KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov 1985 Interview – Idealogical Subversion
This interview keeps coming up, and I don't really understand why. It's utterly uninteresting. Bezmenov had an inconsequential role in the KGB. He was not privy to any large-scale details.<p>Bezmenov defected in 1970. After his defection would not be privy to any new information. The interview is from 1984 and not 1985 as the title purports. Ultimately, the claims in this video are categorically false. We can observe this in two ways.<p>First, after the collapse of the USSR no information on these efforts was revealed. Bezmenov claims 85% of the KGB's efforts are spent on this supposed program of ideological subversion of the American public. And yet, we have seen no documents. No intelligence from the US side. Nothing.<p>Second, he claims the subversion was put in place to change the schooling system and thus indoctrinate the next generation. Keep in mind that this program would've had to be in place by 1970. And quite a few years earlier than that too since, again, Bezmenov was not a particularly privileged member of the KGB. And if we were to assume the program is real the changes should blindingly obvious in hindsight. But in fact, there are none.<p>So we must look a little closer at Bezmenov - why would he claim these things, and why does the interview keep resurfacing?<p>At the time of the interview there was a great panic around communist influence across the country. We're in the middle of Reagan's first term as president. Reagan was hawkish on perceived communist sympathies, just like the rest of the Republicans and the mainstream American right-wing. The market for people claiming that the ideological foundations of their political rivals is grounded in communist indoctrination. They wanted to hear how homosexuality becoming more accepted, a call for racial equality, and a general anti-establishment attitude was, in fact, Soviet indoctrination of the schooling systems.<p>Bezmenov earned his living peddling what this large group of conservatives wanted to hear, and that is where his lectures and this interview come in.<p>Today we see claims of "cultural marxism" and "post-modernism" infecting universities, and thus infecting the minds of the very late cohort of millenials and the early cohort of Gen Zs. It's the same dance of comfort we saw in the 80s playing out again. The interview isn't someone predicting the future because of some special insight. It's someone playing into the 80s "culture war" and people recognizing that a similar "culture war" is happening again today. A "culture war" that will continue to happen as long as societies continue to evolve and re-evaluate their collective values.