Reading this (and looking at the dates), it struck me that Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin) was a shill for Project Russia's narrative. The dates fit well, too.
It's quite bizarre, and a little scary, to start seeing how the threads of a fringe weirdo like Yarvin are starting to weave into the politics of the most powerful country on Earth.
Yarvin -> Thiel + Musk -> JD Vance + Musk, they are basically getting their seat time on the throne, bringing Yarvin's deranged philosophy to it... What the actual fuck?
Probably because this almost begs for accusations of shill-ing, worthless altercations via comments and generally degraded discussion.
I had heard about the book before, but just found out that they printed 3 millions of them (which is a lot for whats probably mostly ideological drivel)... Distribution via semi-official channels is also concerning.
This is generally an interesting datapoint. I used to believe that 2010s European policy (treating Russia as somewhat flawed democracy, and trying to positively influence via mutual trade) was generally a good idea that could've worked, but have realized that this was probably pretty doomed from the outset and almost negligiently naive from European leaders.
2014 was a wake-up call that Russian imperialism is alive and well, but it was conveniently ignored because Russian gas was such a nice pillar for EU electricity.
If I understand correctly, there's a fringe book from 2005 about uniting the world under a single religion led by the "Prince Monk." The article attempts to frame this as the official Kremlin playbook without giving any substantial evidence (other than "some ideas seem to be aligned with Kremlin's"). It also includes speculative filler about Xi Jinping, Trump and Musk, who weren't politically relevant when the book was written. The article, just like the book, reads like a piece of speculative fiction full of wishful thinking.
Also, some aims from the book have already been achieved (like 'The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from the European Union.[9]').
I posted it because I found it interesting and it was new to me, but I'm skeptical of how influential this is too. This stuff is perhaps the Russian analogue of American think tank outputs like the old Project for the New American Century that received so much press back in the 2000s -- stuff that feeds into the thought processes of certain factions of the state apparatus. In the end the agenda is probably to make money for the oligarchs, much like the US.
In any case if Russia did actually succeed in the first parts of this agenda the beneficiary would be China, which is vastly more powerful, and it would become a Chinese world with Russia as a vassal state. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy and less than half the size of California, its demographics are terrible, and its military is old junk. Who wants to bet on whether their nukes would actually work? Those things require upkeep.
Of course on the flip side -- a formerly proud global superpower fallen on hard times is exactly the kind of place where delusional nonsense gets a foothold. You'll see it in the USA if we actually undergo a partial collapse. You'll see all kinds of crackpot insanity being taken seriously... more than you see now. "How did we get our first Scientologist president?" "Well, after the dollar collapsed..."
>"Meanwhile, they say, voters behave like easily manipulated children and don’t have enough information, education, or domain expertise to weigh in on national leadership matters."
You see in all of this stuff at the core is a resolute disdain and distrust of the average human individual, seeking to treat them as little more than obedient automata. Some things about fascism never change.
>"Woah shit fellas Russian propaganda fake news shut them down immediately!"
Typical run of the mill Russian whataboutism. Ah yes, things are not perfect, therefore we are just as bad as them!
>Typical run of the mill USAer mindset. Ah yes, we are "better" than them, so our problems don't really exist.
No, we just have higher level problems to deal with. Running global trade, providing the reserve currency, generating nearly the entirety of high tech IP, outputting the vast overwhelming majority of culture and media, and continuing to provide the only real sustained economic growth in the entire developed world is a lot more complex and nuanced than LARPing as a 19th century imperial power bullying neighbors or submitting their citizenry to full obedience and worrying about grain imports. It requires more complex systems with greater levels of feedback and autonomy than any centrally commanded ideological fantasy regime could ever provide. The drawbacks of such a system are that they end up seeming messy and imperfect from the outside. But it's the only way such an organization can actually work in the modern world.
Oh glorious child of freedom, heir to the beacon of liberty and burger-fueled enlightenment! I kneel before your radiant stars and stripes, humbly begging your divine intervention in my lowly, uncivilized land. Please, O harbinger of freedom fries and democracy, rain your benevolent drones of cultural superiority upon us! Invade my country, shatter my outdated customs, and replace them with the gleaming perfection of Walmart aisles, NFL Sundays, and pumpkin spice lattes.
I yearn to sing your anthems while sipping on a 64oz soda and binge-watching reboots of shows that ran better in the '90s. Let your Hollywood blockbusters teach me the true meaning of heroism, your fast food teach me the joys of high-fructose corn syrup, and your reality TV show me the deep complexity of human emotion.
Oh merciful dispenser of freedom, take pity on my backwards existence. Supersede my wretched culture with your superior one—bless me with the gift of questionable foreign policy decisions and an uncanny ability to add cheese to everything. Only then can I ascend to the higher plane of existence that is AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM™.
Please, I implore you, invade us swiftly and mercifully. Turn my humble homeland into a shining franchise of your illustrious nation, and I shall forever pledge allegiance to the flag, even as I drown in the sweet nectar of Diet Coke. Amen.
Having talked to Ukrainian refugees I strongly believe there's is some civilizational gap between certain countries in how they perceive systematic violence, especially killing people for resources. In Western civilization, there is no universal support for it. That's why when Bush prepared for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, he couldn't really count for a wide coalition (his infamous "you forgot Poland!") and there were the biggest anti-war protests in the history of modern Europe, with millions of people going out on the streets.
We, Westerners, hate killing people - whether they are Arabs, Afghans, Vietnamese. As for Russians, I'm not so sure - it was enough to convince people that Ukrainians are Nazi and the killing started.
Western distaste for killing is a recent-ish phenomenon and is by no means universal. I don't think it would be that hard for us to go back to those days. Civilization can be a thin veneer.
I disagree. After the two wars there is nobody who couldn't see that war is pure evil. That's why the initial project than later became the EU appeared - so that a war never appears in Europe again. If anything, today we hate it more than ever.
Facts simply disagree with you. The USA took part in (too) many bloody wars and invasions since WWII.
After Iraq, one would have hoped Americans finally learnt the lesson, yet Biden was voted president, after backing the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lybia. Even Obama championed drone strikes around the world and supported Saudi Arabia's invasion of Yemen.
If there's a lesson to be learned, it seems to constantly evade Americans' attempts to grasp it.
I agree that the USA is different from Europe in this respect. The invasion on Afghanistan and Iraq was completely wrong, and in the case of Iraq based on falsified information, and the final result was worse than before. And although I'm happy Obama withdrew the troops from Iraq and Biden from Afghanistan, it looks like there simply wasn't an exit plan and responsibility for the people left behind. They had to deal with the consequences of wars waged by Bush under the impulse of 9/11 with no good outcome.
Still, when you look at the perception of war by Americans, starting with Vietnam, you see that people don't like killing. "In the course of the war, there developed in the United States the greatest anti-war movement the nation had ever experienced, a movement that played a critical role in bringing the war to an end." [0] This is a phenomenon that you don't see in Russia where people learned very well that if they want to stay away from big trouble for them and their families, they must not speak out in any way.
It seems the West has found the perfect solution. Allow protests as long as they don't become dangerous, but keep waging wars without any compromise. People (some of them at least) will vote either way, and you can now claim to be better than everyone else, while detaining the record for most killed civilians!
Europe didn't start any war after WWII. leadership reflect the people so if Europeans were blood-hungry, they would kill - for territory, for money, for resources. Instead, people slowly started to understand that we're all interconnected and war is just suffering. You can't really find any of XIX-century mentality like "Our nation is the best and we must fight with our neighbors" anymore - and it is thanks to the EU that Putin hates so much.
This is false. We bombed Sarajevo, Libya, participated in the invasion of Iraq and so on.
> thanks to the EU that Putin hates so much
If we look again at facts, the only ones who seem to hate Europe are the USA, Ukraine, and the EU commission.
Who destroyed North Stream and is now trying to destroy the other routes for gas from Russia to Europe?
Who's pushing for Europe to buy USA gas at 4x the Russian gas cost?
Who's trying at all costs to escalate this war, spreading allarmism and calling for wild increases in military spending?
Before the Ukraine war started, Russia actually helped us, as most of our industry was backed by the availability of cheap Russian gas. If nothing, we were increasingly independent of the USA. That mutual benefit relationship has now been severed, but to whose advantage? As a EU citizen I only see our quality of life decrease the more we "help" Ukraine.
The destruction of North Stream was an excellent move by whoever did. Europe drastically cut support for the current war and any future ones that Putin can wage by enormous cut on gas purchase from the regime. Yes, it was cheap, but the price is blood. We understood this too late.
Can Putin attack other countries? Not now, because Ukraine is still fighting, so for now he can just do smaller acts like cutting cables, messing up public transport during the Olympics or putting inflammable stuff on transport airplanes. But can we be sure he won't do it in a couple of years? The means to ensure so is to make Europe strong enough to make Putin hesitate.
Now let's move on to military actions you mentioned. As for Sarajevo, I remember it very clearly. The UN mission failed completely, in the same way that they failed in Rwanda. And I believe it was the only NATO initiative in history that actually made sense. The idea itself, not the execution though - NATO pilots were too afraid to fly low and they bombed civilians. But they never considered it a "good thing to do", rather a grave mistake, then a humanitarian fund was established to rebuild and make amends to the families. Other than that, the intervention actually stopped genocide.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan - as I mentioned, nobody in Europe wanted, Bush had big problems forming the coalition for his stupid aggression, millions of people went on the streets. I don't know any single person who would say "What a great idea, let's attack Iraq/Afghanistan". On the contrary, everybody thought it was very stupid. This is a huge difference between the two worlds: many Russians actually believe that killing Ukrainians is good and it should be continued.
Oh sweet child. If you live in a "first world" country you should know the price of your lifestyle is always blood. All the convenience you get is based on the exploitation of poorer countries to extract their resources (energy, minerals, workforce, etc) at a very low cost for us.
How could you think that getting gas from Russia is the only unethical option? Just inform yourself.
> millions of people went on the streets
Yes, and yet the invasion happened anyway, millions died in the middle east and the war went on until it was clear to the ruling elites that there wasn't any other benefit to extract from it. They couldn't care less about the protests, which by the way our democratic governments didn't hesitate to repress with violence whenever they became too loud. The Palestine debacle is another great example of this. If the kind of repression US university students were subjected to happened in China, the whole West would be screaming dictatorship. Heck, we still talk about how the HK protests were "brutally" repressed yet we did much worse with our own protests.
It's exactly like it happened for Vietnam. The USA finally pulled out when they realized it was going to be a very long blood bath for them, not because of the protests.
> If you live in a "first world" country you should know the price of your lifestyle is always blood.
This is not only false but also implies the "X is bad so you can also do other bad things" mentality that I don't buy.
> yet the invasion happened anyway
With extremely limited support from Europe. Basically, from EU countries only the UK agreed and Blair was heavily criticized for that. From [0]: "...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. " Then Bush answered "You forgot Poland" which became a short-lived meme.
So yes, I think Blair and Bush jr should join Putin and Netanyahu as war criminals. But at the same time there is a great cibilizational divide between Europe and Russia, sadly for everyone involved.
Got anything to say about the content of the article? Do you think Russia is actually trying to do these things, or not? If they are, does it matter whether you like the people who are warning us about it?
And if you don't think Russia is trying to do this, do you have any reason not to believe it, other than "I don't trust the author"?
> Got anything to say about the content of the article?
The medium (or mediator, as it happens) is the message, and I tried explaining who this mediator was. I can't take anything seriously coming from a guy who works for a Department of State blob agency.
> And if you don't think Russia is trying to do this, do you have any reason not to believe it, other than "I don't trust the author"?
My beliefs of what Russia may or may not do are in no way, form or shape influenced by what blob companies set up by the US Department of State might push forward, so I'm afraid I can't you help with that.
If you want we can instead discuss about guys like (post-1950) George Kennan and similar, i.e. American thinkers who still dared have their own opinions about the Soviets (and, to be clear, I also think that Kennan was wrong on some stuff, but it was his right to be wrong as an independent thinker, unlike this guy Troy here).
