How the KGB’s Playbook Is Destroying the West Today
Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov (1939–1993), also known as Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist and KGB operative specializing in propaganda and ideological subversion.
Ideological subversion is the process of bending a society’s perception of reality so completely that it destroys itself.
In the Cold War era, few voices pierced the veil of secrecy as profoundly as that of Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector whose chilling exposés on ideological subversion still resonate today. His warnings, drawn from firsthand experience in Soviet active measures, offer blueprints for destroying free societies—not through bombs, invasions or disease, but through the poisons of manipulated ideas and cultural decay.
Here are 20 of Bezmenov’s key insights.
- Ideological subversion is a long-term process, spanning 15-60 years, designed to change the perception of reality in a target nation without a need for military force.
- Only about 15% of KGB efforts focused on traditional espionage; the majority targeted psychological warfare and ideological manipulation.
- The goal is to demoralize a society by undermining its moral, educational, and cultural foundations, making people unable to recognize or defend against threats.
- Demoralization takes 15-20 years, the time needed to educate one generation with subversive ideas.
- Educational systems at all levels are key targets, turning schools into indoctrination centers that promote relativism over facts and critical thinking.
- Media infiltration sows confusion by amplifying divisive narratives and discrediting objective truth.
- Religion is attacked by portraying it as outdated or oppressive, eroding spiritual anchors and replacing them with state loyalty or nihilism.
- Family structures are weakened through promotion of individualism, divorce, and alternative lifestyles that fragment social cohesion.
- Moral relativism blurs right and wrong, leading to apathy and inability to unite against a society’s true enemies.
- History is rewritten to vilify national heroes and traditions, fostering self-doubt and guilt in the populace.
- Following demoralization, destabilization lasts 2-5 years, targeting the economy, foreign relations, and defense to create internal chaos.
- Economic sabotage widens class divides, shrinks the middle class, and breeds resentment through inflation, shortages, or inequality.
- Foreign policy is manipulated to isolate the nation, straining alliances and emboldening adversaries.
- Defense readiness erodes through budget cuts, internal divisions, or anti-military propaganda.
- The Crisis stage erupts in violence or upheaval, where a demoralized and destabilized society demands radical solutions*.
- During the crisis, people willingly surrender freedoms for promised security, paving the way for authoritarian control.
- Normalization is the final phase, where subversive changes become the “new normal,” institutionalized and irreversible.
- Opposition is silenced through censorship, marginalization, or elimination in the normalization stage.
- The process relies on “useful idiots”—well-meaning Western intellectuals, elites, activists, and leaders who unwittingly* advance societal suicide.
- Once subversion succeeds, even exposure of the truth won’t reverse it, as the population rejects facts that contradict their reprogrammed worldview.
Bezmenov’s insights resonate today for obvious reasons from our fractured educational institutions, corrupted sciences to zero trust in “experts”.
Americans must heed Yuri’s prescient warning: reclaim critical thinking, fortify culture, and reject divisive ideologies before the stages of subversion culminate in irreversible “normalization.”
Because at that point America is dead.
* I personally believe this is/was the objective of Barack Obama.
** I also believe this was the objective of Spygate up to and including present day.
Note: Yuri Bezmenov on Substack is a must-follow.
