sidestep that defense.

I think this thing of theirs is supposed to beat the current systems as Mach 10 is fast. It seems to be getting though in Ukraine but I am not an expert and Russia makes all sorts of claims. If it’s weapons work, it would be beating it’s smaller neighbour. https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-hypersonic-missile-stri...

I think Russia knows that this is a war with NATO for world hegemony and it is going to last a very long time. Maybe a decade or more. Thus, what's the best way to conserve resources and deplete the enemy? Just sit in defensive positions with good logistics and shell while the Ukranians send more and more cannon fodder and the west slowly runs out of armaments. Eventually, they'll send the polish recruits. Then they'll send the rest of Europe, and finally American troops. That's why Russia is going slowly here and not getting out over their skis with the advance.

I think China was supposed to not back Russia, but they reneged on the deal. That's the critical thing that went wrong with the western war effort and why Russia's economy did not collapse as was expected.

Re: KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion

#150

Post by seneca »

tonymet wrote: post #61

A useful tactic for your belief or disbelief is to follow the thread of belief to it's origin and see if you endorse that individual. Many of the pillars of present-day progressivism and conservatism can be traced to a few key philosophers , academics & politicians from the 20s-60s. Those ideologies will become more grounded when you see the kind of person those thoughts came from.

This is literally describing, and endorsing, the ad hominem fallacy.

Your point isn't wrong in this case, the roots if modern new-left ideology are unsavory, but that doesn't make it a sound general approach.

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