Mysterium Fasces Episode 46 — Bulgaria + The White Front
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 22 minutes
Words per Minute
136.09781
Hate Speech Sentences
118
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the history of nationalism in Bulgaria, the fall of communism, and the horrors of the Gulag Gulag death camps. We also talk about the atrocities committed by the communist regime, including the use of dynamite and forced labor camps.
Transcript
00:13:29.740
familiar with Bulgaria at all. And certainly, I can only speak for myself, but I have no
00:13:36.540
great or deep knowledge on the history of nationalism in Bulgaria and on the current
00:13:41.080
state of political affairs. Although I have certainly met some very good Bulgarians of
00:13:47.340
high character over the years. So maybe we can start by talking a little bit about the
00:13:53.740
history of the Bulgarian nation and the history of nationalism in Bulgaria. We can either
00:14:01.140
start with the establishment of the third Bulgarian state or maybe the post-World War II, the grip
00:14:12.780
No, I thought you were going to make me go back thousands of years.
00:14:17.660
That would have been a hassle because the communists changed up a lot of history and
00:14:25.220
there's lots of theories and lots of things are very controversial nowadays about ancient
00:14:32.420
history that is. But about the establishment of the third Bulgarian states, there was after
00:14:38.040
the Russo-Turkish War where we had volunteers in there. After we had a failed uprising where
00:14:44.580
the Turks literally slaughtered all the people here.
00:14:47.660
So we practically enacted revenge and in backlash, we kind of slaughtered them as well.
00:14:55.420
After that, we got the Russian government for about like one or two years where they set
00:15:00.980
things up. We got a German monarch, Alexander I of Battenberg, because he was a cousin of the
00:15:09.700
Russian emperor at the time and he was suggested.
00:15:11.600
Then afterwards, he abdicated because of fighting in the Serba Bulgarian War, because of unification,
00:15:23.340
complications, Balkan stuff. In World War I, we joined the Central Powers because of what happened
00:15:31.600
in the Balkan Wars. Lots of land that we lost, we wanted to regain it and Germany was the only
00:15:36.780
country offering it at the time. Of course, we lost it, but we were very close to Germany and less
00:15:44.300
less so to Russia from that moment on. And afterwards, in World War II, we joined the Axis. We will remain
00:15:53.660
neutral for most of the time, but even though we remained neutral, we got bombed by Anglo-American bombers,
00:16:01.660
we got invaded by the Soviet army, and we ended up turning into a communist state. Communism was very
00:16:09.900
rough. My great-grandfather was one of the people sent to a death camp for not wanting to give up his
00:16:16.340
land. He was a hero, basically, from World War I, so it was very rough on the family.
00:16:25.500
Yeah, I can imagine. It kind of seems like pretty typical narrative for most places where communism
00:16:34.340
took over. I was recently in the Czech Republic, and I had the opportunity to go to the Museum of
00:16:41.400
Communism there, and they were talking about how they would, when they first were engaging in mass
00:16:46.000
collectivization, anybody who refused to give up their property, especially people who were religious
00:16:50.980
and politically agitated against the regime. Often they would send them to uranium mines,
00:16:57.700
where they would, you know, work them with no protective gear, and so all of these guys would
00:17:02.180
die of radiation exposure, you know, and get horribly disfigured immediately.
00:17:06.740
Yeah, yeah. What they did here, the most disgusting thing that I know of is a death camp very close to
00:17:15.220
where I live. It's not where my great-grandfather was sent. That was another one, but this one,
00:17:20.180
especially, they made everyone climb up to a mining hill where they would mine for something. I'm not
00:17:26.180
totally sure what, but while they're mining on the hill, they placed dynamites, and basically everyone
00:17:31.540
on the hill needed to either jump off or get blown up by the dynamite, and you have people falling down
00:17:37.300
and breaking their necks, their legs, everything, and practically dying instantly, or you had people being
00:17:42.980
exploded by the dynamite. And there was other, like, prisoners there that needed to collect the body
00:17:50.420
parts afterwards. I've heard stories of, like, old people that were there that were talking, you know,
00:17:55.940
you pick up, you see heads, torsos, legs, arms flailing around, and when they fall down, they're still,
00:18:03.540
they're still, like, twitching, and you need to pick it up very fast, or else you're gonna get shot.
00:18:11.620
And then the commissar practically needed to, needed to burn it all. You know, these people were
00:18:18.980
the same savages that fought in Russia, the partisans. They went up in the hills and came down,
00:18:25.460
burned the village down, and took all the things and left. These, they're obviously, you know,
00:18:31.860
always been led by Jews, even here. The most prominent Jew is, uh, that I can think of at the
00:18:37.700
moment is a woman named, uh, Violeta Yakova. She was, um, she was a partisan that killed Kristu Lukov,
00:18:46.020
actually. She went up to him in front of his house and shot him, um, I think it was several
00:18:52.980
times in the chest in front of his six-year-old daughter, I think it was. And he was shot dead,
00:19:00.260
practically, there. And that's when we lost, uh, the most prominent fascist leader in the country
00:19:08.420
Fascinating. Do you want to go into a little bit of the history of, um, you know, fascist and
00:19:13.220
national socialist politics in, uh, Bulgaria? Um, because...
00:19:17.620
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, um, there's a lot of controversy nowadays,
00:19:24.900
especially if they were fascist or if they weren't just because people shy away from that
00:19:29.860
thinking that they can, uh, subdue the government, not banning events, such and such. But every year,
00:19:36.100
you know, they try banning it and eventually it's going to go. But basically, Kristu Lukov was
00:19:43.140
not the founding member, but he was the most high, high standing member because he was an officer
00:19:48.900
in the army and a hero from World War I. He, in World War I, he, what he did was, uh, he was still
00:19:56.020
not even a major major. And what happened was he was on the border to Serbia and while we were using
00:20:02.260
the war, his entire battalion, or I'm not sure if it was a battalion or division, mutinied and they
00:20:09.460
all left the front. And he was practically left there only by himself against, uh, literally
00:20:14.260
thousands of Serbian soldiers. And he fired cannons all night. So we didn't lose a city of
00:20:20.020
60,000 Bulgarians just because he fired cannons and there was a sheep herder that actually handed him
00:20:26.580
the shells. So he practically saved an entire city. And when the Serbian, uh, commanding officer found out
00:20:32.820
that it was this, uh, one man and a sheep herder, he spit on the ground and shook his hand out of,
00:20:39.540
uh, wow. Yeah. Uh, it didn't, uh, the playwright George Bernard Shaw write a famous, uh, play about
00:20:49.140
the, uh, Bulgar-Serbo war? First of all. Uh, I, I don't know about that. I know that in the
00:20:56.820
Surud, uh, famous Russian song, uh, what's, I forgot the name actually, Farewell Slavyanka. It was
00:21:03.620
actually written about Bulgarians in, uh, the first world war though. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I can, um,
00:21:12.100
the history of the modern kind of state of Bulgaria is only about 130 years old. And so it kind of went
00:21:18.980
from a kind of German-led monarch, uh, you know, standard European, uh, monarchial system. During
00:21:26.420
that time, was it, um, semi-constitutional? Was there a parliamentary apparatus? Uh, how,
00:21:31.780
I guess the question is, you know, how, what is the history of liberalism like in Bulgaria? And has
00:21:37.220
there, please go ahead. It's always been hard for every monarch to do his job because when the Russians
00:21:43.300
came and gave us a constitution, you know, we had a Russian government for about one or two years,
00:21:47.700
so they can set up the state. Um, they set up literally the most, one of the most liberal
00:21:54.340
constitutions in all of Europe. So you, we had a constitutional monarchy, a government,
00:21:59.780
even though the conservatives were, which were practically, you know, they answered every single
00:22:05.620
desire of the, um, of the monarch, you know, they were very decent most of the time, especially our
00:22:11.460
first prime minister that, uh, was actually a veteran from the Russo-Turkish war in the,
00:22:17.620
uh, uprising before that. It worked most of the time because we had the government in our pocket,
00:22:23.620
but in situations like when we lost World War I, you know, people mutinied from the front and went
00:22:28.820
back to the cities. And then the Tsar had to abdicate the monarch and, uh, actually a liberal
00:22:35.620
government took over led by agrarians. Uh, he was literally, the guy that led the agrarians actually
00:22:42.500
didn't even feel like a Bulgarian. He, he was, he said himself, he was a Yugoslav.
00:22:47.940
He gave up Bulgarian insurgents in Yugoslavia to the Serbs, gave information about them.
00:22:53.700
And eventually, you know, his government got couped by the monarch and he actually took power again.
00:22:59.220
And that's when the country started being actually productive. And we actually started to develop
00:23:04.820
again, just as prior to that. So that, yeah, so the monarchy treated the Bulgarian nation fairly well.
00:23:12.980
So in the, um, I guess the, the, uh, the question is, it doesn't seem to me that there's been a huge
00:23:19.380
amount of time, uh, where Bulgaria has been exposed to kind of the treachery of hard liberalism or,
00:23:26.500
um, communism in a way that's, um, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that fascism usually is a
00:23:31.700
reaction to, um, end stage liberalism and communism. And it just seems to me that, uh,
00:23:38.740
I guess my question is, what is the level of development of Bulgarian, um, you know,
00:23:45.700
far right nationalist, you know, thought and, uh, history aside from the monarchical history?
00:23:54.580
Well, there was the movement by the Tristovokov led. That was a very big movement. It was the
00:24:01.460
biggest in the country at the most prominent members, legionnaires. And then there were the
00:24:07.140
ratniks, which were much more, much smaller, but very radical. They were actually banned by the
00:24:12.820
government because they didn't want to get problems with them because what they did in the forties,
00:24:17.940
people can look this up. It was called the Bulgarian crystal knots where they went out and
00:24:21.940
they smashed Jewish shops. And they were, they were very orthodox in the sense that they were,
00:24:27.460
uh, they were basically like our version of Kudriano's movements in, uh, Romania. Uh,
00:24:34.100
very, they loved the orthodox church a lot and they follow a lot of teachings.
00:24:39.860
And after they were banned, they, you know, they still operated. A lot of them joined the SS.
00:24:44.820
And afterwards, the last remnants of, uh, national socialism in the country was when the country
00:24:50.500
got taken over by communism and, uh, uh, there was, um, uh, government in a different country.
00:24:57.380
I don't know how that was called exactly, but it was another fascist, uh, Alexander Tsanco that
00:25:03.060
actually led a government in, oh, it was a government in exile from Austria. And a lot of them,
00:25:09.300
I think they fought in Vienna till, till eventually the communists came and, uh, practically butchered
00:25:16.740
them all. Uh, but that's not written. There's not enough written about it to be sure what they
00:25:22.500
fought till the end. Interesting. So I guess there's a whole bunch of different directions that we could
00:25:30.980
go here. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the post Soviet state of the, um, state of Bulgaria.
00:25:39.380
So it's been about, um, 30 years since the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet empire.
00:25:45.780
Um, now Bulgaria was an independent republic, as I understand, uh, in the Warsaw Pact. And so you,
00:25:53.060
you know, what you said that communism was very heavy handed on Bulgaria. How was it compared to places
00:26:00.500
like, um, you know, Romania or, you know, Czechoslovakia where, well, I don't know
00:26:08.500
about how heavy handed it was in that sense, because I was in, my father traveled to Romania.
00:26:14.740
I know that, uh, the Romanian dictator actually left the country in such a state where they had
00:26:20.740
zero depth to anyone, but you know, it's, they, after communism fell there, they were practically
00:26:27.540
all dying because they didn't have any food. While over here, the transition was a lot more peaceful.
00:26:32.820
We just had recession and things like that, which fixed itself semi, uh, decently over time as
00:26:40.020
decent as you can get in this part of Europe, I suppose. Um, afterwards, you know, democracy,
00:26:47.380
of course, like every Soviet country, I post Soviet country, they always, you know, uh, sold all the
00:26:53.060
factories practically to themselves, abandoned all industry. Like if you, if you take a train across
00:26:58.500
the country, you can see that the country looks like, uh, like a siege scenario has already passed
00:27:07.780
because of all the abandoned factories. And not only are they abandoned, but gypsies go in and they
00:27:12.500
take all the armature, all the steel, all the walls, they literally break it down until there's nothing
00:27:17.540
left like cockroaches. It's, it's almost scary, but you know, that's always fine. Uh, though I know about
00:27:27.460
like, uh, religious, um, they always, uh, stop religious activity in the country. Uh, like my mother
00:27:35.620
told me stories of how she bought an icon at a church, you know, uh, you could have done that. But when her
00:27:41.300
teacher saw it, you know, she, uh, ripped it up or, uh, try it or just basically threw it out.
00:27:48.340
And, uh, one day she was carrying a cross, uh, in school, uh, uh, basically a necklace and her
00:27:55.220
teacher, you know, just threw that out as well. When she saw it and said, yeah, we sent the man to
00:28:01.140
space and he didn't see God. How do you see God? Yeah. Pretty typical, uh, anti-Christian attitude
00:28:09.620
for most of Marx's countries. Marxist countries. So did this church in Bulgaria, uh, was it a,
00:28:15.860
it's, you seem to insinuate it was allowed to continue to operate even under the communist rule.
00:28:20.940
What was the level of repression like on the church by the, um, communist?
00:28:25.700
Well, they practically, they practically killed all the proper Christians in the church. You know,
00:28:31.460
that's why we still face problem problems in the East and the Orthodox churches nowadays in Russia
00:28:36.420
and Bulgaria and Romania. They replaced all of the, um, all of the proper Christians in there,
00:28:42.460
like the patriarchs and stuff like that with, uh, communist spies, basically that would, uh,
00:28:47.480
you go to church and you can't really share anything. And if you do, that guy's going to
00:28:52.740
tell on the secret police and you're going to go to a death camp. It's almost, uh, scary because you
00:28:58.280
had these people and you, they were practically in every corner in every building and you never knew
00:29:02.840
who was an agent, not only in the Orthodox church. It was allowed to operate, but it was a facade just
00:29:08.860
to spy on people. Practically. I think Stalin came up with that idea originally when he allowed it in
00:29:13.880
Russia. Yeah. So there was a sort of a similar situation with the Moscow Patriarch. Um, does that,
00:29:21.260
does that situation continue on, uh, into today? Do you still kind of have the lingering remnants?
00:29:26.060
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a lot worse actually than it got before because we had a scandal a few years ago
00:29:32.480
uh, and I'm sure it practically continues. You had this, um, there was a guy at one of our most,
00:29:39.300
uh, important monasteries in the countries where one of the most prominent nationalist revolutionaries
00:29:45.140
was, uh, even lived for a little bit, hiding from the Ottomans because they were hunting him down,
00:29:50.920
practically. Um, one of the, um, you know, the monks there that actually lived there, they, um,
00:29:59.900
uh, uh, he actually turned out to be a homosexual, uh, to, it's a very complicated situation in that
00:30:08.780
sense. But the, all of the monks, you know, they, when they're not, it's, it's weird. We had a very
00:30:17.760
important Bulgarian, um, I'm not totally sure what the word is, but he was, uh, he was very much,
00:30:25.640
um, endowed in the faith. He basically donated, he lived poor his whole life and he donated over,
00:30:33.020
I think, 70,000, uh, euros or something of that sort to the Orthodox church buildings because they
00:30:39.640
need restoration. And he lived poor his whole life and he died very recently. He was like, um,
00:30:47.460
there's not enough people like him nowadays, I think, where they would give the bread out of their
00:30:52.360
mouth just to, just to be nice, just to be proper. Indeed. Indeed. But yeah, so I guess we can kind of
00:31:03.740
continue on the religious question. So, I mean, what is the general, um, religiosity like in the
00:31:09.820
country post-Sovietism? My understanding is that, you know, it's a liberal state, so it's officially
00:31:14.300
secular, but that Orthodoxy has some level of recognition as a traditional faith. And then most
00:31:19.840
people at least identify as Orthodox, but I know that there's also... Most people do. Yeah. Most
00:31:27.060
people are supposedly Orthodox, but you don't see, you know, you have the typical problems where they
00:31:32.120
go to church and they don't pray. You got the problems where they just wear crosses and put them
00:31:37.120
in their cars just for good luck or something like charms. Well, you know, they, it's, it's stupid really.
00:31:43.220
Uh, I know my father, which is practically agnostic or atheist. I'm not totally sure myself. And he has
00:31:50.600
icons in his car. Like it's, uh, it's, I don't know what the word is even for when someone acts like
00:31:57.960
that, but it's most people do it. Most people do things like that. Of course you have really
00:32:03.280
religious people, mostly old, but they're a dying breed nowadays. Yeah. So that sounds kind of
00:32:09.960
typical, um, for most countries. Has there been after the fall of communism, a resurgence in the
00:32:16.260
religion? I mean, cause we've seen in Russia, though it's certainly not by any means an Orthodox
00:32:20.700
country these days, there is, you know, they're building new churches left and right, uh, church
00:32:24.660
attendances. No, no, no. Churches are falling apart nowadays. The monasteries don't have enough money
00:32:30.220
to be kept because of the monks and patriarchs and everywhere. And the Holy Synod practically
00:32:35.320
steal money. They buy nice cars. It's, it's a disgusting situation. Like you have beautiful
00:32:41.360
churches in, uh, in small villages where they just, the Holy Synod cannot hold them practically.
00:32:47.920
So they abandon them and they take out, um, the person that's serving in there. So you got,
00:32:54.320
um, while at the same time you have lots of, uh, in the South of the country where
00:33:00.020
Turks live and a little bit in the North, you have a lot of mosques being built because
00:33:05.000
they have a lot of funding from, uh, from all over. They even have, uh, from Saudi Arabia,
00:33:09.880
a lot of funding. They have Islamic schools only. And if, because Bulgarians are somewhat
00:33:14.980
of a minority in those parts and different areas, you know, if you don't know your proper,
00:33:22.120
you need to basically accept Islam to go into this school. Uh, even if, even if you do accept
00:33:29.420
Islam and you're a Bulgarian, you're going to be highly discriminated and you're going
00:33:33.500
to be put up before everyone else, you know, Gypsy, Turk, Tatar, Pomak, uh, behind any different
00:33:40.180
minority. Even in my, uh, city, there was a singular mosque because in every city, there
00:33:47.620
was a mosque from the Ottoman empire that was left. They destroyed most of them, but they
00:33:52.260
always left one. And this one is, uh, I think in that situation and this mosque, uh, they
00:33:58.280
played, um, they played Islamic music early in the mornings and, uh, skinhead actually
00:34:04.140
climbed up and took their megaphone and shook, chuck it on the streets. They brought a new
00:34:08.660
one, a very more, a much more expensive one all the way from Saudi Arabia. And everyone
00:34:13.660
complained so much to the mayor where he didn't have any other, uh, choice, but to ban them from
00:34:25.300
Yeah, I can only imagine. I know that this is a huge, uh, hugely contentious issue in most
00:34:30.860
places where, where this is done. Uh, um, so that's an unfortunate situation. Do you think
00:34:38.240
that this is due to, um, you know, the apathy among the population or a systematic corruption
00:34:45.200
among the, the hierarchy and the clergy, you know, kind of both, um, because like, you know,
00:34:51.540
Well, I think it's, I think it's the same time that people see that the job pays well to be a priest
00:34:58.280
and they study it really hard, but these people don't look at, um, don't look at the, you know, uh,
00:35:04.940
benefits to the soul. They just see the material benefits because these people, you know, when they
00:35:10.760
become priests, they study, uh, three or four dead languages. You know, they need to study
00:35:16.540
Latin, uh, Hebrew, Greek, ancient Greek, uh, and the old church Slavonic. Yeah, that's four
00:35:22.800
languages. So it's very hard that they need to study Holy texts and they need to have had good
00:35:29.560
grades practically their entire life to get into, uh, studying these things. And they're surrounded
00:35:34.820
by other people that think the exact same way. And at the same time, you got people that
00:35:40.180
just don't put enough effort when they go to church, you know, to build a community because
00:35:46.020
when people go to church, you know, they're like, uh, let's light a candle. It's more of a cultural
00:35:50.060
thing nowadays, not a religious one where they just light a candle and leave.
00:35:55.700
Yeah. I've heard, uh, similar stories from, from many, um, many Orthodox countries in the East
00:36:03.420
or traditionally Orthodox countries, uh, in the West. I mean, it's the diaspora community
00:36:08.380
tends to be, uh, you get similar levels, but the, the only people that come to church are fairly
00:36:14.060
serious about it. So there's that, there's that consolation at the minimum. Um, would you say like,
00:36:20.220
what's the state of the spiritual atmosphere among the youth? I mean, is atheism predominant?
00:36:25.560
No, it's, it's predominantly atheist nowadays. Yeah. It's, they're just surrounded by all this
00:36:30.760
propaganda and all this, these things on TV and whatnot. And, uh, it's especially in my city,
00:36:37.720
uh, from what I've seen walking around and whatnot, you, you got the same, you got some people
00:36:44.380
which are like their parents, you know, like my parents where they put icons and whatnot and
00:36:49.120
pretend like they not pretend, but they think they're religious or just because they have an icon
00:36:54.040
and went into a church once a year, um, and painted some eggs on Easter. Um, but that's pretty
00:37:01.700
much it. You know, it's predominantly atheists. It's the weed culture of the 21st century.
00:37:07.740
Yeah, that's very unfortunate, although not very surprising. Um, kind of returning to the current,
00:37:16.260
like Bulgarian political climate. I mean, what is the, um, obviously it's a kind of a liberal
00:37:21.680
parliamentary democracy. I mean, is the state, uh, generally speaking conservative, um, is the
00:37:27.840
government, like, is the parliament, um, you know, effective? Is it, you know, cause we have
00:37:33.040
countries like, like, they don't do their job. No, no, not at all. I don't see a difference if it
00:37:39.300
was a conservative or whatever, whatnot, because all the major parties and most of the small ones,
00:37:45.220
you know, have politicians, which either are sons of, uh, communists or practically communists
00:37:52.880
themselves, or in some rare cases, Jews, you got people like, um, the main party ruling for about
00:38:01.620
three terms. Now the guy ruling over it is called Boyko Borisov and he's actually, he was the bodyguard
00:38:10.520
of the communist, um, of the communist dictator, a bodyguard that became a fucking minister.
00:38:18.620
And then you have the Bulgarian socialist party, which is directly descended from the Bulgarian
00:38:23.000
communist party. They advocate for all the murders that happened when the Soviets came, even they're
00:38:27.380
disgusting. At least others pretend like that's not fine. Then you have the liberal party, which is
00:38:33.300
just a masquerade for the Turkish minority party and a gypsy minority party. Um, they practically,
00:38:40.520
uh, in some of their events, even though it's against the constitution, you know, political
00:38:45.140
events, they speak in Turkish, they, uh, their leader was again in the secret service during
00:38:52.320
communism. And at the same time, he was part of, uh, during communism, a Turkish liberation
00:38:58.040
thing, a terrorist group where they blew up, uh, they blew up, uh, while they operated because
00:39:05.220
it was for us for a short time, two train stations in one of the, um, and, uh, both train cars,
00:39:11.680
they were pregnant women when they blew up, uh, all of them Bulgarians. Then you have the biggest
00:39:19.020
patriotic party, um, uh, parties, which are the same. Like there was, there's one VMRO, which, um,
00:39:27.920
the leader of, um, Karakachanov, he was actually as well, a communist, uh, a member of the communist
00:39:35.200
secret service. And this continues how, like to all the different parties, it's just the same
00:39:39.920
everywhere. Yeah. So it sounds to me that the secret police basically, uh, just seized power of the
00:39:49.240
after the secret police and people like mafia bosses, mafia bosses, predominantly mixed with, uh,
00:39:56.280
communists. And just because they all like to steal money, at least in during communism, the money
00:40:01.460
somewhat went into building things and stuff like that. So, you know, we weren't, uh, we weren't afraid
00:40:07.580
of being extinct as a, as a people during communism. Well, now it's, I don't know, it's people complain
00:40:15.780
like, uh, how, because people still, this is Eastern Europe, people are racist, you know,
00:40:20.760
they complain, oh, during communism, we didn't see so many gypsies on the street. Now it's, uh,
00:40:25.480
in some areas, more gypsies or Turks and then Bulgarians. And that's very much true because
00:40:30.420
I don't know, to be honest, the situation has changed a lot.
00:40:39.080
Yeah, I can imagine. So it just sounds to me like it's pretty typical fair. I mean,
00:40:42.680
ineffective parliamentary politics governed by this kind of bureaucratic inertia, the holdover
00:40:47.460
oligarchs and strong men from the Soviet era. What was the level of the liquidation of the
00:40:53.020
economy like in the 1990s? Was it as bad as say the Ukraine or Russia, or was it more like, um,
00:40:59.880
you know, Poland or, uh, or, or, you know, Czech Republic or Hungary, where at least some of the,
00:41:06.480
Almost all of the infrastructure was gone. And the things that weren't gone was, were basically
00:41:12.800
taken over by either these communists or mafia bosses. It was all taken. And now oligarchs rule
00:41:18.680
over all of the business in the country. And most of the time they ended up selling it off. Even
00:41:24.080
what was left to different oligarchs, like the Russian oligarchs own our oil company, the biggest
00:41:30.820
one. And they actually, uh, um, failed it. And nowadays, you know, in my city, especially,
00:41:37.940
you know, it was before communism was, it was 5,000 people. And then the communists made it
00:41:42.900
into a hundred thousand big metropolitan city with lots of factories and all those factories
00:41:48.580
nowadays are gone. And these people mostly have to work in service and whatnot. And the wages aren't
00:41:55.680
good and everything. And a lot of them are moving out to different, uh, either cities or abroad.
00:42:04.480
So what is the, what's the general level of, um, of state efficacy and so on? I mean, are there
00:42:12.120
high levels of, of corruption, um, in day-to-day life?
00:42:16.040
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you mean in day-to-day life?
00:42:20.600
I guess what I'm asking you, you know, our governments, uh, like our government services
00:42:24.500
delivered with any sort of, you know, efficacy. I mean, what, what kind of, you know, state
00:42:28.960
presence is there? Um, you know, like, like for instance, you know, you're saying you're
00:42:33.160
going to a demonstration tomorrow. Do you have confidence in the ability of the state security
00:42:40.780
Well, in the sense of the March coming up, I believe the police will do their job. From what
00:42:48.140
I know they always keep their job and there's not a lot of Antifa to face us, but the state
00:42:55.360
doesn't properly organize the police. They wait, uh, up and because they can't ban the
00:43:00.220
march. It's anti-constitutional. They don't have any rights or any evidence to ban us. And
00:43:05.340
the court always rules in our favor even, but they always wait to, till the last moment
00:43:11.940
to, you know, uh, uh, to block off all the roads so we can march across the streets.
00:43:18.140
Uh, so we can, um, do our, our march basically. And the police always gets there in the last
00:43:24.440
moment at the last second practically and does their job. And they're practically very annoyed
00:43:31.260
at that because the government makes them run. And naturally they take it out as a, you know,
00:43:35.920
these nationalists are making, uh, making their lives a lot harder.
00:43:39.540
Yeah, I can imagine. So, I mean, I guess the other question is in terms of, um, in terms
00:43:49.520
of, uh, you know, so like when we look at, um, let's say like the, you know, the government
00:43:54.560
in Poland, um, you know, Poland's government has been, um, you know, fairly good about providing
00:44:01.920
basic social services for the people and has been strengthening its, um, international health
00:44:07.500
care system, subsidies for families, that kind of thing. What's the state of basic social
00:44:13.040
services in Bulgaria? Uh, I can imagine that under communism, there at least must have been
00:44:17.580
a fairly, uh, robust, you know, infrastructure. I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me.
00:44:23.080
Uh, has that been looted and disintegrated since the fall of communism?
00:44:26.720
Communism left a lot of infrastructure, which could not, could not be kept. And then, and,
00:44:34.260
and serve it as services to the people, you know, uh, some pensioners get like, uh, 40,
00:44:40.580
50 euros a month to live on, even though prices here are a lot lower than Western Europe. That's
00:44:46.660
practically still not, uh, not enough for a person to live on, especially an old person that
00:44:52.480
can barely walk on his feet. And to be a pensioner, you need to be, uh, I think you need
00:44:58.280
to be 50 to 55 years old or you were 60. I'm not totally sure. It was a very old age. Like
00:45:04.320
my father is a mechanic and from his job, you know, it's very, it's very hard to do. It's
00:45:11.540
very heavy on the back and everything. Um, he's not going to be able to do it till he's a pensioner.
00:45:18.200
He's at some point like, uh, going to do something else because that's not going to be, he's not
00:45:22.840
going to make it to pension. Right. Yeah. It's kind of what I figured. So fairly,
00:45:29.180
fairly non-existent, fairly low level of infrastructure post, uh, post communism.
00:45:35.640
It's even, it's even, it's even gotten worse in the sense that we're discriminated in our
00:45:40.840
whole nation, much like in Western Europe, because I'm still a student in school. If you know,
00:45:47.240
in school, they provide this program where you get money from the state, if you have really good
00:45:52.220
grades, like, uh, but a gypsy just to inspire them supposedly to get better grades, um, you know,
00:45:59.540
they give them more money than us. And then a lot of these places, you know, in village, uh, places
00:46:04.120
where there's gypsies and Bulgarians that are a minority. And of course the Bulgarians, you know,
00:46:07.880
are the only educated ones to supposedly try to educate these gypsies. You know, they get beaten
00:46:13.000
up on their job, you know? Oh, why did you write me a low grade? I'm going to beat you up. You're
00:46:17.980
going to take my money away. Practically that type of thing. And it's, it's, it's a scary situation.
00:46:24.980
Like I, I feel like I don't want to study almost because I'm going to get more, much less money
00:46:31.640
from the States. Then, uh, that shit skin over there is going to get. Yeah. So I know that Bulgaria
00:46:41.420
is a member of the EU and NATO. Um, are these kind of, uh, you know, pro gypsy, pro Turk policies,
00:46:48.540
are these a result of, um, Western, um, Western influence or are these the result of the effective,
00:46:56.520
uh, uh, lobbying for power by these minorities through the, uh, parliamentary system or both?
00:47:02.000
Uh, practically both, you know, NGOs, we, uh, we got funded by, uh, there is, we have a small
00:47:10.740
Jewish minority. They're very small, you know, but they have an NGO that gets funded all over a lot
00:47:17.220
of money. You got all the liberal NGOs will get funded, uh, by Westerners, uh, by the EU.
00:47:26.520
Even this year, the, uh, the state is supposed to take care of practically all the EU delegates.
00:47:33.880
And that's why they were trying to ban the March this year. More than any, you got videos
00:47:38.560
online by the world Jewish committee, basically saying, you know, Chris to look of the port.
00:47:44.060
It's so many, so many Jews to trip link, uh, you know, the death camp. But in reality, uh,
00:47:51.300
uh, what's the reality of the situation? He wasn't, um, he wasn't alive.
00:47:56.520
Because he was shot the year prior that, uh, he couldn't have physically signed the documents
00:48:01.780
to, to these Jews, you know, to get sent to these death camps.
00:48:07.580
Yeah. It's being dead is a little bit of a, uh, a barrier to that kind of activity.
00:48:15.040
Yeah, I can imagine. So the, um, is there, is there kind of popular, uh, resentment or,
00:48:23.800
or resistance to membership in, in the EU and NATO? Uh, I know for instance, like in
00:48:29.520
the Czech Republic, there is a very, very, you know, common and widespread Euro skepticism,
00:48:36.480
Yeah. Yeah. You got, you got tons of people that hate the EU here, but at the same time,
00:48:42.320
there is, uh, the country split almost in half of, you know, Russophobes and Russophiles.
00:48:48.780
That's continued most of the history, but now it's even more twisted, uh, than before,
00:48:53.880
because before at least it was, uh, people that were advocating for Germany.
00:48:58.060
Nowadays it's for America and capitalism and whatnot.
00:49:01.020
And you got the Russia, Russia, people that support Russia, you know, they wave literal
00:49:06.780
communist flags sometimes and burn EU flags. Then you got the, uh, the Russophobes, which
00:49:14.100
wave American flags, Ukrainian flags, NATO flags, you know, most of the people aren't and don't
00:49:21.200
fall into those groups directly, but they have a sharp opinion. Generally people don't like
00:49:27.680
the EU. They don't like NATO because they understand that NATO destroyed our army to
00:49:32.500
practically colonize us and put American bases down here. You got, um, our army during communism
00:49:39.300
was 300,000, uh, just soldiers. We got, we had a bit, basically the Warsaw Pact put enough
00:49:46.040
army, uh, put enough army infrastructure and whatnot and weapons and tanks and BTRs just
00:49:53.080
to, and we were just to, you know, be prepared in our country alone to invade at the same time,
00:49:59.900
Greece and take Constantinople from Turks at the, in a week's time, I think it was the biggest,
00:50:07.160
um, uh, biggest training, uh, military exercise in all of the Balkan peninsula at the time.
00:50:15.280
It was a very tense situations to say the least. And nowadays it's all gone from 300,000, uh,
00:50:23.940
military active personnel. We went to 20,000 and that's, it's, they, they have really old
00:50:33.020
uniforms. They don't even, a lot of them still don't even have a Kevlar helmets. They still
00:50:38.260
use the steel ones in some situations, ones from a world war one, you know, Bulgarian style
00:50:43.960
helms, which is, uh, absolutely absurd in the 21st century wearing a steel helmet.
00:50:50.740
Yeah. Wow. That's, uh, that's shocking and dramatic. I can't, cause like, I know for instance
00:50:56.120
in, like there have been other countries where naturally the, of course, after the end of
00:51:02.880
communism in Eastern Europe, NATO promised that they wouldn't, uh, they wouldn't try to gobble
00:51:08.660
up any ex-war sub-packed countries. And naturally they, uh, were lying through their teeth. Um,
00:51:15.080
and the, I know that, you know, in the case of, um, Poland and Czech Republic, some of these
00:51:20.260
other countries that, um, they made a whole bunch of exceptions to their military infrastructure. Um,
00:51:27.300
you know, allowing, cause like all NATO infrastructure has, has to be compatible with one another.
00:51:32.140
Right. And so it's, uh, it sounds to me that Bulgaria was uniquely, um, uh, stripped of
00:51:38.500
its, uh, uh, uh, military capital. Do you know if a lot of this extra material was, uh, like
00:51:45.480
sold on the black market or exported to other countries or, uh, you know, a lot of it was
00:51:49.360
sold to the black market, like you said, and a lot of it was, uh, practically scrapped for
00:51:55.140
metal. Uh, a lot of it's got sold to different countries. Yeah. Uh, I remember there's a video
00:52:00.820
online basically literally, uh, you know, uh, T7, T50s are outdated, but you can still keep
00:52:07.260
them at least when you don't have anything else. And there was a train of, uh, I think
00:52:11.940
150 T50s being sold off to some different country. I don't know who would even buy them
00:52:19.380
to be honest. Yes. Chad, perhaps. Um, yeah. So that's, uh, sounds, sounds pretty typical
00:52:30.260
to me. I can imagine that there hasn't really been any, any real investment in any sort of
00:52:36.620
infrastructure on the part of the, uh, liberal democracy. What's the state of the economy in
00:52:42.360
the country? So you said that the, a lot of the heavy infrastructure, uh, was destroyed.
00:52:47.200
My understanding is that Bulgaria towards the end of the communist era was actually developing
00:52:51.640
some, uh, high tech infrastructure. And I've also heard some things that it's got actually
00:52:57.100
a fairly thriving economy. Um, are these correct? What's, uh, your general impression of, of
00:53:02.760
all of these, uh, matters? Well, the only reason why we have any sort of infrastructure
00:53:07.960
properly built is because of EU money being funded and more than half of it gets stolen
00:53:14.080
usually. Like, uh, we have all the highways practically built or on, uh, EU money and they're
00:53:22.740
not very well built. Uh, most of them, they have potholes in them in some cases and whatnot,
00:53:28.060
you know, they're drivable most of the time, but there's no investment in the Northern part
00:53:34.240
of the country. Just most of it goes to either the coastline or the South just because there
00:53:39.800
is most need there and they forget people like where I live. Uh, there's practically the
00:53:45.280
zero infrastructure. Uh, the roads are so scary that I had an Austrian national socialist friend
00:53:52.000
visit me once and, uh, he looked at the streets and he said during World War II, this wasn't even
00:53:58.000
this bad. Wow. Yeah, that's, uh, unfortunate to hear. Um, again, a lot of this is not, not very
00:54:08.300
surprising, uh, unfortunately. So the, you know, but what is, so what's the state, um, of the economy
00:54:15.720
for, you know, regular people? Um, because there, I keep coming, coming back and using the, you know,
00:54:21.660
sort of example of Poland as a relatively successful post-communist state where, you know, there is, um,
00:54:28.900
a high level of jobs of, you know, people are even coming from other countries to Poland to work.
00:54:33.120
So, uh, there's a lot of, there's a lot of jobs, but they don't, they aren't well, well paid. Like I
00:54:40.140
worked for, um, from six to six practically, or sometimes extra just because the boss made me do
00:54:46.980
it, even though, you know, we were proper. I worked for 300 euros a month, uh, about, and, uh, I worked
00:54:55.040
in a meat factory where it was very heavy lifting. Sometimes lifting, uh, boxes or, um, pig heads for hours
00:55:02.980
hours on end with, uh, 10 minutes break every like, uh, three, sometimes four hours. Some, uh, some of
00:55:10.140
the workers had to stay almost illegally overnight just to work off something that wasn't worked off
00:55:16.600
in the day because the package didn't arrive or something. They were very tired, you know, uh,
00:55:23.180
that includes me once, once when I was lifting frozen pig heads, actually, uh, I dropped the thing
00:55:30.020
because it was slippery and the pig head, um, the ear was so icy that it, uh, cut a huge wound in my
00:55:37.840
hand when I, when it fell and actually fell on my foot as well. And of course it didn't, I didn't
00:55:44.260
get provided any work boots. So, uh, yeah, I saw, I can imagine. So yeah, wages continue to be pretty
00:55:51.860
low. So it's very fairly common, you've said, for young people to, um, you know, leave their
00:55:57.580
hometowns or even leave the country in order to find work. Yeah, they usually leave for Western
00:56:03.860
Europe, at least, uh, the most educated people that you can imagine that would improve the economy
00:56:09.780
just say, why should I work here for this amount when I, people are literally throwing money at me
00:56:15.560
in Western Europe, you know, and they go work in Western Europe. Even though they would have a
00:56:21.200
decent wage here and they can still work and they can still live in their own country, you know,
00:56:25.320
see their parents and whatnot, their relatives. If you study hard enough and go get a university
00:56:31.160
degree and, uh, get a proper job, like, uh, people that work with computers get, uh, a thousand,
00:56:38.500
two thousand euros in the capital city in some cases, and that's more than enough to live in
00:56:44.740
Right. Yeah. So it's fairly, unfortunately, typical as much of the information we're, we're
00:56:54.320
discussing is, I mean, there's been no, I can, there's been no real attempt by the government to,
00:57:00.900
uh, incentivize, um, you know, workers staying within the country or no real attempt for, um,
00:57:08.860
the increase in have wages have, has there been, uh, an increase in wages over time or have they
00:57:13.560
remain stagnant? You know, wages increase, but prices increase at the same time.
00:57:20.240
Right. So just general inflation rather than an actual, people assume, people assume they
00:57:26.260
have more because, you know, technology improves and the prices drop and you can afford more
00:57:31.340
things like smartphones came in, uh, and whatnot, but, and then plasma TVs and people have those
00:57:40.360
things. But in general, you know, it's, it's, um, and I, in some cases I see a lot of people on the
00:57:46.720
streets, you know, even though wages aren't high, a lot of people have the newest iPhone or the
00:57:50.700
newest Samsung or whatnot, you know, I don't want to bother with buying those things myself because
00:57:58.500
Yeah. Again, a trend that we see, uh, replicated throughout most of the world, people are interested
00:58:07.260
more in these kinds of status luxury items than in, you know, as you say, more important
00:58:13.200
necessities. Um, so what's the, uh, what are the effects of the post-communist liberalization
00:58:22.680
been on the Bulgarian culture and society? You've talked about the, you know, increasing
00:58:28.420
prevalence of, you know, foreign demographics, Gypsy, Turk, uh, and their own cultural cohesion
00:58:34.920
and, uh, systematic, um, systematic favoring by the state, uh, against kind of regular Bulgarian
00:58:42.220
people. But I guess my question is to you, uh, what do you, like, do you observe just the general
00:58:47.740
liberal degeneration in the youth, um, that we see everywhere else? Well, I didn't, I'm
00:58:54.400
not totally sure how to even answer that question. Liberal youth is liberal youth theory. They're
00:58:59.680
always going to get liberalized over time. There's a lot of weed culture nowadays slipping
00:59:04.860
in that you can notice. And then things like that. Right. I guess my question is, um, like
00:59:12.820
for instance, in Western European countries or in Canada or in the United States, um,
00:59:17.320
like the level of, the level of, of decadence is so intense that the, you know, you, you
00:59:23.660
see like a, just a total disillusionment among the youth. Right. And for instance, I mean,
00:59:28.700
I guess like what I'm asking you is like, um, you know, in Russia, communism kind of, uh,
00:59:35.760
Sovietism insulated it from a lot of the nefarious cultural influences of the West. And that immediately
00:59:41.960
after the fall of communism and the massive economic collapse of that country, there was the flood
00:59:47.220
of, you know, hyper degeneracy, uh, into Russia. And so I'm curious in Bulgaria, um, you know,
00:59:53.640
what's kind of like the level of, what's kind of like the level of degeneracy that you observe
01:00:00.280
among the youth and among, um, society in general? You have among the youth, you have a lot of football
01:00:07.020
trust and stuff like that. It's like, they're like Russia, but on a smaller level because we're a
01:00:10.980
smaller country. You have a lot of that stuff. Uh, these football trust, I know them personally
01:00:16.820
in some cases used to, you know, back in like, uh, more than a year ago, I used to go around
01:00:23.080
with them. The problem is these people act in a certain way. Uh, but at the same time, they
01:00:30.220
don't act ideologically correct. Like they do drugs, they get drunk. Uh, most of them smoke
01:00:35.680
and now I'm not only talking about tobacco and, uh, things like that. But those, that's
01:00:42.180
the small issue. The big issue is that most of the people listen to gypsy or Turkish turbo
01:00:47.620
folk, which turbo folk is basically what it came from Serbia. The idea is that, uh, they
01:00:52.760
take traditional music from the country, you know, the general music and they add, uh, the
01:00:59.280
generous lyrics like, uh, touch my ass or touch my dick and stuff like that. There's a, there's
01:01:04.920
actually a Turkish singer called Aziz in the country, which is famous among the youth.
01:01:10.620
I don't, it started as a joke originally, but people actually started listening to him
01:01:14.660
more and more. He has a song, which, uh, literally he sings about, uh, you know, uh, touch my genitalia,
01:01:22.840
play with my genitalia. He's a homosexual Turk.
01:01:28.500
That's all right. Yeah, that's a greatly unfortunate. A lot of the Serbian turbo folk I've ever been
01:01:34.480
exposed to, fairly wholesome. Uh, it's too bad to see that. Yeah. From the Yugoslav times,
01:01:40.320
nowadays in Serbia and in Romania, it's the, it's almost the same situation as here.
01:01:44.680
Oh, that's, uh, really unfortunate. Uh, yeah. Cause you go, the Yugoslav vintage, vintage stuff
01:01:50.820
is, uh, is quite sublime. Um, anyway, so yeah, it sounds, sounds pretty typical, but yeah. Do you
01:01:58.360
observe, um, you know, I guess my question is like, um, you know, when you go to a Western European
01:02:06.900
country, um, the, the, I guess the, I recently I was in, I was in Central Europe and so I visited
01:02:12.780
both Vienna and Prague. And one of the things that I found, um, so disturbing about Vienna is that
01:02:20.320
everybody looked like faggots and like all of the men were, yeah, all of the men were, were very like
01:02:25.780
metrosexual and like the vast majority of the time when we would see just, you know, like a regular
01:02:31.600
looking dude, you know, who didn't, you know, have some sort of a frilly scarf and all this,
01:02:37.980
he would be a foreigner or tourist. And then immediately what we noticed when we went to
01:02:42.020
the Czech Republic was that, uh, the men didn't all look like homos. Um, and so I, this was, uh,
01:02:49.380
this is kind of what I'm trying to get at. And my, my impression is that, uh, you know, Bulgaria
01:02:54.860
to, I have a good friend of mine who's from Russia and he said to me that Russia, it has
01:03:00.760
problems, but we are not faggots. And so that's, that's my impression of Bulgaria. Am I correct?
01:03:08.040
Yeah. It's, it's how you basically said, you know, I traveled to Western Europe, especially
01:03:13.320
with my father by car and I can see the gradual, you know, I traveled all the way from one end
01:03:18.600
of Europe to Belgium. So, uh, I could see the slow degradation and the same time, uh, the
01:03:28.280
rise of infrastructure, like every country that we went up, uh, went from, uh, like had
01:03:33.240
a one meter of, uh, asphalt extra every time you pass the border.
01:03:40.460
But you see the people being more and more homo, as you say, like, uh, I was astonished.
01:03:45.140
Like my British friend right now is in, um, in Sofia for the March tomorrow. He's very
01:03:52.680
excited. And he actually, when he, he was in here and, uh, he's actually, he messaged me
01:03:58.340
earlier and he's like, Oh, there's people here are not gay. What the fuck? And, uh, why are
01:04:03.500
there no, uh, I only saw like two non-whites. This is amazing.
01:04:07.300
Yeah. That is, uh, that is a distinct and eminent advantage. It's, uh, it's really weird
01:04:16.700
when you, when you're from a place that has that kind of high level of degeneracy and
01:04:20.280
multiculturalism and you go to a place that doesn't, it's, you almost, you forget like
01:04:25.460
your, your whole system is kind of reset. It's, uh, it's, it's an experience that I've
01:04:31.600
had, uh, very recently. So, uh, it's quite, quite fresh in my mind when, you know, you go
01:04:36.380
from, from seeing Africans and, and Arabs, like literally every day and in quite quantity
01:04:41.560
to, you know, seeing one in the course of like a week, it's, uh, like a shock to your
01:04:48.020
Well, what happens here is basically in my city, even though it's very poor and with
01:04:54.000
bad infrastructure, we had, uh, we had the most, one of the biggest and most important
01:04:58.420
medical universities in all the country. And of course, because we're the cheapest country
01:05:03.120
to live in, um, in the, uh, the European union, a lot of people take advantage of that.
01:05:09.080
And I, you have a lot of students from London and I can see the entire demographics of London
01:05:14.480
in this one university, which I live very close to.
01:05:18.680
Uh, I just see the entire demographic of the, uh, of the capital city of the ex-British empire.
01:05:26.520
You see, I, I only saw like two white and British people come out of that university.
01:05:31.260
It's almost scary. I had, uh, in my fitness, I had, um, this was a year ago, I think, because
01:05:38.100
I haven't gone to fitness, uh, to, uh, to the gym in a long time. Um, I, I remember this
01:05:46.380
one Indian guy from the medical university that smelled like literally Korean shit at the
01:05:50.720
same time. And he was running on the treadmill at the whole time. And the whole gym smelled
01:05:55.540
like shit. So like a guy like took him off of the treadmill while he was running, pushed
01:05:59.580
him off and kicked his head in. He never came back.
01:06:02.760
Wow. That's, uh, yeah, certainly a far cry difference from, uh, the culture of most of
01:06:08.900
the West. Um, yeah. So I guess my question, do you, what kind of, uh, how optimistic are
01:06:16.500
you for the future of the, you know, Bulgarian people just based on their, their current health?
01:06:21.160
Because it seems to me that despite all of the, the issues that Bulgaria has, that, that
01:06:28.240
basic level of national coherence and, uh, identity and, um, lack of, of faggotry, it
01:06:37.660
seems to, to speak kind of highly in its favor for the, you know, the coming, uh, weeks and
01:06:42.400
months. And I would also say as a sec part two to that question, what have the effects of
01:06:46.360
the, uh, the invasion crisis been on Bulgaria, Bulgarian society?
01:06:57.460
Well, most of the country doesn't want to welcome them, naturally. Um, you see them coming
01:07:05.800
in and most of them, you know, reported they're not even Syrians, they're Ghanis. And most of
01:07:12.140
the time when they come in, uh, they bring in, uh, from, uh, basically the guys that put
01:07:17.840
them over the border, you know, they give them drugs. Uh, so they travel across, you
01:07:22.640
know, uh, carrying drugs. They, that's why there are little reports because according to
01:07:27.900
EU law, you know, they could go up to a border fence. It's a, I think that was a Dublin law,
01:07:34.160
uh, law, and they can, uh, be subjected to be refugees in the country if they have Syrian
01:07:40.100
documents and whatnot. But most of these people aren't, aren't even Syrians, either have fake
01:07:45.300
documents or just don't and just, just try jumping the fence, which even isn't that big.
01:07:52.260
They can, uh, sometimes go around it. And the EU actually blamed us for being fascists, for
01:07:57.600
building a, uh, a border, uh, fence that's, uh, 50 kilometers long. It's not even all that long,
01:08:04.960
uh, when the Turkish border is, uh, 300 kilometers in total. And of course you can't build over all
01:08:11.200
the terrain, but still. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. Yes. Great fascists for putting up some, uh, some
01:08:19.040
fences. That's the, um, yeah. Yeah. A fourth Reich is here in Bulgaria. Master fence builders. Yes,
01:08:26.000
exactly. Okay. So I think kind of, we've come to the end of our first hour. Um, so when we come
01:08:32.240
back, we're going to get into your group, White Front, a little bit more and clean up some of the
01:08:35.740
rest of the questions we have for Bulgaria. Get a couple of stories from Kali Yuga News and then,
01:08:40.700
uh, that'll be it. So to our listeners, stay tuned.
01:09:52.180
Did you work towards heart that was much hisMIN
01:14:17.180
A very wide range of topics about the current political climate in Bulgaria.
01:14:22.140
Now we're going to talk a little bit about our friend's group here known as White Front.
01:14:27.980
So why don't you get into the origins of this group and how it came about?
01:14:33.860
Well, originally what it came about is there were some Bulgarians, some not active to join us back in the Iron March forums.
01:14:45.480
And when I registered, I got contacted and got in touch with some of the Bulgarians on there.
01:15:01.440
And over time, I spoke to one of the founding members.
01:15:07.580
And I was like, you know, I'm planning on joining this group, which already existed, the guys that organized a march.
01:15:14.340
And he's like, no, you shouldn't join them because this and this and that.
01:15:25.500
And then eventually, slowly but surely, you know, over the years' time, we developed a flag.
01:15:35.540
We did a little bit of urban exploration, which I sent you pictures of.
01:15:42.940
We're going to edit them, try to edit them because I can't use Sony Vegas properly yet.
01:15:52.840
Similar to, you know, what different groups have made over time, like SkiDust and stuff like that.
01:16:00.760
We're going to go try that type of look and feel.
01:16:07.440
I interviewed the boys from SkiDust here on this podcast a while back.
01:16:11.280
And we kind of did a very, very similar style of episode on Lithuania subsequently.
01:16:23.240
So, this is essentially, you know, an outshoot of the fraternity that came about from Bulgarians on Iron March.
01:16:30.320
So, are there any other – how much interest is there in an explicitly national socialist or fascist organization in Bulgaria?
01:16:38.160
And what kind of – can you explain to me your own ideological worldview and your founding principles?
01:16:47.980
Well, you know, the founding principles of fascism, you know, what basically our march advocated for – we're actually advocating for the exact same thing.
01:16:58.540
We've translated news articles into Bulgarian and soon we're going to try to translate actual siege in Bulgarian so we can actually have it.
01:17:06.320
But first, I've only read on a PDF part of siege.
01:17:10.700
I think it was around 150 to 200 pages in the beginning.
01:17:14.940
And I'm going to get the actual book if I can, get my hands on it, and I'm going to share it with a friend of mine from the organization.
01:17:23.540
And we're going to try translating it into a proper Bulgarian.
01:17:29.260
We haven't translated the book or even written one.
01:17:31.180
So, when we're done with that, we're going to try publishing it and selling it off to people.
01:17:38.220
And I assume it's going to be quite well-received because, you know, they sell publicly Mein Kampf.
01:17:45.900
My parents bought me Mein Kampf when they were on vacation, actually, a couple of months ago as a gift.
01:18:00.000
But, you know, for most of our – not all of our listeners might be familiar with Iron March's particular take on National Socialist political philosophy and worldview.
01:18:12.200
So, maybe we can just very briefly go into that for them.
01:18:16.740
So, I don't think this will be important because you can't really talk about it enough.
01:18:22.040
There is a lot of misconceptions as to what people mean when they use the term, you know, fascist slash National Socialist.
01:18:30.000
And certainly, I remember when I first came into contact with Zeiger and he explained it to me.
01:18:34.200
You know, I asked him, well, how come I've never, you know, heard such a definition or a presentation before?
01:18:39.840
It was something I was totally unfamiliar with.
01:18:41.880
And so, essentially, what Iron March's school of political philosophy advocated was National Socialism or Fascism as a shorthand term for the instantiation of natural law in a modern political order or the implementation of a worldview of eternal truth to one's own particular national circumstances in a modern way.
01:19:05.860
And so, this is kind of radical because, you know, people – the reason why this kind of way of thinking had to come about when dealing with these terms is because this is the only means by which one can reconcile the apparent diversity, but also synchronicity and sympathy that these various far-right groups had for one another in the early part of the 20th century in Europe.
01:19:30.680
So, how is it possible that groups like the Spanish Falange, Italian Fascists, the NSDAP in Germany, the Iron Guard in Romania, which, you know, if you're taking their, you know, their particular worldviews, of course, the Iron Guard is a radical orthodox organization.
01:19:47.360
In many ways, you know, very different from, say, or, you know, British Union of Fascists in the United Kingdom.
01:19:56.260
However, they all saw themselves as essentially being united in the same struggle against international communism and capitalism, for the struggle for national sovereignty and prosperity for their people, against international Freemasonry and Jewry, and so on.
01:20:10.660
And so, it's this conception of fascism where it's less of a particular ideological instantiation of natural law, say, you know, Mussolini-style totalitarianism, whatever you want to – German-style racialism, but rather a more general worldview is the way that Iron March would even discuss it.
01:20:29.460
So, beyond just a mere ideology, it is predicated upon, you know, an idea of a transcendent spiritual worldview of absolute truth, which then is what attempts to apply to the nation in the political realm.
01:20:43.500
So, is that fairly succinct? Do you want to add anything to that?
01:20:49.160
I just want to add that we tell people usually, you know, we don't have an ideology.
01:20:54.460
We have a worldview, because that's where we stand.
01:20:58.060
You know, an ideology, the way we see it is that it's just – they're different in different countries just because, you know, different countries, different people, different history.
01:21:07.440
And when you have different people and different history, you need different – some kinds of different laws inside of the country.
01:21:15.060
And, of course, every movement has its own thing.
01:21:19.540
While a worldview is just trying to adhere most to natural laws as possible, and that's what we have.
01:21:25.620
You know, if you want to call it fascist national socialists, it's all the same to us.
01:21:31.980
Right, yeah, that's exactly – precisely correct.
01:21:36.300
And so, can you talk about – I mean, in your particular circumstance, you know, what do you – is there any unique properties to the Bulgarian national socialist worldview that you want to elaborate on or discuss?
01:21:50.640
You know, because I think there's a really good Kodriyanu quote, something to the – let me see if I can find it.
01:24:09.240
So, I guess that's – what I'm trying to ask you is in context of that quote, what do you see as, you know, manifestation and as characteristic of the Bulgarian national character in its history?
01:24:19.980
Well, from the quote is our group right now in the 21st century, it doesn't really stand that much with the Orthodox integrity that they had because our group is mixed in some ways.
01:24:38.940
You have a – you have some pagans in the group and you have some agnostics and some Orthodox Christians like myself.
01:24:50.560
I hope that my brothers would join me in the faith one day, but I don't – I don't get all pushy about that always.
01:24:56.980
Yeah, that's – I find the quote practically the same in every other part, you know.
01:25:05.060
I agree with almost everything, especially the German racialism in comparison to the Italian totalitarianism or however you say it.
01:25:15.440
Yeah, that doesn't – that's kind of what I figured.
01:25:19.960
That's the situation with I think a lot of groups in the West as well is that they are kind of mixed religiously by necessity.
01:25:29.600
So, I guess kind of coming back to it, what do you – you know, I imagine that the problems which assail the Bulgarian nation are fairly much the same as for the rest of Eastern Europe and for Western Europe as well.
01:25:46.940
But are there any particular areas that are of special interest to you and to your group?
01:25:54.440
And is there anything that you're attempting to like promote very vigorously?
01:25:57.320
Like, for instance, in the United States, right, there's a huge campaign right now to promote awareness of opioid abuse and of, you know, the mass deaths of the white working class due to, you know, prescription synthetic heroin at the hands of Jewish pharmaceutical oligarchs.
01:26:16.020
Well, we're not exactly – we don't have a giant campaign to push except on generally getting members of time because we're a fairly small, a new group.
01:26:31.440
We do advocate for the typical things, you know, no drug abuse, no whatnot.
01:26:49.780
We just don't allow heavy drug use and whatnot, you know, no drug use.
01:27:01.360
So why don't we talk a little bit about – so your group is fairly new, as you said, formed just about a year ago.
01:27:06.580
So do you want to talk about maybe, you know, the goals of the group, you know, and the kind of propaganda you've been engaging in?
01:27:15.140
You talked already about efforts to translate Iron March articles, Siege and so on, networking, that kind of thing.
01:27:22.580
You know, you've alluded to and hinted that you're going to be participating in a march both tomorrow and next week.
01:27:28.640
Yeah, this week, tomorrow exactly, I'm traveling with a member of our group, which lives in a small town next to mine.
01:27:38.820
And the march in Monday, which is a march for a Bulgarian national hero from the Ottoman times, which he fought against the Ottomans and he was eventually hung by the Ottoman court for anti-state activities at the time against the empire.
01:27:59.640
The attendance of the first march, Luko March, in memory of General Kristolukov, is about from 1,500 people to 2,000 people.
01:28:12.840
And the march in Monday, its attendance is upwards of 3,500 people.
01:28:29.640
It varies on some reports, but I assume it's around 6.5 million to pushing at 7 million.
01:28:38.660
That's actually quite fairly impressive, 3,500 people in an organized march for a country of that size.
01:28:46.140
You know, so, do you want to go on and talk more about your group's direct action activities and this kind of thing?
01:28:57.320
Or, you know, we can take this wherever you'd like.
01:29:00.280
I'm glad to discuss anything that's pertinent or of interest to you and the patriots.
01:29:05.200
If we're talking about our group exclusively, we're obviously the most radical in the sense of publicly advocating for national socialism and fascism.
01:29:15.240
That's why I think we would bring a lot of problems in some senses, if the media catches on to that, to the organizers, which, you know, they try to step away from that thing.
01:29:31.300
Because, you know, they push him to not be directly fascist just because they don't want the march to get banned on those scales.
01:29:40.320
And they do achieve that at the moment because, you know, the court ruled in our favor and the march is going to continue this year.
01:29:47.500
They tried banning it for four to five years now, I think.
01:29:51.100
And there's attendance at the Luka March, especially from lots of international organizations like the Nordic Resistance Movement always attends.
01:30:01.680
You've got German nationalists from Der Dritte Weg and the MPD sometimes attend.
01:30:05.940
We used to have Romanian nationalists, which came, which is always interesting because you have in the Balkan Peninsula, especially, you have a lot of people that are from different countries that argue over land disputes because historically our nations always fought.
01:30:29.100
So you have the Romanians, which came, and just because we're ideologically similar, we managed to work together as that's expected.
01:30:40.060
And they were actually very decent from all I know they can.
01:30:43.840
We just don't accept generally Serbian nationalists just because of tough history.
01:30:52.400
They wouldn't want to come to Luka March anyways because Kristolukov in World War I actually fought against the Serbians on that front.
01:30:59.100
It would be very difficult to incorporate them in the march.
01:31:02.380
Well, I do think if they want to come, like organizations like Srpska Aktsia, Serbian Action, if they want to come over to the march about Vasily Levskiy in Monday, they could because Levskiy actually fought.
01:31:17.460
The first Bulgarian battalion that fought against the Ottomans was actually Congress in Belgrade.
01:31:23.340
Even there is memorials of them, the battalion, there is a statue even.
01:31:33.500
I'm pretty sure that they will still be welcomed because we did welcome even Russian nationalists there from the Russian imperial movement, I think it was.
01:31:45.560
That's certainly something that seems to be very unique and encouraging to this generation of European nationalists is the kind of unparalleled networking and support that we have with one another.
01:31:59.300
I mean, of course, even this podcast in general is attempting to bridge some of that gap for our English language speakers and provide some insight into these various more obscure nationalist movements and efforts to fight for national socialism in countries abroad.
01:32:16.860
And so it's just really great to hear that there is that level of cooperation between our Nordic and Bulgarian and German and Romanian allies.
01:32:25.600
And I think I hope that this is a trend that does continue because, of course, there are very real ethnic and historical divisions and conflicts between our peoples that are not trivial.
01:32:41.300
They can't just be dismissed as unimportant by no means, but I think that most people have come to the point where we realize that we are all in this together and they all want us dead.
01:32:56.060
Yeah, that's why we advocate, you know, if we don't stick together as the most radical nationalists, we're going to get extinct.
01:33:06.640
So there's actually a memorial in Serbia of, you know, Serbians at the same time and Bulgarians that died during, I think it was either World War I or the Serbo-Bulgarian War, that, you know, historically nations didn't ally just because, you know, just because of anything.
01:33:28.240
They allied sometimes exclusively for survival.
01:33:31.460
And that goes for the religious stance as well, like, we might disagree with each other, but when we're on the brink of being extinct, we can work together now and start killing each other later.
01:33:46.120
I think Nat Dainlaw once said that the whole purpose of preserving the integrity of the Nordic peoples was so that they could go to war again.
01:33:55.900
Well, that's a distinct European feature, we're warrior people, so this missing war for the sake of peace and unity, that's going to destroy our people nonetheless.
01:34:07.320
So once we do get that order back that we did have in Europe for thousands of years, of course, we're going to have conflicts again for silly land disputes or however you want to look over them.
01:34:18.980
And we're going to have wars again, we're going to have wars again, we're going to have wars again, we're going to have people killed and whatnot.
01:34:28.480
Yeah, well, inevitable, I would say, is the chief characteristic that these had been.
01:34:34.140
And the reality of the situation is, I think, generally speaking, it's very good to see that there is a kind of a dedication to not spilling our national cousin's blood over these disputes.
01:34:53.480
So, is there anything else that you want to discuss, you know, concerning Bulgaria, do you want to talk a little bit about maybe the gypsy question?
01:35:05.280
Oh, the gypsies are like, they're not even a question, you know, we're afraid of the Turks because they have a big state behind them and they can organize, you know, you got the special forces that literally, I think it was in their code,
01:35:17.900
where they integrate into European countries and start, like, small resistance and, over time, arm resistance.
01:35:24.000
And, you know, the race war, I think, would start from basically these Turks congregating with different minorities, especially in Western Europe and Germany,
01:35:32.820
where they are a majority here in the south of the country, parts of the south of the country.
01:35:39.140
You know, that would happen eventually with the Turks.
01:35:41.400
But the gypsies are just, you know, historically, since they were kicked out of India, they've been always inbreeding.
01:35:57.140
The simplest way I can put it, they're genetic trash.
01:36:03.040
They were kicked out of there, which being kicked out of a country where people literally shit on the streets is amazing.
01:36:10.500
Yeah, I mean, it's, most of, I think, our listeners are familiar with gypsies.
01:36:18.880
It's always been fascinating to me that every European that I've ever asked, even if they're, you know, real ideological liberals,
01:36:28.600
will admit to the gross degeneracy and awfulness of the gypsy population.
01:36:33.560
Like, that's why I have a liberal girl in my class at school, like, very liberal, supporting gay rights and whatnot.
01:36:41.660
But I asked her, okay, if you're a girl for rights for everyone and whatnot, that all this stupid shit, do you hate gypsies?
01:36:57.220
I mean, you know, I don't know how deep there is to probe into this.
01:37:04.100
I mean, they're nomadic criminal disruptors, you know, thieves famous for engaging in, you know, human trafficking, drug trafficking,
01:37:12.920
but petty crime as well, mostly, you know, and there, it's kind of, people have described gypsies as kind of, you know, low-rent Jews in that sense.
01:37:31.760
Eventually, when the race war starts, you know, the gypsies aren't going to be an issue.
01:37:36.520
You know, they could get, they could, their entire population in most countries can get destroyed, you know,
01:37:42.260
in a matter of probably a couple of years or even less, because they're just, they can't congregate, they can't work together.
01:37:51.540
They're always fearful of when someone stands up to them, some kind of authority.
01:37:56.180
They just, they're very weak as a people because of all their inbreeding.
01:38:00.820
And, well, the Turks, you know, even though they did have a history of race mixing, especially during the Ottoman Empire,
01:38:10.200
just because of all the blood tax and janissaries and everything,
01:38:15.700
they are an actual threat because they can actually build weapons, hold weapons.
01:38:23.780
They're, I think, the fourth biggest NATO army there.
01:38:28.400
And it's going to be a huge issue with them, especially right now,
01:38:32.260
when I can see that there's racial tensions, especially in the south, which I talked about earlier.
01:38:37.720
I do think that because during communism, we had the same issue,
01:38:41.780
but the communist government literally threw them out, like 300,000 of the Turks,
01:38:53.860
because I plan on enlisting as a reservist in the army that I'm going to be thrown as a cannon fodder
01:39:01.080
against these well-armed Turks in comparison to our stagnated army.
01:39:09.500
Yeah, that seems to be quite a real existential threat.
01:39:13.760
I can only imagine, I mean, it's the, what is the level of awareness of and recognition of the threat
01:39:25.220
from the organized Turkic populations of the country among the general population?
01:39:29.980
I don't think people recognize the threat at the moment,
01:39:33.780
but I do think people will start recognizing the threat.
01:39:36.920
You know, they see it as more of an issue on religion and whatnot,
01:39:39.600
because most people, of course, don't like Islam and whatnot.
01:39:43.540
But I think that they will see the issue once the Turks start getting properly violent,
01:39:48.360
like they did, like they had a terrorist organization during communist times.
01:39:52.340
And we're talking about communist times where they were,
01:39:57.940
And we had agents, you know, looking over and stopping these things.
01:40:04.640
So I do think that now in democracy, because democracy is a lot weaker
01:40:10.280
and these things that they, you know, advocate for their rights more than Bulgarian rights.
01:40:16.660
The problem is going to be very, very serious in the next 20 to 30 years.
01:40:23.480
At least this has a, this has the accelerationism aspect is the Turks are going to be much more violent
01:40:33.080
and we're going to have the situation where the people are going to wake up to the problems in the world much faster.
01:40:40.720
Then in like different countries, which don't have almost any minorities,
01:40:44.180
like in like the Baltic states, they almost don't have any non-white minorities.
01:40:49.200
They have problems with the Russians, like you talked in your Skidas podcast, I remember,
01:40:56.260
where they, I think Latvia, the country had like 25% Russians
01:41:00.300
and they take out almost all their problems on the Russian minority,
01:41:05.080
which it could be problematic, I assume, I don't live there.
01:41:09.640
And also I heard from an Estonian friend, which is here for the march as well,
01:41:13.940
that in Estonia they do a lot of problems as well, the small Russian minority.
01:41:18.140
Because I assume what the U.S. and Saudi government did is that they didn't send any good Russians.
01:41:25.140
They probably sent some Siberian criminals there.
01:41:28.360
So naturally their sons and daughters would be similar to them because blood is in water in the end.
01:41:34.740
Yeah, yeah, no, it is truly a precarious situation.
01:41:42.000
It wasn't something that had occurred to me, but now that you've said it,
01:41:44.760
I can imagine that the Turkish foreign policy must be extremely threatening
01:41:54.740
insofar as Erdogan is quite actively promoting the, you know, the organization,
01:42:01.120
the funding of radical militant elements, the proliferation of, you know,
01:42:06.100
the Turkey peoples in Europe as conquerors, you know, telling them to have six, seven children
01:42:12.700
I know that the birth rate in Bulgaria is very low.
01:42:19.640
Yeah, one of the lowest in, I think, the whole world at the moment.
01:42:25.780
Just because even if you, and on top of that, you have a lot and a lot of people
01:42:32.600
Just as a comparison, in the end of communism we had in 1989, I think it was, yeah,
01:42:39.180
we had about a little bit over, or a little bit under, I'm not totally sure, 8 million people.
01:42:47.160
Now we're 6.5, and those statistics aren't sure we could be less.
01:42:52.580
And you have on top of that a pretty big Turkish minority, one of the biggest in Europe,
01:42:58.260
and at the same time one of the biggest by percentage of the population,
01:43:03.340
a gypsy minority, which they have children like at the age of 11, 12, 10,
01:43:08.720
and they have, like, sometimes 10 to 20 children just to claim government benefits.
01:43:16.180
Yeah, that's, again, extremely, extremely typical of what we see in most of Europe.
01:43:22.120
And so the situation with the demographics is kind of mirrored.
01:43:25.560
There is a great demographic disparity between these minority populations.
01:43:29.320
Do you know what, like, how fruitful, how many children per woman that there is
01:43:42.300
They do have a lot of children, from what I've noticed.
01:43:45.940
I actually used to have Turkish neighbors which moved to Spain.
01:43:56.600
Not all that much, more than the average Bulgarian has still.
01:44:01.760
But I did learn some of the things about, at the time, about Islam,
01:44:08.160
because I do think it's important to learn about these things.
01:44:13.060
At the same time, historically, it's interesting.
01:44:15.640
And at the same time, you must know your enemy to defeat your enemy.
01:44:19.540
They actually translated parts of the Quran to me and some things like that.
01:44:28.280
The Turks are not well known for doing crime in the country.
01:44:32.660
You know, the main crime in the country comes from all the gypsies.
01:44:35.660
Like, the black people in the U.S., they're literally 90% of the people in prisons right now.
01:44:44.460
Which, if any one of us, like a nationalist, goes to prison,
01:44:48.540
it will be a death sentence with all those gypsies there.
01:44:51.380
Because, if anything, gypsies alone aren't a threat.
01:44:54.280
But when you're one against 50 to 100 or even more,
01:45:06.120
What is the level of persecution against nationalists by the government at the moment?
01:45:11.160
You said that there's been several attempts to ban the march,
01:45:14.300
but that the court has upheld your constitutional rights to demonstrate.
01:45:18.160
Have these persecutions come from the government, the regime, or from private actors?
01:45:25.940
Well, at the same time, different NGOs advocate for that stuff,
01:45:29.480
and it goes to propaganda to all the people in the country.
01:45:33.180
And they slowly start turning against these nationalist events as they grow larger.
01:45:38.260
And at the same time, you have the government advocating for it.
01:45:43.720
Last year, I think it was because Interpol reported for a non-luka march
01:45:47.600
that several Polish ultranationalists were inside of the country,
01:45:58.120
Even though these people, even if they were ultranationalists,
01:46:01.300
which I doubt from Poland that they would wave swastikas around
01:46:06.260
I doubt that these people would be active criminals if they traveled across Europe.
01:46:14.500
They didn't have a criminal record to keep them off international travel,
01:46:19.340
so that should not be enough to advocate for the ban of the march.
01:46:24.260
That year, they didn't get the support of the court as well,
01:46:30.340
Just we had to wait a long time so the police could,
01:46:34.160
because at the last moment, they had to clear the streets and everything,
01:46:38.700
And this year, they advocated for the ban of the march
01:46:41.800
because the starting point of the march was very close
01:46:44.500
to where the EU representatives this year are going to be hosted.
01:46:53.280
and we proposed to the organizers of the march,
01:47:00.480
They moved the march from a different starting point
01:47:28.820
as long as we don't have any banned symbols during the march,
01:47:44.800
because the courts still uphold some sort of law,
01:47:49.700
and if it's at the same time in the constitution
01:48:25.940
which is, I think, partially because you're lazy.
01:48:50.860
You know, you can't appease the government forever.
02:19:58.740
Den Wunschuh führt er in der Fahrt, hat Helm und Armisch an.
02:20:07.280
Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.
02:20:14.800
Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.
02:20:26.260
Bei Weinsberg setzt es Brand und Schand, Heia, oh, gar mancher über die Klinge sprang.
02:20:39.120
Heia, oh, ho, spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.
02:20:51.580
Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.
02:20:59.340
Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus, Heia, oh, ho, unsere Enkel fechten's besser aus, Heia, oh, ho.
02:21:18.340
Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.
02:21:35.800
Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Haar.