Ep.86 Exposing Communist Infiltration in America w/ Julie Behling

Welcome to the Programming Lions podcast! In this episode, we're joined by Julie Behling—author, speaker, and creator of the documentary 'Beneath Sheep's Clothing.' Julie discusses the dangers of communism and its infiltration into American society. She shares her journey from being a missionary in Russia to writing her master's thesis on underground Christian movements in the Soviet Union. Julie then explains how she recognized similar Soviet tactics being used in America, which led to the creation of her book and subsequent documentary. The conversation covers essential topics such as the tactics used by communists, the infiltration of educational and religious institutions, and how to defend against these ideologies. This episode is a must-watch for anyone concerned about societal structures and the preservation of freedom.

Links:

Website: https://beneathsheepsclothing.movie

X: https://x.com/JulieABehling

FB: https://www.facebook.com/julie.a.behling

IG: https://www.instagram.com/beneathsheepsclothing/

TIMELINE

00:00 Introduction to Julie Bealing

00:37 Julie's Background and Early Experiences

03:47 The Making of Beneath Sheep's Clothing

06:04 Communism's Impact and Tactics

09:44 Christianity vs. Communism

11:36 Modern Communist Infiltration

12:27 The Hierarchy of Communism

13:04 Communism's Influence on Social Movements

14:50 Life Under Soviet Rule

17:02 Woke Marxism in America

20:20 Teaching Kids About Freedom

22:45 Conclusion and Future Plans

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Programming Lions podcast. Today we have Julie Behling on the show. She is an author, a speaker, and the brains behind the documentary Beneath Sheep's Clothing. She warns about the dangers of communism as well as the infiltration of communist ideas into American society. So we got a lot to unpack. Let's get into it.

JULIE_BEHLING-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_311ms-StreamYard: 0:28

Julie bailing, thanks for joining the podcast today. We're excited to have you and get into some of your expertise a little bit more. Oh, max, are you okay? Yep. Okay, perfect. So Julie, you are an author, a writer. A filmmaker. And can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what sparked you into this collaboration with Beneath Sheep's Clothing? A movie that I've seen that the boys haven't, but I want to hear more about that. Yeah, so I'm, I'm a mom. I have a 10-year-old son. I homeschool mom. Okay. And I live in Southern Utah. I was a missionary in Russia in the late nineties and I lived there for a year and a half. And I came back to the us, went to graduate school for Russian and East European studies, a Russian language and literature. And then I ended up writing my master's thesis on underground Christian movements in the Soviet Union and their survival tactics and the tactics of the Soviet state to try to dismantle Christianity. And that was in 2004 when I defended my thesis. And then in 2008 I started seeing the same things, the same Soviet tactics to destroy Christianity. Happening in America. Wow. And it, it, it shocked me and I took a closer look and it was all there. And so I started my research for my book Beneath Sheep's Clothing, Uhhuh, and wrote that over a period of couple years, got to a dead end, set it aside. Mm-hmm. Finally pulled it back out in 2021 to finish it. Yeah. We used a Soviet Union, Russia. Russia was part of the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was several republics. They that encompassed Ukraine, Russia, countries like Armenia, Uzbekistan, several different countries. There are 12 republics of the former Soviet Union. Yeah. Was Russia. Was Russia was, sorry? Was Russia still called? Russia called, it was called Russia. But Russia was a republic of the Soviet Union. Right. It was like, like one of the states of the United States. It was not a country by itself. Once the Soviet Union was founded in the early 20th century. And you spent how many years over there? A year and a half. A year and a half, yeah. I had graduated from my undergraduate before going on my mission to Russia. And I had to take a foreign language for part, I was studying biology for my undergrad. Okay. And I was planning on registering for Spanish since I had taken two years of Spanish in high school. But there's a lot of interesting stories about what led me on this path. I actually, the night before registering, I had a dream and in my dream. A guy that I had a crush on and his dad, who I hadn't met yet, we're speaking Russian in my dream. Oh, wow. And his dad actually was living in Russia at the time. His, and was the head of the Russian department at my university. Okay. And in the dream I wanted to speak Russian so badly. I was like, I wanted to speak Russian. So I decided to register for Russian the next day. So I took two and a half years of Russian in my undergrad, and then I decided. To go be a missionary. And I actually didn't get to pick to go to Russia, but that's where they decided to send me based on my language expertise, I guess. Oh, okay. I got it. I not like I could even speak Russian after two and a half years. I couldn't say hardly anything, so they Do you, do you still know any Russian? Yeah, I speak to my cats in Russian all the time and like, like, can you speak to us on Russian? Oh, wow. That sounds cool. That sound cool actually, I said, of course, I, I really love the Russian language. Mm-hmm. It is a beautiful language actually. I'll teach you how to say hello. What, like a sneeze and then if you're a Russian man, you s slur together. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Very cool. And so then the film, Beni Sheep's clothing came out. Yeah. So just a little bit more backstory. Mm-hmm. So I, I, when I was finishing the book mm-hmm. I took some time off from my businesses, the beginning of 2022. That's when I came across the content of James Lindsay, which helped catch my book up to modern day. 10 years had passed and so much more had happened with the communist takeover of education, Uhhuh, and the churches too. And then Trevor Loudon, I came across his content. Okay. And it was absolutely shocking. I finished the book in the end of March, 2022. It had been 20 years from the time that I started my research for my thesis to publishing my book, and I thought that was like the end, the culmination. I was gonna be really proud of myself. I was gonna sleep well that night. Published the book, went to bed that night, couldn't sleep. I was up till four in the morning and I was seeing in my mind's eye concepts from my book in cinematic format. Oh wow. It felt like it was, I was being shown that was the next step. So I just, I was really tired and I was just like, okay, God, if this is the next step for me, you're gonna have to send me someone who can work with film or video like this.'cause that's way beyond my capability. Mm-hmm. And a few weeks later, a documentary filmmaker contacted me. And someone who I'd been Facebook friends with. Mm-hmm. Didn't, never met him in person. Yeah. He said, Hey, I saw you post about your book. It looks really interesting. It looks like it should be made into a documentary. I'm a documentary filmmaker. Wow. Would you be open to talking with me? And I was like yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. And then, but I had no money to pay him. And then getting funding was a whole other thing. Oh yeah, for sure. I'm sure. Well. We, my wife and I, we watched it. It was a great film. Thank obviously you're a, a major part of it and we've we've met James Lindsay. He was a, had a big role in that too. Yeah. It's very informative. Yes. A bit terrifying. Yeah. And it's got some graphic nature. It's not really for kids, it's, it's a little mature, but I would say 16 and up. Yeah. Okay. But it is terrifying to see some of these tactics and how they're showing up. And so that probably leads us into some of the questions that the boys and I were exploring, what important things would he say to kids about communist Methods and Dangers? Because a lot of people in our comments always say stuff about how communists, or like, how like sometimes we talk about communism, they say like, oh, it's not that bad. It was just done wrong. So he may talk about the dangers and all that stuff with it. Sure. To start with, communism is the deadliest societal system in the history of the world. It's killed more people than any other system. So that's a pretty big red flag right there. Yeah. And it, it purports to uplift the underprivileged, but what it does is oppress everyone. Mm-hmm. Except for the tiny elite at the top who get to run the show. It's basically a power grab. The people at the top of the communist system have. Godlike power and people have almost no power. And Marxism, I'm sure you've heard that term. Yep. The way I, there's so many different definitions. I don't get into political theory. I, I'm a very practical person. Yeah. Marxism, I define it as the playbook to prepare a society to fall to communism. Mm-hmm. Where you harness the oppressed versus oppressor, where you locate a group of people who are oppressed or who can be made to feel oppressed. You tell them they're oppressed. You stoke grievance and get them really riled up. Yeah. And then you point out, oh, that's your oppressor right there. Yeah. Go, go sick him. Like tear down that system of power. Right. And then when that power vacuum, the communists are able to come in and take over everything. Mm-hmm. So that's my definition. That's how others have described it to us too. And we, yeah, we had the pleasure of meeting with James Lindsay and Matt Lomeyer and they described it very, very similarly and yeah, I still find it fascinating. As Will said, we've put out a couple of posts of podcasts that we've had with some of these great guests and. Invariably, people come in and say, well, you guys just don't understand it. You just don't get it. It wasn't done right. And so I find that fascinating because to your point, the first point you made was that the track record of communism has the highest death toll of any system that's ever been tried or attempted. So yeah. And for those people, what I say is, okay, so it wasn't communism. Every society that has attempted to implement communism has ended in the blood bath. Yeah. What are some of the main pillars that fall when communism happens. So communism, the way, the reason people keep falling for it is because there are a lot of oppressed people throughout the history of the world. Yes. That's obvious. That's what, that is a major theme throughout history. And then in America, there's not as much oppression as, let's say, czarist Russia for sure. But what they're doing is weaponizing our empathy for the oppressed.'cause Americans do not, like most of us, almost every American, we don't like to hear about people being oppressed. And so they, they've weaponized our empathy. But some of the hallmarks they supposedly under communism. Let the people own the means of production. Right. The people. But it's really the tiny elite. Oh, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna control everything in the name of the people. Yeah. And so you're gonna get, you're gonna get a bunch of free stuff. You're gonna get free healthcare, you're gonna get free education, free housing, guaranteed employment, but no freedom. Sorry about that. Lots of free stuff, no freedoms. Yeah. So that's a major hallmark. And then people who want to opt out. No, they're gonna get arrested and sent to the Gulag. Mm-hmm. Maybe executed. Yeah, because you're not allowed to opt out. Wait, is the Gulag a jail? The Gulag is a, a system of prison camps that the Soviet Union had and involved people being starved working like, it's like labor camps. And they were labor camps. They were reeducation camps. They were horrific. And honestly, they were worse than, I mean, obviously the Holocaust was terrible, but the thing about the Gulag is. Like, at least in the Holocaust, people were put outta their misery more quickly. In most cases, in the Gulag, they would be there for 10, 15, 20 years, sometimes brutal, 25 years. God, people would have multiple sentences. There were people in my research, some of these underground Christians that served 30 years in the Gulag. That's a great segue. Can you tell me a little bit about why they want to stomp on Christianity? Yes. As a main sort of priority? Yeah, because it's the main ideological threat. To communism, because communism is like, well, we're gonna save, we're gonna save all of humanity and set up a godless utopia on earth. But Christians like, well, we're, we're going to, to heaven. Yeah. It's, it's a utopia in heaven with God. And they don't want that competition. They want to. So they, they wanna replace Chris Christianity with communism as the religion, basically. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. And, and with Lenin And Stalin as the, as God, yeah. And they and Len Stalin were deified. They were, they were children in schools in the Soviet Union, especially in the early decades, were taught to see Lennon, Stalin almost as lots. Yeah. I remember like vividly one of the examples in Beneath Chief's clothing where the teacher was I think in front of the class and. Ask the kids to hold out their hand and close their eyes and ask God for, ask God for candy. Yeah. No candy came. Now close your eyes and ask Sta one for candy linen. Yeah. Or linen. I'm sorry. And, and the teacher wouldn't put candy in all her hands. Wild. And that's real. My, my major professor in grad school, she grew up in the Soviet Union. She escaped, had the skin bird teeth. She told us that story. That was a very common that's just, it's wild to imagine. So are people kind of like asleep and not really seeing the communist strategy? Yeah, because it's, it's, they say lots of really nice things like, oh, you care about the oppressed, right? Mm-hmm. Let's, let's talk about how communists in America talk. Well, don't you care about black and brown people? Oh, you're, oh, you're a racist. Oh, you don't want communism, you're a racist. Right? When they don't call it communism, they use other words. So they, they trick people and they trick people, and they, they promise all these things. Again, lots of free stuff and like, oh, liberation from oppression. Mm-hmm. But yeah. But that's not what the result ever has been. This is such a fascinating topic. We probably talk all day about it, but do you think that it has been largely like a psyop from countries like Russia or Soviet Union and China to infiltrate and, and try to embed these ideas into the youth and the education system? Yes. But it's, it's, it's worse than that. So communism has come to America from many different sources. Mm-hmm. It's insinuated in the documentary, but my book goes into a little more detail. The first people to really bring communism to America, where America's elite. Mm-hmm. Some of the top elite and some of the robber barons, Rockefeller Carnegie were the ones funding. The infiltration of the schools and the churches and as they were taking over every part of society. And why would that be? Well, so I call this, there, there's this pyramid. It's a pyramid scam. Communism is a pyramid scam. Mm-hmm. And I, there's different levels of communist enablers. The very top, it's the money bags and puppet masters. Mm-hmm. They themselves are not communists, but. Communism is a really great way for them to keep the masses down and they can stay, keep themselves in power. Yeah. Then the next level is the avowed communists who, who admit they're communists. There's not that many of them in America, but they played a key role. But then the next levels are the biggest. We have our fellow travelers who are the liberals, progressives. They don't want communism, but they, they agree with a lot of the things that communists say. Yeah. And they have been the ones driving much of our push left in America than we have the Duke. Oops. The people that have fallen for the lies, like Black Lives Matter. Oh yeah. Black Lives do Matter. So I'll go, I'll go March for Black Lives Matter. Not knowing that it's a Marxist organization. Yeah. Wow. So Marxists what they, and communists, what they do is they, they co-opt existing movements that people agree with and infiltrate them and twist them for their own purposes. They did that with feminism. They did that with civil rights. They've done that. They've infiltrated Christianity. They've infiltrated everything and then try to twist it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what's powerful about that is there's some truth in these movements. Right, exactly. So it's easy to fall for it because it's, well, of course Black Lives Matter. Right. We care about that. Right. And then yeah, you find yourself sort of like doing any, you know, anything that they say. Yeah. Because you don't wanna fall out of their graces. I feel the same with like LGBT and, and a lot of these movements that become almost like, yeah, like cultish religious organizations. But but yes, there's some truth to it, which makes people like, yes, communism marries a truth to a lie, and the truth is that people have been oppressed and, and maybe mistreated, but the lie is that the, the tactics that the communists propose will actually help the oppressed. Yeah. Yeah. That's the lie. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. Well, and what's tricky is, people are down on capitalism and greed but, you know, that really exists in all these systems. What I, sometimes, the way I like to think about it in terms of why capitalism is a often a better option is because at least we have the option Yeah. In, in a capitalist system, we have the option to, you know, not buy or not. Do that thing. Yeah. In a, in a socialist or a, or a, like a Marxist or communist system, you don't have the option because you'll be put to the gulag. Yeah. I mean, just let a little paint a really quick picture for life in the Soviet Union in like, let's say the seventies, eighties, like in the, its later years. You go to the grocery store, the grocery stores in Russia, even when I was there in the late nineties, it, it was a room. The size of, from that booth to over here, just smaller actually. Mm-hmm. And you go in and you have to, you don't get to like take stuff off the shelf. You have to talk to the guy and there's just very limited things to choose from. Yeah. And as far as clothing, they would, there was just, everyone was wearing the same clothes that there was just a few things to choose from. Everyone's apartment's identical. Mm-hmm. And it's tiny and cheaply built. Yeah. That's all that you had to choose from. So they started smuggling blue jeans into the Soviet Union in the eighties. It was like really the hottest commodity on the black market. Yeah. American blue jeans. Yeah. Wow. And even things like music, right? They had to Oh yeah. You kinda had to get pirated music and sneak it into the country. Yeah. It was unlocked like so PO poets and, and musicians and various people, if their works did not, they had to glorify communism or else they were not allowed to. They had to fit into that system. Or they could be executed. There was a, a famous poet, there were several famous poets in the Soviet Union that were writing things that were contraband. Mm-hmm. And that maybe were not completely like gushing over how great a Soviet Union was. And they had to do that in secret. And they had to, their stuff had to be smuggled. Their works had to be smuggled out of the USSR to be published. Wow. Wow. Wild. Because many poets got the firing squad. That means shot to death. Yeah. Executed. Yeah. Yeah. Or the gulag. Scientists, max, what do you think of that, buddy? It just doesn't sound too good, does it? Scientists, if they, if they came up with the wrong conclusions in their scientific research, would also get sent to the Gulag or be executed. Yeah. Yeah. Wrong conclusions. Meaning the conclusions didn't sufficiently glorify the Soviet Union in communism. Right, right. Well, we've seen some of that in the past few years. Yeah. Yeah. Trust the science Max. You gotta trust the science. Unify. So what does that exactly mean? Yeah, so we have to first unpack what woke means, and a lot of people know what that means, but it's still, it's a little bit mystifying. So woke Marxism and I'm, and really grateful for all the research and work of James Lindsay to like really elucidate on all of this. It's the version of Marxism that metastasized in America, and I'm using this term, this is actually not my term, marxism uses gain of function. It's a gain of function. Ideology. Yeah. So in order to take over a society, it mutates. And so woke is the way that Marxism has been able to infiltrate America. Because again, Marxism in the, in Russia, before the Russian Revolution, it was the, the lower class people versus the middle and upper class. Mm-hmm. The proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. It was class warfare that they, that's how they were able to topple the Russian SAR and get in communism. Right. But that didn't work in America. So the weakest area of America was the legacy of slavery. Yeah. And so they're able to capitalize much more easily on grievance of black people and people of color versus white, white supremacy supposedly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose en gender and then you have Yes. And then preference and things that the lt, lgbtq, and then also like women feminism and all that stuff. Yeah. So all these different groups that, that have felt marginalized in America, which people have been marginalized in America Sure. Have been able to be radicalized Yeah. Through, through people infiltrating their movements and turning them woke. And so one of the things that I like to explain, so kids, our kids are being programmed in the schools mm-hmm. To become woke. Yeah. And it's like putting on a pair of goggles. I call'em the woke goggles, where you see everything through a single lens of power dynamics, oppressed versus oppressor. Right. So you see racism everywhere. You owe everything's racist. Yeah, of course. Everything is homophobic, transphobic, misogynist. And the truth is there is some of that. Sure. But not everything is just that. Right, right. And and so. To unify, what do we need to do or what message would you have for kids like, we, we started this channel largely because we, I feel like, saw through the goggles of Wokes and like, well, this doesn't make sense. Like, why are we speaking like this, doing this? Why are kids being made to feel guilty for slavery when it was like they were not here? Yeah, I know. And nobody has good solutions. You know, I always have everybody. And it brings up reparations. I say, well, how much to whom and from whom? Like, if you can give, tell me that, then like, let's have a discussion. But nobody can, it's just like this endless this endless battle of oppression. So, and at some point you gotta move on, like people have bad things happen. But, but anyway, so we started this movement largely to get our kids waking up and maybe unfi. Yeah. And to bring that message more to the gen alpha. Universe so that we can get the pendulum swinging back the other way. Because I personally very, very concerned about social and culture wars and what that's doing to our nation is just stripping out traditions and, you know, nuclear family and all this. So, but from your perspective and studies and having a child similar ages, what are some things that kids should be aware of and they can do to, kind of battle this? Yeah, so I, I actually wrote some home lessons for parents to teach their kids. Okay. The first one is free. People can go to peoples network. Us, I can make sure I have it up there, but it's called Why does Freedom Matter? This lesson is for age eight ish and up. Okay. And it's, it's to really bring home that, that initial concept like freedom versus tyranny. Mm-hmm. Then this, I had a second lesson. The red flags of tyranny set. You got censorship propaganda. You've got all these different things. Yep. And I'll just, I'll just give what the activity is for that lesson, because people can do this with their kids at home. You start out, pick a board game, one that has money in it, like Monopoly. Yep. And you set yourself up as, as the banker. And then you, if you have multiple kids, make an agreement with one of them ahead of time that if things get out of hand, that is their job to escort any other kid out and put them in a different room if that's gonna be jail. Okay. And so what you do is you start the game, let's say it's Monopoly and you play it like normally for five minutes. Mm-hmm. And then. You make an announcement and you're like, oh, by the way, from now on, anytime anyone passes, go, you're going to, you get your$200, and then you have to give me a hundred dollars, okay, of your 200, and then when I pass go, I get$500. Yeah. You like change the rules so that only you can win. Yeah. And when someone is like, no, that's not fair, and like, no, no, no, you, you're gonna, you're gonna play this way or there's jail for you. Wow. And then I mean, everything, you know? Yeah. We should do that. But, so, because that's what we should try that, that's what communism does. It, it stacks the deck so that only the people at the top can win and keep your power. Right. No one else has a chance. I call being Baker. Right. I'm sure you would max as far as like unpacking woke Marxism like. It, it's a complicated topic. It's over my son's head who's 10. Mm-hmm. So, but that's why I'm creating UNFI specifically for high school and college age kids. Yeah. To really unpack the different aspects of wokes and un brainwash. Yeah. I hope many, many young people. Yeah. So are you in, are you still kind of in the middle of building out on Wfi as a platform? I would say beginning. Okay. Beginning stages. Yeah. I have a demo video and. And I have laid out 16 lessons. Okay. There'll be a five minute video discussion questions and an activity. Again, high school, college age. Yeah. And hoping to, I'm connecting with Turning Point people here. Good to see if their turning point in chapters would be interested in using this in their chapters. Yeah, I'm sure they would. And well, as it gets developed, we'd maybe love to talk to you again about that because our audience is, is very much like Gen Z, gen Alpha, and parents of those kinds of those age kids. So Right. It would be great to get access to that and, and tell people about it. Yeah. So maybe with that, what we'll do is we will wrap. This is a complicated topic. I appreciate you going over with us, Julie, and I know we can go into a, that's insane. A lot more depth, we've scratched the surface of what it is and I think it's important for kids to understand at least that much, so that they can be equipped to sort of identify when they see it. Once you see it, you see the patterns and it's obvious. Yeah. So, and then, and if you're not letting your emotions be manipulated into like, oh, you're a bad person if you don't go along with this agenda. Like, no, I'm not a bad person. Right. I'm not going along with that. Right, right. Yeah. We're looking forward to UNFI and Beneath Sheep's clothing. You wanna tell us how to access it and how the film is going? Yeah, we've gotten great reviews. Glen Beck is a huge fan. Charlie? Kurt. Yeah. Senator, we watched it. We're fans. Yeah. Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Helping get it gets out. I actually gave a copy of it to Roger Stone yesterday. Okay. Say, Hey, Trump needs to see this. So I'm hoping it goes all the way to Trump. People can stream it online at Beneath Sheep's clothing movie. Also, if they can purchase DVDs there, we have a way for people to. Be able to get the rights to show it to a large group, like let's say a church. Okay. Every Christian needs to see this film. Every parent of, of children in schools needs to see this film. And also, Salem now is a streaming platform that has it, we're working on getting it on Amazon, but Okay. They're, we're having some problems. They're saying it's too controversial. Yeah. My business partner's working on that to get on some other platforms. With that, let's call it a wrap. And thanks so much, Julie, for coming on the show. We'll put the links to your film and your book and everything in the description so people can check it out. Awesome. And then maybe we'll circle back when when Unify comes around. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Alright. Thanks so much. Thank you.