Active Measures: Part I, "Demoralization"

 This is the first of a planned three-part series that will focus on analyzing the origins, perpetrators, and fulfillment of Soviet-style subversive “active measures” in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Because of the amount of information that there is to talk about, owing to the enormity of data that is revealed through thorough research of this subject, this multi-volume approach has been taken. This first installment is focused on the strategy of “demoralization”.

 

          BACK in the 1980s a now-infamous interview was hosted by George E. Griffin with KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov. This interview, little known to the general public, exposed the four-part strategy by which the Soviet KGB sought to subvert enemy nations. Many commentators, especially in recent years, have noted that these “active measures” that Bezmenov exposed are highly reminiscent of situations happening in contemporary society. Along with George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Bezmenov’s revelations have been seen as an eerie prophecy of societal collapse.

          I have long been interested in examining these active measures, and in piecing together the various events, persons, and other things that have been named as examples of these active measures. Everyone acknowledges that something negative is happening to society, although our ideological presuppositions have made us interpret details differently. In the course of this article, and the other planned ones, I wish to show the facts for what they are and how they show a unified, coordinated network and agenda. I might end up having to say a whole lot, but the truth has never come in a cute little package.

          First, before we begin, I must note something about the active measures I am about to discuss. When I first learned about Yuri Bezmenov and Soviet active measures (and the beginning of my “career”), I was confused about one thing: “How exactly does this apply to the current World, considering the USSR doesn’t exist?” However, after during further research (some of which contributed to the articles “The Greater Threat of Leftism” and “The Manchurian Candidate”) I made a series of realizations and discoveries. The enemy was not in Russia, or China, but was and had its roots in Europe, the Old World aristocracy that – up till the 18^th century – was embedded in royalty; since then, it diversified into elitist governments and companies that kept close ties with one another.

          When you read the works of Anthony Sutton, such as Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution or Wall Street and FDR, you realize that the active measures exist independent of the Soviet Union and communism, and that either are simply puppets of the Euro-American Establishment and her dynasties. There is a reason why American socialist Robert Minor was disillusioned and drew a cartoon of Karl Marx meeting with American industrialists. With this said, we can understand how the active measures continue to get enforced, and proceed with our analysis.

          The first tactic that Yuri Bezmenov mentioned was “demoralization”. Demoralization, as defined by Bezmenov, is exposing an enemy public to the ideology of the enemy (the KGB), subverting the values and unity of a targeted nation. Bezmenov said this tactic takes 15-20 years to fulfill, as that is the time it takes to educate a whole generation in this ideology, and back in the 1980s he said it was being fulfilled by radicalized individuals now employed in the civil service, businesses, mass media, and universities. We can only imagine how far it has gotten by today.

          So, how exactly has demoralization unfolded in the United States? Well, evidently it unfolded through the NWO-controlled USSR, and its invariably subversive and inhuman state ideology of Marxism. Marxism is an ideology baked in nihilism and devilry, as shown by The Epoch Times in a documentary, and so it is most fitting as the ideology required to demoralize any group of people. Soviet infiltration of the United States started up in the 1940s, as shown by the Venona project which exposed hundreds of Soviet assets in the United States, such as spies in the American Communist Party and US atomic weapons program. There was also Joseph McCarthy, a man who has been unduly vilified and underwhelmingly vindicated, who exposed a vast network of Soviet spies, a network connected to names such as Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Nathan Silvermaster, and many others. There was also the infiltration of mass media, as stated by Yuri Bezmenov, that became well-known in the 1950s via the Hollywood blacklist.

          In fact, what we have just identified is that the Soviets did indeed infiltrate the civil service and mass media. These infiltrators were themselves loyal to the enemy ideology, of subversive Marxism, and they exposed it to unsuspecting and impressionable members of the public. Although, what of businesses and universities?

          Well, certainly a good number of industries and organizations were infiltrated by Marxists during the Cold War. For example, the National Lawyers’ Guild and ACLU are both very left-wing legal organizations representing the infiltration of the legal industry. Hollywood’s infiltration shows how the media/entertainment industry has been tainted. Labor unions are infamous for being front groups for Marxism, exposing yet another aspect of industry as Soviet-backed. Even in the present, the “pandemic” of woke/left-leaning corporations is more visible and obvious than it was during the Cold War.

          Now, what about universities? The education system is one of the most influential elements of any society, as it shapes and molds those who – come their eighteenth year – will become active contributors to their nation. The education system is notorious, even to educators, for its drawbacks as a restrictive and mismanaged program that is mass producing functionaries, not individuals. What evidence is there for the infiltrati—Oh geez, I cannot even say it without laughing! Of course there is evidence!

          The story of how America’s schools (primarily, universities) have become infiltrated by Marxists and turned into assets of the demoralization campaign begins back in the early-20^th century. It begins with the Marxist Frankfurt School, or Institute for Social Research (see pages 2 and 3 of linked PDF), which was founded in 1923. The Frankfurt School was led by prominent Marxists such as Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and others. The Frankfurt School was the source of what is today known as cultural Marxism, which is not only an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideology, but an anti-Christian, anti-traditionalist, postmodernist ideology, and itself the source of critical race theory.

          A significant influence of the Frankfurt School was the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci (who prominent leftist politician Pete Buttigieg’s father was a fanboy of) is a whole subject in and of himself, but there are a few quick things I can make mention of. Gramsci was a zealous Marxist, but believed that the failure of Marxist revolutions in everywhere but Russia was due to a fundamental misunderstanding by Marx of how the capitalists kept a hold on power, namely by sociocultural institutions. Schools, the family, religion, media, and other institutions were defamed by Gramsci. In his own words:

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

          This is the basis of the demoralization/infiltration stratagem exposed by Yuri Bezmenov. It was also reiterated by influential Gramscian Marxist Rudi Dutschke, who coined the phrase “the Long March through the institutions”, the Marxian infiltration of universities and schools. Gramscian/Cultural Marxism is the form of radical leftism most predominant nowadays, and it was given life as an ideological Frankenstein’s Monster in the 1920s by the Frankfurt School. We now return to them.

          In 1934, the Frankfurt School – exiled by rising Nazi Party – came to Columbia University. The School had been invited by Columbia’s internationalist president Nicholas Murray Butler (a European unificationist), who had tried to run for President in 1920, previously endorsing Elihu Root – a Carnegie-connected aristocrat of Wall Street who cofounded the CFR. Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse were the most prominent members of the School who made long-term residence in the United States after being taken in by Butler. Horkheimer, Marcuse, and some other cultural Marxists took up prominent positions in American universities thereafter.

          Columbia University, the first host of the Frankfurt School, became a hotbed of far-left activism in the 1960s. The Frankfurt School and their brainchild of cultural Marxism became embedded in the New Left movement. I touched on the New Left in my article “The Greater Threat of Leftism”, as the majority of individuals and organizations listed in that article are of the New Left. The New Left has also been highly influenced and infiltrated by CIA- and Establishment-affiliated assets, go figure. The spread of leftist ideology in universities since the importation of the Frankfurt School is undeniable.

          So, there above we see the evidence for the infiltration of every sphere of society – civil service, businesses, mass media, and universities; I might as well also add the next major sphere, the Church – just as Yuri Bezmenov foretold four decades ago. These elements of our society have been led by Marxists and been preaching Marxism for all this time, and the results are apparent – they were apparent to Bezmenov and others all the way back in the 1980s. The rise of the far-left and their political agenda in America, and the whole West, is painfully obvious.

          The goal of demoralization, which begins with the infiltration we have been discussing, is the weakening and eradication of a society’s values. Well, have we seen our values being degraded in recent decades as the influence of demoralization has proliferated? You betcha.

          It is no lie or secret that American values are under attack. Our most important guidelines, those of the Constitution, have been trampled upon to cosmic excesses. Both Democrats and Republicans (I’m not going easy on my own side) have sickeningly violated the Constitution in various manners. The evidence for the total cultural and moral collapse of Western civilization is voluminous. The 1960s was definitely the turning point (for reasons that will be discussed in another article), and this turning point was embedded in the Marxist ideology and its infiltration of American academic and social institutions. Before the 1960s, America was a Christian morally-steadfast traditionalist society; since then Christianity, moral absolutism, and traditionalism have been poisoned by cultural Marxism and its Establishment backers.

          Demoralization is the ideological subjugation of an enemy public, subverting the values and unity of a targeted nation. We have looked into and examined how the enemy public – that of America and the Free World – has indeed been infiltrated and exposed to an anti-democratic ideology, manifested primarily in far-left/Marxist dogma. And, just now, we have completed an analysis – a rather easy one – into how the values of Western civilization have been subjected to attack and ridicule. Again, even Republicans are guilty of this, for many of them have violated the “Judeo-Christian values” they claim to hold so dear; I cannot link anything for this, however, as all the webpages I can find are by leftist sources that do not even understand what Christian values are to begin with.

          So, in conclusion: Demoralization, one of four phases of subversive “active measures” that were used by the Establishment-backed Soviet Union, has been fulfilled in the West. American and other European societies have been targeted, and the evidence for their subversion is abundant. Core traditional values to American and Western people have been eroded over the last few decades, and the same groups can be blamed for this erosion. Those groups are cultural Marxist/far-left organizations, some of which had considerable degrees of elite backing.

          At the fulfillment of a society’s demoralization, as Yuri Bezmenov said, the next stage is to introduce destabilization. It is destabilization that takes a demoralized society and prepares it for the butcher's block by knocking it off its legs. It is destabilization that we will focus on and explore in the next article of this series.