Interview: JR Nyquist on the Threat of Communism Today

by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 21, 2021) — Last week, The Post & Email interviewed author Jeff (JR) Nyquist, who has closely studied Soviet and communist strategy, which incorporates calculated disinformation campaigns, and its impact on societies which are not well-versed in the ideology’s purpose and tactics.

A prolific writer and student of history, military strategy, politics and what he sees as the threat of communism since his high school years, Nyquist has written three books: “Origins of the Fourth World War” published in 1998; “The New Tactics of Global War: Reflections on the Changing Balance of Power in the Final Days of Peace” with Benjamin Baruch, published in 2015; and “The Fool and His Enemy: Toward a Metaphysics of Evil,” published last summer.

Nyquist has been a contributing writer at The Epoch Times, The Sierra Times, Financial Sense, WND (formerly WorldNetDaily) and Catholic Exchange.  He warns that most Western societies are not aware of the true nature of communism and its goal of overtaking Western nations which Lenin and Stalin revealed in their writings.

In an interview with Mike Adams on November 1, Nyquist contended, “Always, the strategy of Russia and China is to invade the United States…the war against America is still being planned…and that means at all times, they’re always preparing…because their model for invading the U.S. is the model of Germany invading Norway in 1940: preposition uniforms and weapons; infiltrate the country with people under the guise of doing business…and then striking when the need arises.”

Without telling the reader what to think or which conclusions to draw, Nyquist presents a compelling case for concern given current geopolitical events. The Lenin/Stalin model, which has brought about the deaths of tens of millions worldwide, is very much alive today, Nyquist contends, and thrives on the malleability of unsuspecting Western societies by its dissemination of false narratives.

In a February 15 column on his website, Nyquist provides an example, utilizing Natalie Grant’s “Disinformation: Soviet Political Warfare 1917 – 1992″ as a backdrop, of a Soviet-style disinformation campaign:

Suppose the truth is represented as Narrative A. In order to divert attention from Narrative A the special services will be tasked with spreading several false diversionary narratives; that is, Narratives B – F. If you construct those narratives with sensational claims, people will be drawn to them. Of course, the public mind is very susceptible to sensational claims. Soon enough everybody will forget Narrative A. In fact, people will become so besotted with a sensational false narrative they will spontaneously create home-grown arguments in support of the narrative. In this way a false narrative will gain a life of its own.

During the interview, Nyquist detailed how Soviet regime defectors’ predictions of the future have been proved hauntingly accurate, with the overtaking of Western society by communism being the goal.

The Interview

When I was a teenager, I was absolutely obsessed with military history and strategy.  I subscribed to “Strategy & Tactics” magazine; they made realistic war games of real wars.  My focus when I was that young was mostly on strategy.  Then, of course, when I got older, I wanted to be a writer and always wanted to be a journalist, but I thought, “Journalism school is all politics. I don’t understand any of this; I don’t like politics.”  So I thought I better be a political science major because I needed to understand it.  Then I found out I had analytical ability; I had a British professor who said I needed to become a political scientist because I had this ability.  So I got interested in the political side, the strategy of politics and history.

I ended up in graduate school but studied a lot of history before that because I felt I didn’t have enough grounding in it.  I would look at theories but felt I didn’t know enough. I went through a lot of ancient history because I came to believe that the ancient world was a distant mirror, that there was a civilization that had gone through its course of birth, maturity, old age, senility and death and we could see maybe where we were headed, too.

I read Oswald Spengler and other cultural historians who saw certain parallels.  So then I went back to graduate school and encountered communists.  They actually tried to recruit me; they liked me.  In fact, one lady took me out for lunch, and I wondered what it was about, and she said, “They want a commitment.”

My first thought was to ask, “Who are ‘they?’”  I knew who they were; I had hung out with them enough to know:  they were communists; they were operating a cell, and they wanted me to join.  I didn’t answer right away, but I realized I had to give her an answer, so while we were walking back from the restaurant, I said, “I can’t give ‘them’ a commitment because I don’t believe in Marxism.”

Other things happened, but my academic career was over. I had become very, very interested in communism because I had seen it up close. When you see it, you realize it’s real and they’re taking over things and have a method, you develop an interest in it.  I was in graduate school briefly in 1983, but I was working and didn’t have the money or the time.  From 1987 to 1990, I was pursuing a Ph.D. and a teaching credential, which I got in 1986. 

I became interested in Soviet strategy and started reading defector literature.  A lot of people have defected, but the academic books on the subject didn’t ring right to me.  I wanted to read the actual Soviet books:  “Soviet Military Strategy” by Marshal Sokolovsky; “The Offensive” by Sidorenko, and “The People, the Army, the Commander,” — the “Officers’ Library,” they called it.  This was the actual education of Soviet military officers. 

Then I started reading the defector literature, what defectors coming from the highest levels were saying about what they were doing and what their strategy was.  What I discovered was nobody else was reading this literature.   What I found was that most of our so-called “experts” maybe glanced at it, but they didn’t take it seriously. “Oh, defectors – they’re liars.”  There was a dismissive attitude toward anybody who had defected from that world – that they were defective.

What I found was a tremendous wealth of details mutually supporting alarming information from a strategic point of view.  They were painting a picture of the future, by the way, that when I was doing this in the late ‘80s, everything they said has come true since.  These included Anatoliy Golitsyn and Jan Sejna, who was one of the highest-ranking political defectors ever; he was the 7^th or 8^th highest-ranking communist in communist Czechoslovakia, a protégé of Khrushchev.  You find they talk about outlandish things such as the Warsaw Pact faking its collapse.  A 1982 book by Jan Sejna said they were going to fake the collapse of the Warsaw Pact Alliance; the book is called, “We Will Bury You.”  The strategic material starts on page 100; I know that from memory.

Golitsyn was maybe the most important defector because he was part of the KGB that was designing the KGB long-term deception strategy in the late ‘50s, and although he didn’t hear all of it, he was able to piece it together from what he heard.  When he worked with our CIA counter-intelligence under James Angleton, they were able to put it together.  He wrote a book in 1984 called, “New Lies for Old,” and in that book he gave 148 falsifiable predictions. This is not according to me; it’s according to intelligence researcher Mark Riebling in his book, “Wedge: How the Secret War between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security.”  

By 1994, when his book came out, almost 94% of those predictions had come true. 

That’s what I find in the defector literature.  In Sejna’s 1982 book, he said the Soviets planned to break up Yugoslavia along ethnic lines after Tito’s death.  Guess what?  It happened.  You see the same things in Viktor Suvorov’s work.  Suvorov’s real name is Vladimir Rezun.   He is a very good writer who wrote a number of books such as, “Spetsnaz,” “Inside the Soviet Army” and “Inside the GRU.” 

Defector literature has this uncanny prophetic angle where you will be reading things that will happen in the future. In Suvorov, there are allusions to the War on Terror. In his 1987 book, “Spetsnaz,” he talks about something called “grey terror” which would happen in the future in which the West would be attacked by terrorist forces that had no apparent connection to Russia or the Soviet Union but would be controlled through intermediaries and mercenaries. It would be diversionary to divert the intelligence and military resources of the West to this other enemy while they were getting ready for World War III.  That’s in Viktor Suvarov; I’m not making it up. It’s the chapter called, “Spetsnaz’s First World War.”  Also, there’s stuff about scandalizing.  When you get closer to world war, you want to make sure that the people in the West think all their leaders are scum: that they’re all compromised, that they’re all bad and that they’re all evil.  Sound familiar?

When I would talk to professors and other people and defense professionals about defector literature, none of them wanted to touch it with a ten-foot pole.  It was like forbidden territory, so I knew then that I had stumbled on a goldmine and the fact that people were programmed not to show that people don’t think. They think they think, but they don’t, and academics are the most famous for it.  They don’t really even assess themselves enough to know how much they go along to get along and how much that negates thinking.

So I had a kind of critical education. It was also extremely demoralizing, because when you realize that most of the people you looked up to and most of the institutions are just rife with fraud and stupidity and incompetence, it’s a pretty harrowing thing, but it is actually the truth.

H.L. Mencken used to describe “democracy” as a clown show where the boobs were always being taken in by each other.  It is basically true, unfortunately.  The number of people who are authentic, who are actually willing to do the work and actually paying attention and thinking is always a tiny minority, and I mean tiny.  Billy Mitchell was the guy who predicted that the war with Japan in the Pacific would start with a submarine and air attack on Pearl Harbor.  He made that prediction in 1924, and they tried him and kicked him out of the military.  Think about that:  the guy who understood what was going to happen, the military genius of the U.S. Army Air Force, they put on trial for being insubordinate because his subordinates were boobs and he knew it.  And when he tried to make his point, they wouldn’t listen, and he got upset.

That gives you an idea of how the world works.

So how did I get into this?  Finding out that communism is the biggest thing happening in the world.  Socialism is a new form of religion and communists are like the Jesuits driving the bus, because everybody is so easily manipulated – they kind-of drift through life – and they specialize.  Because they’re so fanatical – Lenin was a kind of genius, and so was Stalin – and they were able to focus those ideas that worked that actually could help you take over countries and extend your power.  It’s not perfect; it has a lot of trial and error in it, but look at where it’s gotten them.  They have the biggest country in the world, Russia, and they have the most populous country in the world, and I’m telling you that Vladimir Putin is still a communist.

It’s so obvious. Russia supports every communist country: Africa, Latin America and Asia.  They give weapons to North Korea; they have military advisers there right now.  They’re supporting Nicaragua being built up; they have troops in Venezuela.  “Wait a minute: I thought Russia wasn’t a communist country anymore.”   “Yeah, like I have a bridge I want to sell you.” People are very naïve.  This is so obvious, in fact, but yet nobody notices.  Why? Because everybody reads the headlines. They say, “Oh, you didn’t get it: Putin’s a nationalist; he’s a Christian; he wears a cross.”  See how easy it is to fool people?  I could wear symbols and say I’m a Muslim.  I could even do the prayer.  Does that make me a Muslim?  No; it just makes you gullible. So this is really where we are. 

What I’ve done these past years is write a book called “Origins of the Fourth World War.”  I wrote it before the collapse of the Soviet Union.  I knew it was going to happen in advance because the defector literature said it was going to happen.  It wasn’t just me: those 148 falsifiable predictions that Golitsyn made were mostly about the collapse of the Soviet Union and how they would exploit it and how they would begin to isolate conservatives and anti-communists and how they would be able to extend communism into the West.  Because once the Cold War is over, what do you need any kind of fences against communism for?

It’s a very big game, with very large institutions and very many players involved in it. I’ve been writing about it pretty consistently. I wrote for WorldNetDaily from 1999 to 2000; before that I wrote a little bit for Newsmax. I wrote for Sierra Times; for 12 years I wrote for Financial Sense; I’ve done some writing for Epoch Times, and I mainly do my own blog.

I interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky before his death, and my big question for him was, “Western conservatives never really understood communism, did they?” His answer was, “No, of course they didn’t.”  And I said, “Well, why didn’t they?” and he said, “Because they want it to be simple, and it’s complicated.” And I said, “Can you explain it in a way that’s simple?” and he said, “No, you can’t, because it is complicated.  You can’t make it simple; you have to actually study it; you have to see how complicated it is.  But then you see their eyes glazing over and you lose them because they want the fast-food version.”

I had to agree with him.  He gave a great speech when William F. Buckley – they were congratulating themselves on winning the Cold War; this was 30 years ago now – invited Bukovsky to give a speech.  Of course, he was angry; I could tell, and I reminded him of that speech when I interviewed him.  In that speech he did something interesting: he told a story. Now Buckley was resigning as the head of the anti-communist organization and somebody else was taking over, but they were really folding shop because they had won the Cold War.

Bukovsky got up there and said, “The West is like the drunk in the Russian story who’s coming into town with a shoe on one foot and a sock on another foot, and the whole village is shouting at him, ‘You’ve lost your shoe!” and the drunk shouts back at him, ‘No, I’ve found a shoe!’”  That was the West saying we’d defeated communism.  We thought we’d found a shoe, but we were a drunk and we lost a shoe. We had it all wrong; we hadn’t won anything. 

When you look at Russia with its fifth-generation weapons and its new nuclear warheads, and our nuclear arsenal has rotted away, and you have Joe Biden in the White House and Barack Obama before that and our trade is all made to cater to China and China and Russia are uniting and doing joint military exercises, practicing the invasion of Alaska and bombing the United States as they did in Vostock in September 2018, you have to realize where we are here in history. 

Then you have this biological attack on the Western world, on the whole world, in fact. Look at how the communists are using it, and you have to realize we’re in the grip of a very sophisticated strategy with massive reach.  Of course, it all goes back to the development of the Soviet Union, the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. I went back last summer and started rereading Stalin, and it’s all in Stalin.  There’s nothing they’re doing now that isn’t in Stalin or Lenin. 

So that’s how I got interested in this, and that’s why I write about it. I could write novels, but Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina.  How many times could a woman throw herself under a train?  What’s more interesting is all of Western civilization is throwing itself under a train.

The Questions

The Post & Email: Where does that leave the United States, and where do we go from here?

Jeff Nyquist: If the survival of the West depends on something I have to say, we’re in trouble.  But it is our survival that’s at stake.  This is not easy to answer, because this is such a large thing in history, and when you look at something like the structure – think of the Soviet Union, think of how you build the structures that make up the government and the Army and the intelligence services and the strategy and all the communist parties around the world, then the Left and all the rhetoric and the ideas.  Now you have people who believe in global warming; in fact, they’re trying to destroy America’s energy independence, because obviously, we have to reduce our carbon footprint; that’s the whole justification for destroying pipelines and taking away jobs in the coal mines.

So where does this come from?  Let me give you an idea:  the global warming idea was brought up in the Soviet Politburo in the late 1970s.  He was a science guy and pioneered the idea that “If we could convince the West that the planet is going to warm out of control and we can get them to ruin themselves with an economic sabotage operation, we can get them to flip to socialism.”  Because what was it that made us prosperous?  They couldn’t get a revolution in the West because they couldn’t get an economic crisis in the West that they could overthrow.  But if they could limit our use of energy – our standard of living depends on cheap energy.  If you make that energy too expensive, they can make life difficult for people, and then they can have more followers in the West and overthrow it.  The other thing they can do is open borders and bring in poor people from the Third World and overburden the wealthy countries, causing them problems that way.  They can cause social fragmentation and fracturing and turn the races against each other.  By the way, the program of the Communist Party USA is the program of championing the victims: Mexicans, immigrants, homosexuals, on and on, every victim group.  Why?  Who’s victimizing them, by the way? Capitalism is, and of course white people.  You divide the society and you say, “These people have been suppressing you; you need to rise up against them.”  It’s in the program of the Communist Party.  Now the Democratic Party does this by the numbers. 

The Post & Email: Do you think public figures who ascribe to global warming – take AOC, for example – really believe it, or is she just advancing a narrative as a means to an end?

Jeff Nyquist: I don’t know what people actually believe – she may well believe it – but she probably doesn’t even know who invented the idea.  She probably doesn’t even know where it came from.  Now there are people in these communist organizations who know perfectly well.  We can point out who some of them are.  The world is full of communist-front organizations and actual communist organizations where the people running them are pretty well-informed.  They know that environmentalism is a tactic, a strategy.  They don’t care about the environment. They know that using transgenderism is a tactic. And by the way, it’s a tactic to justify the oppression of Christians because the Christians are a big group who are going to resist communism because communism is atheistic. So they need to paint Christians as villains and say, “Christians don’t like homosexuals or transgenders, so they’re evil; they’re haters.”

The strategy is designed to make certain groups victims and raise their profile as people who need to be defended. That is simultaneously an attack on other people who believe in the Bible, for example.  This is a strategy.  Whatever anybody thinks or believes, you can see this is really very practical, and it’s about strategy.

The problem we have now is there’s nobody on our side who understands all of this and is fighting back.

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The Post & Email will continue its interview with Nyquist in a second installment.