“I was engaged in something much more unpleasant than espionage. I was engaged in ideological subversion, which is seldom explained to people by your media, because the media is part of that process.”
That was one of the many quotes that made me take a closer look at some presentations and writings by Yuri Bezmenov (also known as Tomas Schuman) in the mid-1980s.
Bezmenov was a Soviet KGB propaganda agent. After defecting to Canada in 1970, he described the long process of national subversion used by the USSR on international targets. He died in 1993 and it looks like he was forgotten, though over the past decade summaries of his interviews pop up during crises. I (along with others) recently discovered his work and found that his framework for slow national subversion spoke to the modern era (and not just 2020).
I’ve written about disinformation several times in the past (Prester John and the Long History of Disinformation and Disinformation and Disease – Coronavirus Edition). Disinformation and subversion activities that Bezmenov refers to offer an opportunity to appreciate systems on an international scale and how they affect outcomes. Continue reading “Bezmenov’s Steps (Ideological Subversion)”
