Old KGB Video Tells How Collapse in America Has Been Decades In The Making

This article is one of the most fascinating I’ve read in a while. It’s a 39-year-old interview with a KGB defector to the United States named Yuri Bezmenov. In it, he describes the psychological and propaganda techniques the KGB used (and that Chinese Communists still use today) to undermine the U.S. (By the way, there’s a video link embedded in the article; I recommend that also. It’s only about ten minutes long).

I found his analysis highly accurate and highly credible. He explains how controlling the meaning of words and controlling narratives can be used to undermine the beliefs that citizens have in their own society. From there, it’s all downhill for that society.

He’s not alone in sounding the warning. His analyses and prognosis are in line with George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and many others.

One of the most prescient commentators on this process was Joseph Schumpeter. In his book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), he predicted that capitalism would fail and be overtaken by socialism. His reason had nothing to do with a Marxian revolution. He thought that was nonsense. Instead, capitalism would be a victim of its own success. We would become so wealthy as a society that we would take it for granted and forget where the wealth came from. At that point, we would move to socialism (without revolution) on the view that we could afford it.

He said the process would take 50 years. That turned out to be a highly accurate prediction.

Other thinkers along these lines include postmodernists such as Jacques Derrida, Michele Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Herbert Marcuse, lumped into the category of “deconstructionists.” That’s not a very accurate description, and they’re not well understood. They were philosophers. They don’t get much respect in France today.

They had a bit of a movement in Germany in the 1970s, but that died out after the Baader-Meinhoff gang and the murder of Hans Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction in 1977. The only place the philosophy really took off was the U.S. It did not take off in Philosophy departments, but it thrived in English departments, where it spread to primary education.

The idea is that words do not have objective meanings. They mean what those in power say they mean. Words are used to construct narratives, basically, stories that define reality.

The “truth” of the narrative is irrelevant. What matters is the power of the narrative to influence perception and behavior. So, those in power define words, construct narratives, and control perceptions. This is the real purpose of taking over universities, foundations, media, and corporations. You get to control the narrative.

The practical implications of controlling the narrative are all around us: climate alarmism, pandemic, DEI, ESG, BLM, insurrection, etc. Indoctrination was implemented at the elementary and secondary school levels. You eliminate critical thinking, SATs, merit-based admissions, etc. Stop teaching History. What’s left is an ideologically brainwashed generation who know what they have been programmed to believe but lack the ability to challenge their own views, listen to opposing views, or process facts.

The source of all of this was Antonio Gramsci. His Prison Notebooks (1929-1935), about 3,000 pages, are the playbook for everything that has happened since. The interview was helpful, and Bezmenov got it exactly right. Yet, his views should be put in the broader context outlined above. It will take 20 or 30 years to reverse this. The battleground is in the elementary schools and the homes.

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