[Editor’s Note: We post this story and link to accompanying video with a caution. The interviewer was a member of the right wing conspiracy group John Birch Society. The KGB defector speaks in truly Cold War terms of the times, yet, the plan he outlines sounds disturbingly like what we are now facing in the U.S. Where the program described was framed in terms of a Marxist-Leninist coup that program could have easily been adjusted to the kleptocractic goals of Putin’s Russia. It’s a story and interview worth considering. — Mark L. Taylor]

By Paul Ratner
Big Think (7/18/18)

President Trump was almost universally panned for the press conference that followed the meeting with Russia’s President Putin in Helsinki, Finland. Trump was seen as capitulating to Russia by refusing to confront Putin on the issue of past and present interference in American elections. In fact, the American president seemed to be saying he doesn’t support the findings of his own intelligence agencies and instead prefers to take the Russian leader at his word. Even if he’s changed his tune under the backlash.

Whether you believe Putin really has some kind of compromising material to make Trump do his bidding or if Trump is simply being nice to people who partially helped get him elected, or if you somehow still think, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that all this is much ado about nothing, the fact is President Putin is a very experienced former KGB officer. He has both the know-how and the intelligence to carry out very far-sighted and ingenious operations. We don’t know his endgame and neither do we know how much of his KGB training he still employs, but in light of current events, there may be a way for us to get a deeper understanding by studying the words of Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, a former KGB agent who defected to Canada in 1970.

“Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime. False. United States is in a state of war: undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system.” 

In 1984, Bezmenov gave an interview to G. Edward Griffin from which much can be learned today. His most chilling point was that there’s a long-term plan put in play by Russia to defeat America through psychological warfare and “demoralization”. It’s a long game that takes decades to achieve but it may already be bearing fruit.

Bezmenov made the point that the work of the KGB mainly does not involve espionage, despite what our popular culture may tell us. Most of the work, 85% of it, was “a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.”

You can see it with your own eyes

What does that mean? Bezmenov explained that the most striking thing about ideological subversion is that it happens in the open as a legitimate process. “You can see it with your own eyes,” he said. The American media would be able to see it, if it just focused on it. 

Here’s how he further defined ideological subversion:

“What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.” 

Bezmenov described this process as “a great brainwashing” which has four basic stages. The first stage is called “demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve. According to the former KGB agent, that is the minimum number of years it takes to re-educate one generation of students that is normally exposed to the ideology of its country. In other words, the time it takes to change what the people are thinking. …

Read the Rest and 13-Minute Video

(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )

*****

Trump Biographer Warns Trumputin Is Deploying Soviet-Style Distraction Tactics With His Erratic Tweet Storming

By Sarah K. Burris
The Raw Story (7/23/18)

Speaking about his recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, Donald Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio explained that the president has been trying to distract and deflect, much in the way Russia does.