RadixJournal - Prole Rage

00:00:00.000 The one thing he didn't want to do, though, was strange, was that people understood that his predecessors, Brezhnev and people like that,

00:00:08.400 I think they kind of understood that things were going very wrong, that communism, the communist system wasn't working and it was going to collapse.

00:00:17.520 And all those that were strongly invested in it were going to lose out severely.

00:00:22.540 And so they had this clamp, this clamp down in the in the 70s, where it was in many ways more strict than in the 60s.

00:00:32.460 But that's what tends to happen when a system is on its last legs, like the 50s was more strict on homosexuality, for example, than in the 40s or 30s.

00:00:43.800 And it was interesting that he realised that there was a niche, there was a way of gaining power and popularity by saying things need to change.

00:00:50.820 We need to have glasnost, we need to have perestroika. 0.98

00:00:54.420 Yeah. But then I saw a documentary where he was negotiating with the leaders of Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania.

00:01:02.520 And and they basically wanted to, of course, just get rid of communism.

00:01:07.260 And this, of course, he balked and was like, oh, no, no, our people would never accept that.

00:01:11.380 They would think it was unfair. So he had this different contradiction in a way whereby he he his his niche that he planned for himself was, oh, I will be the great reformer.

00:01:20.160 And therefore, I can keep the system going.

00:01:23.380 Exactly. That's the that's the contradiction.

00:01:26.760 First off, Gorbachev did have some blood on his hands in terms of repressing popular revolts.

00:01:35.720 But he is probably most remembered for ultimately like being a reformer and thus encouraging popular revolts and basically reform being intended as something to maintain the system,

00:01:52.880 but then ultimately inspiring a total delegitimization and demoralization of the system.

00:02:00.040 So, I mean, and you can kind of I don't I mean, I think there's some different figures.

00:02:05.200 I mean, because like Khrushchev's secret speech on Stalin was not published until like the 80s or something like that, but it was well known.

00:02:15.120 But he basically said he kind of gave the line about communism that the system is perfect.

00:02:24.060 There's just some bad people in it. So, you know, Stalin was a complete jerk and we shouldn't repeat all of his follies. 0.99

00:02:33.780 But the system itself works. So it was a kind of rotten apple theory. 1.00

00:02:40.500 And I think that was kind of one way of moving forward.

00:02:44.360 He was pushed out by his Brezhnev, who was his I believe it's like deputy or something later on.

00:02:52.260 And then Gorbachev, I think, was trying something different.

00:02:57.240 I mean, like the 19 late 1960s and 70s, there's a term for it in in like Soviet historiography,

00:03:07.240 which is it's like the eternal time or like the no time or something.

00:03:12.280 There was this point where the system of Soviet communism was just existing.

00:03:22.260 And it was just like the train was rolling down the track and it wasn't gaining any speed.

00:03:28.160 And it was maybe slowly slowing down, but it wasn't really coming to a crashing halt.

00:03:34.060 And there was all of this like, you know, social change going on in the West.

00:03:41.480 That was almost there was just absence in the East.

00:03:44.900 So you had this like 20 year period of like no time, basically.

00:03:50.360 Again, I'm reading many guys have seen this.

00:03:55.620 Philip Short has this new biography of Putin out and Philip Short.

00:03:59.980 He's a good historian.

00:04:01.460 He actually did biographies.

00:04:04.280 I've not read these, but he's done biographies of like Mao and Pol Pot or something.

00:04:08.460 So he seems to really like writing massive biographies of dictators.

00:04:13.640 And he's now taken on Putin, but he it's a biography, but he really brings in like the the cultural aspects of things.

00:04:23.980 So he kind of places Putin within a, you know, broader trajectory.

00:04:28.160 A number of the biographies that I've read one real biography of Gorbachev.

00:04:33.260 And one of the things that this guy concluded was that, yeah, this guy was Machiavellian and calculating.

00:04:38.100 So, for example, so, for example, he wanted his relationship with Edward Shepard-Nardzer, who was the foreign minister.

00:04:45.200 And he wanted to move and later became the kind of de facto dictator of Georgia.

00:04:49.700 And he wanted to move Shepard-Nardzer to being kind of vice president so that he could basically take all the blame for all of the reforms and whatever.

00:04:57.520 And Shepard-Nardzer saw this was a trap and didn't want to move.

00:05:01.860 And then the contrast then with Yeltsin is really interesting.

00:05:05.440 At exactly the wrong moment, basically, Gorbachev was was careful and cautious and whatever and didn't want to strike.

00:05:14.820 And so therefore and certainly didn't want to overthrow communism.

00:05:18.260 And so therefore he was there was a coup.

00:05:20.260 And of course, he was he was imprisoned in his is it DACA, they call it the DACA.

00:05:25.240 Yeah. And you've got this Yeltsin who was kind of just an impulsive risk taker, gambler.

00:05:31.400 Yeah. Who who just sort of such different personalities who just saw his chance, probably not even particularly calculating towards it, just saw his chance and just took it.

00:05:42.400 And it's it's an amazing difference.

00:05:44.580 But the idea they're trying to portray him now because of the context in which he's died of the Russian war and all this.

00:05:51.600 Oh, he was this good man and he tried really hard and all of his reforms have been undone.

00:05:56.280 Well, I think he was actually good.

00:05:57.540 But he also stuck. He he kept hold of communism to the last minute.

00:06:01.680 He wanted to make sure communism didn't fail.

00:06:06.040 There's no there's no question about that.

00:06:08.140 I think he actually was a very moral person.

00:06:11.980 And to give him credit and to look at him realistically, I think he genuinely believed in his reforms and, you know, opening things up.

00:06:24.300 And, you know, at least what I was reading is that there were there were these publications of these magazines, you know, that Putin was reading and when he was stationed in Dresden.

00:06:38.580 And it was there actually was a kind of opening up of criticism and discourse and so on.

00:06:46.100 I mean, Gorbachev basically like all of his reforms to save communism triggered the total delegitimization of communism.

00:06:56.160 But to his credit, I guess he was not willing to engage in full on suppression.

00:07:03.600 So you have Glasnod and Perestroika in Russia. 0.51

00:07:07.680 And from what I can understand, when he was when he was traveling to Germany, there was all of this almost kind of like jealousy of East Germany of like we want we want what you have.

00:07:20.860 We actually want to kind of have an opening up of discourse.

00:07:23.980 We want communism with a human face.

00:07:25.720 There is this kind of notion of we're it was we're sent us folk, which means we are the people.

00:07:34.240 And it was a kind of bottom up.

00:07:36.480 I don't know, like Tea Party, almost like rebellion against the government.

00:07:42.380 And he basically encouraged it effectively.

00:07:45.240 He never he always said that communism is the right system in East Germany is the East German Democratic Republic.

00:07:53.060 This is the right system.

00:07:54.180 But we hear you.

00:07:56.380 And again, that that kind of like toppled these dominoes where you have this like total delegitimization of East Germany by people just crossing over the border and, you know, ransacking the Secret Service and all this kind of stuff that was just totally demoralizing.

00:08:18.060 It shows this like contempt of the people for the government, which, again, he triggered and he allowed to happen.

00:08:25.880 And I guess to his credit, I mean, he could have cracked down.

00:08:29.560 He did crack down in in certain places in the Baltic states, but he didn't ultimately stop it.

00:08:37.860 And he did give over power, which is pretty remarkable.

00:08:42.280 I mean, he he resigned from, you know, being the leader of the party.

00:08:48.840 I mean, that on Christmas Day, it's pretty incredible that someone would do that knowing communism's history.

00:08:57.040 But I do think he's misunderstood in the sense that he was a he was certainly Machiavellian, as you say, he was and he was charismatic and interesting and he was a good politician.

00:09:08.700 But, you know, again, I guess it's that I don't know if this is comparable to kind of our own time, but you you just kind of allow you give them an inch and they take a mile like you allow some sort of reform and openness.

00:09:26.160 And the whole thing just starts collapsing.

00:09:30.840 I mean, the difference is that they they were I mean, it was more extreme.

00:09:34.360 Their situation was they couldn't get hold of food.

00:09:36.960 Yeah, it was so extreme that and well, maybe that's coming.

00:09:41.880 But every everyday life was severely hampered and they could remember even in the 50s or 60s that it wasn't as bad as this.

00:09:50.960 Yeah, so and so, of course, people understood that there was something seriously wrong and there was only so so such an extent to which they could stop people talking and they could stop rumors of what life was like in the West from from from coming out.

00:10:06.600 Oh, look, they were listening to Western radio station.

00:10:09.720 Yeah, that was the thing that that was the thing that did for Ceausescu was that it was once the neighboring country to Romania fell, they had a Trump car because they knew they knew that communism had fallen in other parts of Europe.

00:10:25.700 And of course, people knew that, of course, it was suppressed by the Romanian media, but they knew that.

00:10:32.380 And then there was this massacre or whatever it was in in Timisoara over this process.

00:10:37.860 And then that was it. Everyone just knew and something some sort of process like perhaps you've talked about before that process of people just feeling sad or whatever.

00:10:46.680 And so they wear clothes, whatever, that term I always forget.

00:10:51.120 And something like, yes, the social mood just kind of changed.

00:10:55.020 And he stood up in Bucharest and was just booed.

00:11:00.220 And everyone just everyone apparently the military just kind of almost immediately switched sides.

00:11:05.480 Yeah. And it was it was they just knew the social mood is changing.

00:11:08.480 This is it. He's been booed in public. That's it. It's it's over.

00:11:11.680 Yeah. And so it would take something dramatic like that.

00:11:15.440 And so in our situation, they keep prognosticating doom with regard to in this part of the world,

00:11:21.620 but certainly in places like Britain or whatever, with regard to the winter and Germany that that no one's going to be able to heat their homes.

00:11:28.800 And it's going to be really serious trouble.

00:11:31.360 So perhaps it would take something like that for for people to.

00:11:35.660 But I don't I just can't see it.

00:11:37.020 Yeah, but the thing is, I mean, I see I don't.

00:11:41.680 I don't I was thinking through this. I don't think the situations really are analogous.

00:11:47.680 I mean, because there was an out and there was an end.

00:11:51.280 So it's like, again, when when Gorbachev was reforming communism, even before the Soviet Union,

00:11:58.740 even before like the fall of the Berlin Wall, like McDonald's had established a restaurant in Moscow.

00:12:07.460 Yeah. I think it was like 1987 or 1988.

00:12:10.840 There was a famous there was a famous episode of I don't know if you ever heard of it, Spitting Image,

00:12:14.920 which is where they have these these these these wax, these latex puppets that lampoon politicians and whatever exaggerate.

00:12:24.400 Oh, yeah. And there's a spud you like, which is sold baked potatoes.

00:12:27.320 And so I now declare the Moscow branch of spud you like open.

00:12:31.700 And someone says, I would like one potato, please.

00:12:34.200 I am sorry. We are sold out.

00:12:38.660 Yeah. And it it's interesting.

00:12:44.700 I saw this report on YouTube of of a I think it was like the nightly news with Peter Jennings or something.

00:12:55.800 And they were so this was in 1988, I believe, is when the first McDonald's opened in Moscow.

00:13:00.640 And they were interviewing the people.

00:13:03.040 And it was a bit it was a bit expensive.

00:13:05.560 It was kind of like going out for a night of the town, of course, in terms of price.

00:13:09.560 But you're you're at McDonald's and the woman who works there, who is this nice Russian girl, she said, like, I've been trained to smile constantly.

00:13:18.620 Like, like this is it's a very kind of American and kind of down home quality of you smile and you're nice to everyone.

00:13:26.060 And she said that it was really it was all of the it was disturbing all the customers because they thought that they had done something wrong or that she was laughing at them.

00:13:36.020 So it's all the customers are like, what is the issue here?

00:13:41.360 Everything OK? And she's like, welcome to McDonald's.

00:13:44.960 It was it was kind of amusing.

00:13:47.500 It was almost like this, like, cultural tyranny of smiling all the time, which is a very American. 0.51

00:13:53.960 Oh, it is. I mean, it's a hideous thing in America.

00:13:56.900 This is the way they say, have a nice day.

00:13:59.020 Of course, they don't want you to have a nice day. They would have a very unnice day.

00:14:02.260 But have a nice day. You have a good one.

00:14:04.860 You have a good one. I did. I don't know if it kind of makes you feel good to say it.

00:14:08.980 I don't know. But it is so ubiquitous in America.

00:14:12.400 Have a nice day. And we just balk at it.

00:14:15.760 It's so hollow. It's so hollow.

00:14:18.880 And you have to say it. So it's like it's like if you if you say to something like in in Britain, there's a there's a kind of code which Finns don't get. 0.56

00:14:27.280 Finnish people. I live. People don't know this. I live in Finland.

00:14:30.340 Finnish people will be will be very literal about it. 0.51

00:14:32.600 If you say to a Finn, hey, we must go for a drink sometime. 1.00

00:14:35.120 Yeah, I'll ring you. I'll ring you. Then they take that literally.

00:14:38.660 And they will wonder why you haven't done so.

00:14:40.960 Whereas in Britain, that's just that's just part of the code.

00:14:43.760 That's just saying I don't wish you any specific harm.

00:14:47.540 Right. And that difference.

00:14:49.880 And that is taken to a further degree in America.

00:14:52.720 They'll say things like if you're ever in Blediddley, Idaho, you must come and stay in my house.

00:14:58.160 Yeah. And of course, it didn't mean a word of it.

00:15:00.820 But it's it's a very strange thing.

00:15:04.480 Yeah. Right. Because it is a kind of hollow promise.

00:15:07.420 Like, how are things going? It's like, oh, things are great.

00:15:10.080 Like, yeah, thank you. And it's like we have these like, you know, high suicide rates and people dying of drug overdoses left and right.

00:15:19.300 It's like things are just great. Thanks.

00:15:21.380 Things are great.

00:15:23.840 It's a it's a but they are they are friend.

00:15:26.480 They are much more friendly in America.

00:15:27.840 But there is a degree to which you wonder, do they do they mean it?

00:15:31.500 Whereas.

00:15:31.700 Oh, right. Exactly. But I would almost kind of prefer that, too.

00:15:36.560 I don't know. You know, you dress for the job you want,

00:15:39.580 not the job you have. There's something to be said for smiling and being friendly and just like people being endlessly dreary and frowning.

00:15:47.780 Does it actually does bother me?

00:15:50.400 Oh, I wouldn't. I kind of get sick of it.

00:15:52.700 It's just like, you know, you wouldn't like Eastern Europe, then.

00:15:56.320 No.

00:15:57.580 Speaking Northeast Europe, they they they don't they don't smile. 0.62

00:16:00.860 They don't even say, excuse me, even in Latvia, it's the same.

00:16:04.080 They'll just sort of snake past you.

00:16:06.760 They won't say excuse me because to say excuse would involve social interaction.

00:16:10.740 And that could be embarrassing.

00:16:12.660 It's like a race of autistics or something. 0.99

00:16:16.500 Yeah. In some ways, they're a race of autistics. 1.00

00:16:18.480 But in other ways, they're kind of like a race of schizophrenics because they over they overread social signals.

00:16:22.060 Right. And they get terribly upset.

00:16:25.420 So I've been in this situation where I've offended somebody.

00:16:28.380 Oh, let's say you shouted.

00:16:30.320 I did not shout. I raised my voice.

00:16:32.780 Right. There's no distinction in Finland between shouting and raising your voice.

00:16:36.160 If you raise your voice, you're shouting.

00:16:37.380 There's no word that distinguishes the distinguishes them at all.

00:16:41.280 Interesting. Yeah.

00:16:42.660 Where are these people from then that are here in the group?

00:16:45.660 Well, we've got somebody that looks like they're Swedish.

00:16:47.620 British. And I'm thinking American, British.

00:16:53.900 Is that what we are?

00:16:55.940 Yeah, we've got some Americans here.

00:16:59.060 Yeah.

00:17:00.500 You know, my Boris, I guess Boris is busy.

00:17:04.800 He's probably working.

00:17:05.940 Boris has some very interesting things to say about Russia.

00:17:10.400 This is the issue.

00:17:11.820 These calls that we did, as you noticed on the on the Substack link,

00:17:16.220 I've just gone to one Zoom link because this I don't know what was going on with the real euro hours Zoom link.

00:17:26.260 But as opposed to recording the call in the cloud, it gives me these like 17 second clips of nothing.

00:17:34.640 It's just totally bizarre.

00:17:36.080 But anyway, this should work because this this link has never not worked.

00:17:40.200 The link I got through my email works.

00:17:42.620 But the link that you sent me through Skype, that didn't work.

00:17:44.820 That took me just kind of a list of international phone numbers.

00:17:49.040 Oh, you needed to hit the link above it, I think.

00:17:51.840 Oh, did I?

00:17:52.360 Yeah.

00:17:52.680 Well, it doesn't matter.

00:17:53.820 It doesn't matter.

00:17:55.140 But just to go back.

00:17:56.880 See, I don't real quick.

00:17:59.020 I don't think the situations are completely analogous because so in during the Cold War, there was a out and there was an in.

00:18:12.360 And so, you know, in the beginnings of certainly in the beginnings of communism and in even up to, say, like the famous kitchen speech with Khrushchev and Nixon.

00:18:27.540 I think there was a genuine concern that communism actually had gotten it right and that it was sweeping the world.

00:18:40.240 I mean, in 1945, Stalin was to some degrees accommodating of the of the Western powers in the sense that he felt like in the next three years, there's going to be a communist revolution in Britain.

00:18:58.880 And all of these evil capitalist powers will fight against each other and take each other down like our, you know, bulldozing all of Europe is just inevitable.

00:19:11.660 And so we can actually be rather patient in this.

00:19:16.980 And there was reason to believe that when he was meeting with Mao in the next years of I can't remember when that famous trip was when Mao visited Moscow.

00:19:34.520 You know, there was just this friendly banter of like you handle the East, we'll handle the West.

00:19:40.260 We're all on the same team.

00:19:42.560 This was inevitable.

00:19:44.040 And in terms of like Nixon meeting Khrushchev in this famous kitchen, there was just this notion of like Soviet production is more efficient.

00:19:54.600 Why would you create 200 different washing machines?

00:19:58.600 There's no possible reason to do that.

00:20:00.900 Just create one.

00:20:02.140 It's the best and the most efficient.

00:20:04.260 And we will bury you is the kind of famous line by Khrushchev.

00:20:09.180 And so I don't know when it basically occurred that, you know, the Soviet economy was just frozen in ice and was just unworkable.

00:20:22.060 And they were just existing in this like two decade long stagnation and slow decline, whereas the West was moving forward.

00:20:30.920 Yeah, it was really the 70s, the kind of president, these older people in charge. 0.89

00:20:35.540 I mean, similar to, I guess, Biden, you could say.

00:20:38.000 These gerontocrats.

00:20:40.060 There's all these theories in economics.

00:20:48.900 I don't know if we have any people that are trading in economics here.

00:20:51.320 I'd be interested in your views on it.

00:20:52.820 But the try and make sense of something, which it seems to me just makes sense on some other level, which is in terms of sort of group hormonal differences and changes in how people feel and that these spread across society and people understand how other people feel and despair spreads as well.

00:21:09.740 There's a number of studies on this depression spreads.

00:21:12.400 And so you could end up with really just a kind of a depressed society.

00:21:17.240 And what's his name?

00:21:18.280 Theodore Dowrymple has a number of books on his time in the Soviet Union towards the end, particularly in Albania.

00:21:24.400 And you just get this sense of just doom and that no one sees any point and that therefore something at that point has to snap on an individual level.

00:21:34.920 If people are highly depressed, they'll often have sort of religious experiences, not often, but they'll sometimes have, which will inspire them to bring about change.

00:21:43.240 And this kind of thing, I suppose, to stretch the metaphor, can happen at a societal level.

00:21:48.740 And I just think that something like that, it was just this sense of doom.

00:21:51.180 I get the impression on the ground in Britain that there is increasingly people, older people particularly, but are just really annoyed by the situation.

00:22:03.900 They're annoyed by the fact that whenever they watch a TV commercial, it's a mixed race couple, for example. 0.99

00:22:09.600 Not that they object to mixed race couples, but they object to it being in your face like that. 1.00

00:22:15.360 It can never not be a mixed race couple ever. 1.00

00:22:18.080 Unless it's a commercial for buying for paying funeral insurance.

00:22:25.460 And they're irritated and they will become aware that other people are irritated and they'll talk about it and whatever.

00:22:34.860 And these things kind of organically spread.

00:22:37.080 There's an irritation, I feel, in the UK, which wasn't there perhaps in 2015, that is growing now.

00:22:46.840 I can't talk for America, but...

00:22:49.020 Oh, well, yeah.

00:22:49.840 The irritation in America is intense.

00:22:54.380 And it's actually, it is getting very extreme.

00:22:58.780 I mean, I think a lot of this, like 80 to 90% of the fear of like critical race theory in schools and so on, or the gender stuff.

00:23:11.700 I think it is massively overblown.

00:23:13.780 And it's due to the fact that we live, we have this kind of social media, or I guess to some degree, like televised environment where people are existing, you're kind of existing everywhere.

00:23:29.680 And the most intense experience in the country is your experience.

00:23:34.880 So I actually saw this thing last night.

00:23:39.120 I was just browsing through YouTube and it was in Idaho.

00:23:42.780 These Christian fundamentalists who view Idaho as the, I think it's like the last redoubt movement or something, where they're all, I had never heard of this before, but they're all moving to Idaho to create the last redoubt of Christian fundamentalism.

00:23:59.680 There was actually a white nationalist version of that as well.

00:24:02.620 I think this one is like, you know, a thousand times more popular.

00:24:07.060 And they're freaking out at like local librarians and so on.

00:24:11.580 And they're like, they want to get rid of books that the library doesn't even house.

00:24:17.280 You know, so they're just over, like they see something on social media and because social media is becoming their consciousness.

00:24:26.320 So their consciousness isn't about, you know, everyday experience of walking down to the coffee shop or whatever.

00:24:35.500 Their consciousness is actually libs of TikTok.

00:24:40.380 And so they think that.

00:24:42.840 Yeah, sorry.

00:24:43.700 Yeah.

00:24:44.380 Yeah.

00:24:44.780 It's so easy.

00:24:46.340 Yeah.

00:24:46.940 Sorry, carry on.

00:24:47.520 Well, I'll just finish real quick.

00:24:48.900 So there is this nice, I would imagine liberal lady who is the local, who is the librarian. 0.99

00:24:56.960 And she kind of read as liberal, but who knows?

00:24:59.980 It doesn't even matter.

00:25:01.060 And she's saying they're, they're like telling me that I'm harming their children.

00:25:06.120 And they're saying that, like, they want me to ban books that the library doesn't even own.

00:25:11.480 And they're coming to my house protesting while engaging in open carry.

00:25:17.200 And she just kind of resigned at some point.

00:25:20.060 She was like, this is not.

00:25:21.220 Sorry, sorry.

00:25:21.920 So what's open carry?

00:25:22.760 You're openly carrying, openly carrying a weapon.

00:25:24.920 So, yeah.

00:25:26.980 So in many, I don't even know all the national laws.

00:25:30.080 Is that legal to openly carry a gun?

00:25:32.860 Yes, you can open carry.

00:25:34.340 The issue actually is concealed carry in many cases.

00:25:38.180 But yes, you can absolutely do that.

00:25:40.780 I mean, I doubt you could do that in New York City or something.

00:25:43.580 But yes, I will occasionally see it out here in the, in Montana, of someone just with a sidearm.

00:25:53.180 Openly carried.

00:25:53.980 But yeah, and so again, like maybe these people are kind of crazy, but I think it's, it's something

00:26:01.780 kind of bigger in the sense that their, their experience is now digital.

00:26:08.980 And so they'll see some crazy woman on TikTok who is genuinely crazy, kind of talking about 0.97

00:26:16.520 puberty blockers and critical race theory and all of this stuff. 0.89

00:26:20.400 And that is their experience.

00:26:22.620 So their experience actually isn't like real or local.

00:26:26.600 It's this social media consciousness that they've developed.

00:26:31.460 Well, you can say that then obviously it's perfectly natural in a polarized society that you transpose

00:26:38.660 everything that you feel about the most extreme manifestations of that, if you don't know any

00:26:43.020 of them personally, onto all people that are that.

00:26:46.200 So in Northern Ireland, for example, you would have a totally polarized society, Catholics and Protestants

00:26:51.960 with absolute nothing to do with each other.

00:26:53.540 And the all the only Catholics that you'd see on the telly would be Catholic extremists from Sinn Féin or something like that.

00:27:01.300 The only Protestants you'd see on the telly would be Protestant extremists from the Democratic Unionists or something like that, or the political, politicized Protestants anyway.

00:27:09.400 And so the idea that there's just an ordinary person that's Protestant who's basically just like you, but has slightly different views on whether you have to pray to the big man one to one or you need an intercessor is just not, doesn't happen.

00:27:23.060 And that's more so now, of course, they've kind of come together.

00:27:25.140 And I think you're getting that and it's very sad in a way that you're getting that with with politics, that when I was young, when I was 20, I meet people now at conferences and whatever, who are 20 years younger than me.

00:27:38.760 And they it's extraordinary.

00:27:40.260 They have like opinions and pubic hair and and they and and they, you know, they and they would have no friends who were left wing.

00:27:51.460 Right. No, absolutely not. They would never like date a girl that was left wing.

00:27:56.380 They would never they just have nothing. And that's apparently what it's like.

00:27:59.180 I was talking to these people that were at the same university that I was at, but obviously 20 years later.

00:28:02.720 And they're saying it's totally polarized now at Derby University.

00:28:05.600 There's right wing secret societies and things like this.

00:28:09.320 And you'd you'd have nothing to do with people. It's just it's just you're either right.

00:28:13.100 You're either a right wing person or a left wing person or you that you don't care.

00:28:17.140 But increasingly, you are either one or the other.

00:28:19.120 Whereas when I was there, most people didn't care.

00:28:22.260 And if they were right wing, they were a bit right wing and they would be perfectly happy to be friends with.

00:28:27.640 I was good friends with the girl that lived next door to me. 0.99

00:28:30.160 She was an active member of the Labour Party and she later became deputy mayor of Tower Hamlets.

00:28:35.040 And we were perfectly good friends.

00:28:37.380 Indeed, indeed, she put me next to her at the table on her 21st birthday party.

00:28:41.600 And that just wouldn't. It seems that they were saying, these 20 year olds in 21st, that just wouldn't happen now.

00:28:47.320 It's just totally because I think the Internet is a cliche, but the Internet must have more than social trends and hormones and whatever.

00:28:55.260 But it must have contributed to this because you and you there's no one culture anymore.

00:29:00.040 There's no every imagine a situation where, like, well, 60 percent of British people would tune in and watch one television program of a night.

00:29:08.060 More than half the country are all sitting there around the telly watching Coronation Street.

00:29:12.820 And now that's just gone. And so we don't have anything.

00:29:17.980 I mean, that maybe American football somewhat resembles that.

00:29:23.580 But I don't think any television show actually resembles that anymore.

00:29:28.740 I mean, even when I was a child, I mean, everyone watched the nightly news and there was just a general sense of like, what is newsworthy?

00:29:39.260 What's up? What's down? What's left? What's right?

00:29:41.300 Like, I don't think anything approaches that. I mean, even the like, again, I'm kind of going going off a little bit of a stray here.

00:29:49.080 But like the difference between music now and I keep I'll talk to young people about this just to to make sure that I'm right.

00:29:59.420 Because, you know, there is a tendency that you listen to the same music that you liked in your 20s or maybe even your teens, like for the rest of your life.

00:30:07.880 You just become inherently nostalgic about music.

00:30:10.200 So but I'll talk to people about this in the in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.

00:30:17.480 There were bands that it's not that everyone bought their album or everyone was listening to them, you know, constantly.

00:30:28.320 But like they kind of defined a certain era, you know, I mean, to go back to like the Soviet Union.

00:30:35.080 I mean, when was it Billy Joel or John, John Bon Jovi?

00:30:40.400 I think it was Billy Joel. You know, hold on.

00:30:43.020 Who's who did Born in the USA?

00:30:45.960 I always get these guys mixed. Springsteen, excuse me.

00:30:48.640 I always get those three. I always kind of mix up.

00:30:52.060 Like I know they're a little bit different, but Springsteen did a concert in the Soviet Union that was the kind of like back in the USSR.

00:30:59.720 This was like a tremendous event. U2 in in their heyday of the kind of like late 80s and 90s, they were a kind of global band that was representing the West.

00:31:14.760 And the the coincidence that they were called U2, named after U2 spy plane, is kind of fascinating in that regard.

00:31:24.000 They they just like they like the Octoon Baby album was actually produced in former East Berlin.

00:31:34.880 And like it was a kind of like cultural event where this one band was kind of defining an era and speaking to the world.

00:31:47.220 And I mean, even like Nirvana, which was this, you know, cool band in some ways, but it is a kind of nihilistic, like downward spiraling band where it's reducing the musicality.

00:32:02.300 It's playing guitars out of tune, screaming it, you know, it's very influenced by punk, of course, but like it represented a certain like nihilistic urge in the late 90s.

00:32:14.900 But but it kind of like in that way was a national and global phenomenon, like it was the band of its era.

00:32:24.380 There is nothing even approaching that at this point.

00:32:28.960 Like there's no like I mean, rock is dead in many ways, but like there's no there's no one band there.

00:32:38.040 There are people who are popular, of course, but there's no one band that is kind of defining a moment in time.

00:32:44.340 I think everything has just been so massively fragmented.

00:32:49.700 Do you disagree, Ed? You're looking at me.

00:32:51.740 What?

00:32:51.960 Britney. Britney surely has defined the last 25 years. 1.00

00:32:55.600 Britney Spears, one woman has defined a quarter of a century.

00:33:00.900 Surely we agree on that.

00:33:03.380 You're talking about Britney Spears?

00:33:05.340 Of course.

00:33:07.380 Richard, would you say that like Lady Gaga and some of those like female pop artists has been like very different have like defined the sound of the early 2010s at least or the late?

00:33:18.640 Yeah, I think that's fair.

00:33:21.260 I think that's fair.

00:33:22.340 But Lady Gaga is like, again, her popularity is declined.

00:33:27.760 I mean, she had a lot of albums that were duds and she still is a kind of like icon and she does Hollywood soundtracks.

00:33:36.340 I mean, I have a person that you see my point.

00:33:39.240 I have no real interest in music apart from Iron Maiden.

00:33:45.540 I used to quite like Iron Maiden when I was about seven.

00:33:48.380 And otherwise, I've just never been particularly into music.

00:33:51.480 And somehow, I don't know how, but certain musicians have come to my attention.

00:33:56.860 And I quite, I'll have them on while I'm, I don't know, jogging or something.

00:34:00.960 Sure.

00:34:01.500 Such as this, there's this Canadian. 0.98

00:34:07.080 Hey, hey, you, you, do you have a girlfriend?

00:34:10.440 That, her.

00:34:11.620 I can't, I think it's Avril Lavigne.

00:34:14.620 Okay.

00:34:15.160 So that's, that's one that's come to my attention.

00:34:17.440 Lady Gaga is another.

00:34:19.180 And then there's this Taylor Swift.

00:34:21.740 Yeah.

00:34:22.600 Yeah.

00:34:22.900 And then there's this Katy Perry.

00:34:24.240 So those are the ones that I know I've heard them on the radio in the car or something

00:34:29.960 like that.

00:34:30.480 And I found them a bit catchy.

00:34:32.680 Right.

00:34:33.520 I'm sad to say.

00:34:34.260 Look, there are, I mean, I do think that Taylor Swift is kind of a national band in some degree,

00:34:42.420 but I think you see my point in the sense that everything is so fragmented.

00:34:49.160 There's no like unifying, like artists that, that kind of almost like speaks to a time or

00:34:56.740 something.

00:34:57.080 There are these ever fragmenting niches of, and, and, you know, for better and for worse,

00:35:03.680 there's a lot of move towards just listening to stuff on SoundCloud and so on.

00:35:08.020 So anyway, it was just the point, like if you were listening and, and I was getting this in

00:35:13.880 this Philip short biography of Putin, like if you were buying blue jeans or you were listening

00:35:20.780 to Bruce Springsteen or you owned a VCR in 1988, that was, you know, that wasn't just mere

00:35:29.540 entertainment or fashion.

00:35:30.960 That was also kind of a political act.

00:35:33.220 Like there was a, there was a notion of a West that was more dynamic and more intoxicating

00:35:42.200 and more certainly wealthier and, and, and so on that was kind of like outside you.

00:35:50.580 I mean, that, that now famous commercial that Gorbachev starred in, in, I don't know, 93 or

00:35:56.240 something, uh, where he's at Pizza Hut and there's this family where the young man in

00:36:01.460 the family, uh, says, you know, oh, we have these great opportunities now that communism's

00:36:06.140 over.

00:36:06.560 And then his father is basically saying, oh, it's all chaos.

00:36:09.600 It used to make sense now, you know, whatever.

00:36:11.680 And then he's like, well, you know, we have, um, uh, you know, again, they were going back

00:36:16.700 and forth.

00:36:17.120 Like we, you know, we, we, we've got cool art and things like that.

00:36:19.980 Like, no, it's unpatriotic or whatever.

00:36:21.800 And then they both said, oh, but we now have Pizza Hut and they both like raise the glass

00:36:27.140 to Gorbachev.

00:36:28.080 Oh, we all, we all love Pizza Hut.

00:36:29.880 That was the one, there, there was a notion of like Western cultural imperialism.

00:36:35.220 There was a kind of West outside of the East that you could look to and say, I want that.

00:36:41.920 If you don't care about things like free speech or democracy or whatever, then, uh, or if you're

00:36:48.460 not particularly materialistic, then it could be arguable.

00:36:51.540 What did Gorbachev give you?

00:36:53.040 He gave you fast food and materialism and glamour.

00:36:57.480 Yeah.

00:36:58.280 And yeah.

00:36:59.000 And that's, that's all that's remained as well.

00:37:01.120 Cause the free speech bit, that's all that's gone.

00:37:03.280 So what his legacy is to Russia is fast food, American, the Americanization of Russia. 0.87

00:37:10.500 Pizza Hut.

00:37:11.260 Which is not necessarily a brilliant, uh, a brilliant thing.

00:37:15.660 No.

00:37:17.000 And I think they, Russians do like, in some ways, understandably want to feel great.

00:37:24.440 I mean, you can see this on these like crazy television programs, which are like Fox news

00:37:30.740 on steroids, where you have these, uh, you know, commentators are all standing at podiums

00:37:37.240 and they're just like blithely discussing, nuking Poland, you know, like, like, I mean, 0.92

00:37:45.160 again, I'm not exaggerating.

00:37:46.640 I, I see these things, they're translated.

00:37:49.140 I, I presume they're not mistranslated and they're just talking about putting people in

00:37:54.240 gulags.

00:37:55.440 They're just like, Oh yeah, we'll, well, we have gulag solution to the Ukrainian question. 0.90

00:37:59.840 You know?

00:38:00.040 I mean, it's just insane what, so like, I was taken aback to be great in 2012, when

00:38:08.140 I spent a week and a half in Latvia without anybody else there.

00:38:13.320 It's always really interesting to go on holiday and not be with another foreigner. 1.00

00:38:16.640 Just, you know, just, well, not holiday.

00:38:18.080 It was a working thing.

00:38:18.780 I was lecturing at, uh, Riga Stradina university.

00:38:21.520 And I was saying to them, these Latvian 20 something master's students, uh, we have

00:38:28.080 so many Latvians and whatever in the UK working in pubs and apparently they actually earn more

00:38:33.080 than let's say a doctor does in Latvia.

00:38:35.340 Uh, and, uh, why, why aren't you part of that, uh, that exodus to, to the West?

00:38:41.640 And it was really interesting.

00:38:42.820 A lot of them agreed.

00:38:43.940 Well, no, no, we want to be here because this is where we're from.

00:38:46.180 We're from here.

00:38:47.200 Our friends from here, our family are from here, but then they made the interesting further

00:38:50.600 point that, Oh, we want Latvia to be great.

00:38:53.620 We want to stay here and build Latvia up so that in 10 or 20 years time, we're richer 1.00

00:38:59.500 than you.

00:39:00.580 And you're what you're wanting to come here to work.

00:39:03.680 And they had that, they had that idea.

00:39:06.120 And you'd never at that point, 10 years ago, and not certainly not now here, a person like

00:39:11.560 that say something like that.

00:39:13.440 This idea of the future is ours and the future is great.

00:39:16.940 And we should, we, we, we, we have this, this desire for future glory.

00:39:21.040 And that was the fascinating difference.

00:39:24.300 Well, but I, I think Russians, I mean, I, I, I think there's a, there, there is a little 1.00

00:39:29.360 bit of that.

00:39:29.920 I mean, I think that's like a kind of positive version of this.

00:39:32.960 I think there's a kind of like, I sense a great deal of desperation and kind of depression

00:39:40.820 of, you know, life might not be shitty, but we can still threaten Warsaw with nuclear annihilation.

00:39:51.060 You know, a, a kind of like dark version of what you're talking about, because all of

00:39:59.080 those professionals, like there was this, I don't know if you saw this leaked memo from

00:40:03.700 Russia, but like 200,000 IT professionals have left, fled Russia after the invasion over

00:40:10.900 the past six months.

00:40:12.980 I mean, that's insane.

00:40:14.900 Yes, I, I certainly saw that a lot of, a lot of, um, middle-class Russians that don't

00:40:22.660 support Putin have fled to Georgia because that's one of, that's one of the places that

00:40:27.080 they can get to without any visa problems or whatever they can need to get there.

00:40:31.040 So a lot of them have got, there's this growing community of sort of young hip Russians in,

00:40:35.640 in Tbilisi.

00:40:36.400 Um, so that's, that's certainly true.

00:40:40.080 But, but yeah, I mean, like you're, you're losing, I mean, we talked a lot about this last

00:40:47.140 week.

00:40:47.380 I mean, there's the 1% and you obviously have this 1% in Russia of monopolistic capitalists

00:40:55.800 who are multi-billionaires and then half of them end up slaughtered alongside their family

00:41:01.620 in some, you know, villa.

00:41:03.440 I mean, this is happening at a, you know, alarming rate.

00:41:09.000 Um, but there's also like the 10% of, uh, you know, professional class and upper society

00:41:17.260 and they are fleeing and Putin just basically said good riddance at one point.

00:41:26.940 I mean, what was the metaphor he used?

00:41:28.400 Like, it's like a fly comes into our mouth and we spit it out or something.

00:41:32.220 I mean, it was remarkable.

00:41:34.240 And so you're left with this like desperate proletarian class that doesn't necessarily 0.98

00:41:41.880 want there to be successful, you know, lawyers and doctors and businessmen and artists and 1.00

00:41:49.140 journalists or whatever in Russia, but are just basically like, fuck you, we'll nuke your 1.00

00:41:54.460 ass and I think that that's what I see. 1.00

00:41:59.720 I'm not sure I see like coming greatness. 0.98

00:42:02.060 I see like troll anger, basically.

00:42:06.260 Prol anger.

00:42:07.020 So sort of, sort of, um, how can I put this kind of like, you know, that film that you

00:42:11.160 told me about that you watched about the Vikings, what was it called now?

00:42:14.900 Oh yeah.

00:42:15.220 The Norseman.

00:42:15.740 I finally managed to watch it.

00:42:17.320 I was on a plane coming back from the UK and it happened to be quite a big plane.

00:42:21.140 And so there was movies on it and things.

00:42:23.380 I managed to watch half of it on the plane.

00:42:25.440 And then I managed to watch the rest of the world.

00:42:26.380 That's quite good, actually.

00:42:27.260 I was, I was surprisingly impressed by it, but it would be kind of, it would be kind of

00:42:32.000 Viking greatness, you know, greatness within a context of poverty, um, great, greatness

00:42:37.340 within a context of general destruction.

00:42:39.160 That, that kind of greatness, uh, rather than, yeah.

00:42:43.080 Yes.

00:42:43.920 And I, I think that like troll anger, I mean, I think you can see a lot of that in the United

00:42:49.020 States.

00:42:49.380 I mean, I think to, to, to tie a bow around what I was saying earlier, I mean, the, there,

00:42:56.960 there was an out and there was an end.

00:42:58.840 So, I mean, when, when I was a kid in the eighties, you know, granted the, the 1980s were

00:43:05.880 not like the 1960s in the cold war where people were, you know, talking about duck and cover

00:43:11.260 and nuclear annihilation and, and so on like that.

00:43:14.400 Things were much more muted in, you know, my childhood.

00:43:20.580 I think there was a kind of Soviet freak out over operation Ryan there, they were, uh, speculating

00:43:26.700 about a first strike from NATO and things like that.

00:43:29.980 But anyway, it was, it was much more muted than the forties, fifties and sixties and so

00:43:35.260 on.

00:43:35.880 Um, and, uh, but there was an out and there was an end.

00:43:39.560 So I could, I could kind of imagine, oh, like, what would it be like to be in communism?

00:43:44.160 Like, you know, it'd be oppressive and horrible.

00:43:46.480 And if you were living in the Soviet union or the Eastern block, you would say, what would

00:43:49.740 it be like to, to live in the West?

00:43:52.040 You know, everyone has blue jeans and Coca-Cola and listens to Bruce Springsteen and U2 and,

00:43:57.960 and, and whatever.

00:43:59.880 And now there's no out or in, like, there's no, there's no other world out there.

00:44:08.120 So, I mean, I, that's where I think like Gorbachev's fascinating, but I don't think it's really

00:44:12.420 analogous.

00:44:13.160 Like he basically, he was a dyed in the wool communist who wanted to save communism for

00:44:22.300 the world and maybe just save it in Russia or save it in the territory that they had. 0.73

00:44:27.240 It wasn't going to be a global revolution, but, but still save it.

00:44:30.480 And so he ended the cold war effectively with, with, uh, Ronald Reagan.

00:44:36.160 Um, he, you know, these are positive things.

00:44:39.120 He, he, he encouraged reform, encouraged reform in Germany, uh, the most important, you know,

00:44:45.260 Eastern block state.

00:44:46.960 And, but this all led to the collapse.

00:44:49.440 So it's a kind of, you give them an inch, they take a mile.

00:44:51.760 Once you kind of open up the floodgates just a touch, then the water just rushed through.

00:44:57.480 And then you end up resigning, you know, in this almost kind of depressing spectacle on,

00:45:02.880 on Christmas day, just saying, I'm leaving.

00:45:05.620 I'm, you know, this is what it is.

00:45:07.160 And you give over power.

00:45:09.560 Um, and, uh, but I, I don't think it's really analogous now because it's like, what, what

00:45:17.060 is the alternative?

00:45:18.520 Like, what is the East or the West in comparison for what we have today?

00:45:22.540 All I see is kind of pro anger.

00:45:26.460 It's, it's, you know, like with Trump fans, you know, what are they demanding outside of,

00:45:35.880 you know, I want Donald Trump to be my president.

00:45:40.700 You know, I mean, there, there's no kind of like other world that they're demanding.

00:45:45.140 There's certainly no policy that they're demanding.

00:45:47.220 You know, I don't know, vague notions of tariffs.

00:45:53.120 I mean, they don't even talk about tariffs, but maybe, maybe, uh, getting control of illegal

00:46:00.120 immigration.

00:46:00.640 I mean, okay, but it's all just extremely vague.

00:46:05.640 And it's basically, I mean, what are the applause lines for Trump fans?

00:46:10.800 It's basically the 2020 election was stolen.

00:46:13.300 And that's what, but that's what, but that's what, but that's what, but that's what you

00:46:16.920 get with a lot of ideological movements like that.

00:46:19.760 It's very, very vague.

00:46:21.760 Um, well, yeah, but, but what, I guess what I'm saying is like what I was saying, like it,

00:46:27.960 it actually, there's a lot of similarities between Russians, again, at least as I understand

00:46:35.540 them, looking at them, you know, from living in the United States, you know, but like, there's 1.00

00:46:41.100 a, there's a lot of similarities of this troll outrage of like, you know, fuck you. 1.00

00:46:48.980 We're just going to drop a nuclear bomb on Warsaw and Ukrainian bastards. 1.00

00:46:54.320 We're just going to, you know, throw you into a gulag. 1.00

00:46:57.760 Ha ha ha. 1.00

00:46:58.640 And then on the other side in the West, it's basically fuck you. 1.00

00:47:04.320 We don't care, you know, what the FBI says. 1.00

00:47:08.380 Uh, we're going to defund the FBI.

00:47:11.600 Trump is my president.

00:47:12.920 Like, it's this just like totally, it's this lashing out and like just totally unproductive

00:47:21.080 proletarian rage.

00:47:24.260 Yeah.

00:47:24.920 Um, I mean, like Marx, I mean, Marx is an interesting writer.

00:47:29.320 Um, I was actually reading some Marx recently.

00:47:32.320 He's a particularly early Marx.

00:47:34.320 He's kind of a fascinating writer.

00:47:35.600 He actually reminds me a lot of each, uh, they had many similar concerns and they were

00:47:40.360 actually attacking the same people, the young Higalians.

00:47:42.520 But I mean, he was fundamentally wrong when he thought that the, and he came to this conclusion

00:47:50.860 intellectually.

00:47:51.440 He was like, you know, basically the, there's this working class in Germany.

00:47:56.340 They have nothing to lose, but their chains.

00:47:58.500 So they will be a kind of like universal subject of history.

00:48:02.060 Like they'll liberate us all because they almost have to.

00:48:05.840 And so I mean, I, I think relying on the proletarian really is, you know, just totally incorrect.

00:48:15.400 And what you get from proletarian revolutions are the kind of things that we're seeing now,

00:48:22.160 just this general F you world sentiment.

00:48:26.940 And I, I don't, I don't think they're really kind of capable.

00:48:31.500 I think you just run into that brick wall, um, with those people.

00:48:35.600 I mean, again, I would, I would temper that with also the notion that like, we've reached

00:48:40.640 this kind of end of possibilities where there's, there's nothing else.

00:48:46.480 There's nothing outside of the West that people would want, you know, can't we be like them?

00:48:53.580 No.

00:48:54.300 What do you, what do you want to be like China?

00:48:57.120 They want to be like you, you know, in, in Russia, I'm sure they want to be wealthier

00:49:02.720 or something, but like, what, what's the difference?

00:49:05.420 I mean, you have McDonald's or some, something like it in Russia.

00:49:09.220 You, you can buy Gucci handbags in Russia.

00:49:12.120 You can buy a German automobile in Russia.

00:49:14.660 I mean, what, what else there's, there's no alternative that you would go to.

00:49:18.860 And so we're left with this just kind of like lashing out and rage at the end of the day.

RadixJournal - September 08, 2022

Prole Rage

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