Monday, July 6, 2009

Before There Was Pallywood...

There were the Blues Brothers of Moscow... This is not a Belushi and Akroyd spoof!
This picture shows two KGB guys stroking the tumescent egos of "progressive intellectuals and media people" back in the 1970's. It is from the first of these two clips from a 1984 interview with Yuri Bezmenov. Bezmenov was one of the KGB men and a former Novosti employee who later defected. He is interviewed here by the author and political lecturer G. Edward Griffin. These two clips are part of a complete set of a long interview that is on YouTube and well worth the time. I post these two parts here because they are priceless.

Keep in mind that Mahmoud Abbas and many other Palestinian leaders studied these techniques and philosophies at the very Patrice Lumumba University that Bezmenov reveals as a training center for "international terrorist groups".




Bezmenov could just as easily be speaking of today's media and "leaders". His characterizations are pungent and accurate. Here are two of my favorites:

On the media: "Most of these shmucks were afraid to loose their jobs...If you tell the truth about my country you will not last long as a correspondant at the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times...They are dishonest people who lack integrity… intellectual honesty."

On Senator Edward M. Kennedy (could apply to BHO et al just as well): "He thinks he is very smart…he is narrow minded egocentrical idiot who tries to earn his own popularity through participation in propaganda farces."

2 comments:

lgude said...

Great clips! I have thought since 9/11 that the Muslim world is going through a totalitarian paroxysm similar to what the West - including the Soviet Union - went through in the 20th century. I believe this overlap of propaganda methodology - Potemkin villages or Pallywood - between the Soviet system and the Islamist system is because both are a regressive response to the modern. An attempt to restore the absolute social order of the past. Whether it is Robert Mugabe who steps BACK into the role of Chaka Zulu, Stalin into the role of the Czar, Osama bin Ladin into the role of the Sultan it is all the same. They are all monarchist reactionaries in that sense. It seems to me that you get at the roots of why the Islamist propagandists have been able to co-opt the US and Western press so easily. The western press has already been corrupted by the Soviet efforts and the Islamist narrative has been able to successfully masquerade as a progressive liberationist movement that fits right into the space vacated by the Soviet 'propaganda cliches'. Like a virus fooling an immune system. Gorgeous George Galloway, the British socialist and Saddam apologist, overtly labeled the Islamists as the last best hope of the socialist cause. He is more florid than the press, but both are projecting the role of the proletariat in Marxism onto the the Islamists who are overt and outspoken reactionary religious fanatics.

Wally Keeler said...

Priceless posting. This is bookmarkable as in remarkable. I recall similar footsie when travelling through the eastern bloc in the 80s.