MAGA has become the perfect case study in everything he warned about.

by: Free Prince, Liberty warrior

This article was reprinted with permission and has been edited slightly from its original post for style. 

This former Soviet defector turned KGB whistleblower, laid out a terrifyingly simple blueprint for ideological subversion—how a nation could be destabilized from within, not by external invasion, but by manipulating its own people. The goal? To create a population so demoralized, so incapable of recognizing truth, that they would actively participate in their own subjugation.

Watch Yuri Bezmenov explain the destabilization roadmap.

Stage One: Demoralization

Bezmenov described demoralization as the systematic breakdown of a society’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction. A demoralized population doesn’t just accept lies—it needs them to function. We are living in a time where people do not just disagree; they do not even acknowledge the same fundamental reality. There is no shared frame of reference, no mutual set of facts from which discourse can begin. The political landscape has been so fractured, so meticulously warped, that truth itself has become irrelevant.

MAGA has become a perfect example of this. The contradictions are glaring:

• Trump is the ultimate warrior against the Deep State—yet he filled his cabinet with Bush-era neoconservatives, Wall Street elites, and military-industrial complex operatives.
• He fights the globalists—yet handed the reins of the economy to Goldman Sachs executives and enriched multinational corporations.
• He opposes the surveillance state—yet expanded FISA, renewed the Patriot Act, and increased funding for agencies like the FBI, NSA, and CIA.
• He’s anti-war—yet armed Saudi Arabia, escalated drone strikes, assassinated foreign leaders, and bragged about military spending.
• He fights censorship—yet called for banning flag-burning, persecuting whistleblowers like Julian Assange, and increasing surveillance under the guise of fighting “domestic extremism.”
• He champions free markets—yet imposed tariffs, corporate bailouts, and state interventions that his supporters would have called socialism if a Democrat had proposed them.

And yet—none of this seems to matter. Because demoralization is not just about lying to a population. It’s about making them dependent on those lies. People have not simply been misled—they have been conditioned into a state of ideological blindness. A cultivated resistance to contradiction. A mind so thoroughly welded to its chosen narrative that it will discard, alter, or fabricate whatever it must to maintain coherence.

MAGA has been programmed to reconcile every betrayal, every contradiction, through faith alone.

• When Trump betrays his promises? It was 5D chess.
• When he appoints establishment operatives? He had no choice.
• When he expands the very government power his movement was built to fight? It’s fine, because he’s the one in control.

This is not ignorance. This is something worse. A person can be shown, in real time, the unraveling of their worldview, and they will patch over the holes with fantasy rather than face the abyss of doubt. It is not an inability to see reality—it is a refusal to see it. And it’s not just the outliers, not just the extremists—this is systemic.

Politics has turned knowledge itself into a partisan weapon. The expectation is no longer to seek truth, but to defend your team at all costs. Everyone is obligated to have an opinion, to be informed at all times, to adopt the correct stance, even though it is impossible to be fully informed on everything.

And so, they improvise. They adopt prefabricated opinions handed down by their faction. They fill in the gaps with instinctive loyalty rather than independent thought. The game is rigged, and they know it. Two parties, two choices, two sides that everyone is herded into, and neither is worth the loyalty demanded of them. But to acknowledge this would be to admit powerlessness, to admit that they are trapped in an illusion of choice.

So, they cope. They retroactively justify their allegiance by turning their side into something righteous, infallible, and necessary. The alternative is too terrifying. The thought that they’ve wasted years fighting for something fraudulent, that they’ve dedicated their identity to a con, is unthinkable.

So, they double down. This is a coping mechanism turned mass psychosis. And it is escalating. When reality itself is dictated by allegiance, when loyalty outranks reason, when every fact must be bent into submission to fit the tribe’s chosen narrative, the outcome is inevitable: war.

When two factions exist in separate realities, they cannot coexist. They cannot negotiate, they cannot reason, they cannot even comprehend the other side as anything but a threat.

This is irreconcilable. We cannot function like this. A society cannot sustain itself when its people are no longer individuals but ideological husks, possessed by abstractions, fighting battles for masters who do not even know their names.

You are not your faction. You are not your party. You are not an extension of a collective mind. The moment you outsource your thinking, the moment you allow yourself to believe that your side must be right because the alternative is unbearable, you have ceased to be an individual. You have become another interchangeable pawn in a game that does not need you to think, only to obey.

Stage Two: Destabilization

The next step in Bezmenov’s playbook is destabilization—pushing a country into a permanent state of crisis, making it impossible for the population to focus on real, structural issues.

MAGA, once a movement built on skepticism of power, has been trapped in a perpetual crisis cycle, its energy constantly redirected toward manufactured outrage, never toward structural change. Every week, a new villain is introduced, each one carefully selected to keep the base locked in reactionary panic:

• Migrants
• Trans people
• Globalists
• "Communists" (which now includes libertarians, dissidents, and even fellow right-wingers who dare to question Trump’s narrative)
• The Deep State (which somehow never includes people like Jared Kushner, Bill Barr, or John Bolton—people Trump personally elevated)

The actual mechanisms of control—corporate consolidation, mass surveillance, government overreach—remain untouched, quietly expanding as people exhaust themselves chasing cultural boogeymen.

One of the most insidious forms of destabilization is the promotion of false hope operations—narratives designed to keep people passive, waiting, convinced that a hidden force is fighting for them.

The most famous example? "Trust the plan." MAGA was told again and again that justice was right around the corner:

• "The Deep State is about to be exposed."
• "Trump is playing 5D chess."
• "Mass arrests are coming."
• "The storm is coming."

The function of these narratives is obvious—to keep people waiting instead of acting. When real opportunities to resist tyranny presented themselves—whether it was government overreach during COVID, the expansion of the surveillance state, or Trump signing away civil liberties—the movement did nothing. They were too busy believing that some hidden force was fighting for them, that justice would be delivered without them lifting a finger.

This is the art of pacification. MAGA, for all its energy, for all its outrage, for all its supposed rebellion, has spent years in an induced coma, kept in check by carefully managed narratives that ensure their fight never leaves the realm of talking about fighting. If you think this is just a right-wing phenomenon, think again. The exact same tactics were used to neutralize left-wing populism.

• In 2011, Occupy Wall Street emerged as a direct threat to the financial elite, uniting people across political lines against corporate corruption. It was rapidly infiltrated, rebranded as a progressive culture war movement, and defanged into irrelevance.
• In 2016 and 2020, the Bernie Sanders movement tapped into widespread discontent over corporate influence, imperialism, and wealth inequality. It was co-opted—Sanders himself bowed to the establishment, his supporters folded back into the Democratic Party, and the entire movement was redirected toward culture war distractions rather than policy change.
• Black Lives Matter, originally a protest against police brutality, was absorbed by corporate interests, rebranded into a fundraising arm for the Democratic Party, and weaponized to push mass compliance narratives.

The playbook is always the same—redirect populist anger away from systemic reform and into dead-end culture wars. MAGA is not unique in its manipulation. It is merely the most recent case study in how movements that could pose a real threat to power are steered into irrelevance.

A destabilized population doesn’t organize. It doesn’t demand structural change. It doesn’t build anything. It reacts. It flails. It exhausts itself chasing ghosts while the real tyrants tighten their grip.

MAGA is kept in a permanent state of reaction—forever playing defense, forever distracted, never advancing toward its supposed goals. The wheels keep spinning, the outrage keeps flowing, and the machine rolls on, stronger than ever. This is destabilization in action.

The crisis stage, according to Bezmenov, is when a destabilized society, exhausted by chaos, demands order—and the system offers them a “savior.” But the trick is this: The savior does not dismantle the corrupt system. He reinforces it.

For MAGA, that savior is Trump. From the beginning, Trump was a pressure-release valve—a figure who could absorb and redirect right-wing populist energy back into the very system it sought to destroy. MAGA believed they were backing a leader who would:

• Dismantle the Deep State
• Drain the Swamp
• End the forever wars
• Challenge corporate corruption
• Restore liberties lost to the surveillance state

But in reality, none of this happened. Under Trump, there was no rollback of government power, no dismantling of the elite networks controlling the country. The structure remained exactly the same. In fact, in many ways, it expanded:

• The Deep State remained untouched – Trump’s DOJ and FBI aggressively pursued whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden while protecting the institutions he claimed to oppose.
• The war machine never stopped – Trump increased military spending and escalated drone strikes while claiming to be anti-war.
• The Swamp was never drained – His administration was stuffed with neoconservatives, Wall Street operatives, and Big Pharma insiders.
• Surveillance state powers expanded – FISA courts, the Patriot Act, and domestic spying operations continued without pause.
• The deficit skyrocketed – He printed more money than any president in U.S. history, accelerating the economic collapse he claimed to be fighting.
• The COVID response consolidated power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats – Operation Warp Speed was a gift to Big Pharma, enriching the very corporate elites MAGA claimed to despise.

MAGA was led to believe they were fighting the system, when in reality they were being led deeper into its grasp. Their anger was redirected. Their energy was contained. The machine remained intact. And after four years of empty promises, what was the result?

This strategy is not new. Throughout history, elites have used charismatic strongmen to pacify dissent, absorbing revolutionary energy while keeping real power untouched. Trump follows the same historical pattern. A system on the verge of collapse needs a figure like Trump—someone who can rally the people, absorb their frustration, and ultimately bring them back into submission.

Here’s the most dangerous shift of all: MAGA is no longer interested in dismantling government overreach. It simply wants its own people in charge of it.

They no longer oppose mass surveillance—they just want it directed at “the right people.” They no longer oppose authoritarian crackdowns—they just want to be the ones wielding the power. They no longer care about civil liberties—they just want their enemies silenced. The movement that once claimed to stand for liberty, decentralization, and individual rights has morphed into a full embrace of authoritarianism—so long as it wears the right colors.

This is the ultimate crisis stage victory for the system. The opposition has been co-opted.

Stage Four: Normalization

The final step is normalization—when the population, exhausted by years of instability, accepts the new order as inevitable. This is the endgame of ideological subversion. The process does not require the complete destruction of a movement—only its transformation into something unrecognizable.

MAGA was once resembled something rebellious. Today, it is an institution. It no longer even questions the levers of power—it merely seeks to wield them. The people who once stood for liberty now advocate for:

• Censorship—as long as it’s their enemies being silenced.
• Mass surveillance—as long as it’s their political opponents being tracked.
• Government intervention—as long as it benefits their side.
• Authoritarian retribution—as long as they’re the ones holding the whip.
• Endless war—as long as it's their guy waging it.
• Reckless spending—as long as their guy promises to reduce it later on.

The system wins, regardless of who is in charge. The wars continue. The surveillance expands. The corruption deepens. And the people—distracted, exhausted, pacified—keep cheering for their own subjugation.

MAGA was never about reclaiming America. It was about keeping a disenfranchised population distracted, enraged, and ultimately pacified. Every outrage, every betrayal, every contradiction—none of it matters. Because the demoralized mind does not seek truth; it seeks comfort. And nothing is more comforting than the illusion that you are fighting back while marching straight into the hands of those you swore to resist.

Yuri Bezmenov was right. The Soviet playbook didn’t just work—it worked so well that the people who scream loudest about communism have become its greatest case study. The government is larger than ever. The surveillance state is more powerful than ever. The corporate oligarchy is richer than ever. The war machine is more profitable than ever.

MAGA, the so-called “opposition,” has been completely absorbed. It has no demands. It has no principles. It has no vision beyond putting its own people in charge of the same machine it once wanted to dismantle.

And that is the final victory of ideological subversion. A population so exhausted, so demoralized, so consumed by tribal warfare that they no longer fight for real change. Instead, they simply ask: “When do we get to be the ones in control?”

That is not resistance. That is submission. And the machine rolls on. If you are truly against the establishment, you must be willing to question the movements that claim to fight it. If you are truly against tyranny, you must resist it no matter who wields it. If you are truly free, you will not let yourself be used. Because the final trick of ideological subversion is this: By the time you realize you’ve been played, you’re already too deep to admit it.

Think for yourself.

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