FULL INTERVIEW with Yuri Bezmenov: The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion (1984)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in propaganda and disinformation threads, though some commenters present it more as a prediction of current events than established analysis.
What it is
The full 1984 interview with Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, in which he lays out four stages of ideological subversion. It is a long interview with G. Edward Griffin.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec narrator · 2021-08 · on “Facebook Is the AOL of 2021”
Well if you take that kind of stuff seriously, you really should watch the Yuri Bezmenov interviews. Yuri was a KGB defector in the 80s who was working in India and decided to defect after he fell in love with the culture of India and became disillusioned. He worked in ideological subversion of nations through propaganda: [this video]
Strong rec rramadass · 2021-09 · on “Useful Spy Books”
No books on Mossad? My favourite is - Deception: The invisible war between the KGB and the CIA. by Edward Jay Epstein. This is the real "Art" of Spycraft. Another must see is Yuri Bezmenov's "The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion" video : [this video] You can go crazy trying to interpret this video in the light of what Epstein wrote about Deception :-)
Strong rec the_third_wave · 2023-06 · on “Was Modern Art a CIA Psy-Op?”
Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who defected to the United States in the early 70s who has some choice words to say on this subject, words which turned out to be more than prophetic. It is worth watching the whole interview, about 1 hour 20 minutes in which he laid out the four stages of ideological subversion” created by radical Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within. [this video]
Recommends shevy-java · 2026-08 · on “Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down”
Trump is indeed effective at pillaging. The interesting thing is that Yuri explained and predicted (!) this in the 1980s: [this video]
Cites deedeex · 2020-09 · on “Remembering my father”
That has several reasons. I will explain why your approach didn't work. 1: (source) Social media is doing reinforcement learning on their "lab rats". This is true for all the social media platforms. It's not like you read one fake news article, you see them non-stop: your world becomes fake news. Just like how YouTube keeps playing the same type of content. Facebook and Twitter do the same thing. Good for engagement ($), not good for society. 2: (psychology) The way the human belief system works, is to try to find evidence in favor of your own beliefs (not against). Social media reinforces your existing belief system: your political, religious but also conspiracy beliefs. Our ego doesn't lik
Cites orangepurple · 2022-07 · on “TikTok owner ByteDance explores self-designed chips”
> Having ByteDance participae in this shows the depth of the effort as ByteDance is probably one of most Western-orientated Chinese tech companies. I would go further and assert that ByteDance is a state-sanctioned Chinese psychological weapons manufacturer and covert intelligence gathering operation on an unprecedented scale which is optimized to destroy the minds of foreigners, harvest their preferences, social status, movement data, and identities. To quote Yuri Bezmenov: Most of the activity of the Department was to compile huge amount, volume of information on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion, publishers, editors, journalists, actors, educationalists, profess
Cites kevinmrose · 2022-12 · on “Iranian Officials Asking Venezuela for Asylum in Case of Regime Change”
Here's the KGB defector's interview you're talking about, his name was Yuri Bezmenov. [this video]
Cites dindobre · 2024-02 · on “Alexei Navalny has died”
>Speaking of facts, how about you start providing your source for this hyperbole claim It is you sending out a volley non falsifiable claims as an argument that justifies the invasion. You might as well tell me that PG is behind everything, I can't disprove that. >Ironic claim given the NATO expansion What aboutism. >This is the illusion we're being sold Yeah alright. Please don't bring groupthink and cancel culture into the discussion, it's really not pertinent, you are 1 minute away from going "the west has fallen". And I agree with you that there are many things to improve, to say the least. Still, even if the Western free speech, free market, etc. is all an illusion, Ukrainians have the