May 17, 2019 • 55 mins
If you live in the global west, odds are you haven't heard of Aleksandr Dugin. The author of "Foundations of Geopolitics" doesn't have a global profile, and he holds no official position in the Russian government. However, despite his lack of official government credentials, western officials are increasingly worried that this author may be at the helm of Russia's global chess game, from the annexation of Crimea to proven interference in election systems and more. So who is the mysterious Aleksandr Dugin -- a quack? A genius? Listen in to learn why some believe he may be a new Rasputin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt Nol is not
here today. They call me Ben and we are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know a
very uh would you say? We're a very American show, Matt.
(00:45):
We are American centric. A lot of the things we cover,
you know, we bring our own perspective to it, and
we are Americans, and we do try to branch out,
we do. But our perspective is our perspective, true, true,
and it's important for everyone to be aware of and
as much as as possible uh their own perspectives and
(01:06):
inherent biases. But you're right, we often cover things that
are related to the United States, or occur in the US,
or involved people from the US. In all fairness, we
are always thrilled to branch out of that North American shell.
(01:27):
You know. Quite enjoyed our earlier episode on Indonesian cryptids right,
which ended up being a little more true crime. And
I think either of us reckoned as some Australian cryptids
in there, had some Australian cryptids in there. Did we
ever do the bunyip? Did? We did? We did? Okay,
and we had I think we had any reeson correct
(01:49):
time from stuff Mom never told you and savor excellent shows.
Check them out. Speaking of fantastic segues, Matt, I was
thinking about this earlier. Do you realized for the better
part of a century, the Soviet Union and Russia have
been the stand in boogeyman for the US. We have
other threats come and go right, other things hit the
(02:10):
news cycle, but pretty much since the nineteen forties or so,
and even even before then, uh Soviet Union Russia we
were like the main antagonist, the main recurring nemeses. Yeah
they were. They were the second most organized to mobilize
power right right right. And nowadays this is back in
(02:36):
the news. It doesn't matter what your political leanings are.
You can't really read a headline without running into something
about Russia. And when most people in these United States
of ours think of Russia, we think of one man,
Vladimir Putin. Rumors have swirled about this guy for decades
(02:56):
and decades and decades, and intelligence services the world over,
not just our alphabet soup, but many other alphabet soups
across the planet have spent millions, if not billions, trying
to learn more about him, more about his plans, more
about his strategies, and ultimately, like what's his deal. In
this episode, we're exploring a bit about the man himself,
(03:20):
his rise to power, his inner circle, along with what
some believe is his actual end game, his genuine goal
on the world stage. But let's let's cut past all
the you know, the MSNBC, Fox News, CNN stuff, and
(03:41):
let's let's get to know this guy. Who is Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin. Well, if you listen to Lad's own story,
he's just a regular old guy. He was born to
a working class family. He was born in Leningrad in
nineteen fifty two. His father was he was a war veteran,
(04:01):
quite decorated. Actually, he was also a factory worker. And
Vladimir was an only child, and he grew up in
you know, one of the like a communal apartment, not
a commune necessarily, but a communal apartment with two other families.
And again this was just kind of run of the mill.
This is how you lived at that time in nineteen
(04:24):
fifty two, especially if you're you know, a factory worker
and a war war veteran, right right. The state had
a tremendous influence in determining where you and your family lived.
And this, as you said, was not at all unusual.
A communal apartment is sort of similar to think back,
(04:48):
did you ever live in the dorms at Georgia State?
I lived in dorms at Columbus State, and it was
the same kind of thing that you're about to. Just
like you have a communal kitchen maybe uh best room
or two that are shared across the unit of two
to three families. But then people have their own rooms
and stuff. It's not just you know, a room with
(05:08):
a hot plate and a toilet, nine people or something. Yes,
And if you go to the Kremlin's official website that
has a biography on Vladimir Putin, you get this quote
from Putin. Are you gonna do it in a voice? No? Uh?
All right? It says I come from an ordinary family.
And this is how I lived for a long time,
nearly my whole life, I lived as an average, normal person,
(05:29):
and I've always maintained that connection. So there we go.
We're starting out just normal. He's using the word normal. Average.
Uh yeah, ordinary, sure, sure, run in the mill three
squares will meat and potatoes, right, three square mills a day.
I mean, that's that's very common in any political uh
(05:51):
political website, you know what I mean, someone will say
unless they're unless they're and out and out looney been strong,
strong man dictator who believes they have a mandate from God,
They'll say something like, you know, I'm of the people.
I am, I too, am one of you. Unless it
was like the DPRK writing it, perhaps I think it
(06:13):
would look a little different. It would, it would one day.
Maybe we can just make a segment of Dear Leader facts,
various achievements growing up putin loved spy novels and TV shows.
There's an interesting quote from him in a BBC article
about the appeal he saw in these stories. Oh yeah, well,
(06:38):
it's a concept that maybe a lot of us have
or could identify with. If you when you listen to this,
the quote is one man's effort could achieve what whole
armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of
thousands of people. We've brought this concept up before. It's
a facet of what's now called asymmetrical warfare, Like why
(06:58):
would you why would you need to build your own
aircraft carrier when you could, for much less money and
time build a missile that would destroy an aircraft carrier,
or a spy that could infiltrate that aircraft carrier and
sabotage it, or a computer programmer network that could change
the course of an election. There you go, oh god,
(07:22):
but you know what I mean. You gotta work smart
instead of working hard. When Putin was still in school,
he went to the KGB Security and Intelligence Agency and
asked how he could join up. I don't want to
just read these spy novels, he thought, I want to
I want to live them. The people at the headquarters said, alright, good,
(07:44):
you got moxie. You know, they probably like chucked his
chucked his chin a little bit, and they said, we'll
tell you what, go to the army first, or go
to college and get a law degree, and then come
back and maybe we can talk. And he was like, Yep, yep,
he did so he that's exactly what he did. He
(08:05):
took the latter option and he went to Leningrad State University.
He spent seventeen years there's a mid level agent working
for an intelligence During this time he had an experienced
that many of his biographers and people who study his life,
for lack of a better word, they concluded this was
(08:27):
a defining moment in his life. Yeah, he was in Dresden, Germany.
The date was December five, nineteen eighty nine, and this
is just just a couple of weeks after the fall
of the Berlin Wall between East Germany and West Germany,
which I have a piece of. By the way, did
ever tell you that it was this souvenir thing that
people were selling at the time. That's awesome. It's a
(08:50):
weird one. Was it? Was it in your apartment? I mean,
you're dwelling place wherever that could be? Because I missed it,
and next time I'm gonna check it out. Um, that's
really cool. Um, So we're in we're in Dresden, Germany,
and Dresden, you just may remember from us talking about
this before was bombed terribly in World War Two. Uh,
(09:14):
just obliterated. It was I believe it was the firebomb
campaign of Dresden. Uh, read about it if you want to.
It's a whole other piece of history that's worth looking into.
But he's in this historical city and there is a STAZZI.
I guess the German intelligence police. They've got an installation
(09:37):
very close just across the street from where the KGB
also has their headquarters there in Dresden. And I guess,
I guess he found himself. Putin found himself within that
KGB office. And there was an anti communist mob that
was forming at the Stazi location, a huge mob of people,
(09:59):
and then of you know, a group of them broke
off and went over to the KGB offices. And uh,
Putin recounted that, you know, as as he's seeing this occurring,
and like, oh god, what do we what are we
gonna do? Are we gonna have a firefight right now? Um?
He was told that the KGB couldn't officially do anything
to respond to this threat of violence against them without
(10:22):
direct orders from Moscow and quote, Moscow is silent. And
this stuck with Putin In some of his public statements later,
he said, this business of Moscow is silent. I got
the feeling that the country no longer existed, that it
had disappeared. It was clear that the union was ailing
(10:44):
and that it had a terminal disease without a cure,
a paralysis of power. And this makes sense because think
about again, I'm I want to be very fair here. Uh,
this is something that happens to many organizations. You feel
paralyzed because you are waiting for a green light or
approval on something, you know what I mean. And that's
(11:07):
that's also necessary because at this point it could have
made an international incident or triggered a hot war. But
still he's like, why do we have to sit here
with our hands in our pockets while something may well
turn into a riot? And he's in his thirties at
this time, and you can really feel from that quote
that it was, like you said, the Birapher's due point
to it as being like one of the moments. And
(11:31):
this is this is around the time as KGB years,
around the time you can see that famous photograph of
him as a photographer posing as a photographer in the
same shot with the US so fast forward by Putin
has resigned from the KGBS Active Reserve he's back in
(11:53):
Lennon Grad where he grew up, but now it's called St. Petersburg,
and he's working for the city's first democraticly elected mayor,
a guy named Anatoly Soapchuk, who happens to be his
former law professor. He was, he was behind the scene.
He was a fixer. Uh. You remember a House of Cards.
(12:13):
So for much of House of Cards, Underwood the Underwood
family has a fixer, right, I can't remember the guy's name.
We ended up becoming chief of staff who ended up
becoming chief of staff. That was his spoil, as spoils
of war is blood and treasure here earned that by
doing very illegal things. So the implication here is that
maybe Putin was cutting some legal corners for the mayor.
(12:37):
He was called the man to see if things needed
to get done and yeah, and he was indispensable to
the mayor. He was also very loyal to the mayor. Yes,
when Schick wasn't reelected. Um, the guy who won, the
guys who's who the guy wanted? Like, you know I
heard about this, Uh, Putin the fixer fellow could get
(12:59):
him on my staffs. He's offered a job by the
man who won and um Putin turned it down, and
he said, quote, it's better to be hanged for loyalty
than be rewarded for betrayal, which I don't care how
you feel about the guy that's tore right. So he
and his family pull up the ten stakes, they moved
(13:20):
to Moscow, and he climbs up the government ladder. He
eventually becomes the head of the agency that replaced the KGB,
which is the FSB, and should it should be familiar
to a lot of us who've been listening to the
show for a while, and in he's head of the FSB,
and Boris Yelson, who was the President Russia at the time,
(13:43):
has named him personally named Putin to this position. Newsweek
was speculating a lot about this. Who is this guy?
You know what I mean? He was He was on
intelligence network radar for a while, but it wasn't in
a lot of mainstream news. They had bigger fish to fry.
So Newsweek said this was a job the president would
only have given to one of their most trusted of aids.
(14:05):
Then in August of Boris Yelton appoints Putin Prime Minister
of Russia. And if you go to the official of
the official website of the Kremlin, you can read about
the interaction of just walking into Boris Yelton's office and
having him basically just tell him you're the one. You're
I'm the one, You're the one for this job. It
(14:26):
was fascinating. This was also a time of chaos in
the administration exactly, but it's one of those things that's
difficult to turn down right right, and it doesn't compromise
his loyalty or his concerns about that, but it's also
it's also a situation wherein Yeltsin and his administration need
(14:46):
a lot of help. Putin, you see, is the fifth
prime minister in less than two years. They're just running
through them, and this chaos continues to escalate. In New
Year's Eve, suddenly Boris Yeltson steps down from office and
he says, Vladimir Putin is the acting president, and he
(15:09):
is the acting president until March when he wins the
election and becomes the real president. A lot of people
there's some murky stuff because a lot of people I
think that this was a move Yelson was doing as
ah an attempt at self preservation, because there was already
a war in Czechenia, which will be important later. And
(15:32):
his approval ratings were dropping as the war was getting
more and more desperate and less and less successful. So
now we have we have gotten to the point where
Putin is finally president of Russia. What does he do next?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor, you know,
(16:00):
just before we get into this again, Ben, I just
want to point out I think people are right to
say there's something odd going there going on there with
the whole Yelton appointment of Putin to him becoming president
within four months, that's it feels like that was a
calculated move somewhere, and I guess it would be difficult
(16:20):
unless you had the official I don't know diaries of
everyone involved, but still it feels like there's there's a
little something extra occurring there. I also want to point
out Boris Yelson was. It was not a secret. It
wasn't often written about a bunch of headlines and stuff,
but Boris Yelson was a notoriously wild alcoholic. There's a
(16:44):
great story I do. It's a little bit of a tangible.
We may not have time, but it's it's so worth it.
There's one time Boris Yeltson meets then President Bill Clinton
in Washington in September of Secret Service eight found yells
in alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk in his underwear,
(17:08):
yelling for a taxi and you know, slurring his words.
They were trying to get him inside, you know, to
Blair House where he was staying, and he was like, no,
get your hands off, and I'm president, but I want
a pizza. Seriously, he was hailing a taxi to get
a pizza. Maybe maybe he had just finished shooting his
(17:29):
p tape. Someone asked, U, nobody really knew about this
until two thousand and nine. You can say how they
don't want that getting out. When a guy named Taylor
Branch published a book called the Clinton Tapes where he
interviewed the former president and then he asked Bill Clinton
how the situation ended, and the guy just shrugged and said, um, well, yeah,
(17:49):
I mean he got his pizza last last thing. The
next night he tried to do it again. Yes, waited.
He was having a laugh, That's all it was. He
seemed very very centered on that. But the but we
say all that to say that this h multiple levels.
This presidency was in trouble and as soon as Putin
(18:14):
becomes president, right in acting president, he's the legit president.
March after the election, he does one of those famous
first presidential moves. He pardons the guy before him, giving
him immunity from any investigations, including protecting his papers, his residents,
and his other material possessions. That also means protecting his
(18:39):
bank account. Wow, there you go, your pardon, right, thanks
for the office. And he had two big problems. First off,
he's already a man with a plan. He has a
big goal, but it's on the horizon, right, that's what
we're talking about in this episode. So he has two
immediate problems stymying his progress. The first is that Yelsen
(19:01):
had a ton of oligarchs. An oligarch is a member
of a very small elite that controls a disproportionate amount
of industry, finance, or resources. And yells it deals with
all them because of the privatization of the former USSR,
And Putin says, all right, these guys might they might
(19:26):
be bigger than me one day, you know what I mean,
So let me get in front of it. As one
of our old boss is so fond of saying. And
in July two thousand, he told the oligarchs, Look, I'm
not gonna mess with your business. I'm not gonna take
all of the all of the businesses that you stole
(19:47):
from the Russian people. I'm gonna let you do that,
make as much money as you want, and stay the
hell out of my way, and don't ever say anything
negative about me, and don't ever make me think that
you're a ch allee. And they said, okay, they were
like dope, yeah, well for the most part, right, um, yeah, wow,
(20:10):
let's let's keep going down a few other things that
occurred to him, and before we get a modern day,
the second big problem, right, yes, the second massive problem
the Chechen hostage crisis. And this occurred in two thousand two.
And this is when there's a theater in Moscow that
was seized by Chechen militants. There are forty of them
and they were led by the warlord Mozvar Barayev and
(20:32):
h This was a like over the course of three days,
this took place, and there were nine hundred and twelve
hostages that were there, like there were being there were
taken hostage at this theater, and one hundred and twenty
nine of them were killed or died at least in
some way. And this was really really a big moment
(20:53):
for Putin and a lot of people thought that his
domestic approval was just gonna, you know, sink because this
is it happened on his watch essentially, and that's really
all that has to occur for a leader to be
criticized and then have their reputation uh taken away, even
if you know, possibly he couldn't have done anything about
it directly besides different strategies for going in and to
(21:16):
resolve the hostage situation. But let's we have a quote here.
It's just talking about his his ruthless handling of the
siege and his refusal to negotiate with the hostage takers
further short up his reputation as a man of action,
and um, his approval rating went up. Its shot up
actually three after everything was over. So you know, he
(21:38):
he went into a situation that a lot of his
detractors thought, oh, this is gonna go terribly for him,
and he turned it around completely just by being what
a lot of people would consider to be just strong
in that moment. Right. Yeah, here's what they did. They
had they had they surrounded the place for two days,
and then they rated the place in the morning of
(22:01):
October after they had pumped a narcotic gas in the building,
knocking out the terrorists and the hostages alike. They broke
through the walls and the roof, they went through the
sewage tunnels all at once, and they just started wiping
people out. Geez, it's nothing to mess with. And this
(22:23):
this would have you know, if this would have been handled, say,
if this had been uh, something that happened in the US,
for instance, that kind of approach would be political suicide.
I mean it'd be like that's like a Waco situation
but much worse. But this time and they were like, yeah,
this guy gets things done. There you go. He even
(22:44):
got reelected four right, he did. Yeah, he had a
second term and he he really just focused inward on
domestic affairs. But he did draw a lot of criticism
for cracking down on the voice, the like the media,
on people who are reporting things that are occurring. You
(23:04):
know that that he's handling domestically, right, So I'm handling
everything over here domestically. But I don't want, uh, I
don't want you to talk about it necessarily talked about
the way I did you know we can be friends
as long as you are not a challenge. Yeah, that's
don't don't make me don't like you are making don't
(23:25):
you know why why do you want me to have
to do these things to you media? And also he
was he was tremendously popular because of the perceived economic
um economic improvements in Russia. The GDP increased by sevent
investments increased by over a hundred and twenty. The country
(23:47):
largely relied on oil, and it was good to be
in the oil business at that time. He steps back
because there is rule of law right. And in two
thousand eight he has a guy named Dmitri Medvedev who
is elected president and Dmitri later makes Putin the new
prime minister a day later. There's little debate that Putin
(24:10):
more or less hand picked Medvedev as his stand in,
and then soon enough Puten came back for the presidency.
He just Yippi Kayaid back back into office. In two
thousand twelve, he won his third presidential election. It's a
six year term. This was controversial because people said, does
(24:32):
the constitution let you have a third term? And critics said,
this is a fraudulent election. But officially, if you believe
the official numbers, he got around sixty four percent of
the vote or more than sixty which is which is
huge because he said, look, vote for me, you know,
and you won't make me do the things that I
(24:53):
have to do to you as soon as you you
don't vote for me, you're a pro, you're an obstacle.
Don't make me think of you as a challenge. Yeah,
it's that's that's the intensity, right, So we'll fast forward
through some of this stuff so we can get to
the really crazy part. In March, he gets on the
(25:15):
world stage again. He annexes crimea. You and I were
working on this show when that happened, and we were
we were going back and forth figuring out what what
the move was here. But ultimately there were little international consequences.
And now, on a side note, no one knows how
(25:36):
much Putin is actually worth. In March of this year,
Congress started saying the US Congress started saying, we should
investigate this is this guy a modern Manson Musa who
was you know, genuine generally acknowledged to be the wealthiest
man of all time. Check out the drunk history on
Manson Mussa. Yeah, well, he's uh, Putin me actually be
(26:00):
the wealthiest single man the world. No one knows, but
speculation says that he may control more money than Bill
Gates and Jeff Bezos combined. So if that's true, that's astonishing.
But it could also, you know, it could be propaganda,
and it's tough to tell who the author of that
propaganda might be. But during his rise to power, and
(26:21):
here in the modern day, in twenty nineteen as we
record this, he stands accused and his administration stands accused
of numerous crimes, including but not limited to, illegal expansion,
is M annexations and supportive coups, crime and others, financial corruption,
economic warfare, election interference. Sorry, folks, you knew that one
(26:42):
was coming. And of course, murdering people. I mean, just
look at the assassination list. Is this a path to
power paved with murder? There is no question that multiple journalist,
former employees of the government, and dissidents alike have met
untimely ends during Vladimir Putin's time at the helm of
(27:02):
the Russian government. We have some quick examples. Some may
be familiar to you, some may not. Let's start the
first one big power move Alexander Litvinenko, KGB agent, former
KGB agent. He drank a cup of tea at a
London hotel and it had been laced with a poison.
He died three weeks later. The poison was something called
(27:26):
polonium to ten, and people in the US heard about this.
It was a huge stink because it was so blatant
that it seemed as if members of the Russian intelligence
agency wanted to leave a fingerprint of some sort, or
someone wanted us to believe that it was them. That's
(27:46):
what I always imagine that blatant, right was it was
it a frame, a stitch up job. Right? So we
do know that the Brits found that not only was
let Venko poisoned, but that he was poisoned by FSB agents,
and they said these orders probably came from their boss
(28:08):
and probably from President Putin. And then we have a
journalist and a politic. Kovskaya, yes is a Russian journalist,
was highly critical of Putin and just his political moves
and everything. And she wrote a book called Putin's Russia,
and she accused him of turning his country into ostensibly
(28:28):
a police state. And she was murdered by contract killers
who shot her at point blank range. Uh, and it
was like right outside where she lived, where she got
shot in the elevator the lift I guess and five
men were convicted eventually of her murder, but the judge
found that it was a contract killing. It was definitely
a contract killing. They got paid one hundred and fifty
(28:50):
thousand dollars by some unknown person, a person unknown. So
again this doesn't mean that putin personally order at all
these things, but they occurred during his time. There's another
journalist in Italia, Estemruva, who worked with the Anna political
of Skaya that we just mentioned. She uncovered human rights
(29:12):
abuses carried out by Russian state forces in Chechenia, and
she was abducted from her home and found in the
woods nearby with gunshot wounds. To where had no one's
ever been convicted of her murder. There was an oligarch,
Boris Berezovsky, who fled to the UK after he Imputin
got on bad terms. Again, we can do business. Don't
(29:36):
don't make me think you're a challenge. That's it. I'm
going to Britain And he said, all right, I'm going
to Britain, and then during his time in Britain in
the UK, he threatened to bring down Vladimir Putin by force.
That's when he was found dead shortly after in his
Berkshire home March of in what was called a suicide.
(29:57):
He was found dead inside of a locked bathroom with
a ligature around his neck. The coroner could not explain
how he died. The British police had earlier, on several
occasions investigated several alleged assassination to attempts against him, but
this was a you know, suicide. And that's just a
couple of the examples here. But they really do show
(30:18):
how all these people, the oligarchs, he's working with, journalists
who are covering what's happening, even x KGB intelligence agents
all end up dying. But why yeah, why is it
because they incurred the wrath of the man himself? Is
it because they incurred the wrath of maybe rogue agents
in the government. Because we know that intelligence agencies act
(30:42):
on their own accord all the time, and the left
hand doesn't always know what the right is doing. But
these people did die after they ticked off the Russian government,
and this is all this is all pretty grizzly stuff. Right,
but unfortunately it is not uncommon in the halls of power.
Some of the more cynical US listening today may even
argue that, hey, this is what it takes to stay
(31:04):
in power when you're running a more unstable country. If anything,
this only proves that the Russian government, like many many
other countries, is involved in shady stuff. But to what end.
This is where we run into a plot twist, because
you see folks unlike American governments, or specifically, unlike the
(31:25):
US government, which often shifts its policies every four to
eight years depending on who owns and pays the current administration,
it's rarely the voters. Spoiler alert, ha ha. The Russian
government has had consistent leadership for around twenty years now.
That gives you access to more long term planning, and
(31:46):
some experts believe there's more than the dirty business of
geopolitics at play here. Instead, they say there may be
a long term plan, the long game. We've talked about
that before, the Great Game, the Great Game, and we'll
talk about it after a quick word from our sponsor.
(32:14):
Here's where it gets crazy. Questions, questions, questions, who's got questions? Well,
one of the million dollars, billion dollars trillion dollar questions,
is what is Russia actually up to? Some experts believe
they have found the answers in the works of a controversial, enigmatic,
(32:34):
and relatively obscure philosopher, pundit, professor, politician, a guy named
Alexander Dugan, who his enemies will call the modern rast Sputin,
or even once the alex Jones of Russia. That was
a quote I read as well, how can you be
both of those? I don't know. It seems like they're
(32:55):
very different people. So Alexander Dugan, who is he? Who
is he? He's born in Moscow January seventh, nineteen sixty two,
about ten years older than Putin. His parents were oh,
a colonel general in the Soviet military intelligence and a
candidate of law. This guy Dugan and his wife Galina,
(33:16):
She was a doctor in candidate of medicine. So any
of this dude, he's a polyglot, he was speaking ten
languages at least. Uh. He's a professor, a fascist, he's
a celebrated philosopher in his home country, and he is
for a lot of people, at least a lot of Russians.
He's at the forefront of geopolitical thought. He is he
(33:37):
has one of those minds that can see the entire
chess board. Yeah understands. Yeah, that's a good way to
put it. Matt. He's he's the he's like the third
base coach saying, this is how you make the move,
This is how you see through the bs and get
to home plate. He is a prolific writer, and in
his nineteen article Fascism, Borderless and Red, he procla the
(34:00):
arrival of a genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist
fascism well Russia, so not just regard variety fascism. He
believed that it was again, these are quotes, and they
may be offensive. He believed that was by no means
the racist and chauvinistic aspects of national socialism that determined
(34:23):
the nature of its ideology. Instead, he says, and this
is a weird phrase, he says, the excesses of this
ideology in Germany are a matter exclusively of the Germans,
while Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism
with a passionate desire for true change. And then he
starts shouting out various non organizations s especially the scientific
(34:47):
sector of this organization of the ANNERBA. What that what
was an intellectual oasis the framework of the national socialist regime.
That's crazy. So he conveniently, um, he conveniently doesn't hit
upon the massive genocide that heard in World War Two.
(35:09):
But he's talking about these uh kind of odd organizations
that ended up leading the charge in a lot of ways,
a lot of intellectual ways in his early days. In
his earlier works too, he had a lot of tendency
to resort to a cult symbolism. Just to mention that part.
But but he also wrote a book, the title of
(35:32):
which translates to the Foundation of Geopolitics in English. We've
mentioned this book before and we had a We had
someone right in and say, hey, do you have an
English translation of this? I believe they said, because I
speak Russian. I couldn't find an English translation from my friends.
(35:53):
There was one poor English translation of this book that
was available on Amazon for a long time. There was
no official translation, there's no name translator. I strongly suspect
that a computer translated this stuff. So what we do
know about this book is pretty fascinating. I mean, I
read that computer translated version and I was like, man,
(36:17):
this guy's all over the place. But I think it's
just because you still need a human translator. Right, So
what we know is disturbing and fascinating because it appears
to predict not all, but many of the actions taken
by putin his inner circle in the Russian government, especially
in recent years. He credits a guy named General Nikolai
(36:39):
Klokotov of the Academy of the General Staff as his
co author main inspiration. Klokotov denies this, and then another guy,
Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, who's head of the Russian Ministry
of Defense, helped draft the book. But although Klokotov says
he didn't help write it, he's still a huge fan.
(37:01):
He said that in the future of the book should
serve as a mighty ideological foundation for preparing a new
military command, just like Atlas Shrugged, just like so um.
And you can even notes that the book is used
as a textbook in just all over Russia and multiple
(37:23):
educational programs. So as though like check it out, Yeah,
my stuff is a textbook, right right, And he is
a professor, and professors write textbooks. But this is popular,
This is very popular military military education circles. So other
people in the government, not all, but other people in
(37:45):
the government say that this shouldn't just be a textbook
that some people read. It should be a compulsory or
mandatory book, you know, like everybody has to take English
eleven oh one or basic economics or something. It will
be like Lord of the Flies, right right, class exactly. So,
but what is this book about. Not the sexiest title,
(38:05):
obviously not the most provocative thing, but it hits on
some provocative points. Well. The first is Atlanticism, not Atlantis. Yeah,
Atlanticism is in the Atlantic, I'm assuming, but it rejects
Atlanticism in favor of Eurasianism. So all right, let's talk
(38:26):
about this. Atlanticism is the West, basically all of the West.
We're talking the UK, the United States. Who are the
other big players in the West Western Europe in general,
So that'd be like Germany, France, Spain. Yeah, and he's saying,
let's we're saying no to that. Eurasianism or continentalism is
(38:48):
the new thing. It's land based power, revolving around authority,
authoritarian control, essentially an empire of racially pure regimes in
which women are confined to the home and breeding, and
that that part hitting on that part comes from critics
of this obviously. Uh. But yes, the idea is that
(39:12):
Atlanticism is represented by in all but name NATO, the
North Atlantic Tree Organization is modern, polyethnic, egalitarian, feminist and
democratic a k American globalism, and the idea is in
his in his mind, the idea is that the emphasis
(39:33):
on individual liberty is moving the species in the wrong direction.
And he says stuff that I think many people would
find quite offensive. Says, you know, the idea that there
is no there is no community, the person, the individual
is paramount. And uh. He furthermore accuses the West, the
(39:54):
American globalist, of removing people's ability to to identify as
part of a group. In recent years, he had said
that the last, the last, the last bastion of group
identification was gender, and that the West was trying to
remove the concept of gender. So he's taking it. I'm
(40:18):
showing that point to illustrate how far he's taking it.
And let's get to this idea of the plan. Ultimately,
the plan laid out in this book, which is again
a textbook often in the country, is to replace the
global superpower of the US with a multipolar world of
regional powers, regional hegemons, with Russia controlling Greater Eurasia, essentially
(40:44):
the what was once the territory of the U. S.
S R. Bring it back. The book declares that the
battle for the world rule of Russians never ended and
that Russia remains the staging area of a new anti bourgeoisie,
anti American revolution. And I can see the red hats.
They're like, make the uss are a thing again? Is that?
(41:07):
Is that a real hat? No? But that's what should
we make that? Oh, will put his name on it.
I don't know. We'd have to at least send him one.
But the Eurasian Empire is in his mind constructed on
the fundamental principle of the common enemy, rejecting this Atlantic
sism you mentioned Matt strategically controlling the US and the
(41:27):
refusal to allow quote liberal values to dominate us. He
wrote that that. Okay, so that's the thing that sounds
a little conspiratorial, right. There's a big thinker, great ideas.
What is he actually doing. It appears that he is
um back predicting some things that are happening on the
(41:51):
global stage today. Yeah, he wrote pretty much about Oh,
let's say something that may or could be considered to
be similar to the Trump like presidency. While that was
couching it really hard. But let's let's get a quote here.
At the global level, for the construction of a planetary
(42:11):
new empire, the chief scapegoat will namely be the U
s A the undermining of whose power, which up to
the complete destruction of its geopolitical constructs, will be realized
systematically and uncompromising lee by the participants of the new empire. Okay,
a little over my head, been so the idea here
(42:31):
is that they want or do Gang wants, to be specific,
he wants the US to retreat from its interference and
global events, to become a little more isolationist, and to
internally become more divided. Now too, from his perspective, it
doesn't particularly matter how that is achieved, you know what
(42:55):
I mean. If there's a if there's a super super
far left, eat the rich, no material possessions president that
divides the country, then that's fine too, because it accomplishes
the same thing, which is to divide and conquer the
domestic population. And then while this is occurring, and while
the US is becoming more mired in its own domestic
(43:17):
affairs and increasingly isolationists. Jugan says, let's make overtures to
Latin America, to South and Central America and get it
away from the control of the global North. Let's also,
while we're at it, provoke every kind of destabilization and
separatism within the borders of the United States that we
(43:40):
can to make it less and less capable as a
global superpower and give it more and more problems at home. Well,
and here's one of the major things we've talked about
this before that is similar to and why we're comparing
this to putin or why where why this is important.
Rather than just wielding a weapon to attack some thing
(44:00):
or the might of let's say a naval force or something,
this kind of battle, this kind of play occurs as
a subversion much more than and and you know, an
actual attack, right right exactly. Yeah, this is a war
fought in terms of diplomacy asymmetrically subterfuge. This is not
(44:25):
um battalions meeting each other in a proxy country. It's
that destabilization. That's one of the main things. You're you're
not you're not exploding it. You're just making the foundations
so weak that it crumbles under its own weight. And
there's some economic warfare as well, using Russia's gas, oil
and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries. Like
(44:47):
years back, Uh, there was this legitimate concern and Russia
did it successfully, this legitimate concern that they could turn
off the natural gas faucet because they were a supplier
right to a lot of Eastern Europe. And they did
it a couple of times. Right, So these tools they're
saying are more effective for these purposes that military might
(45:09):
would be. And let's let's walk through some of the
goals in this book Foundation Geopolitics and see whether they
match up with real world events. First off, Ducan Alexander
Ducan strongly believes that the UK should be separated from Europe.
That's happening, it really is. In he was like, let's
(45:31):
break up the party. Something the party needs to get
broken up. Britain's got to get out of the European picture.
And now we call it brexit. Brexit has not happened yet,
but it's continue, you know what's on the precipice, right.
And then Dugan also said Ukraine should be annexed by Russia. Yeah,
(45:52):
because quote Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning,
no particular cultural import or universals significance, no geographic uniqueness,
no ethnic exclusiveness. It's certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous
danger for all of Eurasia. And without resolving the Ukrainian problem,
(46:12):
it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.
What while first of all, but second of all, what
what happened? What's what's what is attempting to happen? In Ukraine?
CRIMEA right? Yeah, uh, okay, so we got to to
for two for two so far to in progress In
(46:35):
the United States, he says Russia should use its special
services domestically in special services, special services. It's a hard
wish wish uh, special services to fuel instability and separatism.
He says, provoke, provoke racist. Russia should introduce geopolitical disorder
(46:56):
into internal American activity, encourage all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social,
and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements extremist, racist, sectarian,
thus destabilized internal political processes in the US. And then
he says it would also make sense if at the
(47:18):
same time we support isolationist tendencies in American politics that
sounds familiar, it's happening. It's it's like it's you know,
at least there are we know they're approvable attempts from
the Russian side to foment that kind of discord. And again,
we cannot emphasize enough that this argument here is not
(47:41):
saying let's pick a side. It's saying let's let's back
up every side. And these groups, these extremist groups are
generally not going to get along with one another. They
have a different version of how the world and the
country in which they live should be. Let's back every
side that's on the periphery or like at an extreme right. Essentially, yeah,
(48:03):
there's no there's no modern no Church of moderation being
backed by by this guy. Right, so like so, by
this argument and this is just speculation, I'm just making
things up here. By this argument, um, militant uh vegan
terrorists are no different from neo Nazis, even though they
(48:24):
probably wouldn't get along. But the vegans are gonna, you know,
go out there in campaign to get you to stop
eating meat, and that's gonna make you frustrated because you
like meat. Or they'll blow up livestock infrastructure and you know,
these are just examples that seem indicative of plans coming
to fruition. There are things that haven't happened yet. He
(48:45):
advises that China, the country of China should be contained
and as much as possible dismantled. Not much success on
that front, sorry, Alex. But but they're also plans for
um Armenia to Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, and
these these plans, it's still kind of hard to see
(49:08):
Iran as a core. Seen as an ally. The idea
is to form alliances with two or three countries in
different regions. But people so it sounds crazy, right, but
people are taking this seriously. Foreign Policy described this book
as one of the most curious, impressive, and terrifying books
to come out of Russia during the entire post Soviet era.
(49:30):
And it's they said. It was more sober than his
previous books. It's better, argued, it's shorn of occult references numerology, traditionalism,
and other eccentric metaphysics, all of which he used at
his previous works. Yeah, those are a little more crazy,
what we say. Sure, it was they were not in
their rights, right, He didn't he didn't say, look at
these rooms. But this, I mean, but this brings us
(49:53):
to springs, to our conclusions. So that's the book. And
if you do not speak Russian, or you don't happen
to have a PDF of that computer translated version, you're
going to be hard pressed to find it in Russian
or in any other language. Honestly, um and surprising because
that book sold out four times in four editions, and
(50:16):
it's still not in English. So we have to we
have to ask ourselves if we if we're thinking with
clear minds, how much of Russia's actions come from this playbook?
The so called playbook? Is that strategy on its own?
You think to not have an English translation that's readily available,
(50:37):
I don't know. You know, all it takes is uh,
someone who speaks Russian and English. Town, Yeah, which is
a huge undertaking to translate a book. But yeah, I wonder.
According to John Dunlop, Hoover Institution specialist on the Russian right,
there has probably not been another book published in Russia
during the post communist period which is exerted a comparable
(51:01):
influence on Russian military, police and foreign policy elite. So
people are reading this and they're talking about it. It's
the Harry Potter series of its field, right, but a
lot of people in the US are not aware of it,
and we have to ask, like, how is this book?
Are people reading this book and saying, boom, that's the plan?
(51:23):
You know what I mean? Is Vladimir Putin reading this
book and saying, all right, man, crimea, let's do it yolo?
I don't think he says yoo. Maybe. Well, we know
that while he's definitely influenced, military thought may have influenced
Putin to a degree. He and Vladimir Putin don't always
see eye to eye. He sees Vladimir Putin as a
(51:45):
compromise as arguably better, but he would argue that this
tendency should go further. He wants a super Putent, that's
his phrase, someone who was more nationalistic, less compromising with
the threat of American globalism and NATO and yes and
uber flat just so and again, not everything described in
(52:09):
this book has come to pass. It does appear that
he has predicted several things that are occurring now. But
this leads us to the question, what's what's next? Is
the Russian government, the actual Russian government and the current president,
are they genuinely following a step by step guide outlined
in a textbook, or what's going on? Is Dugan just
(52:32):
a nut job conspiracy theorists that people are maybe taking
too seriously for propaganda value. This is the way that
that bugs me. Like back to your question, Matt, he
just asked a second ago, why isn't there an English translation?
Why was that admittedly bad English translation pulled from Amazon.
(52:53):
I know, man, nobody wants nobody wants your opponent to
have a playbook of what's going on and what you're
gonna do. I'm not saying that's what's happening. It is
strikingly curious, though, And I remember back in the day,
I believe there was a there was an interview perhaps
with him that you can find where with him and
then a couple other people, and they're describing the long game,
(53:16):
and it's describing all of these things that are that
we've just outlined here roughly. At least, that's a great
point because we can see a lot of the if
you cannot speaker read Russian, as neither of us can,
you can see in a lot of his lectures the
same points. So if you can't get ahold of the book,
(53:38):
you can always literally, like you just said, Matt, hop
over to YouTube search for Dougan Foundations geopolitics. Just those
three words and you will embark upon a very deep
rabbit hole. A lot of it's the geopolitical stuff we
talked about. But then he you see other lectures where
he gets progressively further out there. Yeah, do it. So
(54:03):
just turn this off and start start watching videos. So
we want to know what you think. Is this Is
this all propaganda? Is there sand to it? Is this
guy guiding policy for a country that's perfectly capable of
affecting other foreign powers? Or is this, you know, just
(54:24):
kind of exaggerated. Yeah, let us know what you think,
because I know what I think. It scares me. No,
I'm just joking. Um, So right to us. You can
find us on Twitter and on Facebook where a conspiracy stuff.
On Instagram, we are a conspiracy stuff show. Share your
thoughts with us. If you don't want to do that,
give us a phone call, leave a message and it
(54:46):
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(55:08):
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(55:35):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt Nol is not
here today. They call me Ben and we are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decade.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know a
very uh would you say? We're a very American show, Matt.
(00:45):
We are American centric. A lot of the things we cover,
you know, we bring our own perspective to it, and
we are Americans, and we do try to branch out,
we do. But our perspective is our perspective, true, true,
and it's important for everyone to be aware of and
as much as as possible uh their own perspectives and
(01:06):
inherent biases. But you're right, we often cover things that
are related to the United States, or occur in the US,
or involved people from the US. In all fairness, we
are always thrilled to branch out of that North American shell.
(01:27):
You know. Quite enjoyed our earlier episode on Indonesian cryptids right,
which ended up being a little more true crime. And
I think either of us reckoned as some Australian cryptids
in there, had some Australian cryptids in there. Did we
ever do the bunyip? Did? We did? We did? Okay,
and we had I think we had any reeson correct
(01:49):
time from stuff Mom never told you and savor excellent shows.
Check them out. Speaking of fantastic segues, Matt, I was
thinking about this earlier. Do you realized for the better
part of a century, the Soviet Union and Russia have
been the stand in boogeyman for the US. We have
other threats come and go right, other things hit the
(02:10):
news cycle, but pretty much since the nineteen forties or so,
and even even before then, uh Soviet Union Russia we
were like the main antagonist, the main recurring nemeses. Yeah
they were. They were the second most organized to mobilize
power right right right. And nowadays this is back in
(02:36):
the news. It doesn't matter what your political leanings are.
You can't really read a headline without running into something
about Russia. And when most people in these United States
of ours think of Russia, we think of one man,
Vladimir Putin. Rumors have swirled about this guy for decades
(02:56):
and decades and decades, and intelligence services the world over,
not just our alphabet soup, but many other alphabet soups
across the planet have spent millions, if not billions, trying
to learn more about him, more about his plans, more
about his strategies, and ultimately, like what's his deal. In
this episode, we're exploring a bit about the man himself,
(03:20):
his rise to power, his inner circle, along with what
some believe is his actual end game, his genuine goal
on the world stage. But let's let's cut past all
the you know, the MSNBC, Fox News, CNN stuff, and
(03:41):
let's let's get to know this guy. Who is Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin. Well, if you listen to Lad's own story,
he's just a regular old guy. He was born to
a working class family. He was born in Leningrad in
nineteen fifty two. His father was he was a war veteran,
(04:01):
quite decorated. Actually, he was also a factory worker. And
Vladimir was an only child, and he grew up in
you know, one of the like a communal apartment, not
a commune necessarily, but a communal apartment with two other families.
And again this was just kind of run of the mill.
This is how you lived at that time in nineteen
(04:24):
fifty two, especially if you're you know, a factory worker
and a war war veteran, right right. The state had
a tremendous influence in determining where you and your family lived.
And this, as you said, was not at all unusual.
A communal apartment is sort of similar to think back,
(04:48):
did you ever live in the dorms at Georgia State?
I lived in dorms at Columbus State, and it was
the same kind of thing that you're about to. Just
like you have a communal kitchen maybe uh best room
or two that are shared across the unit of two
to three families. But then people have their own rooms
and stuff. It's not just you know, a room with
(05:08):
a hot plate and a toilet, nine people or something. Yes,
And if you go to the Kremlin's official website that
has a biography on Vladimir Putin, you get this quote
from Putin. Are you gonna do it in a voice? No? Uh?
All right? It says I come from an ordinary family.
And this is how I lived for a long time,
nearly my whole life, I lived as an average, normal person,
(05:29):
and I've always maintained that connection. So there we go.
We're starting out just normal. He's using the word normal. Average.
Uh yeah, ordinary, sure, sure, run in the mill three
squares will meat and potatoes, right, three square mills a day.
I mean, that's that's very common in any political uh
(05:51):
political website, you know what I mean, someone will say
unless they're unless they're and out and out looney been strong,
strong man dictator who believes they have a mandate from God,
They'll say something like, you know, I'm of the people.
I am, I too, am one of you. Unless it
was like the DPRK writing it, perhaps I think it
(06:13):
would look a little different. It would, it would one day.
Maybe we can just make a segment of Dear Leader facts,
various achievements growing up putin loved spy novels and TV shows.
There's an interesting quote from him in a BBC article
about the appeal he saw in these stories. Oh yeah, well,
(06:38):
it's a concept that maybe a lot of us have
or could identify with. If you when you listen to this,
the quote is one man's effort could achieve what whole
armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of
thousands of people. We've brought this concept up before. It's
a facet of what's now called asymmetrical warfare, Like why
(06:58):
would you why would you need to build your own
aircraft carrier when you could, for much less money and
time build a missile that would destroy an aircraft carrier,
or a spy that could infiltrate that aircraft carrier and
sabotage it, or a computer programmer network that could change
the course of an election. There you go, oh god,
(07:22):
but you know what I mean. You gotta work smart
instead of working hard. When Putin was still in school,
he went to the KGB Security and Intelligence Agency and
asked how he could join up. I don't want to
just read these spy novels, he thought, I want to
I want to live them. The people at the headquarters said, alright, good,
(07:44):
you got moxie. You know, they probably like chucked his
chucked his chin a little bit, and they said, we'll
tell you what, go to the army first, or go
to college and get a law degree, and then come
back and maybe we can talk. And he was like, Yep, yep,
he did so he that's exactly what he did. He
(08:05):
took the latter option and he went to Leningrad State University.
He spent seventeen years there's a mid level agent working
for an intelligence During this time he had an experienced
that many of his biographers and people who study his life,
for lack of a better word, they concluded this was
(08:27):
a defining moment in his life. Yeah, he was in Dresden, Germany.
The date was December five, nineteen eighty nine, and this
is just just a couple of weeks after the fall
of the Berlin Wall between East Germany and West Germany,
which I have a piece of. By the way, did
ever tell you that it was this souvenir thing that
people were selling at the time. That's awesome. It's a
(08:50):
weird one. Was it? Was it in your apartment? I mean,
you're dwelling place wherever that could be? Because I missed it,
and next time I'm gonna check it out. Um, that's
really cool. Um, So we're in we're in Dresden, Germany,
and Dresden, you just may remember from us talking about
this before was bombed terribly in World War Two. Uh,
(09:14):
just obliterated. It was I believe it was the firebomb
campaign of Dresden. Uh, read about it if you want to.
It's a whole other piece of history that's worth looking into.
But he's in this historical city and there is a STAZZI.
I guess the German intelligence police. They've got an installation
(09:37):
very close just across the street from where the KGB
also has their headquarters there in Dresden. And I guess,
I guess he found himself. Putin found himself within that
KGB office. And there was an anti communist mob that
was forming at the Stazi location, a huge mob of people,
(09:59):
and then of you know, a group of them broke
off and went over to the KGB offices. And uh,
Putin recounted that, you know, as as he's seeing this occurring,
and like, oh god, what do we what are we
gonna do? Are we gonna have a firefight right now? Um?
He was told that the KGB couldn't officially do anything
to respond to this threat of violence against them without
(10:22):
direct orders from Moscow and quote, Moscow is silent. And
this stuck with Putin In some of his public statements later,
he said, this business of Moscow is silent. I got
the feeling that the country no longer existed, that it
had disappeared. It was clear that the union was ailing
(10:44):
and that it had a terminal disease without a cure,
a paralysis of power. And this makes sense because think
about again, I'm I want to be very fair here. Uh,
this is something that happens to many organizations. You feel
paralyzed because you are waiting for a green light or
approval on something, you know what I mean. And that's
(11:07):
that's also necessary because at this point it could have
made an international incident or triggered a hot war. But
still he's like, why do we have to sit here
with our hands in our pockets while something may well
turn into a riot? And he's in his thirties at
this time, and you can really feel from that quote
that it was, like you said, the Birapher's due point
to it as being like one of the moments. And
(11:31):
this is this is around the time as KGB years,
around the time you can see that famous photograph of
him as a photographer posing as a photographer in the
same shot with the US so fast forward by Putin
has resigned from the KGBS Active Reserve he's back in
(11:53):
Lennon Grad where he grew up, but now it's called St. Petersburg,
and he's working for the city's first democraticly elected mayor,
a guy named Anatoly Soapchuk, who happens to be his
former law professor. He was, he was behind the scene.
He was a fixer. Uh. You remember a House of Cards.
(12:13):
So for much of House of Cards, Underwood the Underwood
family has a fixer, right, I can't remember the guy's name.
We ended up becoming chief of staff who ended up
becoming chief of staff. That was his spoil, as spoils
of war is blood and treasure here earned that by
doing very illegal things. So the implication here is that
maybe Putin was cutting some legal corners for the mayor.
(12:37):
He was called the man to see if things needed
to get done and yeah, and he was indispensable to
the mayor. He was also very loyal to the mayor. Yes,
when Schick wasn't reelected. Um, the guy who won, the
guys who's who the guy wanted? Like, you know I
heard about this, Uh, Putin the fixer fellow could get
(12:59):
him on my staffs. He's offered a job by the
man who won and um Putin turned it down, and
he said, quote, it's better to be hanged for loyalty
than be rewarded for betrayal, which I don't care how
you feel about the guy that's tore right. So he
and his family pull up the ten stakes, they moved
(13:20):
to Moscow, and he climbs up the government ladder. He
eventually becomes the head of the agency that replaced the KGB,
which is the FSB, and should it should be familiar
to a lot of us who've been listening to the
show for a while, and in he's head of the FSB,
and Boris Yelson, who was the President Russia at the time,
(13:43):
has named him personally named Putin to this position. Newsweek
was speculating a lot about this. Who is this guy?
You know what I mean? He was He was on
intelligence network radar for a while, but it wasn't in
a lot of mainstream news. They had bigger fish to fry.
So Newsweek said this was a job the president would
only have given to one of their most trusted of aids.
(14:05):
Then in August of Boris Yelton appoints Putin Prime Minister
of Russia. And if you go to the official of
the official website of the Kremlin, you can read about
the interaction of just walking into Boris Yelton's office and
having him basically just tell him you're the one. You're
I'm the one, You're the one for this job. It
(14:26):
was fascinating. This was also a time of chaos in
the administration exactly, but it's one of those things that's
difficult to turn down right right, and it doesn't compromise
his loyalty or his concerns about that, but it's also
it's also a situation wherein Yeltsin and his administration need
(14:46):
a lot of help. Putin, you see, is the fifth
prime minister in less than two years. They're just running
through them, and this chaos continues to escalate. In New
Year's Eve, suddenly Boris Yeltson steps down from office and
he says, Vladimir Putin is the acting president, and he
(15:09):
is the acting president until March when he wins the
election and becomes the real president. A lot of people
there's some murky stuff because a lot of people I
think that this was a move Yelson was doing as
ah an attempt at self preservation, because there was already
a war in Czechenia, which will be important later. And
(15:32):
his approval ratings were dropping as the war was getting
more and more desperate and less and less successful. So
now we have we have gotten to the point where
Putin is finally president of Russia. What does he do next?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor, you know,
(16:00):
just before we get into this again, Ben, I just
want to point out I think people are right to
say there's something odd going there going on there with
the whole Yelton appointment of Putin to him becoming president
within four months, that's it feels like that was a
calculated move somewhere, and I guess it would be difficult
(16:20):
unless you had the official I don't know diaries of
everyone involved, but still it feels like there's there's a
little something extra occurring there. I also want to point
out Boris Yelson was. It was not a secret. It
wasn't often written about a bunch of headlines and stuff,
but Boris Yelson was a notoriously wild alcoholic. There's a
(16:44):
great story I do. It's a little bit of a tangible.
We may not have time, but it's it's so worth it.
There's one time Boris Yeltson meets then President Bill Clinton
in Washington in September of Secret Service eight found yells
in alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk in his underwear,
(17:08):
yelling for a taxi and you know, slurring his words.
They were trying to get him inside, you know, to
Blair House where he was staying, and he was like, no,
get your hands off, and I'm president, but I want
a pizza. Seriously, he was hailing a taxi to get
a pizza. Maybe maybe he had just finished shooting his
(17:29):
p tape. Someone asked, U, nobody really knew about this
until two thousand and nine. You can say how they
don't want that getting out. When a guy named Taylor
Branch published a book called the Clinton Tapes where he
interviewed the former president and then he asked Bill Clinton
how the situation ended, and the guy just shrugged and said, um, well, yeah,
(17:49):
I mean he got his pizza last last thing. The
next night he tried to do it again. Yes, waited.
He was having a laugh, That's all it was. He
seemed very very centered on that. But the but we
say all that to say that this h multiple levels.
This presidency was in trouble and as soon as Putin
(18:14):
becomes president, right in acting president, he's the legit president.
March after the election, he does one of those famous
first presidential moves. He pardons the guy before him, giving
him immunity from any investigations, including protecting his papers, his residents,
and his other material possessions. That also means protecting his
(18:39):
bank account. Wow, there you go, your pardon, right, thanks
for the office. And he had two big problems. First off,
he's already a man with a plan. He has a
big goal, but it's on the horizon, right, that's what
we're talking about in this episode. So he has two
immediate problems stymying his progress. The first is that Yelsen
(19:01):
had a ton of oligarchs. An oligarch is a member
of a very small elite that controls a disproportionate amount
of industry, finance, or resources. And yells it deals with
all them because of the privatization of the former USSR,
And Putin says, all right, these guys might they might
(19:26):
be bigger than me one day, you know what I mean,
So let me get in front of it. As one
of our old boss is so fond of saying. And
in July two thousand, he told the oligarchs, Look, I'm
not gonna mess with your business. I'm not gonna take
all of the all of the businesses that you stole
(19:47):
from the Russian people. I'm gonna let you do that,
make as much money as you want, and stay the
hell out of my way, and don't ever say anything
negative about me, and don't ever make me think that
you're a ch allee. And they said, okay, they were
like dope, yeah, well for the most part, right, um, yeah, wow,
(20:10):
let's let's keep going down a few other things that
occurred to him, and before we get a modern day,
the second big problem, right, yes, the second massive problem
the Chechen hostage crisis. And this occurred in two thousand two.
And this is when there's a theater in Moscow that
was seized by Chechen militants. There are forty of them
and they were led by the warlord Mozvar Barayev and
(20:32):
h This was a like over the course of three days,
this took place, and there were nine hundred and twelve
hostages that were there, like there were being there were
taken hostage at this theater, and one hundred and twenty
nine of them were killed or died at least in
some way. And this was really really a big moment
(20:53):
for Putin and a lot of people thought that his
domestic approval was just gonna, you know, sink because this
is it happened on his watch essentially, and that's really
all that has to occur for a leader to be
criticized and then have their reputation uh taken away, even
if you know, possibly he couldn't have done anything about
it directly besides different strategies for going in and to
(21:16):
resolve the hostage situation. But let's we have a quote here.
It's just talking about his his ruthless handling of the
siege and his refusal to negotiate with the hostage takers
further short up his reputation as a man of action,
and um, his approval rating went up. Its shot up
actually three after everything was over. So you know, he
(21:38):
he went into a situation that a lot of his
detractors thought, oh, this is gonna go terribly for him,
and he turned it around completely just by being what
a lot of people would consider to be just strong
in that moment. Right. Yeah, here's what they did. They
had they had they surrounded the place for two days,
and then they rated the place in the morning of
(22:01):
October after they had pumped a narcotic gas in the building,
knocking out the terrorists and the hostages alike. They broke
through the walls and the roof, they went through the
sewage tunnels all at once, and they just started wiping
people out. Geez, it's nothing to mess with. And this
(22:23):
this would have you know, if this would have been handled, say,
if this had been uh, something that happened in the US,
for instance, that kind of approach would be political suicide.
I mean it'd be like that's like a Waco situation
but much worse. But this time and they were like, yeah,
this guy gets things done. There you go. He even
(22:44):
got reelected four right, he did. Yeah, he had a
second term and he he really just focused inward on
domestic affairs. But he did draw a lot of criticism
for cracking down on the voice, the like the media,
on people who are reporting things that are occurring. You
(23:04):
know that that he's handling domestically, right, So I'm handling
everything over here domestically. But I don't want, uh, I
don't want you to talk about it necessarily talked about
the way I did you know we can be friends
as long as you are not a challenge. Yeah, that's
don't don't make me don't like you are making don't
(23:25):
you know why why do you want me to have
to do these things to you media? And also he
was he was tremendously popular because of the perceived economic
um economic improvements in Russia. The GDP increased by sevent
investments increased by over a hundred and twenty. The country
(23:47):
largely relied on oil, and it was good to be
in the oil business at that time. He steps back
because there is rule of law right. And in two
thousand eight he has a guy named Dmitri Medvedev who
is elected president and Dmitri later makes Putin the new
prime minister a day later. There's little debate that Putin
(24:10):
more or less hand picked Medvedev as his stand in,
and then soon enough Puten came back for the presidency.
He just Yippi Kayaid back back into office. In two
thousand twelve, he won his third presidential election. It's a
six year term. This was controversial because people said, does
(24:32):
the constitution let you have a third term? And critics said,
this is a fraudulent election. But officially, if you believe
the official numbers, he got around sixty four percent of
the vote or more than sixty which is which is
huge because he said, look, vote for me, you know,
and you won't make me do the things that I
(24:53):
have to do to you as soon as you you
don't vote for me, you're a pro, you're an obstacle.
Don't make me think of you as a challenge. Yeah,
it's that's that's the intensity, right, So we'll fast forward
through some of this stuff so we can get to
the really crazy part. In March, he gets on the
(25:15):
world stage again. He annexes crimea. You and I were
working on this show when that happened, and we were
we were going back and forth figuring out what what
the move was here. But ultimately there were little international consequences.
And now, on a side note, no one knows how
(25:36):
much Putin is actually worth. In March of this year,
Congress started saying the US Congress started saying, we should
investigate this is this guy a modern Manson Musa who
was you know, genuine generally acknowledged to be the wealthiest
man of all time. Check out the drunk history on
Manson Mussa. Yeah, well, he's uh, Putin me actually be
(26:00):
the wealthiest single man the world. No one knows, but
speculation says that he may control more money than Bill
Gates and Jeff Bezos combined. So if that's true, that's astonishing.
But it could also, you know, it could be propaganda,
and it's tough to tell who the author of that
propaganda might be. But during his rise to power, and
(26:21):
here in the modern day, in twenty nineteen as we
record this, he stands accused and his administration stands accused
of numerous crimes, including but not limited to, illegal expansion,
is M annexations and supportive coups, crime and others, financial corruption,
economic warfare, election interference. Sorry, folks, you knew that one
(26:42):
was coming. And of course, murdering people. I mean, just
look at the assassination list. Is this a path to
power paved with murder? There is no question that multiple journalist,
former employees of the government, and dissidents alike have met
untimely ends during Vladimir Putin's time at the helm of
(27:02):
the Russian government. We have some quick examples. Some may
be familiar to you, some may not. Let's start the
first one big power move Alexander Litvinenko, KGB agent, former
KGB agent. He drank a cup of tea at a
London hotel and it had been laced with a poison.
He died three weeks later. The poison was something called
(27:26):
polonium to ten, and people in the US heard about this.
It was a huge stink because it was so blatant
that it seemed as if members of the Russian intelligence
agency wanted to leave a fingerprint of some sort, or
someone wanted us to believe that it was them. That's
(27:46):
what I always imagine that blatant, right was it was
it a frame, a stitch up job. Right? So we
do know that the Brits found that not only was
let Venko poisoned, but that he was poisoned by FSB agents,
and they said these orders probably came from their boss
(28:08):
and probably from President Putin. And then we have a
journalist and a politic. Kovskaya, yes is a Russian journalist,
was highly critical of Putin and just his political moves
and everything. And she wrote a book called Putin's Russia,
and she accused him of turning his country into ostensibly
(28:28):
a police state. And she was murdered by contract killers
who shot her at point blank range. Uh, and it
was like right outside where she lived, where she got
shot in the elevator the lift I guess and five
men were convicted eventually of her murder, but the judge
found that it was a contract killing. It was definitely
a contract killing. They got paid one hundred and fifty
(28:50):
thousand dollars by some unknown person, a person unknown. So
again this doesn't mean that putin personally order at all
these things, but they occurred during his time. There's another
journalist in Italia, Estemruva, who worked with the Anna political
of Skaya that we just mentioned. She uncovered human rights
(29:12):
abuses carried out by Russian state forces in Chechenia, and
she was abducted from her home and found in the
woods nearby with gunshot wounds. To where had no one's
ever been convicted of her murder. There was an oligarch,
Boris Berezovsky, who fled to the UK after he Imputin
got on bad terms. Again, we can do business. Don't
(29:36):
don't make me think you're a challenge. That's it. I'm
going to Britain And he said, all right, I'm going
to Britain, and then during his time in Britain in
the UK, he threatened to bring down Vladimir Putin by force.
That's when he was found dead shortly after in his
Berkshire home March of in what was called a suicide.
(29:57):
He was found dead inside of a locked bathroom with
a ligature around his neck. The coroner could not explain
how he died. The British police had earlier, on several
occasions investigated several alleged assassination to attempts against him, but
this was a you know, suicide. And that's just a
couple of the examples here. But they really do show
(30:18):
how all these people, the oligarchs, he's working with, journalists
who are covering what's happening, even x KGB intelligence agents
all end up dying. But why yeah, why is it
because they incurred the wrath of the man himself? Is
it because they incurred the wrath of maybe rogue agents
in the government. Because we know that intelligence agencies act
(30:42):
on their own accord all the time, and the left
hand doesn't always know what the right is doing. But
these people did die after they ticked off the Russian government,
and this is all this is all pretty grizzly stuff. Right,
but unfortunately it is not uncommon in the halls of power.
Some of the more cynical US listening today may even
argue that, hey, this is what it takes to stay
(31:04):
in power when you're running a more unstable country. If anything,
this only proves that the Russian government, like many many
other countries, is involved in shady stuff. But to what end.
This is where we run into a plot twist, because
you see folks unlike American governments, or specifically, unlike the
(31:25):
US government, which often shifts its policies every four to
eight years depending on who owns and pays the current administration,
it's rarely the voters. Spoiler alert, ha ha. The Russian
government has had consistent leadership for around twenty years now.
That gives you access to more long term planning, and
(31:46):
some experts believe there's more than the dirty business of
geopolitics at play here. Instead, they say there may be
a long term plan, the long game. We've talked about
that before, the Great Game, the Great Game, and we'll
talk about it after a quick word from our sponsor.
(32:14):
Here's where it gets crazy. Questions, questions, questions, who's got questions? Well,
one of the million dollars, billion dollars trillion dollar questions,
is what is Russia actually up to? Some experts believe
they have found the answers in the works of a controversial, enigmatic,
(32:34):
and relatively obscure philosopher, pundit, professor, politician, a guy named
Alexander Dugan, who his enemies will call the modern rast Sputin,
or even once the alex Jones of Russia. That was
a quote I read as well, how can you be
both of those? I don't know. It seems like they're
(32:55):
very different people. So Alexander Dugan, who is he? Who
is he? He's born in Moscow January seventh, nineteen sixty two,
about ten years older than Putin. His parents were oh,
a colonel general in the Soviet military intelligence and a
candidate of law. This guy Dugan and his wife Galina,
(33:16):
She was a doctor in candidate of medicine. So any
of this dude, he's a polyglot, he was speaking ten
languages at least. Uh. He's a professor, a fascist, he's
a celebrated philosopher in his home country, and he is
for a lot of people, at least a lot of Russians.
He's at the forefront of geopolitical thought. He is he
(33:37):
has one of those minds that can see the entire
chess board. Yeah understands. Yeah, that's a good way to
put it. Matt. He's he's the he's like the third
base coach saying, this is how you make the move,
This is how you see through the bs and get
to home plate. He is a prolific writer, and in
his nineteen article Fascism, Borderless and Red, he procla the
(34:00):
arrival of a genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist
fascism well Russia, so not just regard variety fascism. He
believed that it was again, these are quotes, and they
may be offensive. He believed that was by no means
the racist and chauvinistic aspects of national socialism that determined
(34:23):
the nature of its ideology. Instead, he says, and this
is a weird phrase, he says, the excesses of this
ideology in Germany are a matter exclusively of the Germans,
while Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism
with a passionate desire for true change. And then he
starts shouting out various non organizations s especially the scientific
(34:47):
sector of this organization of the ANNERBA. What that what
was an intellectual oasis the framework of the national socialist regime.
That's crazy. So he conveniently, um, he conveniently doesn't hit
upon the massive genocide that heard in World War Two.
(35:09):
But he's talking about these uh kind of odd organizations
that ended up leading the charge in a lot of ways,
a lot of intellectual ways in his early days. In
his earlier works too, he had a lot of tendency
to resort to a cult symbolism. Just to mention that part.
But but he also wrote a book, the title of
(35:32):
which translates to the Foundation of Geopolitics in English. We've
mentioned this book before and we had a We had
someone right in and say, hey, do you have an
English translation of this? I believe they said, because I
speak Russian. I couldn't find an English translation from my friends.
(35:53):
There was one poor English translation of this book that
was available on Amazon for a long time. There was
no official translation, there's no name translator. I strongly suspect
that a computer translated this stuff. So what we do
know about this book is pretty fascinating. I mean, I
read that computer translated version and I was like, man,
(36:17):
this guy's all over the place. But I think it's
just because you still need a human translator. Right, So
what we know is disturbing and fascinating because it appears
to predict not all, but many of the actions taken
by putin his inner circle in the Russian government, especially
in recent years. He credits a guy named General Nikolai
(36:39):
Klokotov of the Academy of the General Staff as his
co author main inspiration. Klokotov denies this, and then another guy,
Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, who's head of the Russian Ministry
of Defense, helped draft the book. But although Klokotov says
he didn't help write it, he's still a huge fan.
(37:01):
He said that in the future of the book should
serve as a mighty ideological foundation for preparing a new
military command, just like Atlas Shrugged, just like so um.
And you can even notes that the book is used
as a textbook in just all over Russia and multiple
(37:23):
educational programs. So as though like check it out, Yeah,
my stuff is a textbook, right right, And he is
a professor, and professors write textbooks. But this is popular,
This is very popular military military education circles. So other
people in the government, not all, but other people in
(37:45):
the government say that this shouldn't just be a textbook
that some people read. It should be a compulsory or
mandatory book, you know, like everybody has to take English
eleven oh one or basic economics or something. It will
be like Lord of the Flies, right right, class exactly. So,
but what is this book about. Not the sexiest title,
(38:05):
obviously not the most provocative thing, but it hits on
some provocative points. Well. The first is Atlanticism, not Atlantis. Yeah,
Atlanticism is in the Atlantic, I'm assuming, but it rejects
Atlanticism in favor of Eurasianism. So all right, let's talk
(38:26):
about this. Atlanticism is the West, basically all of the West.
We're talking the UK, the United States. Who are the
other big players in the West Western Europe in general,
So that'd be like Germany, France, Spain. Yeah, and he's saying,
let's we're saying no to that. Eurasianism or continentalism is
(38:48):
the new thing. It's land based power, revolving around authority,
authoritarian control, essentially an empire of racially pure regimes in
which women are confined to the home and breeding, and
that that part hitting on that part comes from critics
of this obviously. Uh. But yes, the idea is that
(39:12):
Atlanticism is represented by in all but name NATO, the
North Atlantic Tree Organization is modern, polyethnic, egalitarian, feminist and
democratic a k American globalism, and the idea is in
his in his mind, the idea is that the emphasis
(39:33):
on individual liberty is moving the species in the wrong direction.
And he says stuff that I think many people would
find quite offensive. Says, you know, the idea that there
is no there is no community, the person, the individual
is paramount. And uh. He furthermore accuses the West, the
(39:54):
American globalist, of removing people's ability to to identify as
part of a group. In recent years, he had said
that the last, the last, the last bastion of group
identification was gender, and that the West was trying to
remove the concept of gender. So he's taking it. I'm
(40:18):
showing that point to illustrate how far he's taking it.
And let's get to this idea of the plan. Ultimately,
the plan laid out in this book, which is again
a textbook often in the country, is to replace the
global superpower of the US with a multipolar world of
regional powers, regional hegemons, with Russia controlling Greater Eurasia, essentially
(40:44):
the what was once the territory of the U. S.
S R. Bring it back. The book declares that the
battle for the world rule of Russians never ended and
that Russia remains the staging area of a new anti bourgeoisie,
anti American revolution. And I can see the red hats.
They're like, make the uss are a thing again? Is that?
(41:07):
Is that a real hat? No? But that's what should
we make that? Oh, will put his name on it.
I don't know. We'd have to at least send him one.
But the Eurasian Empire is in his mind constructed on
the fundamental principle of the common enemy, rejecting this Atlantic
sism you mentioned Matt strategically controlling the US and the
(41:27):
refusal to allow quote liberal values to dominate us. He
wrote that that. Okay, so that's the thing that sounds
a little conspiratorial, right. There's a big thinker, great ideas.
What is he actually doing. It appears that he is
um back predicting some things that are happening on the
(41:51):
global stage today. Yeah, he wrote pretty much about Oh,
let's say something that may or could be considered to
be similar to the Trump like presidency. While that was
couching it really hard. But let's let's get a quote here.
At the global level, for the construction of a planetary
(42:11):
new empire, the chief scapegoat will namely be the U
s A the undermining of whose power, which up to
the complete destruction of its geopolitical constructs, will be realized
systematically and uncompromising lee by the participants of the new empire. Okay,
a little over my head, been so the idea here
(42:31):
is that they want or do Gang wants, to be specific,
he wants the US to retreat from its interference and
global events, to become a little more isolationist, and to
internally become more divided. Now too, from his perspective, it
doesn't particularly matter how that is achieved, you know what
(42:55):
I mean. If there's a if there's a super super
far left, eat the rich, no material possessions president that
divides the country, then that's fine too, because it accomplishes
the same thing, which is to divide and conquer the
domestic population. And then while this is occurring, and while
the US is becoming more mired in its own domestic
(43:17):
affairs and increasingly isolationists. Jugan says, let's make overtures to
Latin America, to South and Central America and get it
away from the control of the global North. Let's also,
while we're at it, provoke every kind of destabilization and
separatism within the borders of the United States that we
(43:40):
can to make it less and less capable as a
global superpower and give it more and more problems at home. Well,
and here's one of the major things we've talked about
this before that is similar to and why we're comparing
this to putin or why where why this is important.
Rather than just wielding a weapon to attack some thing
(44:00):
or the might of let's say a naval force or something,
this kind of battle, this kind of play occurs as
a subversion much more than and and you know, an
actual attack, right right exactly. Yeah, this is a war
fought in terms of diplomacy asymmetrically subterfuge. This is not
(44:25):
um battalions meeting each other in a proxy country. It's
that destabilization. That's one of the main things. You're you're
not you're not exploding it. You're just making the foundations
so weak that it crumbles under its own weight. And
there's some economic warfare as well, using Russia's gas, oil
and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries. Like
(44:47):
years back, Uh, there was this legitimate concern and Russia
did it successfully, this legitimate concern that they could turn
off the natural gas faucet because they were a supplier
right to a lot of Eastern Europe. And they did
it a couple of times. Right, So these tools they're
saying are more effective for these purposes that military might
(45:09):
would be. And let's let's walk through some of the
goals in this book Foundation Geopolitics and see whether they
match up with real world events. First off, Ducan Alexander
Ducan strongly believes that the UK should be separated from Europe.
That's happening, it really is. In he was like, let's
(45:31):
break up the party. Something the party needs to get
broken up. Britain's got to get out of the European picture.
And now we call it brexit. Brexit has not happened yet,
but it's continue, you know what's on the precipice, right.
And then Dugan also said Ukraine should be annexed by Russia. Yeah,
(45:52):
because quote Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning,
no particular cultural import or universals significance, no geographic uniqueness,
no ethnic exclusiveness. It's certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous
danger for all of Eurasia. And without resolving the Ukrainian problem,
(46:12):
it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.
What while first of all, but second of all, what
what happened? What's what's what is attempting to happen? In Ukraine?
CRIMEA right? Yeah, uh, okay, so we got to to
for two for two so far to in progress In
(46:35):
the United States, he says Russia should use its special
services domestically in special services, special services. It's a hard
wish wish uh, special services to fuel instability and separatism.
He says, provoke, provoke racist. Russia should introduce geopolitical disorder
(46:56):
into internal American activity, encourage all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social,
and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements extremist, racist, sectarian,
thus destabilized internal political processes in the US. And then
he says it would also make sense if at the
(47:18):
same time we support isolationist tendencies in American politics that
sounds familiar, it's happening. It's it's like it's you know,
at least there are we know they're approvable attempts from
the Russian side to foment that kind of discord. And again,
we cannot emphasize enough that this argument here is not
(47:41):
saying let's pick a side. It's saying let's let's back
up every side. And these groups, these extremist groups are
generally not going to get along with one another. They
have a different version of how the world and the
country in which they live should be. Let's back every
side that's on the periphery or like at an extreme right. Essentially, yeah,
(48:03):
there's no there's no modern no Church of moderation being
backed by by this guy. Right, so like so, by
this argument and this is just speculation, I'm just making
things up here. By this argument, um, militant uh vegan
terrorists are no different from neo Nazis, even though they
(48:24):
probably wouldn't get along. But the vegans are gonna, you know,
go out there in campaign to get you to stop
eating meat, and that's gonna make you frustrated because you
like meat. Or they'll blow up livestock infrastructure and you know,
these are just examples that seem indicative of plans coming
to fruition. There are things that haven't happened yet. He
(48:45):
advises that China, the country of China should be contained
and as much as possible dismantled. Not much success on
that front, sorry, Alex. But but they're also plans for
um Armenia to Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, and
these these plans, it's still kind of hard to see
(49:08):
Iran as a core. Seen as an ally. The idea
is to form alliances with two or three countries in
different regions. But people so it sounds crazy, right, but
people are taking this seriously. Foreign Policy described this book
as one of the most curious, impressive, and terrifying books
to come out of Russia during the entire post Soviet era.
(49:30):
And it's they said. It was more sober than his
previous books. It's better, argued, it's shorn of occult references numerology, traditionalism,
and other eccentric metaphysics, all of which he used at
his previous works. Yeah, those are a little more crazy,
what we say. Sure, it was they were not in
their rights, right, He didn't he didn't say, look at
these rooms. But this, I mean, but this brings us
(49:53):
to springs, to our conclusions. So that's the book. And
if you do not speak Russian, or you don't happen
to have a PDF of that computer translated version, you're
going to be hard pressed to find it in Russian
or in any other language. Honestly, um and surprising because
that book sold out four times in four editions, and
(50:16):
it's still not in English. So we have to we
have to ask ourselves if we if we're thinking with
clear minds, how much of Russia's actions come from this playbook?
The so called playbook? Is that strategy on its own?
You think to not have an English translation that's readily available,
(50:37):
I don't know. You know, all it takes is uh,
someone who speaks Russian and English. Town, Yeah, which is
a huge undertaking to translate a book. But yeah, I wonder.
According to John Dunlop, Hoover Institution specialist on the Russian right,
there has probably not been another book published in Russia
during the post communist period which is exerted a comparable
(51:01):
influence on Russian military, police and foreign policy elite. So
people are reading this and they're talking about it. It's
the Harry Potter series of its field, right, but a
lot of people in the US are not aware of it,
and we have to ask, like, how is this book?
Are people reading this book and saying, boom, that's the plan?
(51:23):
You know what I mean? Is Vladimir Putin reading this
book and saying, all right, man, crimea, let's do it yolo?
I don't think he says yoo. Maybe. Well, we know
that while he's definitely influenced, military thought may have influenced
Putin to a degree. He and Vladimir Putin don't always
see eye to eye. He sees Vladimir Putin as a
(51:45):
compromise as arguably better, but he would argue that this
tendency should go further. He wants a super Putent, that's
his phrase, someone who was more nationalistic, less compromising with
the threat of American globalism and NATO and yes and
uber flat just so and again, not everything described in
(52:09):
this book has come to pass. It does appear that
he has predicted several things that are occurring now. But
this leads us to the question, what's what's next? Is
the Russian government, the actual Russian government and the current president,
are they genuinely following a step by step guide outlined
in a textbook, or what's going on? Is Dugan just
(52:32):
a nut job conspiracy theorists that people are maybe taking
too seriously for propaganda value. This is the way that
that bugs me. Like back to your question, Matt, he
just asked a second ago, why isn't there an English translation?
Why was that admittedly bad English translation pulled from Amazon.
(52:53):
I know, man, nobody wants nobody wants your opponent to
have a playbook of what's going on and what you're
gonna do. I'm not saying that's what's happening. It is
strikingly curious, though, And I remember back in the day,
I believe there was a there was an interview perhaps
with him that you can find where with him and
then a couple other people, and they're describing the long game,
(53:16):
and it's describing all of these things that are that
we've just outlined here roughly. At least, that's a great
point because we can see a lot of the if
you cannot speaker read Russian, as neither of us can,
you can see in a lot of his lectures the
same points. So if you can't get ahold of the book,
(53:38):
you can always literally, like you just said, Matt, hop
over to YouTube search for Dougan Foundations geopolitics. Just those
three words and you will embark upon a very deep
rabbit hole. A lot of it's the geopolitical stuff we
talked about. But then he you see other lectures where
he gets progressively further out there. Yeah, do it. So
(54:03):
just turn this off and start start watching videos. So
we want to know what you think. Is this Is
this all propaganda? Is there sand to it? Is this
guy guiding policy for a country that's perfectly capable of
affecting other foreign powers? Or is this, you know, just
(54:24):
kind of exaggerated. Yeah, let us know what you think,
because I know what I think. It scares me. No,
I'm just joking. Um, So right to us. You can
find us on Twitter and on Facebook where a conspiracy stuff.
On Instagram, we are a conspiracy stuff show. Share your
thoughts with us. If you don't want to do that,
give us a phone call, leave a message and it
(54:46):
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