Origins of Today's Normal-Hating, Lying, Reality-Denying, PC-Prog, Conformity-Enforcing Culture
Hint: Obama is a symptom, not a cause
I published Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness, Obama’s Hate-America-First Political Platform, And Destroyed America in 2011.
The book provided answers to the questions that came up every time Normal Americans observed, and tried to understand, their opponents in 2011. It was dawning on Normals that what they called Liberals then (and now confusingly call Woke) were not liberal, nor were they awake. But Normals were at a loss to identify how/why/where/when Americans could have adopted such hatred of their own country. Rush Limbaugh, and others in the conservative media of that era, constantly pondered this question, and never came close to an answer.
The book provided careful and professional research and analysis that clearly answered these questions. The origin of hate-America-first was in the historical background of the Comintern covert influence operations designed to destroy Normal America. My work revealed the 6 bullet point belief system of PC-Progressives today, and traced the origin of those hate-filled beliefs to the covert influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg.
And yet, here we are in 2025, 14 years later, and a new generation of Substack and podcasting Normal Americans continue to ponder and pontificate on the origins of the hatred for Normal America.
The big difference between 2011 and 2025 is that PC-Progism lashed up with neoconservatism, and launched the new American imperialism—spreading the PC-Prog hatred of whites, heterosexuals, and capitalism across the globe, in the guise of Our Democracy. At the same time, the PC-Prog belief system subsumed American culture, gained control of the transmission belts of American culture, and blossomed, just like its totalitarian progenitor, into a system of control and punishment, manifesting as Cancel Culture, debanking, worship of George Floyd, imprisoning white cops for doing their job, censorship (in the guise of anti-dis/mis/mal-information).
My experience since 2011, through the rise and fall of the Tea Party; Obama and Biden regimes; the rise, persecution, and rise again, of Trump; and forever wars, showed that conservative influencers of each era do not really want answers. Questioning and pretending to search for answers seem to be much more compelling than just reading Willing Accomplices, understanding the origin of the belief system, and then working to eradicate it.
As a public service, then, to ease the effort to understand, here’s the first 10 pages of Willing Accomplices, the Preface. It lays out the hypothesis, and summarizes the findings and analysis. This is the TL;DR version.
Preface
In Willing Accomplices, using counter-intelligence analytical techniques honed while serving as an espionage officer in the CIA, I will demonstrate that the emergence of Political Correctness (PC) in America was as intentionally orchestrated as Coca-Cola’s advertising is carefully planned and implemented.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the roots of the strategy to implant PC in the American ethos came from an old and familiar adversary: the former Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security (Russian acronym—KGB).
My thesis is that the KGB, beginning soon after the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917, implemented massive covert influence operations. Their goal was to destroy the core moral fabric of American society. Taking advantage of the intellectual and philosophical climate of the early 1900s, the Soviet intelligence apparatus began what would now be called in intelligence circles, “a preparation of the battle space” to move the world towards the inevitable dictatorship of the proletariat. Covert operatives realized that America’s greatest strengths were its proud exceptionalism and belief that freedom and liberty were part of man’s divine destiny. Our free society also made us vulnerable to covert operations. KGB case officers and their agents had easy access to a wide range of American society.
Prior to and during the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik head Vladimir Lenin and his cronies learned the value of conspiratorial practices and the value of disinformation, propaganda, agents of influence, and other covert influence techniques. Russian society and culture were uniquely suited for these practices of secrecy and espionage. Trotsky described his first experience in Communist agitation, saying “[w]e knew…contacts with workers demanded secret, highly ‘conspiratorial’ methods. And we pronounced the word solemnly, with a reverence that was almost mystic.”
The Bolsheviks employed these tactics first during the many years of preparation for the October Revolution but then more ambitiously as part of a long term project that was designed to soften their capitalist enemies for their imagined global Communist revolution.
A target of energetic covert influence operations was the Soviet Union’s “Main Adversary”—the United States. The covert operations, in which KGB officers recruited and ran agents, were aimed at influencing “Innocents,” which is the term Soviet covert operatives used to describe Westerners who could be manipulated into doing the Communists’ bidding.
The KGB identified and focused on the three areas of a free society that pass on its cultural heritage: the media, academia and education, and entertainment. In addition, they focused their efforts on vulnerable governmental policy-makers, particularly in the State Department.
Using experienced operatives and highly compartmented operations, the KGB sought to insert covert influence “payloads” designed to call into question the fundamental bases on which American society and culture had been built. Many American Progressives eagerly carried out these covert operations for the Communists. Others not involved in the operations received the covert messages and accepted them as gospel.
The messengers denigrated American patriotism, capitalism, and individualism, and called into question American foreign policy. The critical view of America seemed to form the philosophical basis of an elite anti-American attitude. The attitude coalesced during the Great Depression. It was nurtured and strengthened by the American transmitters of the KGB’s covert influence operations: journalists, screenwriters, and professors, among others.
Willing Accomplices
I call these Americans “Willing Accomplices.” They were witting, and unwitting, agents of influence. They were Willing to imbibe the superior attitude conferred by the high-minded ideals of the fronts. And they were Accomplices to the communists’ goal of destroying their country—the greatest cultural destruction operation in the history of mankind.
The Willing Accomplices in the KGB’s efforts to destroy American culture may, or may not, have known exactly who they were dealing with. They may, or may not, have known that the KGB was helping them. They may, or may not, have known that they were receiving special treatment and favors for being a conduit for the “America is a hateful place” message.
Whether they were witting or unwitting of KGB or Comintern involvement by their friends does not matter. Whether they actively spread the influence payload of the Soviets, of hate-America-first, out of good intentions, or because of true belief in normal America’s inferiority and their own, and Soviet, superiority, does not matter. Whether they received a bundle of cash, or a check, or any money at all does not matter. As we’ll see in the counterintelligence analysis chapter, each of the Willing Accomplices put themselves in the control of the Russians, and their situations favorably changed.
Recent writers have used the term Dupes for the fellow travelers and others who fell within the communist sphere of influence. This is too kind, and at the same time misunderstands the true nature of most communist operations. The targets, the Willing Accomplices, may have appeared to be duped, but as we’ll see, this appearance was a fig leaf, provided by the Soviets to their Accomplices, so they could appear innocent, if their conscience or reputation required that appearance.
The communist master of feel-good America hating, Willi Muenzenberg perfected the “Popular Front” operational concept. He and his agents set up multiple organizations with high-minded names and reasons for existence—for example the International Congress Against Fascism and War, and the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. These fronts gave intellectuals, journalists, artists, and educators a higher calling—while serving as cover to insert covert influence payloads into the targeted cultures.
The perceived moral superiority of the Soviet’s covert influence messages provided Popular Front members a chance to show “you were a decent human being,” in fact, a better human being. Muenzenberg despised these Popular Front members, and called them “Innocents.”
A Willing Accomplice in Hollywood, in the 1950s, commented that by participating in anti-anti-communist groups, “I would be spared the agony of thinking my way through difficult issues: all the thinking would be done for me by an elite core of trained [thinkers]…”
The goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad. The KGB utilized Willing Accomplices to spread the message that America was an evil, racist, imperialist war-monger and that Communism was a benign, noble experiment designed to rid the world of corruption, oppression and injustice.
Covert Influence Payload
Babette Gross, wife of KGB agent Willi Muenzenberg, explained the content of the Soviet payload to Stephen Koch:
You claim to be an independent-minded idealist.
You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break.
You believe in open-mindedness.
You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country.
You’re frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the workingman.
You think the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works.
You believe in peace.
You yearn for international understanding.
You hate fascism.
You think the capitalist system is corrupt.
This payload exactly matches today’s PC-Progressive message. The message that Soviet covert operators propagated through American Willing Accomplices. The Willing Accomplices, wittingly or unwittingly, spread the anti-American message. And this message bloomed and grew into the pernicious set of taboos and strictures that we call PC today.
It is important to note that Soviet espionage simply planted the seeds of PC. The seedlings did not need continued communist cultivation. The Soviets’ American Willing Accomplices nurtured the anti-American message in universities, newsrooms, and in Hollywood.
After the payloads were planted, the vast majority of the communist intelligence operatives met the fate of most stooges of totalitarian thugs—violent death at the hands of their comrades.
Communist dictators demand absolute obedience. Nimble, smart, and crafty, covert influence operators did not make good slaves. Stalin feared their abilities. One by one, they were called back to Moscow. An economical one-bullet execution, a 7.62x38mm slug from the KGB’s favorite revolver, the Nagant M1895, ended the lives of the fathers of American PC.
The attitude of wise superiority to the American masses, disdain for the racist, sexist, homophobic, foreigner-hating, dead-white-male-worshipping ignoramuses spread quickly throughout the three domains of cultural transmission. First academia rejected traditional America, her people, her founders, and her foundations. The press was next, closely followed by Hollywood.
The most stunning aspect of Muenzenberg’s message was its ability to self-propagate. Like a fertile flower, once planted and growing, it spread its seeds far and wide, with no need for a gardener to nurture it. The payload, so powerful and seductive, once planted in the American intelligentsia, grew and metastasized, like a political cancer, until it burst forth in full flower as PC in the 1980s.
Muenzenberg’s skillful covert influence operations, aiming to destroy American Exceptionalism, are still bearing fruit today. Willi’s influence operations outlived every one of the Comintern officers that recruited the Willing Accomplices, the American agents who carried the influence messages into the heart of our culture. The effects of Willi’s operations outlived the USSR, and communism as a practical political platform.
PC 2011: Reflexive Loathing of the United States
It is not likely that any of the Comintern covert influence operators realized that they were creating a monster that would grow for decades. They likely believed that after a few years their ops would have sown enough confusion to cause the global communist revolution they knew was coming. Even though the revolution never came in their lifetimes, the “hate America first” attitude slowly caught on. The Elites spread their anti-American message. It had to go underground from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. But after the late 1960s, the Elite Vanguard emerged in full flower.
A more concise description of PC cannot be found than Babette Gross’s formulation of Muenzenberg’s covert influence payload. Look inside any PC ideas, speech codes, or requirements, and you’ll find a “reflexive loathing” of traditional America, our values, history, and morals.
By the late 1980s, full-blown PC infected academia, education, the media, Hollywood, and American society in general. Americans were constantly bombarded with reminders of their hatefulness, bigotry, racism, sexism, and imperialism. Confused by the message of hate and disgust, while their daily lives were filled with positive energy, normal Americans became wracked with guilt. They were reminded daily that they were guilty of slavery, bigotry, killing babies in Vietnam, oppressing minorities and women around the globe, stealing the continent from the Indians, being arrogant in dealing with foreigners, killing the Earth with their hairspray, and various other sins.
In 2008, PC blossomed into full flower. In a spasm of PC-induced guilt, America elected our first anti-American president, who did not hide his disgust for normal Americans. Obama is the first president to apologize repeatedly for America’s sins against foreign countries, and to speak disparagingly against the country that elected him. Obama’s cool, detached Elite attitude, loathing the “bitter clingers” of the heartland, is a living testament to the power and success of Muenzenberg’s covert influence operations.
Epigrams
The purpose…would be to instill a reflexive loathing of the United States and its people as a prime tropism of left-wing enlightenment.
Stephen Koch, on KGB Covert Influence Operations
[Midwesterners] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment…
Barack Obama, Reflexive loathing on display, San Francisco, April 2008
Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations.
Covert Operations Motto
Interesting but ultimately unconvincing. The US elite sponsor anti-American feeling because the denationalisation of the USA fits with the imperatives of a globally integrated economy. The elite also want to destroy the morale of those they rule in order to consolidate control at home. Soviet propaganda ertainly developed many of the themes we hear today, but their adoption and normalisation suited the needs of the US elite since the 70s. The convergence between Soviet propaganda and Washington propaganda reveals the enmity of Washington towards its people but blaming Muenzenberg and co is simply not convincing.
Obama aimed to create a BIPOC heavy elite that can rule the planet in close co-ordination with the elites of the Global South. The woke bullshit us about delegitimising the old ways and legitimising the new. Obama was not, and is not, a closet Marxist. He is a race-baiting opportunist latching on to the shibboleth of the era of Civil Rights and decolonisation. A lot of this is about signalling to Americas rivals and ememies that their elites are viewed by Washington as potential allies. It is to reassure the elites of the Global South that US elites have no loyalty or concern with the American people that might stand in the way of business.