Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB officer who defected nearly three decades ago. In 1985 he gave an interview that can be viewed online. What he said is worth hearing. According to Bezmenonv, "Only about 15 percent of [the KGBs] time, money and manpower was spent on espionage as such. The other 85 percent was a slow process [of] ... ideological subversion or active measures ... or psychological warfare. What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that in spite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves...."
Bezmenov referred to "a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization...." Here we find a generational process, which takes from 15 to 20 years. To understand the concept of demoralization, let us turn to Robert Greene's The 33 Strategies of War, Chapter 7: "The secret to motivating people and maintaining their morale is to get them to think less about themselves and more about the group." In military affairs an army is demoralized the instant the individual soldier thinks only of himself. At that moment, the soldiers begin to run from the battle and the army dissolves. There is no resistance possible when each soldier looks only to his own safety.
If you want to lead a strong army or build a strong nation, you want your people to develop group cohesion or "togetherness." According to Greene, "That is when you start thinking about morale - about finding a way to motivate your troops and forge them into a group." In terms of warfare, motivation is not about rewards and punishments. You have to make people feel the worthiness of their cause, and you must give them a sense of belonging to the army or nation that they are defending. As Greene explains, "They soon begin to link their own success to the group's; their own interests and the larger interests coincide. In this kind of army, people know that selfish behavior will disgrace them in the eyes of their companions. They become attuned to a kind of group conscience." And as it happens, this conscience is contagious. It is also very powerful.
Therefore, it may be said that the "demoralization" of a country is a process of encouraging shameful behavior, of encouraging desertion and the abandonment of the national cause and the nation itself. When Yuri Bezmenov says that the first stage in "ideological subversion" is demoralization, he is talking about a very sophisticated strategy. He is talking about a program for destroying the cohesion and spirit of a nation. In basic terms, an effective program of subversion ridicules or discounts the moral ideals from which a nation draws its strength. It is also useful to promote hedonism and self-absorption; to encourage anti-war sentiments and recreational drug use; or give money to Hollywood producers through intermediaries on the condition that they put more sex and violence in American movies.
According to Bezmenov the KGB of the USSR pumped Communist ideology into three generations of American students. The universities and schools were infiltrated, the curriculum was changed, and a disguised form of enemy thinking was taught to American children. "In other words," says Bezmenov, "Marxism-Leninism ideology [was] pumped into the soft heads of ... American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism - American patriotism. The result ... you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli, in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind, even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black. You still cannot change the basic perception and logic of behavior.... In other words ... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible."
According to Bezmenov, the American educational system has indoctrinated many students with Communist ideology - under the guise of feminism, peace studies, various ethnic studies or general "social science." To counteract this, we need a new educational program that inculcates common sense and patriotism, teaching the value of a unique American cause - in opposition to socialism.
If anyone should doubt the testimony of Bezmenov, I should like to end this article by quoting a former general of the Soviet Bloc intelligence services, Ion Pacepa. Last year Pacepa gave the following statement to interviewer Robert Buchar: "The whole foreign policy of the Soviet Bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism. KGB priority number one was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol John Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation."
