Unscrew The News Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Zuzana Janosova-Den Boer is back. When we left off in Part 1, she had taken us through the split of Czechoslovakia. Tonight we came home — to Canada, and to what she sees happening under our feet right now. Some background for anyone new. Zuzana was born into communist Czechoslovakia, a country that by then had been under communist rule for decades. Communism fell there in 1989, the country split in 1993, and she came to Canada in 1997 — not as a refugee, but as a skilled worker who had to earn her points, prove her education and language, and show she had no criminal record. She didn’t trust her old homeland not to vote socialism back in. She finished at the University of Calgary, earned her professional engineering designation, and worked in Alberta oil and gas for more than 20 years. She and her employer parted ways over mandatory injections. THE CANADA SHE ARRIVED IN The first thing that shocked her here was a TV debate. Two men disagreed hard. At the end, one told the other he disagreed with him but would make sure he always had the right to say it. Where she grew up, the slogan was “who is not with us is against us.” She says she felt truly free. She says that started to change after 2015 — not because the Liberals won, but because of who led them. THE FOUR STAGES In 2018 she found the interviews of KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, and the unease she had been feeling finally had a structure. She published her article “I Survived Communism — Are You Ready for Your Turn?” in January 2019. Her framework: 1. Polarization — divide people and keep them divided, usually by casting one group as victims and another as oppressors, and running it on fear. 2. Demoralization — take control of education, erase history, sideline parents, discredit faith, break down family values. 3. Destabilization — wreck the economy through debt and inflation, let crime run, catch and release, open the doors without control. 4. Revolution — once enough control is in place, stop pretending. Her claim is that these don’t arrive one after another. They overlap. And she says Canada has all four in play. WHY CANADIANS DON’T SEE IT Canada has no history of a totalitarian state. When she asks people whether communism could happen here, the answer is always Eastern Europe, Russia, Venezuela — somewhere else. So she offers a swap: drop the word communism and say total government control. Then compare what we called normal ten years ago with what we accept now. It doesn’t come by invasion, she says. It comes over a generation or two, from your own countrymen, one bill at a time, with a pause after each one for people to adjust and justify it. Denial supplies the most important thing any dictator needs: time. She also named who gets recruited first — not the cynics, but good-hearted people who are easy to move with a victim story. THE RECORDER ON THE TABLE The darkest part of the conversation was about trust. In Czechoslovakia, you didn’t talk politics over dinner, because you didn’t know who was listening or what was mounted under the table. She sees the early version here in the recent police visits over social media posts — with one difference that matters: those Canadians could film it and post it. In her words, “It’s literally we are in psychological war in pretense of peacetime.” WHERE ALBERTA STANDS Her read: roughly 30% of Albertans see what’s happening, 30% are in denial, and 30–40% are on the fence. She believes Alberta still has a critical mass that is awake, and she says the work is talking to the fence-sitters first. Her closing message was for parents and grandparents. Her own family believed they were building social justice for their children. She grew up in a totalitarian state. Think about what you’re handing down. We’re doing Part 3: what happens to people once the state controls everything — what she calls the lots of things that happen before the gulag. Yuri Bezmenov interview: [BEZMENOV CLIP LINK] Part 1: [EP 315 LINK] Follow Zuzana on X: @DenZuzana This episode is supported by Snoot Spray — https://www.snootspray.com/UTN Let’s stay sane together. Keep your head on a swivel. — Bruce This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit unscrewthenews.substack.com/subscribe
