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PJ columnist Ion Mihai Pacepa is a unique figure of 20th century history and he has performed the greatest, most profound of literary accomplishments: his 1987 memoir Red Horizons resulted in the execution of his former boss, the tyrant Nicolae Ceau?escu, and his accomplice wife by the liberated people of Romania. Pacepa is the former head of Romania’s communist espionage division. He was present with Ceau?escu at many of the most consequential meetings of the Soviet bloc. In 1978, after being tasked with arranging a murder, Pacepa chose to defect to the United States. He is the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect.
Since then Pacepa has established himself as the most valuable voice in understanding the effect of Soviet espionage as well as disinformation, the subject of his newest book.
It turns out that the Communists were more interested in confusing us than they were in stealing our technology and spy secrets. Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Attacking Religion, Undermining Freedom, and Promoting Terrorism turns back the curtain on a deeply misunderstood subject that has transformed America and the Middle East in ways that we’re still beginning to comprehend. Disinformation is the process of changing history and sabotaging a culture by flooding it with hateful ideas.
In understanding two disinformation tactics, our understanding of the Syrian conflict transforms. The Soviet Union’s decades of subversion in both the Middle East and America come into alignment. Pacepa describes two tactics which have now grown intermingled. First, the KGB circulated hundreds of thousands of copies of Arabic translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the conspiratorial forgery that asserts that Jews run the world and seek to oppress everyone else. The genocidal antisemitism that fuels both Islamist regimes and terrorist groups is a fire that has been stoked by hateful propaganda’s wide distribution for decades.
In the the Western hemisphere the transmission of hatred against America and traditional values shifted. Pacepa explains how liberation theology — the faith of the church Barack Obama chose to attend for 20 years and where he baptized his children — is a KGB invention created specifically for the purpose of getting poor Christians to embrace socialism.
What is the practical effect on the Obama administration’s political decisions from the president soaking in two decades of Communist-inspired, conspiracist propaganda from his self-proclaimed mentor? The president is wholly indifferent to hatred and antisemitism in the Muslim world. Thus the reality of Syria — that it amounts to one Jew-hating barbarian tribe going to war against another — does not register as the slightest problem for him. If he could ignore the antisemitism of his 20-year spiritual mentor, then should it surprise anyone that his administration ignores it on a global stage?
Last week Robert Fisk at the Independent summarized it in one headline: Does Obama know he’s fighting on al-Qa’ida’s side? Yes, of course he does. He’s just so naive about human evil that he doesn’t regard it as a problem. But those who study 20th century history and take in the testimony of Ion Mihai Pacepa will know better…
M Devolin Said:
Hold your friends close and your enemies even closer.
ppksky Said:
There is an oxymoron.
Bert Said:
Not true. Palestinian Nationalism was an invention of the Islamic Brotherhood in the period towards the end of WWII.
Communism in the Soviet Union was necessarily committed by avowed Marxist values to stamping out all religion, including the Russian Orthodox Church, which to varying degrees has advanced antisemitic values. The efforts of Stalin to focus on Jews would have been a departure from Marxist values which assigns all religions equal culpability as Lenin described as “opiates of the people”.
It is strange to claim that the KGB would circulate copies of the Protocols. I always understood that the KGB was the policed enforcement of the Communist Party and that they were orthodox Marxists. Why would Marxists circulate something that was understood to be a fraud since before Marx? There is plenty of antisemitism in Marxist thought without having to resort to old fashioned Tsarist era screeds like the Protocols.
And also, among Muslims it is widely believed, like among many Europeans, that communism itself is a Jewish conspiracy and the Protocols would do little to undermine that belief.
“The president is wholly indifferent to hatred and antisemitism in the Muslim world.”
He’s not the first president guilty of this sin. Bush walked hand in hand at his ranch with a Saudi prince, and the Saudis are hard-core Jew-haters. There are many more examples of such presidential obsequious behaviour toward the Saudis, but I’ll leave it at that. The entire Western media is “indifferent” to the anti-Jewish hatred taught in the Koran and from the pulpits of mosques all over the Western world. What is so remarkable about Obama doing exactly the same thing? I remember Baker in the Bush Sr.’s government being a shameless anti-Jewish bigot, so why is everyone surprised about Obama? Anti-Jewish hatred is alive and well all over the world. The Soviets didn’t invent it, they simply tapped into it, just as Hitler and his Nazis tapped into it.
“Even without the Soviets, Jew-hatred has been an essential part of islam for 14 centuries.”
Took the words right out of my mouth.
“Tell it to Arnold Harris, who’s hero is joseph stalin.”
I don’t know why you are saying this about Arnold Harris. I did not read any posts wherein Mr. Harris referred to Joseph Stalin as his hero.
@ Bert:
Tell it to Arnold Harris, who’s hero is joseph stalin.
Even without the Soviets, Jew-hatred has been an essential part of islam for 14 centuries.
Mass murderer Joseph Stalin wanted to stamp out Judaism in Russia. The Jewish communists volunteered to be his storm troopers. They spied inside the Jewish community and reported any Jew teaching Judaism to the secret police. Some of these Jewish teachers disappeared permanently.
I also heard that in 1964 it was the Soviets that backed Arafat and created the narrative of a ‘Palestinian people’ that needed their own state.
Russians are born anti-Semites, going back who knows when. I partially read Russia and the Arabs. It’s a translated historical memoir by Russian big-wig Yevgeny Primakov. I’m sure Primakov actually believes the lies and the distortions he writes about Israel in the book. It’s in his
bloodDNA.BTW, the endorsements on the back include Kissinger, Albright, Scowcroft, Dimitri Simes and Edward Djerejian.