What about Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who tried to warn Americans about communist infiltration of American universities, education systems and news media in the 1980s?
Yes, Yuri Bezmenov was amazing, I think his lecture on Subversion was incredible. Today, what he spoke about could possibly be termed Cultural Marxism/Critical Theory.
Yuri was 100% right, his job was theoretically done before he even escaped to Canada and USA. The Frankfurt School "intellectuals" before WW2, the subversive intellectuals evicted from Germany to Columbia University, began to infect every apparatus of society, especially: media/entertainment, education and politics.
There's a shabby kind of romance to Marxism, it has a mystique that capitalism doesn't have in the minds of impressionable students, and the professors who were once the students of professors who were students of Marcuse or Adorno: Fighting in the streets! Rousing speeches with vehement gestures by professional revolutionaries! (Everyone's seen the grainy footage of Lenin or Trotsky soap-box orating to a worked-up crowd.) All that action-adventure drama! All those opportunities to destroy everything your own resentment projects as the cause of your misery! And at the end of the road, the golden rainbow of the Worker's Paradise! If the road is paved with cracked skulls (as Lenin put it gleefully), so what? Noble humanitarian ends justify the most brutal means. And when absolute power is achieved? Well, those means are just so useful when it comes to holding on to it, aren't they? But now we're no longer liberators, we're dictators over the Proletariat... No problem, we'll just call it "the Dictatorship OF the Proletariat." And don't worry, the State will eventually "wither away."
As for capitalism: Despite Ayn Rand's attempts to romanticize heroic entrepreneurs, Schumpeter was right: capitalism is based on Enlightenment Rationalism, it doesn't appeal to resentment and the sense of grievance or the moral narcissism of "social justice" activism, it doesn't offer a secular religion with its eschatological promises and fanatical certainty. It doesn't appeal to the herd, but to individuals with initiative and a hyperactive work ethic. It doesn't promise that the State will take care of your every need and spare you the discomfort of facing your personal failings, it dares to suggest you should just do your best and take responsibility for the result, good or not so good. Yuk, common sense!
Marxism is one culmination of the German Counter-Enlightenment that also (ultimately) gave us National Socialism. Marxist theory hides its basic lunacy behind the faux-rational pseudo-mysticism of a careerist charlatan named Hegel. Communism shouts at the top of its voice, capitalism is just--reasonable. It talks about enlightened self-interest. Bo-o-o-ring. Marxism lets you hide your most selfish drives behind a pose of collectivist altruism. Capitalism tries to persuade, okay, SELL itself. Marxism threatens you when it can't seduce you with its rebel-with-a-cause glamor; laugh in its face and it throws a Molotov cocktail in yours.
Schumpeter also pointed out that Marxism has an especially toxic appeal to intellectuals, above all in Academia. For one thing, professors tend to fetishize THEORY, and Marxism is nothing if not theory-laden; it has room for all that verbal gas because practically speaking it's nothing but empty promises. That's one big reason why academics love it. The same professors who've never even met a factory worker, and would probably despise him if they did, absolutely LOVE the theory of the working class seizing the means of production. And just so they can be faculty-lounge heroes in their own minds, Althusser tells them "theory is praxis." So just by writing academic articles on demystifying bourgeois aestheticism you're on the front lines of the Struggle!
Schumpeter mentions another reason why Marxism gives academics such a boner: They resent the hell out of not having as much fame and clout as celebrities and politicians and, yes, successful capitalists, i.e., tycoons. What better way to gain power and glory than to subvert the system that doesn't recognize their supreme importance? They're the champions of all the other people oppressed by the sense of their own insignificance. But put these harmless-looking dweebs in power and they turn into the most vicious infighting self-serving bureaucratic beasts imaginable. All in the name of the People.
Did Yuri ever write a book about his insights? His lectures are wonderful, but I can imagine that they only contain a small portion of the knowledge he gathered while in the USSR.
All 4 of his steps are complete. He doesn't give any answers for that, but we can still receive guidance from his wisdom. If DJT doesn't concede by 1/6, he's not going to. If he does, we fight. If he crosses the Rubicon, we have 2 weeks to muster, clogging the streets of DC so nothing can move, and conclude appropriately.
It's crazy to think that he was eventually dismissed as nutty because his was accusing SO MANY PEOPLE of being commie. Turns out their infiltration ran deep and he was right all along.
One of the tactics of the communists has been to gaslight and strawman arguments, to depict their opposition as insane; slander and lies are their chief weapons.
Some of the tactics communists use include: gaslighting and strawman arguments, to depict their opposition as insane; slander and lies are their chief weapons.
McCarthy was right.
What about Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who tried to warn Americans about communist infiltration of American universities, education systems and news media in the 1980s?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvXwuZ-bok Try listening to the first five minutes, this guy is extremely well-spoken.
Yes, Yuri Bezmenov was amazing, I think his lecture on Subversion was incredible. Today, what he spoke about could possibly be termed Cultural Marxism/Critical Theory.
Yuri was 100% right, his job was theoretically done before he even escaped to Canada and USA. The Frankfurt School "intellectuals" before WW2, the subversive intellectuals evicted from Germany to Columbia University, began to infect every apparatus of society, especially: media/entertainment, education and politics.
It’s not even that their ideas are good and that’s why they prevail. They prevail because they SOUND and FEEL good and most people are fucking dumb.
There's a shabby kind of romance to Marxism, it has a mystique that capitalism doesn't have in the minds of impressionable students, and the professors who were once the students of professors who were students of Marcuse or Adorno: Fighting in the streets! Rousing speeches with vehement gestures by professional revolutionaries! (Everyone's seen the grainy footage of Lenin or Trotsky soap-box orating to a worked-up crowd.) All that action-adventure drama! All those opportunities to destroy everything your own resentment projects as the cause of your misery! And at the end of the road, the golden rainbow of the Worker's Paradise! If the road is paved with cracked skulls (as Lenin put it gleefully), so what? Noble humanitarian ends justify the most brutal means. And when absolute power is achieved? Well, those means are just so useful when it comes to holding on to it, aren't they? But now we're no longer liberators, we're dictators over the Proletariat... No problem, we'll just call it "the Dictatorship OF the Proletariat." And don't worry, the State will eventually "wither away."
As for capitalism: Despite Ayn Rand's attempts to romanticize heroic entrepreneurs, Schumpeter was right: capitalism is based on Enlightenment Rationalism, it doesn't appeal to resentment and the sense of grievance or the moral narcissism of "social justice" activism, it doesn't offer a secular religion with its eschatological promises and fanatical certainty. It doesn't appeal to the herd, but to individuals with initiative and a hyperactive work ethic. It doesn't promise that the State will take care of your every need and spare you the discomfort of facing your personal failings, it dares to suggest you should just do your best and take responsibility for the result, good or not so good. Yuk, common sense!
Marxism is one culmination of the German Counter-Enlightenment that also (ultimately) gave us National Socialism. Marxist theory hides its basic lunacy behind the faux-rational pseudo-mysticism of a careerist charlatan named Hegel. Communism shouts at the top of its voice, capitalism is just--reasonable. It talks about enlightened self-interest. Bo-o-o-ring. Marxism lets you hide your most selfish drives behind a pose of collectivist altruism. Capitalism tries to persuade, okay, SELL itself. Marxism threatens you when it can't seduce you with its rebel-with-a-cause glamor; laugh in its face and it throws a Molotov cocktail in yours.
Schumpeter also pointed out that Marxism has an especially toxic appeal to intellectuals, above all in Academia. For one thing, professors tend to fetishize THEORY, and Marxism is nothing if not theory-laden; it has room for all that verbal gas because practically speaking it's nothing but empty promises. That's one big reason why academics love it. The same professors who've never even met a factory worker, and would probably despise him if they did, absolutely LOVE the theory of the working class seizing the means of production. And just so they can be faculty-lounge heroes in their own minds, Althusser tells them "theory is praxis." So just by writing academic articles on demystifying bourgeois aestheticism you're on the front lines of the Struggle!
Schumpeter mentions another reason why Marxism gives academics such a boner: They resent the hell out of not having as much fame and clout as celebrities and politicians and, yes, successful capitalists, i.e., tycoons. What better way to gain power and glory than to subvert the system that doesn't recognize their supreme importance? They're the champions of all the other people oppressed by the sense of their own insignificance. But put these harmless-looking dweebs in power and they turn into the most vicious infighting self-serving bureaucratic beasts imaginable. All in the name of the People.
Buying the courts and election rigging helps a lot
Well said!
Ding ding ding
marxists are really good at persuasion, it's always the scummy people who are good at this, like used car salesmen and lawyers
Did Yuri ever write a book about his insights? His lectures are wonderful, but I can imagine that they only contain a small portion of the knowledge he gathered while in the USSR.
To be honest with you, I don't know. I do know he was assassinated though. I wish he wrote a book about this topic as well.
So, in Yuri’s outline, we are at Crises right?
All 4 of his steps are complete. He doesn't give any answers for that, but we can still receive guidance from his wisdom. If DJT doesn't concede by 1/6, he's not going to. If he does, we fight. If he crosses the Rubicon, we have 2 weeks to muster, clogging the streets of DC so nothing can move, and conclude appropriately.
Yes, I think so.
When the Venona papers came out decades later, out of the 200 or so people on McCarthy's list only 2 were actually not communists.
He was actually right.
Exactly.
It's crazy to think that he was eventually dismissed as nutty because his was accusing SO MANY PEOPLE of being commie. Turns out their infiltration ran deep and he was right all along.
So true.
One of the tactics of the communists has been to gaslight and strawman arguments, to depict their opposition as insane; slander and lies are their chief weapons.
So true.
Some of the tactics communists use include: gaslighting and strawman arguments, to depict their opposition as insane; slander and lies are their chief weapons.
Even his fellow republican Senators were like, "dude, seriously? Come now..".
They were probably commies in on it too
It’s amazing HE KNEW!
And he was killed for it too!
McCarthy . A true Patriot