Yuri Bezmenov’s Theory of Ideological Subversion and the Demoralized Generation

According to Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent, the most effective method of subversion is not military force but a long-term ideological campaign to demoralize a nation from within. He argued that this process was well underway in the United States by the 1960s, targeting students and intellectuals with Marxist-Leninist propaganda. Bezmenov claimed that by the 1980s, this generation, which he described as "demoralized" and "half-baked intellectuals," had risen to positions of power in government, media, education, and business. He believed that these individuals, having been programmed with a distorted worldview, were now "contaminated" and unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. He asserted that trying to convince them with facts was futile because their perception of reality was so fundamentally altered that they were immune to authentic information. Bezmenov concluded that the only way to reverse this societal decay was to wait 20 to 50 years for a new generation of patriotically minded people with common sense to emerge.

This kind of behavioral pattern, where individuals are seemingly immune to facts and evidence that contradict their beliefs, is also a hallmark of narcissism. Much like Bezmenov's "demoralized" individuals, narcissists have a distorted perception of reality that's difficult to penetrate. Their worldview is not based on objective truth but on a need to protect their inflated sense of self-importance. Any information that challenges this view is met with plausible denial and hostility. This psychological trait makes them resistant to change, even when presented with irrefutable evidence, as it threatens their fundamental sense of self. Therefore, in the same way Bezmenov described a generation of people as being unchangeable, the behaviors he attributed to them are psychologically similar to the traits of a narcissist.