Within the Sixties, the KGB performed psychological experiments that discovered two months or much less of bombarding topics with “nonstop” concern messages resulted in topics being “brainwashed” to just accept false data.
For years, web customers have claimed the KGB — the safety and intelligence company of the Communist Occasion of the Soviet Union — performed psychological experiments within the Sixties and located that two months or much less of “nonstop” concern messages resulted in topics being “brainwashed” to just accept false data.
The declare appeared to have first circulated on-line in September 2020, when it appeared in a number of posts (archived) on Facebook (archived) and on X (archived).
(Fb web page Inexperienced Smoothie Woman)
The declare has since popped up in numerous (archived) further posts (archived) on numerous social media platforms (archived). Lots of the posts used precise or near-exact variations of the next phrasing:
Within the 60s, the KGB did some fascinating psychological experiments.
They discovered that if you happen to bombard human topics with concern messages nonstop, in two months or much less a lot of the topics are utterly brainwashed to consider the false message.
To the purpose that no quantity of clear data they’re proven, on the contrary, can change their thoughts.
In some circumstances, the posts (archived) consisted of screenshots (archived) of earlier posts with elements of the textual content underlined (archived).
(X person @GingerJim5)
In comments (archived) on a number of the posts (archived), some web customers said (archived) they have been unable (archived) to search out any credible sources for the declare, mentioning that searches for the main points of the alleged experiments returned solely additional examples of the identical quote — a trademark of the kind of web content material generally known as copypasta, a time period referring to copy-and-pasted textual content that’s typically not grounded in actuality.
Do you may have a supply? I Googled and solely discovered this quote, however no attribution for the data. It isn’t that I do not discover it credible, however I want to cite supply materials.
— Miriam—What Did not Kill Me Made Me Stranger—Solon (@zombiehotflash) April 4, 2024
Like these readers, we discovered no descriptions of particular experiments matching the posts’ claims in any of the books and articles we consulted concerning the history of brainwashing and the history of the KGB. We likewise discovered no proof connecting the declare to Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet defector some web customers have prompt was its supply.
For that purpose, now we have rated the declare as unproven, that means now we have investigated the declare and located no demonstrable proof to both help or disprove it.
Declare Not Attributable to Bezmenov
In response (archived) to feedback requesting a supply for the declare, some web customers pointed (archived) towards statements the Soviet defector Bezmenov made within the Eighties. Bezmenov, a journalist who left Russia in 1970 and sought asylum in Canada and the USA, had a checkered historical past of reliability in his cooperation with Western intelligence businesses, as CBC Information reported in 2022.
Bezmenov’s particular claims about an alleged KGB try to make use of psychological warfare to destabilize the West resurfaced in 2020 when clips of a 1984 interview between Bezmenov and the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin appeared in advertisements for the online game “Name of Responsibility: Black Ops Chilly Warfare.”
Nonetheless, the main points of Bezmenov’s claims didn’t match these of the declare about KGB experiments that appeared in social media posts.
Within the 1984 interview, Bezmenov summarized what he claimed was a four-step KGB marketing campaign to weaken the U.S. that started with brainwashing American college students. The related part begins across the 01:08:19 time-stamp within the video embedded beneath.
In that part, Bezmenov said:
In actuality, the primary emphasis of the KGB just isn’t within the space of intelligence in any respect. In accordance with my opinion and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, solely about 15% of time, cash, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The opposite 85% is a gradual course of, which we name both ideological subversion or lively measures — aktivnye meropriyatiya, within the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare. What it mainly means is: to vary the notion of actuality of each American to such an extent that regardless of the abundance of knowledge nobody is ready to come to wise conclusions within the curiosity of defending themselves, their households, their group and their nation.
It is an incredible brainwashing course of, which fits very gradual, and it is divided in 4 primary phases, the primary one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that a few years? As a result of that is the minimal variety of years which requires to [sic] educate one era of scholars within the nation of your enemy.
Later within the interview, across the recording’s 01:12:48 time-stamp, Bezmenov described the alleged results of this demoralization on a person:
Publicity to true data doesn’t matter anymore. An individual who was demoralized is unable to evaluate true data. The information inform nothing to him. Even when I bathe him with data, with the genuine proof, with paperwork, the photographs, even when I take him by pressure to the Soviet Union and present him a focus camp, he’ll refuse to consider it till he’s going to obtain a kick in his fats backside.
Regardless of some superficial similarities to the declare investigated right here, Bezmenov’s assertions weren’t a precise match. First, Bezmenov’s timeline of 15 to twenty years to brainwash one era of scholars was considerably longer than the social media posts’ timeline of two months or much less.
Second, Bezmenov didn’t use “concern messages” or any related time period to explain the content material he claimed the KGB was pushing on college students. As an alternative, he recognized the fabric as “Marxism-Leninism,” the political ideology of the Communist Occasion of the Soviet Union.
Lastly, Bezmenov made no point out of any particular psychological research associated to his claims, whether or not within the Sixties — because the social media posts claimed — or at one other time.
In reality, across the 01:12:25 time-stamp within the recording Bezmenov claimed that the KGB’s demoralization marketing campaign within the U.S. had been ongoing for 25 years. As a result of the interview occurred in 1984, this system would have begun in 1959, based on Bezmenov’s timeline.
Bezmenov’s claims, due to this fact, didn’t match the main points of the declare that circulated on social media about KGB psychological experiments.
Chilly Warfare Brainwashing Analysis
Makes an attempt to make use of psychological analysis to manipulate folks’s minds for political functions predated the claims of each Bezmenov and the social media posts investigated right here by many years.
In his book “Darkish Persuasion: A Historical past of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media,” the psychiatrist Joel Dimsdale defined how the scientific research of persuasive methods together with brainwashing started in earnest with Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist whose experiments on canine resulted within the discovery of conditioned reflexes firstly of the twentieth century.
After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union’s leaders took nice curiosity in doable human purposes of Pavlov’s analysis and supplied him with beneficiant analysis help till he died in 1936. In accordance with Dimsdale, some historians consider Soviet state brokers used Pavlov’s experimental methods to pressure confessions throughout Stalin’s present trials within the late Nineteen Thirties.
In accordance with the accounts of survivors of the present trials, Dimsdale wrote:
Confessions have been readily obtained after bombarding prisoners with contradictory data and eliciting emotions of guilt and anxiousness. The prisoners’ cognitive functioning was so disturbed by malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and large anxiousness that they readily confessed. By that point, they longed to be punished as a technique to acquire salvation.
Nonetheless, neither Pavlov nor the interrogators concerned with Stalin’s present trials have been affiliated with the KGB, which was not founded till 1954.
Within the Nineteen Forties and Nineteen Fifties, government-funded analysis into the psychology of persuasion continued within the Soviet Union in addition to within the U.S. The time period “brainwashing” emerged within the Nineteen Fifties, and particularly inside the context of the Korean Warfare, in a sequence of articles and books by Edward Hunter, an American journalist and propaganda specialist.
In an electronic mail to Snopes, Dimsdale stated he was not conscious of any revealed sources detailing Sixties experiments during which the KGB discovered that two months or much less of bombarding topics with “nonstop” concern messages resulted in topics being “brainwashed” to just accept false data, though he acknowledged that it was doable that the KGB might have run such experiments.
Finally, Snopes discovered no credible sources describing experiments matching the main points given within the social media posts investigated right here, and the prevalence of an identical or near-identical phrasing in such posts suggests the declare is finest categorized as copypasta, a groundless rumor unfold by web customers copying and pasting textual content from different social media posts.
Nonetheless, we additionally discovered no proof particularly disproving the declare. For that reason, now we have rated the declare unproven.
