Bezmenov's Steps (Ideological Subversion) - Unintended Consequences

2020-07-14 BY PORLANDO
Bezmenov’s Steps (Ideological Subversion)
“I was engaged in something much more unpleasant than espionage. I was engaged in ideological subversion, which is seldom explained to people by your media, because the media is part of that process.”

That was one of the many quotes that made me take a closer look at some presentations and writings by Yuri Bezmenov (also known as Tomas Schuman) in the mid-1980s.

Bezmenov was a Soviet KGB propaganda agent. After defecting to Canada in 1970, he described the long process of national subversion used by the USSR on international targets. He died in 1993 and it looks like he was forgotten, though over the past decade summaries of his interviews pop up during crises. I (along with others) recently discovered his work and found that his framework for slow national subversion spoke to the modern era (and not just 2020).

I’ve written about disinformation several times in the past (Prester John and the Long History of Disinformation and Disinformation and Disease – Coronavirus Edition). Disinformation and subversion activities that Bezmenov refers to offer an opportunity to appreciate systems on an international scale and how they affect outcomes.

But was Bezmenov just a crank seeking attention? One of his most cited interviews is with someone often described as a conspiracy theorist (at least by Wikipedia) though I don’t believe that people citing that 1984 interview know that. Or was Bezmenov revealing the truth? There are certainly disinformation efforts today.

Either way, why did we forget him?

...

Consider
*With the ability to target individuals on social media, organized state disinformation campaigns gained the ability to try different messaging and experiment at scale. This is the present… and the future for a while.
*Bezmenov was for putting up a wall to outside influence, not that the current domestic situation is always the best situation. As he said: “I don’t want America to follow the pattern of ancient Japan. You don’t have to shoot every foreigner who approaches the sacred borders of the United States. But when he offers you junk in the guise of a very shiny something, you have to say, ‘no, we have our own junk.'”
*Calvin: “It says here that ‘religion is the opiate of the masses.’…what do you suppose that means?” Television: “…it means that Karl Marx hadn’t seen anything yet…” (Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson)

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