It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of demoralization followed by destabilization than hordes of anti-capitalist activists texting each other on their iPhones. They see enemies everywhere, while no pro-American authority can be trusted. Whatever Bezmenov saw in the destabilized American society of the early 1980s with respect to the Soviet Union, it’s easy to see how the American Left has destabilized entire segments of modern society after demoralizing them. The defenders are held to strict standards, while anything goes for the most strident critics. In essence, a demoralized population becomes willing to believe the worst criticisms of its own society, while learning to see defenders of that society as their enemies, while avowed enemies become natural allies. In this stage, the fundamentals of the targeted population’s economy, political system, and culture would be attacked, while the demoralized population could not mount much of a defense.īezmenov in 1984 found it “absolutely fantastic” how much influence Marxist-Leninist ideas had developed in the American economy and military. The second stage, Destabilization, is much faster, requiring only two to five years under KGB doctrine. People will not accept the radical expansion of punitive government power unless they feel guilty and deserving of punishment. Guilt is the most powerful force in left-wing politics and academia. Although comprehensively debunked by actual historians, and even the original author has admitted her core thesis was not true, the 1619 Project is now part of some school curricula.Īnother word for demoralization is guilt. Americans are routinely compelled to feel guilty about their society and national history. To take a recent high-profile example, the New York Times’ fraudulent “1619 Project” argued that “American history” actually began with the arrival of black slaves in North America and the Revolutionary War was fought by the colonists to preserve slavery.

Even when demoralization targets are “showered with authentic proof” of contrary positions, they simply “refuse to believe it.”ĭemoralization is quite obvious among today’s young people, whose faith in their country has been systematically destroyed throughout their lives by the education and media establishment. “Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards.”īezmenov explained that demoralization is important because it robs the targeted population of its ability to process valid information. “Actually, it’s over- fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously, not even Comrade Andropov and all of his experts would even dream of such tremendous success,” he added, referring to former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

“Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism,” he warned in 1984, judging that the demoralization process had been “basically completed” by that point. The most famous proponent of such tactics in recent years has been the late Saul Alinksy, the intellectual godfather of the modern Democrat Party, but former Soviet journalist and KGB informant Yuri Bezmenov laid out an even more concise strategy for subversion in a 1984 interview.Īlinksy’s seminal book specified 13 Rules for Radicals, but Bezmenov had only four “stages of ideological subversion,” and they will sound very familiar to anyone following the current wave of left-wing riots, or the politicized final stages of the coronavirus panic before it: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization.īezmenov defined ideological subversion, or “active measures” as the KGB preferred to call it, as a “slow brainwashing process” to “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite their abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”īezmenov said the first stage, Demoralization, could take 15 to 20 years to complete because “this is the minimum number of years it takes to educate one generation of students.” “Progressive” ideology always rests on a conviction that the current “regressive” system is comprehensively unjust and must be destroyed by exploiting its weaknesses.

Subversion