“I hear the human race
Is fallin’ on its face
And hasn’t very far to go.
But every whippoorwill
Is sellin’ me a bill
And tellin’ me it just ain’t so.”
Lyrics to “A Cockeyed Optimist,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.
If Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were alive today, they would have good reason to wonder what happened to the America that won World War II and the Cold War, defeating Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.
Everywhere we look, America is in disarray. From transgenderism to diversity, equity, and inclusion, to the concept of “toxic masculinity,” to extreme environmentalism, to the growing abandonment of Judeo-Christian religious values, to moves to break up the traditional nuclear family, our entire culture is being turned upside-down. And all of these Looney Tunes ideas are tied together by the concept of “intersectionality” – that one identity group’s cause must be taken up by all other identity groups. So, for example, Greta Thunberg, who proclaimed herself the global authority on the environment as a teenager, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the leftist-dominated global media, now figures prominently in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations in her native Sweden.
As Jonathan Tobin writes in his JNS column of May 31, these developments are particularly alarming for Jews, as our safety in America has depended in large measure on democratic norms and the rule of law, both of which are under relentless attack. This is exemplified by the Stalinist show trial and conviction of former President Trump on charges that objective legal analysts find highly questionable, not to mention the assignment of a clearly partisan judge to preside over the case.
Antisemitism is an integral part of the drive to destroy America and the West because of our role in promulgating Western values since the Revelation at Mount Sinai, a drive fueled by the truly toxic alliance between what Katie Gorka calls “Next Gen Marxism” and old-line Islamism.
Where did these wild ideas come from, having seemingly emerged in the last few years like Athena from Zeus’ forehead? Are the world’s intellectuals all channeling Groucho Marx’s character, Professor Hugo Z. Quackenbush? Granted, there is a direct line of descent from the Marxist theoreticians of the 20th century, notably Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, and Saul Alinsky, to the student radicals of the 1960s and 1970s who took up the cause. (The subsequent development of this ideology was cogently presented by Eric Cohen, CEO of Im Tirtzu and publisher of Mosaic, in a speech given to his organization on May 13.) Beyond the chronological and organizational aspects, however, lies the question of the psychological.
It has been noted elsewhere that 2020 America bears similarities to 1920s and 1930s Germany, with university students leading the way to totalitarianism, but that can’t be the entire story. The Nazi takeover was greatly facilitated by the German tendency toward regimentation. As Lenin once quipped, if Germans were called upon to stage a riot at a train station, they would first line up and buy tickets. So how is it that America, a nation born in rebellion against tyranny, the land of the free and the home of the brave, succumbs so readily to accepting oppression and virtual slavery, and in many cases even votes for it?
The authoritarian response to Covid-19 obviously facilitated the transition, as mask-wearing, compulsory vaccination, and lockdowns broke down resistance. Still, the full psychological explanation of our collapse may lie buried within the annals of the Cold War.
In 1984, a KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, gave a chilling interview to G. Edward Griffin outlining what he claimed was the long-term Soviet plan for subverting America through psychological warfare and “demoralization.” He described the plan of ideological subversion as having four stages:
- The first stage is demoralization, which Bezmenov estimated would take about 20 years. His thought was that it would take that much time to produce a generation that would turn away from the ideology of its country. Bezmenov cited “the examples of 1960s hippies coming to positions of power in the 1980s in the government and businesses of America.” He claimed that this generation [i.e., Baby Boomers] was already “contaminated by Marxist-Leninist values.”
He went on to characterize the typical demoralized Westerner: “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.”
The author of the article I cite, Paul Ratner, added the editorial comment: “It’s hard not to see in that the state of many modern Americans. We have become a society of polarized tribes, with some people flat out rejecting facts in favor of narratives and opinions.”
In Bezmenov’s opinion, this phase was completed by 1984. Even if his judgment was premature, it is certainly true now. Many Americans are now thoroughly confused about values.
- The second stage of brainwashing, destabilization, Bezmenov estimated would take two to five years and consist of the subverters’ targeting key structures of the society under attack, such as economics, foreign relations, and national defense. Can anyone deny that our enemies have succeeded spectacularly in this arena, often with the cooperation, witting or unwitting, of our federal government? Our economy is laboring with serious inflation, colossal national debt ($34 trillion, increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days), corporations placing DEI and social justice considerations above earning profits, and dependence on unfriendly countries for needed raw materials, exacerbated by our curtailing domestic energy production.
Our foreign relations are skewed, supporting Iran against Israel and Saudi Arabia, and it is risky to be an American ally or client state, as exemplified by our humiliating headlong flight from Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars of modern weapons and a fully functional airbase for the Taliban, not to mention 13 dead American soldiers and thousands of stranded American civilians. This colossal failure necessarily compromises our national defense, coupled with the Pentagon’s emphasis on woke issues such as “white privilege,” which has driven recruitment well below what is needed to maintain force levels.
At the same time, we have essentially open borders, with millions of illegal immigrants, including single young men, flooding in and potentially being candidates to commit terrorist acts. In a related area of national security, crime is skyrocketing with the election of Soros-backed local prosecutors who don’t prosecute most offenses, the abolition of cash bail for all but the most serious offenses, and the California law that treats shoplifting less than $950 a day as a misdemeanor often not prosecuted.
And our media are controlled by the Left; for example, NTD (New Tang Dynasty), a news network founded by Chinese expatriates who fled Communism, and affiliated with Epoch TV, issued a new documentary featuring conservative Christian actors Kevin and Sam Sorbo, that exposes Chinese Communist control of Hollywood.
- and 4. Next comes crisis. Bezmenov estimated that it would take only up to six weeks to send a country into crisis. The crisis would bring “a violent change of power, structure, and economy” and will be followed by the last stage, normalization.” That’s when your country is basically taken over, living under a new ideology and reality.
We have been at the crisis stage even longer, arguably going back to the beginning of pro-Hamas demonstrations in October, even before the IDF entered Gaza, which has now escalated to efforts to disrupt the universities, drive out Jewish students, and block transportation thoroughfares. Efforts to control the rioters have been sporadic, hampered by many administrators supporting them and by the awareness that any college administrator who tries to restore order is subject to a vote of no confidence by the faculty that almost invariably leads to the administrator’s removal. Consequently, administrators are currently negotiating with students and faculty to institute BDS on campus, including divesting from any company that does business with Israel, boycotting Israeli academics, and not admitting Israeli students.
So here we are, teetering on the edge of the abyss into a totalitarian darkness far greater than the medieval Dark Ages. It is ironic that the Cold War adversary we thought we had defeated may have the last laugh, particularly since the current Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, was a KGB colonel.
And time is growing short. The Biden administration proposes admitting 100,000 Palestinian refugees from Gaza, which could set the stage for an American intifada. As it is, assaults against Jews are rising, threatening the onset of European-style pogroms, with police likely to be ordered to stand down, as New York Mayor David Dinkins did during the Crown Heights riots of 1991 that saw a Chabad yeshiva student from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, stabbed to death by the rioters.
For those who think this is just a Jewish problem, history shows that Jews are the canary in the coal mine. What starts with us doesn’t end with us, as exemplified by Hitler’s killing millions of non-Jewish Europeans. Already, two organizations, America’s Frontline Doctors and Children’s Health Defense, have repeatedly warned that, with the full approval of the Biden Administration, the World Health Organization (WHO), which is run by an Ethiopian apologist for the Chinese Communist regime, will adopt amendments giving it the absolute authority to impose any measures it deems essential for “public health” (including the effects of “climate change”) upon every nation on earth, with opposition forbidden as “disinformation.”
The same forces of evil are evident in the World Economic Forum’s plans for a world in which home ownership will be reserved for the elite, with everyone else having to rent. Giant corporations are already buying tracts of thousands of homes to turn them into rentals. Other restrictions are in the works, most notably the introduction of a digital currency, which will allow governments to track every purchase and every contribution by every citizen, accompanied by the power to freeze or even tap into bank accounts of those who offend the Left, as exemplified by Justin Trudeau’s freezing the accounts not only of truckers striking in opposition to Covid mandates, but of anyone who contributed to them as well.
For example, a woman phoned a national talk show to tell how her son had given $10 to the truckers only to have his bank account frozen so he was unable to pay his rent, which she had to do on his behalf. There was a public outcry in Canada that resulted in Trudeau’s revoking his emergency powers after three weeks; as governments grow more tyrannical, public opposition may not have such effect the next time.
As we engage in prayerful contemplation about how to escape the trap the enemies of humanity have laid for us, let us try to find solace in the closing words of Nellie Forbush’s song from South Pacific:
“…I’m stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope
And I can’t get it out of my heart!
Not this heart.”
