20th Century Time Machine
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2021–2025
13:37 · 982K views · Mar 23, 2016
A 1985 interview by G. Edward Griffin with former KGB operative Yuri Bezmenov. He describes long-running Soviet efforts at ideological subversion and manipulation of US public opinion.
HN commenters bring it up in threads on propaganda, influence operations and platforms like TikTok, saying it feels more relevant than ever.
6 comments from Hacker News
I don't get how more people don't realize this. Yes, all domestic media has also been corrupted by various agencies that wish to psychologically manipulate the masses. Some of this manipulation is to get you to buy things, while other wants to get you to think, act or vote a certain way. The difference is that when a foreign adversary has the ability to do the same, it becomes a matter of national security. Allowing that adversary to also control the platform itself is beyond unsafe. The tricky thing is that the US built these tools, and opened them up for everyone to use. This libertarian position is what will ultimately be its downfall. They can't just go and block access to these tools for everyone outside the US, or heavily regulate them, as it will cause an internal uproar, but that is what they must do in order to survive this war. China is in a much better position in this conflict since the government has total control over the media its citizens consume (barring the rampant use of VPNs, which they can shut down at any point). They have no external but massive internal influence. I feel like everyone should watch this 1985 interview of an ex-KGB agent[1]. It's more relevant today than ever before, and explains the sociopolitical state of not just the US, but of many western countries as well. [1]: this video
Personally, I buy much more into the theory that the fissures in society, are a result of infiltration by Marxists into academia, as was detailed by the Soviet defector and KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov. It's impossible to watch this interview and not tick the boxes.[1] Putin is just the Russian leader who happens to be around when the fruits of those labours are paying off. --- [1] this video
Watch this interview with Yuri Bezmenov: this video Then think about all the "Culture War" problems we are dealing with in American for the past ~10 years.
In general, that is a quite naive understanding. Today's warfare is primarily executived via electronics, economics, and ideology. Here is a Russian agent explaining how it works: this video . Adam Curtis' documentary Hypernormalism also covers this. By the way, this extends to all social media. Whether it's a state or a state's own people, the danger remains the same.
I mostly agree with what you said, but critical thinking can indeed be taught in elementary education. Children can learn from an early age to question the reality presented to them, to apply analytical reasoning to arrive at their own conclusions, and perhaps most importantly in this golden age of bullshit, to be extremely critical of the information they consume online, from mainstream media sources, and even their peers. Not all children will pick up this practice equally and carry it through their adult life, but it's important that they're presented with these crucial tools that can help them be less susceptible, though not invulnerable, to information warfare. Unfortunately, education is mostly based around memorizing and regurgitating facts, rather than teaching people critical thinking skills. To be clear, we're all vulnerable to IW in varying degrees. Thinking critically at the very least makes people more skeptical of the information they consume, and lowers the chance they would spread it further and "infect" others. There's no easy protection against IW or a quick cure from the effects of it. It takes at least a couple of decades to educate a new generation of people to slow down the bleeding, and for the oldest "infected" generation to die out. But first the nation's government must realize that they are indeed a victim of IW, which is difficult to do because there's no direct link that points to it since it's an operation that spans decades, and because of the c