A further reason for my hatred of National Socialism and other ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one’s power, optimally by killing somebody – a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost.

Eric Voegelin[i]

The pseudo-identity of a totalitarian dictator relies on pseudo-ideas. And what are pseudo-ideas? They are often ideas about the victim status of some group – based on sex, race, nation, or class. We hear these themes regularly; for example, that women or transgenders are oppressed, that non-whites are oppressed, that the poor are oppressed by the rich. Here is a victimology that promotes mass murder by encouraging despair. It is a despair that justifies “killing people for the fun of it.” The National Socialists said Germany was the victim and blamed the Jews. The neo-Marxists say people of color are victims and blame white racism. The old-line Marxists say the workers are victims and blame the bourgeoisie. The dictator states, who also see themselves as victims, blame America and/or NATO. In its current war against Ukraine, the Kremlin uses a confused mix of all-the-above, citing Ukraine as a U.S./NATO/Nazi conspiracy under Ukraine’s Jewish president, who is backed by Jewish oligarchs. Here we have an “all-the-above” goulash of popular resentments to justify Russia’s war of aggression. This justification differs markedly from the usual totalitarian demagogy. It partakes of an intellectual incoherency and rhetorical carelessness suggestive of mental disintegration. Who would have guessed? Russia’s regime of banal mediocrities cannot be bothered to make their lies credible. They no longer possess the intellectual wherewithal of the early Bolsheviks. The elder Soviet statesman laid out a long-range strategy. But now it seems, the post-Soviet generation cannot think for themselves. When the old strategy began to fail, they improvised. It was then, and only then, that the mediocrity of the nomenklatura showed itself. The Russian and Chinese governments are failing their people. Russian military setbacks in Ukraine and a financial meltdown in China follow.

In the beginning, the totalitarians were intellectuals; or, rather, they were pseudo-intellectuals; always talking about a better future for mankind. Yet their actions have always been less than ideal. They followed Stalin’s rule of elimination. “No man, no problem.” As Putin said in his 21 September speech, people who oppose the Kremlin lies are now subject to elimination. This is not merely a declaration of war against Ukraine. It is a declaration of war on freedom of speech. If anyone dares to contradict the Russian lies, they are “fair game.” So says that wonderful Christian and conservative, Vladimir Putin. All critics of Russia must die. Here is how “killing for the fun of it” is now justified. The Kremlin will have its way. And Putin says, “I am not bluffing.” So the world will bend its knee, or burn. Here is the logic of the coming nuclear war.

However long he pretends to be tolerant and normal, the revolutionary totalitarian cannot live in peace with people who disagree with him. He must overthrow the world order. He must destroy the powers that be. Because he must have his way, he must be the world’s boss, his only recourse is murder. Eric Voegelin wrote about this, and so did Edmund Burke in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France.

We see today, in America, self-described revolutionaries emerging on the right and left. These would-be totalitarians, lacking self-knowledge, appear to be enemies of each other; but the stage is set so that they can be turned into allies (as happened when Hitler and Stalin agreed to their famous pact in 1939). From the left, everything possible is done to divide and alienate people. Conservatives and patriots feel more and more alienated, disempowered, and even afraid. There is, in American today, a growing paranoia and distrust of the authorities. Policies hostile to the citizens are routinely adopted by elites who think of the people as “deplorables.” Criminals have more rights than their victims. Illegal aliens are preferred over the citizenry. The basis of our existence, which depends on cheap energy, is under a coordinated assault in the name of Climate “science.” We the People are being strangled. Oh yes, the stage is set. Pre-revolutionary conditions are being fostered.

Worse than this is our intellectual confusion. Fact and reason are no longer relied on to establish common ground for discussion. The news is no longer news, in the old sense. Nobody seems ready to agree on the most basic things. Every fact is twisted to fit a partisan purpose, or to fit a conspiracy theory, or a revolutionary agenda. History no longer teaches lessons. Our ideas about history are now “deformed” by apocalyptic consciousness, ideologies of despair, or by those who claim to have unmasked history’s meaning (e.g., Hegel, Marx, and the conspiracy theorists). These deformed standpoints may be summarized as follows: (1) Apocalypticism – which assumes knowledge of the “end of history”; (2) despairing creeds – which say we should withdraw from the world on account of its wickedness; (3) historiogenesis – a linear misconstruction of history that promotes policies that lead to nowhere.[ii]  

What we have learned, from recent international events, is that an intellectual decline is affecting both East and West. There has been a global dumbing down. Yet the freedom enjoyed by the West has provided an outlet for creativity and technological innovation that continues to bring advancements. Russia and China cannot, in the long run, compete. The only thing they can do is rain nuclear destruction on our heads. But do they have the nerve?

This analysis is not meant to be apocalyptic. We cannot view political and military events through such a lens without being blindsided by history (which keeps coming at us). Even worse, our secular and hedonistic intellectuals produced their own version of the Apocalypse, minus the Seven Vials of God’s Wrath. In their version of the Millennial Reign, everyone skips happily past World War III directly to the End of History. Such was Francis Fukuyama’s false revelation in which Satan is not cast down to Earth; merely, the Soviet Union falls and becomes a capitalist paradise. If anything, this was a big thumbs-up for the absurd policies of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Of course, people had such high hopes for the post-Cold War era. The peace dividend was going to make us all prosperous. Americans erroneously supposed that the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. The left was free to advance gay marriage, transgenderism, and an open border. The right was free to embrace its own version of hedonism. Absurdity followed absurdity as history itself was used to play out a reductio ad absurdum – as if history were a bad joke (at our expense). The premise of every political clown was “the end of history.” If the outcome has been ridiculous, if the disaster has finally come into view, we have welcomed it.

Imagine if our ruling elite believed the world was flat. Believing thus, consider the legislation they would have forwarded to guarantee we would not “fall off” the world’s edge. Trillions would have been spent on something unnecessary – on something that was not a problem. And this is what the West has done with its thirty years of peace and plenty. (I say “peace” because the real war was never engaged.)

We stupidly believed that Russia and China were our “partners.” We allowed our military power to atrophy, our nuclear arsenals to rot. The military industrial complex, after all, was inherently evil. We imagined these arsenals were no longer necessary. The threat, Congressman Ron Paul told me in April 2001, was the U.S. Government. And many people still see things through this lens.

After the end of the Cold War, the growing power of the left, achieved by a long march through the institutions, was becoming a juggernaut. Under three successive presidents the country lost its cultural homogeneity. What followed was a cancerous mistrust. The alienated individual, on the political right, was growing ever more paranoid and despairing. Unlike conservatives of earlier generations, a new radicalism was beginning to emerge. As Carl Jung had foreseen, religious deliverance from evil had been turned into “worldly promises about freedom from care for one’s daily bread, the just distribution of material goods, universal prosperity in the future, and shorter working hours.” If the left had been partial to revolutionary ideas since 1917, the right was developing its own revolutionary rhetoric. Nearly everyone is now mass-minded and neurotically susceptible to despair. In respect of this, Søren Kierkegaard famously wrote, “Despair is sin.” Despair is a perverse attitude which gives latitude to errors of omission and commission. Here is a reciprocal source of our troubles. The sin of despair, built on alienation, is leading us, step by step, to “killing people for the fun of it.”

“We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history,” wrote Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke held that a true understanding of the past serves as a bulwark against error. Yet what have we learned? “History consists,” wrote Burke, “for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same.”[iii]

As in the time of Julien Benda, politics has devolved into the intellectualization of political hatred. Four decades ago, Eric Voegelin warned of “the murderous equanimity of the intellectuals who have lost their self and try to regain it by becoming pimps for this or that murderous totalitarian power….”[iv] It is shocking, but true. There are those, on the right and the left, who live in a perpetual rage. For whatever reason, they have adopted an attitude that leaves them profoundly alienated. Like Putin, they see themselves as victims. Doubtless, such people suffer from the tragedy of their smallness. In fact, tragedy holds center stage in their soul. They do not let go of it and therefore never heal. “O woe is me,” they say, and worship at the altar of their rage.

To give a leftwing example, from personal experience, I once engaged in a long conversation with an angry Marxist from Colombia. For my benefit, he poured out his anti-Americanism in a passionate rage. The world’s misery owed everything to American imperialism. There was no justice in the world, he said, and no moral order. Morality was an illusion. I was naïve, he said, to think that criminals could not be happy. It is a strange thing, this moralistic condemnation of morality. Yet being an atheist, he avoided the error of confusing his own rage with the Wrath of God. He therefore brought everything down to the personal level: “I hate America. I hate all Americans,” he raged. Only the Revolution, he added, could set things right. Only violence. Only hatred – as if the disease was its own cure.

On the political right, among traditionalist conservatives, the same rage can be found – with a religious veneer. For example, an acquaintance of several years standing, hopelessly addicted to conspiracy theories, has regularly filled my ears with the story of his victimization at the hands of a cruel and Godless society. To be sure, his discourse is interesting, sometimes insightful, yet always disturbed. It is not surprising in retrospect, that after offering him advice on forgiving and forgetting, he poured out such retaliatory abuse (on me) as to make my ears burn. Such rudeness can only be met with rudeness in return, for one immediately sees the problem; namely, the fun of hurting other people. This man has, for my benefit, poured out his passionate anti-Americanism without appeal. Any attempt to mitigate the country’s guilt was, for him, an impiety. The man’s mind had become a not-so-fun funhouse mirror, reflecting such monstrous distortions as to bring the central question of Voegelin’s work to mind: Why do men indulge in a dishonesty that separates them from reality, from themselves, and from God?

One would think, of course, that a deeply religious man, who professes to pray and talk to God every day, would not so casually embrace Putin’s totalitarian lies. This man favors Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, seeing Russia as a haven for Christians. That Putin is a murderous dictator, he will not admit. That Russia is less of a Christian country than America, he will not admit. And he will not believe Russia has lost any battles in its bloody invasion of Ukraine, which he says is justified. He also believes that RT [Russian TV] is a reliable source for news. All of this reminds me of Eric Voegelin’s statement: “I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as ‘murderous swine.’” And why, indeed, should an outwardly religious person qualify as a ‘murderous swine’ in this context? Voegelin held that those who enable totalitarian lies, are collaborators in totalitarian power. They are accessories to mass murder after the fact.  

One might ask: Why do such people render ideological assistance to mass murder? On close examination we find that my traditionalist acquaintance, and the Colombian Marxist, cast blame in every direction for their personal misfortunes. For example, the traditionalist says that American society is an abomination in the eyes of God because it tolerated the breakup of his family and allowed his wife to take his children. The Church is also wicked, he said, because nobody in the church lifted a finger to put his Humpty Dumpty marriage back together again. According to his creed, America only gets to exist if it is a Bible society organized around his theology. Failing that, the country must suffer the Wrath of God – or is it the wrath of a lonely, embittered man?

Of this type of Christian, Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “He loves God above all, God who is his only consolation in his secret anguish, and yet he loves the anguish and will not give it up.”[v] And it was Kierkegaard who said, “Sin is despair.” Being full of self-pity, despair gives a nod to revenge. The despairing man emerges from his anguish and, said Kierkegaard, “[he] cannot humble himself under it in faith.”[vi] And faith, we might add, is the opposite of despair.

Religion, noted Carl Jung, “means dependence on submission to the irrational facts of experience.” It is not about the perfection of our social or physical state. It is about our soul. The irrational facts of existence, said Jung, “concern far more the individual’s psychic attitude.” [vii] Since misfortune is always coming to us, the question then becomes: How do we deal with misfortune? As it turns out, attitude is everything, and man’s attitude depends on his “point of reference outside” life’s external condition. Religion offers such a standpoint, which a secular philosophy cannot provide. Yet an Apocalyptic consciousness, craving an “end of history” and the punishment of a less than perfect humanity, reveals a less than spiritual perspectivism. Here is an ideology, dressed in the shell of religion, whose focus is the same as the leftist revolution; that is, revenge.

How problematic, indeed, are those who say, “Our society deserves to be destroyed. It is horribly, horribly, wicked.” Yet, who are we to pronounce such a judgment? We, too, are wicked. None are perfect. And while Job’s wife told him to “curse God and die,” faith tells us to rebuke the counsels of despair.

[Postscript: I have had terrible problems with editing this piece. My corrections would not take while posting, and when I caught them later my corrections would not correct. I have pressed the update button dozens of times only to find the errors remained. I apologize to readers about this. There is a parenthesis I am unable to close, despite all efforts. The app on all devices has been buggy lately. In recent articles I apparently cannot see all the comments.]

….

Below is my latest interview with Seth Holehouse:

Links and Notes

[i] Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 46-47.

[ii] Glenn Hughes, Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity (Kindle Edition), p. 84.

[iii] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 247.

[iv] Voegelin, p. 47.

[v] Soren Kierkegaard translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 77.

[vi] Kierkegaard, p. 78.

[vii] Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self with Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 12.

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292 thoughts on “The Totalitarian Trajectory: And Man in American Interview”

  1. Pingback: The Totalitarian Trajectory: And Man in American Interview – Mist Vista

  3. Thanks for writing this. It caused me to self-reflect. I get bogged down in wanting revenge/justice from people who I feel are dismissive and belittling of truths I have tried to bring to light which I have felt are very important. But so important that I’m consumed by anger long term?

    1. This is a common temptation that we all must guard against. To be repeatedly mocked for seeing something different from others is never an easy thing for the human psyche to process. It must be borne with grace – I do not press it anymore with certain friends or relatives. I share it a couple times and if not received well, I feel I have done my duty and henceforth keep discussion to simple, jovial matters. It is not worth getting angry at family about. Always remember that brainwashing is quite powerful and, in my opinion, a dark magic of sorts.

      2. Yes,exactly how things are…..🥀 The “normalcy bias” is a VERY real reality operating in human hearts/minds now everywhere. I still battled it. A coping mechanism. The sad thing is, in the midst of true crisis arising, it is also very dangerous for people and their loved ones– to not be “oriented”, as JRN says, and have at least some situational awareness. 🙏 But, respecting boundaries is important too.

      3. I live this everyday so have given a good deal of contemplation. I also am a fairly recent Christian convert (about 4 years), in an environment where to speak earnestly (let alone reverently) of Christ is to telegraph that you’ve taken leave of your senses or at least your brain – and may even be an “extremist.”

        I have decided in our current moment, hearts and minds will not be persuaded by reason or facts. They likely won’t even be affected by Christian example, although that is how I go about life (ie, do my best to live rightly). I have a few close family members with whom I’m honest though I suspect behind my back they think I’m brainwashed. I feel the logic of the times (when our fellows seem given to cynicism and rank unacknowledged self-interest and preservation of comforts and ego) is, for the Christian, “feet on the ground, head in the heavens” meaning we are likely to suffer, and sacrifice, with little to nothing to show for it in worldly terms, which is why now more than ever the practices that keep us close to God are so important.

    2. A lot of our reactions to how people receive our message depends on what are our expectations?

      In the Bible, the command is merely that we spread the Biblical message. It doesn’t say how we spread the message, whether through talk, films, music, or whatever other medium, just that we spread the message. We are to be culturally and psychologically sensitive to our audiences so that we give a clearly understood message without using 400 year old church language that nobody understands today (including myself). Once we have given our message, we have done our job. How others receive our message is not our responsibility. But ultimately, it’s not our message, but God’s message, so when people reject God’s message, it is no longer personal to us (unless we did a poor job) which helps deflect any emotional response from us.

      Jeremiah taught for 20 years the same message of repentance or the country would be destroyed—more than once people tried to kill him for that message. After his message turned out to be true, they did kill him. All Jeremiah did was to teach and he made sure that it was not his personal message he gave, rather one he got from God. We are not prophets getting messages directly from God, so we need to be careful that we teach accurately what God has had written in the Bible.

      The same attitude should guide our message concerning what the communists plan for this country. Of course there are many evil people in our country, especially among the elites ruling us, such that our country deserves God’s punishment. But when God’s judgment comes, that will not be a time for rejoicing, because when God punishes a country, the good people suffer alongside the wicked. We don’t have Jeremiah’s message that we are to surrender to the invaders, rather we have other commands to work for justice and to protect our neighbors from evil; other commands that mean we are to fight to protect our neighbors from the evil that the CCP and Soviets plan for us.

      Just as the Biblical message is not mine, so also when I talk about the communist plans, that is not my message, rather one that I have gotten from people much more knowledgeable than I about those plans. Jeff Nyquist is a primary source, which I reference in such discussions. I give the URL to this blog. Then when people don’t listen, I don’t get angry, rather saddened that their ignoring of this message will only make things more difficult for them when the Soviets and CCP attack.

      So how should we react when people reject our message? With anger? Desire for revenge? Or with sadness with the recognition that their rejection is out of our hands?

      2. Whether we like it or not, no ruler rules without God’s permission. He will use man to achieve His plan. He doesn’t expect us to fight anything but worldliness. We are not of this world, we just live in it. We are to live a life that reflects God’s agape. We do not need to conquer this world for God, He will one day win the battle for us.

      4. We are to work for justice (Micah 6:8). The Hebrew word for “justice” is not just being personally just, rather societal justice. Our personal circle of influence may be large, may be small, but we are to oppose injustice wherever we can as part of striving for justice.

        God sometimes allows unjust rulers—robbers and murderers—but that doesn’t absolve us from our responsibility to strive for justice in whatever way that is effective and pleasing to God.

      5. In Kierkegaard’s writings the point is made that people can live for esthetic values or moral values. The former, however, leaves one at the mercy of a fickle world; because here we are seeking happiness in terms of material good fortune. But nobody can ever enjoy such good fortune without consequences. Furthermore, injustice is often one of the conditions of WORLDLY SUCCESS, as is UNTRUTHFULNESS; that is, immorality. One may “sell one’s soul,” so to speak, for such success. There is a price when we collaborate with the WORLD (considered apart from moral values). If we invest everything in an UNJUST and UNTRUTHFUL WORLD, we are left with nothing once we leave that world behind (upon death). Living according to moral values, however, a different dynamic occurs. In that case we honor justice and truth, and act accordingly IN THE WORLD. Attempting to live in this way, we feel the shame of our unjust actions and our readiness to lie. Seeking to overcome our faults, we can give ourselves to Truth, and therefore anchor ourselves to something that is not transitory. Here the individual takes responsbility for his actions, conforming to an eternal standard (that is above the world). Thus the individual acts IN THE WORLD, but from the standpoint of eternity. This is the path to “everlasting life” and forgiveness. The other path leads to destruction, despair and chaos. It weighs the world down with a burden of meaning and happiness that the world cannot carry. The world has meaning, to be sure; but that meaning must be anchored to the transcendental (i.e., to God).

  4. JEFF: GOT THIS STATEMENT FROM THE EX-SOVIET DIPLOMAT, WHO IS A UKRAINIAN NATIONAL. HE WROTE A VERY SEVERE TESTIMONY REPORT. AND I JUST GOT CONFIRMED, WITH EVEN MORE INFO ON CNN LESS THAN AN HOUR AGO, FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH A FEMALE DEPUTY FROM ST. PETERSBURG WHO HAS BEEN HIDING OUT IN FINLAND SINCE THE START OF THE INVASION: “ALL THE MEN ARE TRYING TO IN FLEEING RUSSIA BECAUSE ALL THE MEN ARE BEING DRAFTED”.

    FROM THE EX-SOVIET DIPLOMAT:

    This week has been one of those weeks where I wonder if we are entering a very dark period of time.

    On a normal day I get a certain number of phone calls, zoom/face-time video calls.emails, etc.. They take time, but I enjoy doing it. The rest of my time is spent on business, this blog and an online library, exercise, reading, and family.

    But this week has been insane. There is no longer enough hours in a day for me to do the things that I want to do. And it all has to do with the Russia – Ukraine war, tensions with China, and the fracturing of the national and global economy.

    Let me explain.

    Western media goes out of its way paints a certain positive picture on what is happening in Ukraine. That Ukraine is winning, Russia is losing, and Ukraine will prevail and win this war.

    But everyone I know in Ukraine is telling me a different story, They tell me that the situation is getting more desperate. Everyone knows someone who has been killed or wounded, and now there is panic that Russia’s mobilization and commitment of 300,000 soldiers to the war will only mean more death and destruction.

    Sighhhh ….

    I try to help my friends/family members/and contacts who are still there. But there is only so much that I can do, especially when it comes to aid. I just learned this morning that half of what I ship to Kyiv gets stolen or misdirected when it enters Ukraine. This is news that I did not want to hear this morning, and it took me the entire morning and a good part of this afternoon to rush around to replace what was stolen and to send it out ASAP. People I know in Ukraine are dependent on some of the medicines that I provide to them. Failure is not an option.

    The situation in Russia is different, but there are growing fears that the big war is coming.

    Let me explain again.

    Western media reports that Putin has ordered a partial mobilization, but my family and friends in Russia are telling me that this is not a partial mobilization, but a full mobilization. Apparently every male of military age who is not registered must do so immediately so that the authorities can then know where you are and how to contact you if you are called up. Not surprising. Everyone is expecting to be called-up.

    I have a lot of friends in Europe. Half are saying that everything will be all-right, and there is no need to panic. The other half are freaking out, and they are in full panic mode. Who is right? I guess only time will tell. My money is on those who are “freaking out”.

    I have good business contacts in China that I always talk to and keep in contact . Some of them are friendships that go back almost 40 years when I first started to work in China in the 1980s. To say that they are livid with the US is an understatement. And it is not only because of Taiwan that this anger is coming from, but a whole list of other grievances that for some reason Washington DC has decided to poke the Chinese on. This is not a smart foreign policy move from the U.S.. The Chinese have a long memory. They are also not forgiving.

    While coming home I got more bad news from a friend who made the decision to close his company of 35 years in Montreal. He is not far from my home, so I went to see him. It was a sobering experience to see him. The focus in the media is on the high cost of living, and how families are having trouble making ends meet. What is ignored is the high cost of doing business for small and medium size businesses. From what I learned this afternoon. These type of businesses cannot survive.

    2. My (anti-Putin) Russian sources are saying the same. The airports have been crowded with men of military age trying to emigrate rather than risk being drafted; many have some prospects, having worked in a Western country at some time during the last quarter century, or they have relatives or old friends in the West. The ticket prices rose, of course, and this option may soon be closed off (if it hasn’t already). One 30-year-old man (a relative of a friend of mine) has just escaped to one of the central Asian republics because it was the only way out that he could find; from there he hopes to travel Westwards.

      There have been protests in Moscow (and no doubt elsewhere), but for men of military age, these are now desperately dangerous: on arrest, such protestors are being served with their draft papers. Obviously, they are not being drafted because they can be trusted to serve the regime, but rather as cannon fodder, like the old Soviet punishment battalions in WWII.

      The regime has announced that the penalty for failing to show up when drafted will be fifteen years in prison.

      The draft has initially been focused on Siberian and far-north regions where any kind of protest or resistance will be well out of view, nationally or internationally.

      1. To draft young men for this horrifying war of attrition — a senseless war against a country that has never threatened Russia and voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons — is a betrayal of everyone’s trust. And why all this death and destruction? For the pride of ruling people who would rather rule themselves? To make canon fodder out of the Ukrainians when Moscow, one day, is able to draft them?

      2. It’s lock step with the global depopulation agenda, whoever’s behind that. Russia depopulates their own people, same as China, the US, the EU, and Timbuktu.

    2. A lot of skepticism and negativity directed at Mr. Nyquist in Seth’s comments section, yet I found no substantive counter-arguments. “I refuse to believe what this man has to say, despite abundant evidence supporting his positions. I would rather cling to my fantasies of Putin the lion of Christianity”.

      2. Youtube is also a broader audience. One wonders if Jeff’s appearances are monitored for discrediting. The Russian operation to deceive the Right cannot be allowed to be challenged without pushback, after all.

      3. YouTube is suspect in how its comments section works. I have found many of my own comments on it instantly shadow banned, meaning, that I can see them but nobody else can. And it’s always when I take a swipe at the red monstrosity and connect it with Scripture.

        I’m not saying those negative comments on the Man In America video were AI or anything as esoteric as that, but the flurry of similarly themed comments was frankly abnormal. To me, it looked like coordinated trolling as Jeff has been on that channel before and I have noticed no such en bloc howls of derision.

        None of that denies the fact that the Kremlin has a world class PR machine that is plainly targeting western conservatives and doing so with great success. For example, you have idiots now like Henry Makow backing Putin saying “Putin’s fight is our fight”.

      4. Jeff takes a lot of heat at times, too many times. Formulating and discussing alternate possibilities is the highest level of cognition, that’s what I feel we all like about this site. And that is why we shouldn’t become unhinged if people disagree with us, it’s part of the natural discourse, until it gets out of hand. Seth is a great interviewer/host coupled with Jeff yields another great discussion. Many thanks Jeff.

        I’ll try not to mention the cold weather, but it’s already a very cool day by me, and such parts of Europe are at a higher latitude than me. When I was in college and bored, I would nudge my professor by staring out the window on a clear sunny day. Then I would glance at the question, tell him the answer. and let him know it’s raining outside. He would pause… Then shout, “and it’s snowing in here”. The reality was the whole class had no clue how to answer the question, and he was ready to let them know he was upset about it.

        Sometimes we need to shatter the finely tuned unreality of the masses, if not we can have a failed murmuration. Jeff is fantastic at doing this, people should listen to what he says before making such comments.

        I also didn’t realize Dr. Pry passed away recently, I have many of his books and I’m quite saddened by it.

      6. Could there be a new mass formation psychosis developing among a certain segment of conservatives?

        The buy-in of some conservatives that Ukraine is the most corrupt; NATO is corrupt and aggressive; yet Putin is so restrained…is frustrating beyond belief in this crisis. These people talk like he’s is holding down those wiggly nukes with his bare hands. They are just hooowwwling to fly out to protect dear mother R, but Putin says no no, not yet. Wait, wait my darlings.

        So then these same conservatives are foaming at the mouth at the mere mention of Zelensky. Why, it reminds me of those evil Nazis in WWII who wanted to kill the Jews or it’s like they are far woke leftists who think being white makes you racist, or it’s like people who want to lock up or exterminate the unmasked or unvaccinated. It’s the mass formation psychosis.

    3. There is a belligerence at the suggestion of a broader war, I think partly because many both left and right are angry and exhausted by what is perceived as at least two decades of greedy, destructive military adventurism around the world. It doesn’t help that the same, ugly “neoliberal/neocon” alliance (among politicians and the chattering class) are the ones who blast out the most bloodthirsty rhetoric against Russia and Putin. I really get the visceral impulse to reject it.

      What I don’t get is why these same people, critical of the neocon worldview, don’t understand the natural corollary – namely that our military industrial complex has been so focused on wreaking havoc elsewhere (and our politicians so blinded by hubris and bloodlust) – we’re woefully unprepared to defend the homeland or a direct threat against the United States. I also don’t get why the movements toward NWO (ie, WEF flirting with medical, energy and financial tyranny) distract people from the base reality that governments with weapons hold the real power. To me, it was not a great leap to understand that all the advanced technological weapons of tyranny will certainly be deployed against us, but ultimately not by some wealthy bureaucracy – but by the coordinated LETHAL FORCE that controls (or will control) the bureaucracy. Really, the single fact it comes down to is whether one thinks the West has monopolized the lethal force and capacity for war/sustained violence, and if you look around at our culture compared to the countries assembling against us, it seems pretty obvious who’s ready and who’s not. And looking at the utterly divided and confused and depraved U.S. citizenry, and you ask, cui bono? It’s not the U.S. left or the U.S. right or any internal faction. Only external enemies benefit.

    1. This is a war of attrition, lines don’t matter much. What matters is losses ratio 1:10 in Russia’s favor, even before mobilizing. Russia is to restart offensive in November.

      2. The loss ratio is more like 5:1 in Ukraine’s favor. The only way to get your ratio is to believe what is coming out of Moscow and those are transparent lies. 1:10 in Russia’s favor is not consistent with Russia’s style of fighting wars.

        Familiarize yourself with “critical thinking.” The concept really isn’t that hard.

      3. Russia took the heaviest losses during World War Two, yet it is Russia who arguably won that war.

      4. “Russia is to restart offensive in November”. Indeed, another failed murmuration! One can learn much from a failed murmuration. It’s not just for starlings and blackbirds. Sometimes the leader is the first to hit the pavement.

      6. Stalin had the population to massacre in WW2. Putin does not have the people to repeat the performance. Putin’s moves are actually threatening to murder Russia. He’s drafting men up to 65. No country can afford that.

        Add in the style of war Russia is fighting, and it demands high casualties. Peter Zeihan thinks Russia is predictable because it is following the traditional playbook. I disagree because Russia has never fought an opponent like modern Ukrainians. At present, the Ukrainians are running rings around the Russians and are moving fast enough to stay ahead of Russian communications. The Ukrainians are also hitting Ruusian logistics, which have never been good historically, and the combination led to the collapse we have seen so far. Things are getting no better for Putin either. The 300K he’s calling up will probably only yield about 30K light infantry because they have little in the way of heavy equipment to give them, and little way to train them. They will simply be more cannon fodder.

  7. If the US was gone, Russia could call Zelensky and say “surrender or see Kiev nuked”. Perhaps he holds. Then Kiev disappears. What does he say to the second phone call? These are psychopaths. Murder is nothing to them. Zelensky folds if the US is gone and Kiev disappears. Perhaps he folds if he sees Washington disappear.

    So to me, Russia could win the war in Ukraine at any time. They simply must eliminate the USA. To me, the scenario that still makes sense is a surprise, devastating strike on America. It solves all their problems.

    I also don’t really buy the narrative that Putin is “in a corner”. To me, it seems the Communists have decided these are optimal conditions. Perhaps earlier than they’d like, but optimal. And Westerners are totally asleep. I honestly struggle to have even Jeff’s hope or optimism. I don’t see how America isn’t totally destroyed and the remainder of the people die by starvation and gangs. Then a brutal military occupation. Once the Communists have their boot on your neck they will never let up. And by them disarming the US in a first strike they get the boot on the neck. And we are filled with traitors. Conditions are great for them. I don’t know anything positive to say. It sucks to see a sucker punch coming, with inside traitors helping set it up. Not even a fair fight.

      1. You are correct Jeff, I am reminded by what you said in your interview that “despair is sin”. It is surely something I must struggle against. Thank you for all you do.

      3. We should never surrender. But even with us suffering massive damages and deaths thanks to absorbing a massive nuclear attack, the enemy still needs to put boots on the ground in an actual invasion without which they can’t get total victory. The U.S. presently has the third largest population of any country in the world with the highest percentage of people trained in the military if not veterans having been in battle, not counting hunters trained in long distance shooting, how well will it go for the invaders?

        In spite of the many traitors, deludeds and cowards, has the war already been decided?

    2. Putin is taking huge gambles. First of all, relatively smaller places like Japan or Germany have proven they can rebuild themselves back up after being nuked and what not, but Putin perfectly knows that after a nuclear exchange, the chances of Russia rebuilding are quite slim. In that sense, in the absolute sense, politics aside, Russia has lost to Ukraine and Ukraine can rebuild. This is where the Nazi obsession of the nasty communist comes out, because for the antifa type the neo-Nazi is not the true Nazi, but the one who is resilient and can rebuild back middle class type is the Nazi to denounce.

      The Russian movie story of the White Tiger who is an undying Nazism in Germany is such desperate hysterical Soviet rhetoric for whom a resurgent modern Japan or Germany is simply a back door mean to undo the obliteration of Nazism. It is quite then insult to them, and the US State Department diplomacy and communist dominated “Civil Rights” DOJ operate in this language. The end game is clear: Russia and China are still favored militarily and economically while Japan and Germany are kept down with more suspicion and guilt perception controls with respect to Pearl Harbor (an obvious communication provocation, Unit 731 in China notwithstanding) or Nazism. It is pretty clear now that the Golytsin thesis of Soviet deception threatened this language at State and thus him and Angleton were short-circuited from the top at the CIA. This is not to say that they tacitly welcomed the news badly, but rather for them it was a way to telegraph to them that all was going according to plan and the language should be kept throughout and never changed, whether the Berlin Wall fell or not, proving Soviet failure or not. Moral fake indignation was to be preserved over reality or swings in sentiment with respect to Russia or Chinese obvious cruelty.

      Basically, in the Soviet mind, Germany has no right to rebuild back after WWII since Russia cannot on its own – as this old babushka noted bitterly that the charity soup she received in the 90s came from her enemies Germany. This is the “slavery reparation” mix of jealous envy and aristocracy hysterics rhetoric nucleus. They want to be served and be doomed to decadence, but they do not want the ones punished to serve them build themselves back better than them in the process, slaves who will then look at them as they stand in the grave.

      1. Who’s to say that we even fire missiles in response? And if we did, what would we hit? What would they be “rebuilding”? Our military wouldn’t hit anything civilian. Russia would most likely get all the storehouses. Which leaves just our subs. And those subs will be firing at missile silos that have already fired.

      2. At this point a counterforce strike would probably yield little. The only other option is counter value, and that, as Jerry Pournelle put it, means burning little Russian girls.

        If Every major Russian city were destroyed, the overwhelming majority of the population would be killed outright, or die over the following several months. Russia is more highly urbanized than the US, as is every other European country. Putin jaws about Russian just “flying off to heaven,” but that would be cold comfort, even if true.

        Frankly, Putin has already lost the gambles that matter.

    3. Putin is in corner. He painted himself there through is own mismanagement and stupidity. Much of the best of his Army now lies dead or permanently maimed and unable to fight. Mobilizing now will not do him much good as he is quite short of anything other than small arms. Those new troops must also be trained, but the training units have been committed in Ukraine, so they will simply be thrown into the fight where they will be little more than cannon fodder. It worked with Finland in the Winter War. Will it work here? I have very serious doubts.

      1. Russia has captured and controls the entire East and Southern borders with a wide buffer, inside the former, Ukraine, if that’s what you consider a corner.

    4. The pluctocrats who rely on money printing to buy material things are in the corner, they are being cut from the source of those material things.

    5. Perseus I agree, and also grapple with despair or at least fear. The light of God starts to feel distant and abstract, and the suffering and violence in front of us pulls at my mind. Often, at a very practical level, I don’t know what to do. Even “prepare” becomes an abstraction, when really no one around me is willing to prepare. Any personal preparations can be taken or destroyed in an instant. I’m not immune to our soft culture. I don’t know how much I can endure in terms of bearing witness to suffering, and suffering myself. I pray that God’s grace and presence will never leave me, so that I will be internally at peace, regardless of worldly circumstances.

  8. It is clear that Russia doesn´t use its full capability against Ukraine. And I don´t think it is necessary to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. In a war against North America, Canada and Western Europe – okay, it’s understandable. But against Ukraine? No, it is absurd for me. What we see now in Ukraine is not the real Russian army. Those soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine are “cannon fodder” from ethnic minorities, whose families were threatened by Kremlin if they refuse to send their sons to the war, or recruited former prisoners. Is this the real Russian army? With poor quality weapons and afraid soldiers with zero or a little military training? The real, well-trained Russian army participated in exercises like Vostok-2022. Yes, Russia is not winning the war because of the bad weather conditions from the beggining and the “cannon fodder” soldiers who didn’t want to fight for Russia and were ill-equipped and trained. The Russians use primarily old weapons and non-Russian soldiers. But there is a strategy, I am convinced. KGB/FSB without a strategy is like a juice without water and fruits. Kremlin has a strategy for the next 30-50 years, like Robert Buchar said once. Putin and his cronies know what they do. I simply note that for me is strange that many people in Russia support Putin’s war and at the same time there are protests and military reservists who want to leave Russia. Unfortunately, I don´t know exactly what is behind this mobilization. Probably to get rid of more people from problematic minorities and groups. But it´s all strange – a country prepared to conquer Europe and parts of North America to need a mobilization for a local war in Ukraine? Something very strange is happening here.

    1. I think JR Nyquist noted before that Russia, or, rather, the Soviet system, goes forward by walking backwards, wins by losing, or something to that effect. In that effect, you make a good observation about strategy. If the fall of the Berlin Wall charade was a strategy to cause a sort of refugee crisis and a contagion movement of Soviet mentality existentialism to spread to the West, e.g. with hordes of Eastern European atheistic zombies flipping the board, e.g. turning a unified Germany into an East Germany via Merkel and soviet minded voters from East Germany now voting in German elections, this war could be indeed an extension of this sociologist war and process, or at least be recuperated in that manner, re-adapted. 911 was also such re-adaptation of what could have been a US self recuperation from islamic recruiting but instead became an islamic and FSB recruitment tool (“Islam is peace… peering in Putin’s soul… Mueller inviting both Cair and the FSB to help combat terrorism etc.). All of a sudden the spin on 911 became a means to attack patriotic Americans upset at a more or less conscious level that something afoul and subversively recruiting was going on with respect to islam.

      I think it is important to note that the feckless existentialist thugs that the Soviet Putin has been breeding and preparing in Russia for the past 30 years for this Ukraine war crime juggernaut is an extention of this conversion process to evil continued. Now these thugs want to run away to the West because they do not like Putin’s draft! But I bet a dime a dozen, everywhere they will go, they will reminisce the Soviet times, look to Putin with nostalgia and vote and influence wherever they will go for more of the same, betraying the very people helping them and who keep warning them about the evil of government and power. Nay, it is like leaving Soddom and Gomorrah, they cannot help look back fondly of existentialism and anxious against the boredom of life, even if it turns them into pillars of salt.

      The whole strategy is indeed sociological. Maybe they attacked when the fruit was not quite ripe, but who cares? The importance to them is that the process of conversion continues on its course of obscene provocations. It almost is like the Russian and Putin wish the West turned out into a blood thirsty thug itself, destroying the Russia itself in the process through obscene chest beating. Their obsession on Nazism as a virtual metaphore is uncanny in that Stalin admired Hitler, and a part of them still loves and aspires to this sort of existential accomplishment that Hitler embodied as a symbolic ultimate inspiration for their mentality and designs. As a KGB defector once confessed ironically and metaphorically in a PlayBoy magazine article, that power like this was still very depraved yet paradoxically powerfully seductive – to him at lest, that is.

      1. China is indeed to look at, especially in light of the latest “hints” and encouragements they are given by the Pelosi trip and recent Biden warnings and insistence on defending Taiwan. These moves are dis-genuine since these people have been proponents of recognizing mainland China and the implicitly mainland dominated Taiwan in the One China policy. Should we remember that Obama sent Irans billions in gifts during a masquerade of pretend confrontation which devolved into negotiation and then excuses to talking to Iran instead of ignoring it.

        It looks like there is a push to egg on China to become relevant like Russia. Interestingly China is kind of holding back much the way it tried to hold back Putin but only because of readiness and risk calculations issues.

      2. Re: Pelosi. My understanding is that she has always supported Taiwan/Tibet and has done things to annoy and tick off the Chinese regime before.

        Just because someone is leftist and obviously corrupt in many ways doesn’t mean they’re Pro-Russia and China. That might be true moreso with Russia/China’s obvious defenders in the past, like Obama himself who mocked Romney’s statements on Russia, and others who have significant financial and ideological ties with those countries.

    3. I find it quite ironic that the Russian is not so much protesting the draft after all, but the manner in which he is handled in this. The Putin-Soviet raised Russian apparently want an easy pogrom and way to kill people, not go the hard way and semi-fake way through a war where they die for real in a sort of absurd theater. This war is almost like a movie where the characters who die in the movie die for real in order to make it more realistic to the audience. “No animals were hurt during the filming of this production” is always is that disclaimer. I remember a female Russian impressionist being “impressed” by Putin’s theater. She knew it was a bunch of BS and theater, yet she admired it verily so because it was such a well plaid out grandiose masquerde! Not because it was true and righteous for Putin to be that way. For her, “the Righteous Brothers” were only “righteous” in their shear lack of “righteousness” and making it the best “love” scam in the world, which ironically is the reason for her loving them – ironically simply because she falls for them so easily despite a tiny bit of her still figuring it is a scam once taken out with some 2020 vision at a rehab location.

      No, for Russians, it now seems too much, they don’t want to play the sick theater of Putin to its end and be cannon fodder movie figurants for it, with only a list of credits at the end… if they ever will get them for maybe they figure they are fiends who will never get them but be blotted out eventually. The feminine russian is now feeling queasy, perhaps. Or, maybe he just thinks there is a better way, such as letting him run away in other nations from where he will benefit from a laxist Chicago style justice system allowing it to grow gangs which will genocide in impunity without suffering Ukrainian hard bullets.

    4. NATO has already shown that they would not attack Russia. Would they attack Russia if Russia and China nuked the US? One would guess not, but who knows. The gameplan from them is clear. They have missile and nuclear superiority.

      Crash the US economy (this is already beginning), stoke massive civil division in the US, perhaps have another controversial election, and then use the chaos to launch the Final, decapitating strike. In one hour that city will burn. Revelations 18 talks about a city that reigned over the kings of the earth, doing commerce with all nations, being destroyed in one day and one hour, by “fire from heaven”. I hesitate to state anything eschatological with certainty, but it is an odd coincidence.

      1. At this point, there is no way we can tell if the Rooskis have nuke superiority. Given the state of maintenance of the conventional forces, it is reasonable to question the maintenance and functionality of the nuke forces. It would be good bet that a lot of the missiles will not function properly. ICBMs are maintenance hogs, and neglecting them is a fool’s bet.

      2. The Great Tribulation of The Book of Revelation, occurs after the United States is no more. Whatever happens to the US is insignificant in context, yet might well be the event which ushers in, the Antichrist. If Russia and or China were to annihilate the United States, there would be nobody left to experience the Great Tribulation. Even if US nukes have reached their expiration date, I eat expired Twinkies all the time, no problemo. Besides, I don’t buy that the US is defenseless. Seems more likely that the DoD just shuts up about what we do and do not have. At any rate, the US will not be around during the last seven years before the return of the Messiah. I wonder though, what would be the point of The Rapture, if the United States were gone? How many Christians would there be left in the World by then? The Church needs to be removed so that the Holy Spirit won’t be around to Restrain, evil, or the Antichrist wouldn’t be able to function as foretold that he will.

      4. Your prophetical interpretation – dispensationalist in orientation – is one that not all of us share in the forum. Since this is a matter of religion and interpretation, it is best to avoid such fruitless discussions. I am an Orthodox Christian and the Orthodox interpretation of the Scriptures is quite a bit different from the views which you espouse here (and with which I am quite familiar as a former Protestant). What I can say is that, regardless of when the Tribulation occurs and whether or not the “Church” is removed prior to the Tribulation, etc. the important point is that communism is completely antithetical to Christianity, denying that there is a higher power as it is based on materialism, leading communists to completely deny the existence of the supernatural realm. In that sense, it seeks to replace Christianity as a sort of religion in its own right, promising an eventual heaven on earth once the “revolution” has managed to destroy all existing social orders and societies which run counter to Marxist ideology. Its adherents actively seek to eliminate Christianity, which Marxists consider to be a tool of the rich used to manipulate the poor and to maintain the status quo. In denying the existence of a higher authority in the spiritual realm, it thus promotes a sort of moral relativism concerning which any means which can be used to overthrow society are valid so long as they operate in the furtherance of Marxist objectives. Unfortunately, the Marxists have given far more thought to overthrowing the existing, organic social orders than they have to what kind of society will replace them. Communism is alive and well in Russia, South America, China and even the United States as evidenced by the many far-left groups that promote Marxist ideology.

      5. Perseus, what you say seems correct. But in terms of timing/order of events – if “mobilization is war” and Russia is mobilizing 300,000 or maybe 1 million conscripts, which doesn’t seem to make sense w/r/t Ukraine, given that Russia couldn’t support the troops already sent; and we see a confluence of steps taking place in short order (Putin/Xi meeting, week later Russia mobilizes, in about 3 weeks Xi re-ups his dictatorship, all against the backdrop of a summer of drills and provocations); how do these near-term steps mesh with waiting for the U.S. election and destruction of U.S. economy to hit at us directly?

        I don’t know what to make of Russia’s mobilization, except that it doesn’t seem to make strategic sense given Russia’s stated goal of exclusive focus on Ukraine. I also agree with you that the West is very unlikely to return a nuclear strike – unless it’s one aimed at the homeland, but then, what capacity would we have to counterstrike?

        I’m not knowledgeable enough to really hypothesize about war strategy, I just try to make things add up. These recent moves feel like Jan/Feb earlier this year when we watched Russia marching toward an attack, not wanting to believe our eyes. It seems like the current moves are signaling a pivot/escalation even before the U.S. election, or around the same time. If that’s right, I guess the next question is, how long do they keep playing under the carefully-constructed framework that this is all about Ukraine/Taiwan, vs hit directly at North America.

    6. Estimates from military observers put Russian forces in Vostok at about 5,000, maybe 10,000 at most, despite Russia claiming there were 50,000. If the 80,000 or so dead Russian troops were “fake,” it doesn’t look like there is much of a “real” army to replace them with. And, obviously, if Russia is now mass mobilizing 300,000 to a million people, clearly their current military power is insufficient, their losses extreme, and now mass conscription is necessary for victory. But these conscripts will not qualify as “real” soldiers under your definition either, because they will be poorly trained (if at all) trash, most of whom will stagnate in Russia due to poor logistics, without weapons or uniforms.

      This is what Russia has taught us over the course of this conflict.

    7. There were many people shocked at what happened 89-91 in Russia. The CPSU mismanagement of the USSR finally bloomed and brought the entire house of cards down. Just as then, people were thinking Russia was a world power, and had tons of equipment in storage that could be quickly brought out and used, and that has not proven to be the case because of corruption in Russia. Selling things nalyevo has been going on for years, and it may be that Russia’s nuke forces are in just as bad a condition as the rest of the military.

      There is a myth that has gained some currency, that Russia did not send its best into Ukraine. That was not the case. One example is the 1st Guards Tank Army, a formation that was regarded as elite, was destroyed by the Ukrainians. When what Russia regards as their best gets chewed up, and your logistics stink and the enemy keeps hitting them and killing your high command officers, you get an Army that is in deep trouble. Just because Putin holds a large swath of Ukraine does not mean he is not in a corner. he is, and it is a corner that will probably prove to be impossible to get out of.

    8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nXDuaj5PyU Central Asian states drift from Moscow’s orbit – Telegraph podcast Sep 21, 2022
      According to a Telegraph journalist, some studies show that about 20% of Russians support the war, 20% are against it, and the other 60% are apathetic and don’t want to know what’s going on, don’t want their lives to be impacted. One can see the exodus of military-age males as an example of that. Recently a popular Russian music legend A. Pugacheva (?) spoke out against the war, her speaking out may be a game changer in terms of the anti-war movement especially if a few other cultural icons speak out (Pugacheva is apparently the Dolly Parton of Russia).

      Telegraph does really informative podcasts. The rest of it, about unrest in central Asia as a result of Russia’s apparent weakness in Ukraine is interesting. At the CSTO meeting in Uzbekistan, the central Asian leaders made Putin wait for them (usually Putin makes a point of making others wait for him), this represents shift in dynamics of the region. The CSTO is supposed to be like Russia’s version of NATO, but like the Russian army in Ukraine it is showing to be a Potemkin structure; the only time it intervened was in Jan 2022 to prop up the corrupt Kazakh president against a popular revolution. There is now fighting on the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border. The most serious fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia since 2020 occurred a few weeks ago, and now when Armenia triggered CSTO’s version of NATO’s article 5 and asked CSTO to intervene to guarantee Armenia’s security, Russia said it will send a fact-finding mission instead.

    9. This is correct. It is almost like Ukraine is a fake conflict, done on the cheap. Yes, they would like to take it, sure, but to me it seems like a cheap justification for the true goal: striking the United States. Everyone in the West currently thinks the conflict zone is Ukraine without realizing missiles could be getting pointed right at America right now.

      1. One has to wonder about this gradual series of mobilizations — or as the expert in the video posted by Laura, “crypto-mobilizations.” If you did want to adaptively shift your people into war mode, and they would resist a large move, you might do it on the slow plan. I don’t fully understand, but I watch and wonder.

  9. This news item is from earlier in the week, but I think that it ties in well with certain points that Jeff raised in his article: https://www.foxnews.com/us/north-dakota-man-kills-teen-vehicle-political-dispute-victim-republican-extremist

    Also, there is this, which to me is frightening, that people are actually believing this patently false, destructive rhetoric: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/09/19/poll-majority-democrats-believe-there-are-tens-millions-dangerous-maga-republicans/

    1. Of course they believe it, because they want to believe it. These are people who do not live but who, snobbish and full of febrile anxiety, cling to whatever bit of existence they can have over another. They have the convict-prisoner mentality and they are atrracted by it and things like abortion. I.e. struggles, intrigues and petty games of existence thrill them during their bipolar trips, while the idea of living or giving life is completely alien to them, unrepentant. They cannot imagine themselves in their petty lives as petty material. They seek refuge in a strange leavening of a hysterical atheism which however is more a neurosis with respect to God far more severe than the most guilt ridden priest aware of his own sins. They LOVE their dictators who take room and his own existence to all new levels, even if it means reducing theirs to nearly nil, so long they get a piece of the trip by carrying out a more or less soft pogrom themselves on neighbors they will harass, intimidate, bully or snitch on.

    2. This is why Biden “walked it back” the day after the speech and the conservatives crowed as if they had gained a great victory. The Communists didn’t care if Biden made a throwaway comment to a few the next day; what they cared about was their toxic hate speech going out on a primetime address to as many people as possible, programming and priming their consciousness. The level of hatred from left-wing fascists is growing to frightening levels and all conservatives or any non-leftists should be very careful who they interact with.

  10. As a rabbi said, existence and existentialism is a purely material thing of room taking with respect to others. The stand up comedian is an example of a sort of power struggle between himself, small on the stage, and a large audience which would reduce his existence in a fit of stage fright if it was not for the stage and the team to help him herd the public into a subordinate position similar to the relationship of doctor to patient In prisons, It almost is as if the hysteria and anxiety hinges on the issue and resolution of that inner power struggle of vanity. Once one’s existence is severely reduced, what is left should be to live, to do penance and do good works. However some still insist in that environment on existing more than the next prisoner, hazing others in a sort of ridiculous vanity not unlike the one animating a certain feminist bipolar trip of snobism. The seeking of pseudo-identity by killing is this existentialist movement which on the surface looks quite innocent. This communism of existentialism is thus bred amongst workers to divide them, in prisons and in every vanity aspect of society nowadays. It is what makes the Russian accept eating the Putin garbage, cheer him on while he makes heros out of war criminals and snitches, all the while now the same Russian is crying scared and trying to run away since the mobilization was enacted – now hating on Putin. How many times do we have to tell liberal types that government is evil, that its recruiting via hatred is a trap for them ultimately, but they still think they will be the ones benefiting from the war crimes and government abuse existential trips. They love their dear leader and his thuggery until it is time to face the dance themselves. And then they get upset, but they still cannot cognitively make the link between the two, because the places where they take refuge to, they still reject their midl ways and promote this existentialism-power admiration everywhere they go.

  11. Good article, as usual, Mr. Nyquist. I would only argue that it misses the boat a bit in one aspect. The leftists/communists intellectuals have never invested much effort in ideology, per se, but rather their intellectual rigor comes to forefront in their writings on tactics and methodology. For example, it doesn’t really matter when a communist calls an opponent a “Nazi,” whether the label actually accurately describes the person or not; rather, it is the tactic of shouting the opposition down and using inflammatory language that matters to them. This has pretty much always been the case. They have always focused on methodology and tactics over ideology. Just look at The Communist Manifesto. It is a bunch of puerile nonsense that promotes an untenable, unrealistic type of society, largely an abstraction not unlike other utopias of the past. On the other hand, the communists’ writings on tactics and methodology are a great deal more sophisticated. In that sense, I don’t see the communists of today as being all that different from their predecessors. The fact that Ukraine is not literally run by national socialists matters little to them; rather, it is the tactic of shouting down the opposition and beating one’s chest in proclaiming the righteousness of one’s cause that matters to them. It is the tactic of the broken record — repeating a mantra over and over, no matter how ridiculous until people actually start to believe it. Certainly, they are pseudo-intellectuals in the sense that they promote a peculiar brand of utopia that is based on nothing more than abstractions. For them, destruction and revolution is the main thing. They don’t really care what comes after so long as they are able to overthrow the existing social order, destroying everything that gets in their way in this regard.

      1. Yes, good point. I remember you said in an interview once these are “sick persons,” and that point was driven home to me in watching Russian Separatists giving Simon Ostrovsky and his cameraman a hard time at a checkpoint (ultimately detaining them for a short time) in the Donbas region prior to the big invasion in February (I can’t remember the exact date now of the incident but it was recorded and posted on YouTube.). They pointed at the camera person and said we see that you have a weapon and that you are spies, or something along those lines. They insisted on this point that the camera guy had some sort of weapon and was intent of harming them or otherwise causing mayhem. Of course, the only thing the camera person had was a camera as was obvious from watching the video, but for the communists, it is literally second nature to them to lie, create accusations out of thin air, and reinvent reality to suit their purposes. Most normal people would feel at least some sort of compunction or uneasiness in inventing such outrageous lies and behaving in such a manner, but for them, it is perfectly normal to do such things. Your point is well-taken, however, that with Putin, the rhetoric has sunk to a new low.

      3. When I was in OCS in the mid 80s, we had to be able to spout, from memory, the 22 characteristics of leader. It was pretty repetitive as the entire things boils down to one of the characteristics, “example.” When you leaders are liars, you can expect those below to also be liars. An Air Force general described Viktor Belenko as a man who had survived a the moral junkyard of the USSR. Nothing has changed. Russia is also a moral junkyard, and that comes from the example the leaders set for everyone else.

    2. This is correct. Their only principle is power, and their limitations are zero. They are “powerists” if such an ism exists, and gaining power over the entire world is what consumes them every waking minute.

  12. I found much of what you said in the interview with Seth plausible up to a point, but then it occurred to me — your portrait of Putin is nearly a perfect match for how all Western media is now suddenly portraying Putin, like a switch was pulled and suddenly everyone’s demonizing Putin with a startling virulence & sameness. I really can’t see Putin as similar to the thuggish podium-pounding antics of a Hitler or Stalin. I don’t have direct experience of Russian society so I can’t speak to the recent construction of huge cathedrals and a deep revival of Christian fellowship in Russia and Eastern Europe. But that seems to show a decisive break with the blood-soaked Soviet collectivist leftist path.

    Meanwhile the decline in the West seems compellingly real — the breakdown of cities, the collapse of moral codes, the addiction epidemics, the Hunter Bidenization of America & the West. These aren’t temporary transitional hiccups pending a return to a free market vitality. It very much seems the left & its cultural Marxism has gone past the point of no return.

    The best info you gave in that interview was how we have an ‘On The Beach’ warped view of nuclear war, that nukes are just weapons, horrific to be sure, but just weapons. And that a nuked landscape can be rebuilt & brought back to more or less normal in 5 years or so. It’s shocking to realize that. So yes, of course the next big war will be nuclear + supporting follow-on ground troops. Our group think on that is a bit shocking.

    Thanks for that interview.

    1. I have been writing about Putin, studying him and describing him for nearly 24 years — since he was appointed prime minister by Boris Yeltsin in 1999. His history and character are very well known. If the other media say similar things about him, it only means they have done their homework. They were not writing this way about him twenty years ago. I was. It has taken them awhile to figure it out. Under Putin’s leadership Russia has assassinated journalists, businessmen, dissidents and Russian politicians. His assassins have used nerve agents made only in Russia. They have used radioactive polonium, in amounts only Russia has. And there is no deep Christian revival in Russia. This is myth which can easily be dispelled with a little research. Weekly church attendance in the United States is several fold higher than in Russia. In fact, Russia has profound social problems — profound demoralization. Alcoholism and heroin addiction are serious problems there. The lifespan in Russian has been shrinking for men. To have such a distorted idea of Russia as a country that stacks up favorably against America, is to misjudge the present situation.

      1. It is also the case that the leftist media “received the memo”, so to speak, from their bosses, that Putin is now the opposition. When they want to, they can provide quite incisive journalism. The problem has been that they wield this talent only against their enemies and with zero principles. In this case it helps the West however. The vast power of the left-wing media apparatus has been turned against Russia and they have done quite some damage to its’ reputation. My personal feeling is that the Russian Communists have decided to sacrifice Russia’s reputation for now, content to have them play the bad guy, while China does not take much heat. It is remarkably similar to their False Split strategy, with Russia playing the bad guy and China playing the good guy in order to deceive Westerners.

        By Russia playing the bad guy here, stark lines are drawn and contrasts are made. The Democrats can pose cleanly as the opposition, thus provoking the Right to reflexively side with Putin. It also draws attention away from China as an equally dangerous power. But boy oh boy, Russia and Putin’s image is definitely taking damage worldwide. And these kinds of perceptions are not something that can be easily reversed.

      2. Stephen – It seems to me like corrupt elements of our government are selling a “crazy man” version of Putin that they don’t necessarily believe (they were happy to treat him like a “partner” until fairly recently), because they see the Ukraine conflict as a crisis to be managed and exploited. Calling Putin crazy is how they justify the moves they want to make on several fronts, beyond just providing aid to Ukraine. It also contemplates an endgame – dump Putin, we can go back to how things were. They’re not contemplating the much bigger picture. Sadly, we lack focused, genuine leadership.

        Aside from a superficial crazy-man notion of Putin – it is a different thing entirely to understand the communist long game that we’ve been enculturated (and frankly brainwashed) to ignore or belittle for decades. Putin isn’t the crazy man many clueless and craven politicians and analysts conjure; he’s a much more dangerous dictator, who’s been planning and calculating for the decades while the West has been cutting deals and pressing flesh. Understanding his true intentions and danger (and the groundwork laid), makes one start to understand how/why he is appearing now to champion Christianity and “conservative values.” While in the next breath, genuflecting to leftist themes of anti-imperialism and the rights of the poor and oppressed. It’s possible to recognize the decline of American values and also understand that the Great War against us is underway, and the longer our patriots look fondly at Putin the slower we will be to mobilize and fight back.

  14. So, Putin is not who he says he is and Russia is still communist. The Biden Administration’s opposition to Russia and Putin is not real, but USA is pro Ukraine and pro- war just to fool the Western nationalists into supporting the communists without knowing it. Am I right? And this is the case because the American occupying communist government in Washington is supporting Ukraine when they should be supporting the Russian communists. Right?

    I really can’t comprehend this deception. It’s like the modus oprerandi of how they roll: Democrats running for office in conservative areas register as Republicans in order to deceive the voters, and then they change their uniforms once they begin legislating. Or they run fake Republicans in the party primaries to split the vote and allow the RINO to beat the conservative.

    And more deception: they use of “rule of law,” “our democracy,” and so on, when they continually violate the meaning of the terms they use.

    Please explain the present American Democratic Party evil in world affairs now that you have explained Russian stealth policy since the KGB “let it leak” in 1958 that they would do what Yuri Bezmenov warned about back in the 80s. Biden pumps billions of dollars into Ukraine and senselessly kills masses but really wants the communists to win since global communism is the preferred outcome they want.

    So we—who sided with Russia because we knew Obama, Newland, Vindman, Biden, Hunter, and the rest of the cast in Ukraine-American affairs stand for the destruction of America—are being used to support a world communist state because we can’t stomach the above cast of players in Ukraine?

    No honest person can comprehend this kind of deception and destruction.

    1. “No honest person can comprehend this kind of deception and destruction.” Nailed it.

      These people who advocates Marxism, ou use it as a mean to an end, are either sick, corrupted or broken in a way that the average person cannot fathom, there is a book regarding the medical perspective of this: “Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes” by Andrew M. Lobaczewski. In other dimensions, such as philosophy or spirituality may apply.

      Another problem is this mentality can contaminate average people, creating some sort of neurotic behaviour, making people ignore reality itself. Ideologies may provide a confortable place for them, to indulge in their personal preferences, specially those that treats reality as secondary.

      Here in my own country that can be easily seen: An urban elite, supported by corrupt politicians and civil servants, divorced from reality, promptly ignores rule of law, and desires to reestablish political and cultural hegemony at all costs, and willing to sacrifice the entire economy, to also vanquish a rural elite that is rising, and are a tangible threat to their sumptuous livelihoods. For them, marxists and marxism, are a valuable tool, a ” perefe to rule in hell, than serve in heaven” type of mentality.

      Here, we are slowly rising from a political-economic quagmire, having survived a “plandemic”, and despite the world around us, slowly rebuilding. But no, “we must return to power, even that means throwing the country headfirst into that [same quagmire we started crawling out of]”. And we go back to your statement : “No honest person can comprehend this kind of deception and destruction.”

      1. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

        I’m sharing this and the previous essay by Mr. Nyquist with some associates to try understanding what Mr. Nyquist believes about this US-Ukraine alliance and the illogic of siding with a country that, although corrupt and somewhat sympathetic to Nazis, including their association with criminal Americans in high places, is an alliance counter to their own ADVOCACY of global dictatorship WHICH IS SUPPOSEDLY WHAT RUSSIA WANTS!!! So why bother with supporting Ukraine and their OPPOSITION to the stated global objective?

        Trying to unite far right with far left? Seriously?

        My associates are saying “propaganda” and “controlled opposition.”

        We need clarification that is specific to the American contribution in this deception. Right now, we don’t see anything that makes sense.

      2. Excellent reply. Yes, the Rice Administration is weakening the US with their support for Ukraine. And in doing so they are helping to bring about a new world order. Your reply is logical. Am I being fooled by thinking that Russia and the US are not in on it together? You might have helped me to understand the deception.

    2. @ Retired. You say “No honest person can comprehend this kind of deception and destruction.”

      Is this a figure of speech meaning “I am horrified by this kind of deception and destruction”? Or do you mean literally that you cannot understand it?

      Either way, if you want to play a part, however small, in preventing conservatives from being deceived into support for their enemy, you will need make an effort to understand. Jeff cannot anticipate and answer every possible question you may have in the course of an article of one or two thousand words. Have you gone back over previous articles dating back a few years to check for consistency and correct predictions? Have you obtained pdfs of Golitsyn’s “New Lies for Old” and “The Perestroika Deception”? Have you obtained pdfs of Sejna’s “We Will Bury You” or Douglass’s “Red Cocaine”? If so, have you read at least a few chapters from these works to assess, at least, whether they are prima facie plausible?

      Most who comment here have done that, and there’s nothing to stop you from doing this. If you gain an overview of the evidence and arguments and think that you see a problem, you can say so and someone will try to answer, but if you will not even take the time to dip into the the literature, then you “cannot understand” simply because you don’t want to understand – it would take too much time and might embarrass you in front of your “associates” who like things to be simple. Similarly, the “liberals” you oppose don’t want to spend time trying to grasp the statistics that show the dangers of the vассіnes, and run the risk of embarrassing themselves in front of their friends. Best to keep things simple all round – just choose your side, and you’re done.

      Among your fellow Putin supporters, you will find many fine Christian upholders of freedom and morality such as the rulers of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and North Korea. Obviously, these are people who share the desires of you and your “associates” to make America great again.

      1. Your last paragraph is a cheap shot and doesn’t make sense because none of those countries are Christian or moral.

        The meme says, “I don’t support Putin; it’s just that I oppose these people” listing the American criminals from the Obama and Biden eras, and you know all of them. Many of us who despise communists worldwide feel exactly like the meme. We read Mearsheimer and believe the US is entirely responsible for what is happening today in Ukraine. Did James Baker tell Gorbachev “NATO will not expand one inch”?

        Has NATO expanded geographically since the last days of Gorbachev?

        I read that when the USSR collapsed it put Madeline Albright in a panic due to the loss of a bi polar world, something she evidently supported. It was then decided to keep communism alive via the UN. I mean, we weakened the Russians and made a previously weak China into a power.

        Can these simple questions be answered with simple answers or not?

        Same with my question about the apparent contradiction between the thesis that Russia is still communist and is executing the most Byzantine long game plot—to remain communists committed to helping the west to destroy itself, while the US simultaneously opposes the communist Putin in favor of democracy in Ukraine when all indications lead me to believe that the WEF is communist and they control all western leaders. This is odd, not to mention the fact that democracy to these American criminals means “We decide that you are on the menu.” Too many inconsistencies.

        Now, if I have spoken the truth, and based on the coup against Trump, MAGA, and patriots who refuse to become subjects, why would the American regime NOT openly embrace “communist” Russia? I mean, the two regimes, and China want the destruction of the west AND a global dictatorship. Note: I don’t think Russia or China want “We are the world” songs where all the powers hold hands like feminized Trudeau, Macron, and the dude in Australia. No, the CCP and Russia want domination, which means they don’t play well with the other kids.

        Answer this: if Russia remained communist and wanted the left and right to unite to bring about a revolution, why is the US not partnered with Russia. That is the deception.

        If I think answers are logical, then I will go down the rabbit hole and read.

      2. We were partnered with Russia for many years after 1991. But the last phase of the strategy involves destroying the USA completely. This is called “one clenched fist.” They have to unite with China and finish us off. KGB defector Golitsyn predicted this as the last and final move of the communist bloc.

      3. The WWII generation had a policy to never do business with our communist enemies. China was obvious, maybe not the case with Russia after 1991. Thanks for replying.

      4. Yes, good comment. It does require effort and research, but the evidence is there (that Putin and his Soviet Union 2.0 are communist in orientation). I watched a lot of the footage uploaded to YouTube by Vice News from Ukraine after the conflict started in 2014 or so, but before the big invasion in February of this year. Certainly, Vice News cannot be accused of being far-right conservatives. They interviewed people on both sides of the conflict and I remember seeing a plethora or communist symbols (such as the hammer and sickle) being displayed by the Russian Separatists. One of the officers stated that they were in the process of building “the Soviet Union 2.0” — his term not mine — and then he proceeded to spout off a bunch of communist mumbo jumbo. They interviewed many Russian separatists and even a guy from Texas who was fighting on the side of the DNR and all of these people admitted to being committed Marxists fighting for Marxist principles against the “fascist,” “Nazi” oppressors. The fact that they are communist in outlook is even apparent in their rhetoric. They shamelessly label all those who oppose them as fascists and Nazis, a telltale sign that they are communist in orientation. They still praise all of the old Soviet leaders rather than repudiating them. It’s obvious enough to anyone who cares to look. Good comment.

    3. Retired – your summary well encapsulates the diabolic absurdity we’re forced to grapple with.

      One point: you say, “And this is the case because the American occupying communist government in Washington is supporting Ukraine when they should be supporting the Russian communists.”

      This sentence envisions that the alternative to our current admin’s posture is to support the Russian communists. I see a different alternative – leadership that appreciates and names the true threat (ie, China and Russia acting in concert) and takes the strategic steps necessary (including briefing the citizenry and encouraging moderation, self-reliance etc) to defeat the actual threat. We don’t have that leadership.

      It is possible both to recognize the strategic importance of Ukraine perseverance/resilience – and to understand that our compromised leadership is using a policy of support for Ukraine as cover for taking measures that actually weaken the United States and the West, e.g., shutting down our own energy production while “banning” Russian oil and fertilizer (which ignores the inherent value of those commodities and the economic/geopolitical boomerang effect of a ban); sending massive amounts and cash and weapons with no accountability, with reports it will take years to build up weapons stocks – who knows where it really all goes? The states policy must be measures against actions taken, always with the question, cui bono. Are measures making us stronger or weaker? Are measures making the enemy stronger or weaker?

      Think about Afghanistan. One can think it was terrible policy to wage war there so long, and believe it was time to come home – and realize our administration aided the enemy (China/Russia) and weakened America by abandoning a massive strategic base and leaving other assets, intel, etc., not to mentioning abandoning U.S. citizens and other friends to the murderous hands of the Taliban.

      That’s how I see the current administration, aided by Congressional power centers in both parties. They do what may seem as ostensibly the “right thing” in ways that weaken us while benefitting our enemies.

      2. Very well said. There is a better way, a third way, that goes beyond the current Left-Right paradigm.

        Retired seems to argue that if the governments of both Washington and Moscow are really Communist deep-down, then the only logical action is for them to be openly allied. If they are openly opposed to each other then that means one of them cannot be Communist, the obvious choice for that being Moscow due to its brandishing of the ‘Christian’ alibi. But as Jeff often notes, the Communists don’t follow a linear path that allows their plans to be easily perceived by their enemies. They zig, they zag, they turn left then right, they roll over and play dead and then resurrect themselves as non-Communists. During WWII Stalin famously resurrected the Orthodox Church, controlled by loyal KGB operatives, when he realized that the masses would not fight very hard for Communism. Does that mean he stopped being a Communist? During the Cold War various Communist regimes benefitted from using the False Split strategy, where for example Yugoslavia or Romania would feign to oppose Moscow and then the West would rush in and give them massive amounts of goodies in the hope of getting them to break with Soviet Russia. The Sino-Soviet split was the most successful one, with the US under Nixon opening up trade with Red China on a scale that undermined American manufacturing and economic security and facilitated the massive transfer of military technology to Beijing.

        The other problem with arguing that Russia must be good because all the bad Marxists in Biden’s administration are anti-Russia, is that not too long ago these same people were pushing the ‘Russia Reset’ policy and Uranium 1 deal to Moscow’s benefit. So was Russia communist in 2012 or was Obama conservative? And most importantly, how do conservatives benefit by supporting Russia’s unprecedented aggression? Cui bono? To go back to what Jeff said in the last article, the Dems’ posturing leaves them very exposed. Conservatives have a golden opportunity to hang the Left by their own words — all they have to do is hold the line of 2012 when Romney chided Obama for his weakness toward Russia. They could argue: “If Biden really supports Ukraine and Europe then there is no excuse for not releasing America’s energy potential to supply our allies with oil through the winter. Freezing US oil drilling while buying oil from Russia is not only hypocritical but treasonous! The US could go 1 year without drilling a drop of oil and it wouldn’t make a dent in the earth’s greenhouse gases, but would make a world of difference to Europe’s struggle for freedom and independence from Moscow. Not only that, but it would turn around the US economy and help ease the damage caused by Covid. Biden has no excuse for not doing this.” But what do many politically clueless patriots do instead? They are so passionately against helping Ukraine they cannot even rhetorically entertain the idea long enough to hang the Left for their duplicity.

        Conservatives could cut through the paralyzing Left-Right divide, vindicate Trump’s policies, and invalidate the Left’s justification for persecuting ‘extremists’ by speaking clearly on those issues. Between Covid fascism, the open border, the energy crisis and now Ukraine, the way is open for a major political realignment. Conservatives could form a broad alliance with pro-labor and moderate, non-communist Leftists. But conservatives are foregoing this opportunity. Instead they seem more concerned with defending Russia from perceived US/NATO aggression. What if the US were to do pump out oil to the point that Russia is hurt by falling energy prices? Would these conservatives argue that the US is provoking Russia? Because Russia certainly would. Then there is the bigger problem that Putin explicitly threatened the US/NATO with the use of nuclear weapons, while Biden has cut 2 nuclear warheads and has done nothing to ensure US preparedness for a nuclear attack. When so many conservatives start from the premise that the US is an aggressive, imperialist military-security state, then how can they argue against Biden’s actions? How can they credibly argue that the US needs to immediately modernize its nuclear arsenal to ensure its survival? How can they argue that the devastation in Ukraine is proof that Putin’s threats must be taken seriously when they think it’s all fake news? How can they even begin to talk about the Russia-China alliance and the true purpose of Covid when they praise the former as a conservative bastion? Conservatives have compromised themselves to the point where they cannot, or will not, make the nation-saving arguments even to a receptive audience. They would rather trip over themselves to confirm the ‘Russia shills’ stereotype of the media.

        To sum it all up, if you want to understand how the Left is helping Russia by pretending to be against Russia, then look at how conservatives are throwing away the chance to save their country and deal a fatal blow to the communist Left.

      3. Excellent post, Laura. You very aptly show how Biden helps Russia even as conservatives want the same and falsely imagine Biden is Moscow’s enemy. It is only the strong revulsion of the political center to Russian aggression that has forced politicians to help Ukraine. And Ukraine’s army has worked miracles. Yet Russia’s power is now mobilizing on a larger scale. Does NATO mobilize in response? No. How much mobilization will Russia accomplish before the West notices and scratches its head. Certainly, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and General Flynn will not sound an alarm. Who sounds the alarm? Who dares do this? Russia is a nuclear power and we have no civil defense. Putin said that anyone writing or speaking out against Russia is a proper target. Who do you think he means? Do you see anyone threatening to murder pro-Russian pundits? Who defends us now, really? Our fake defender, Biden?

      4. Laura – Amazing post! Piggybacking on two of your points:

        I recently listened to a podcast explaining Putin’s interest in the Russian Orthodox Church. I can’t recount it precisely, but here’s the gist: Putin is embracing/allying with the Russian Orthodox Church, but this is not the same as championing Eastern Orthodoxy (or Christianity) writ large; for example at the same time he is trying to block Ukrainian control of Orthodox churches in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine. I hadn’t understood that the Orthodox Church is fragmented. Makes sense it’s a Putin power play. As you note Stalin understood the advantages of controlling and seeming to be allied with the church. I hear no mention elsewhere that he’s trying to assert control over Ukrainian churches.

        Also, re the “Great Reset” under Obama. I rarely see mention of that curious circumstance where Putin briefly stepped aside for Medvedev to serve as President of Russia from 2008-2012. Interesting timing. Medvedev at the time was hailed as more liberal in the Western sense. He sold an image of “rule of law” and economic growth. So Medvedev was the Obama/Clinton great reset partner (including the Russian “Silicon Valley”) and just listen to Medvedev now! People’s memories are so short. This great partner is now a raging war monger. No one in the mainstream scratches their head at these jolting pivots. But you’d think at least the Russiagate-focused conservatives would reach far enough back in their memories to appreciate things like Uranium 1, Russian Silicon Valley, and the curious case of Putin and Medvedev trading places precisely coinciding with Obama’s first term and Clinton’s tenure at D of State.

      5. It is this attenuated public memory that makes all these manuevers successful. The absurdity of the first pivot is hardly noticed. The bizarre event of the communists pulling down their own red flag over the Kremlin. We wanted to believe their lies. That is the secret. They see what we want and they feed it to us. The signifance of the return to totalitarianism is not even noticed. Medvedev is a champion, then, of anti-Nazism; exactly like Antifa. He and Putin are also friends of the Nazi, Trump. They are on both sides, and they control both sides. The narratives are all theirs.

      6. Yes, exactly. Conservatives have very short political memories. It’s like the Russia collusion hysteria short-circuited their brains so they can’t remember anything before 2016. They’ve been complaining about the Deep State for 6 years, well now they have a chance to really hurt that entity politically, but they won’t take it. No need to expose the Left’s self-serving flip flop on Russia because Putin will ride in on his stallion and destroy the Deep State for them. Just like with the stolen 2020 election, as Jeff has said, rather than make the real case for which there is an abundance of proof, conservatives have instead gone off on fantasy tangents* that only helped discredit their cause.

        Another point to make is that unlike Covid, where we had the battle of duelling experts and very technical and confusing (to the public) science on viruses, mutations, vaccines etc, the issues of US national survival and the Ukraine invasion are very black and white and easy for the public to grasp. But conservatives refuse to capitalize on popular issues to make the case for much needed national security overhaul.

        *Here are some of Jeff’s articles on how Mike Lindell fell for a hoax computer algorithm that supposedly proved the 2020 election was stolen
        https://jrnyquist.blog/2021/09/10/false-narratives-false-heroes-the-pillow-fight-part-iii/

        https://jrnyquist.blog/2021/07/22/absolute-sabotage-the-rise-and-coming-fall-of-a-false-narrative/

    4. The communists in the United States, were always working with Moscow. From 1919 on, the Communist Party USA swore allegiance to Moscow as the “General Staff” of the Revolution. They infiltrated the Democratic Party decades ago, but were very much consolidating their hold in the 1980s. It was 1983 when I was told about this by communists I had met (who tried to recruit me). Their thing was, “Take over the Democratic Party through its left wing.” They brought forward into play “progressive” agents of the Revolution like the Clintons, Al Gore, Obama and Biden. This is clear from the record, though all the above pretended to be moderates, they were politicians supported by communist front organizations. Republican business interests were meanwhile paired off with China, and this greatly corrupted our financial system and caused our industries to be located overseas — a suicidal policy as we now see. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 enabled the strategy of taking the White House in the 1992 election. This worked like magic because anticommunism ceased to be a factor and Clinton presented a moderate image. The communist links of the Clintons were no longer an issue once the USSR ceased to exist. With each Democratic administration the Marxists moved the country further to the left, and more into suicidal policies. Meanwhile, Russia and China were strategically rearming even as the Democrats blocked the modernization of our overaged nuclear deterrent. After Obama got caught on a live microphone with a camera on him telling Russian president Medvedev that he would give Putin what he wanted after he got re-elected, they realized it was best to make Obama and his friends into paragons of anti-Russian policy (first in Syria). They could not allow the public to draw the conclusion that the Democratic Party was led by closet Marxists who were cooperating with Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, etc. In keeping with this policy they attacked Trump as a Russian puppet, further solidifying their alibi. The war in Ukraine is a mobilization scheme. As an attack it failed. As a screen behind which to prepare a larger war, it is ideal. They do not care about the traitors they have manipulated and/or bribed here. Our elites are heavily compromised and manipulated. This should be obvious. Communist strategy is dialectical, relying on inversion, reversal, divide and conquer scissors tactics.

      1. So taking it one step further, would you say that Russia is or is not part of the deception with Washington…knowing that our Russia position isn’t personal, so to speak? You have me wondering if Russia’s real interest is the same as Washington’s and not really a concern about NATO or the ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Based on your information that Russia never stopped being communist under Putin, and the US went Left, I would assume the premises for this war are not what they appear to be. I guess guys like me can’t understand such diabolical maneuvering. I’m not ashamed of that. I have to know the truth before I choose to follow someone and explain to my friends. Thank you for a respectful response.

      2. Washington is infiltrated by communists who are careful not to be hanged. Putin is helping every communist country on earth. But he will help Chiba flatten Washington. Traitors have one purpose in a war. Russia has agreed, in secret, that China will get the U.S. mainland. Russia will get Alaska.

      3. I will read all of your stuff and follow you. The trouble is, some pretty credible former CIA spooks who agreed with Mearsheimer are or seemed to be sympathetic to Russia in this “conflict.” Can they be fooled?

      7. Yes, exactly. McCarthy tried to expose this and was tarred and feathered by the left-leaning media. If anything, he likely underestimated the true extent of communist infiltration and collaboration with communists embedded in American institutions. Because the American Establishment and American intellectuals tend to share a leftist outlook with the more hardcore communists, they (American intellectuals) are relatively easy to manipulate and the communists have apparently invested a lot of energy in this aspect of their overall strategy. People like McCarthy and James Jesus Angleton were silenced and the communist infiltrators were basically given a free hand and open access to our institutions, being able to infiltrate the highest levels of government, academia, etc. There has been little or no opposition to this in the last several decades.

    5. The cracks in Putin’s facade of traditionalism and paladin of moral values can be seen in how he slanders those he considers his enemies as Nazis, much like many Communists in the West love to do to anyone to the right of Stalin, and when the spotlight is over the Kremlin they also do the same victimization routines, and the word “russophobia” is thrown around, much like when people criticize the LGBT movement are smeared as “homophobes”, people who criticize Islamic mass migration pushed by the left are called “islamophobes”, criticizing Obama or BLM is racism and criticizing Hillary or Feminism is misogyny. Criticizing the Kremlin couldn’t be further from having any sort of phobia towards the average Russian, as can be seen in how desperate the young men are over there of being used as cannon fodder in this invasion that the average Russian doesn’t even have the liberty of calling it for what it is, but can only use the Commissar-approved euphemism. There have been calls of Russian folk and soldiers leaked telling how abandoned the soldiers are, how some are willing to cut a finger off or whatever is needed to not be drafted. The Russian authorities might claim they’ll not be used for Ukraine but not only their word has no value, the way Putin has handled this invasion means anywhere the soldiers will be assigned for, they can rest assured the KGB establishment calling the shots won’t care how bad they have it no matter where they will be deployed. The people who call themselves right wing in the TV, radio and internet who are supporting this bloody tragedy and cheerleading for Putin should be ashamed of themselves.

    6. An easy way to tell where they stand is to watch what price they pay. Talk is cheap. Biden can talk all he wants about supporting Ukraine. Nancy can talk all she wants about standing against China.

      But how much currency (actions) have they spent? Trump paid more than them. He stopped Nordstream, a very real action. His military killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria. He directly told Putin he would obliterate Moscow if he moved on Ukraine. Not if he nuked Ukraine – if he merely invaded it.

      So Trump paid an actual price. His actions imposed an actual cost on Communists. His energy policy damaged Russia’s oil and gas business by bringing the price down. Communists understand supply and demand better than everyone.

      But Biden? What has he done? He approved Nordstream 2. According to Jeff, he is not actually sending the billions to Ukraine, and he is sending the bare minimum of weapons. Strange. So his words are bombastic, but his actions are weak and flaccid. Hmm.

      And Pelosi. She crowed about freedom for Taiwan, but what did she do when China annexed Hong Kong? What has she done to punish China via trade policy? Did she punish Eric Swalwell for fraternizing with Chinese intelligence? Did she punish Feinstein or even criticize her?

      Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from both Moscow & Beijing. Bill Clinton transferred technology to China. Biden tried to nominate a Soviet-born open Marxist as Comptroller of the Currency.

      Talk is cheap. I would even say talk is free and costs nothing. Watch their actions. They are far more illustrative.

    8. Excellent discussion! I thank Retired for his questions and curiosity, and I have learned much in the great responses given.

      1. This platform is very respectful of questions and assertions. I’ve done the same elsewhere and get snide replies and I keep replying “Please answer my questions and if I like your answers and believe that they are correct, then I will change.” It’s how I learn and it saves time because there are so many rabbit holes. Find a reasonable thesis and then go down that rabbit hole. Mr. N has a lot of literature, but at least I can give my old eyes a break by narrowing the reading.

  15. The Desmet/Malone Ideology of Mass Psychosis Blames the Citizens and Not the Global Predators
    by Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin
    Originally posted on America Out Loud Aug 22, 2022

    In the view of Desmet and Malone, mass psychosis has only existed since the Twentieth Century and explains how the group, the people, or the masses brought about Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other modern dictators. Mass psychosis, not dictatorship, is the primary explanation of totalitarianism.

    https://breggin.com/article-detail/post_detail/The-Desmet-Malone-Ideology-of-Mass-Psychosis-Blames-the-Citizens-and-Not-the-Global-Predators

    _______________________________________________________________________

    The Elites are brainwashing us to believe we’re INSANE rather than waking up to the TRUTH!
    Dr. Peter Breggin joins to expose how the movement of “mass psychosis” is a label used by the Elites to call us insane, when we realize we’re being oppressed and controlled.
    @25:45
    https://rumble.com/v1l4q4f-psychiatric-doctor-blasts-mrna-inventor-mass-formation-psychosis-blaming-yo.html

      3. Malone is reasonable and balanced in his approach, and because he does no jump on the conspiracy bandwagon, he ends up being named as a conspirator — as “false opposition” by our right wing Leninists (like Steve Bannon). Thus, Malone writes, “I am increasingly convinced that the world has gone mad. As for me, I just want an off ramp from this crazy expressway to hell. I have been trying to do my best to help people all over the globe for the past two years. Constant traveling. Constant podcasting. And dealing with the constant stream of hate, derision, sneering gaslighting, and malicious defamation has just worn me out. And now it is coming at me from both sides, including people that I thought were in this foxhole with me as colleagues.”

      5. Jeff, Steven Bannon has Malone on his show very frequently. I have never heard him accuse Malone of being “false opposition” or be anything but respectful to him, not do Malone’s article accuse Bannon of this.

      6. Unless I’m mistaken, I just read something about this on Malone’s site. Look back at the thread where Malone’s site is linked to. Did I read that wrong?

      7. Jeff, In your September 8th post you said, “In this context, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon reportedly told Ron Radosh: “I’m a Leninist.” Radosh asked what he meant, and Bannon said, “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s Establishment.” [ii]

        Bringing down the United States Government, of course, would present a golden opportunity to Russia and China.”

        Bannon said I want to “destroy all of today’s Establishment”. You respond with “bringing down the United States Government”. There is a big difference between “the Establishment” and “the United States Government”. I only get to watch clips of Bannon here and there so I do not know everything he says, but from the things I have seen, I see no evidence that he wants to destroy the Constitution or the legitimate governmental institutions established by the Constitution. He is against the giant financial institutions like Blackrock that constantly work to transfer wealth and power from the middle class to the upper class and he is against the politicians and bureaucrats that support these giant financial institutions. He is likewise against the big corporations and the politicians and bureaucrats that support them that have transferred American manufacturing to China and hollowed out our industrial base. Saying he wants to tear down these parts of the system does not equate to wanting to tear down the government.

        Steve Bannon is opposed to U.S. participation in Ukraine and I know that has to stick in your crawl, but that does not make everything he does bad.

        You have stated in past posts that your goal is to build a coalition to save America from the Russians and the Chinese. But you say things from time to time that seems like they would burn bridges with people and groups that you will eventually have to ally with. “Bannon is a right-wing Leninist who wants to bring down the US government”, “Hateway Pundit”, “I don’t trust Trump because he said bad things about Carson* in the primary”, “the Nazi, Trump”. How many people have you lost as readers with these comments? Just because these people don’t agree with you on the dangers of Russian now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. If you burn bridges now, how will you rebuild them when they come around to your way of thinking? And while these people may not be fighting

        *By the way, Ben Carson did not seem to think that Trump saying bad things about Ben Carson was a reason not to support him, as he endorsed him, went on TV to defend him after the Access Hollywood revelations (probably at considerable risk to his own reputation), and went on to be his Housing and Urban Development Secretary.

      8. I differ with you in my understanding of the word “Establishment.” The word refers to those who hold power in the country, incuding those who hold power in government, business, and the culture. The Marxists in the 1960s and 70s talked all the time about bringing down the Establishment. It is revolutionary talk. Furthermore, I am not a politician. I am not building any coalitions. I believe in national unity — in our unity as a people. That is not a coalition. That is called being an American, living in peace with other Americans. We also need our overseas Allies and friends. As an American and Westerner, I am attempting to understand our strategic situation in the hope of offering a few insights that might serve to properly orient us toward our enemy. One of my key insights is, that when someone wants to ally with the Kremlin, they are making a fatal mistake; they are facilitating a deceptive enemy who has played false with us before. I believe you treat enemies as enemies, and friends as friends. Furthermore, in principle, you should be able to tell who is an enemy and who is a friend. In terms of national enemies, any failure to do this is absolutely disqualifying. If I am right, there is no bridge to burn. The same goes for any and all Americans who wish to ally with China or Russia or Cuba or North Korea. Their wish is disqualifying. Therefore, I do not see that I am burning a bridge. Bannon may have fine qualities and he has certainly motivated people to fight at the school board level. That is good. But on this larger issue, having to do with our nation’s survival, he has failed to see the danger form Russia. And such a failure is not something I can ignore (given what I am trying to explain here). You may call this “burning bridges,” but I would rather see the truth as the bridge. Bannon wants to ally with Russia because he does not know the truth about Russia. It is Bannon, in fact, who cannot cross over to the right side. I have no intention of crossing over to his. And, that being said, I voted for Trump twice, but on account of his treatment of Carson in the primaries I have never trusted Trump. He picked the wrong people again and again. One of the really good people he picked was Ben Carson — the kind of person we need. Think how different everything would have turned out if Carson had been president. He had clarity and grace. In fact, it was very gracious of him to ignore Trump’s bad behavior toward him. It does not change the rottenness of what Trump did, and it does not change Trump’s character. If I ignore your bad behavior out of graciousness, it does not transform you into a well-mannered or honest person. I do not think the way Trump attacked Carson was honest. And I do not think it should be forgotten. Carson’s forgiveness of Trump was to his credit, and the country benefitted from his forgiveness. And please notice the position of Ann Coulter. She was a big supporter of Trump. In fact, she went too far and gave him too much credit. And now she realizes her mistake. She now calls Trump a “lazy ignoramous” and says he is “done.” And I believe she is correct. We have to find someone better.

      9. I agree. If the main article here is complicated, the Trump vs DeSantis debate gets complicated. For example, if you read over at CTH, Sundance, the Treehouse is all in on Trump but not RDS; you can’t change their minds.

        “Trump has his own money and won’t be beholden to the elites” (yet he lets his Democrat daughter and son in law have power).

        “RDS voted for the Trans Pacific Partnership as a Florida congressman” but so did other conservatives while the entire California delegation including Pelosi voted against it. The vote was unusual.

        “RDS is raking in huge money from big business and Wall Street…he’s not a populist.”

        And so on…

        It has been reported that Trump and his people know some of us turned against him because of the people he appointed, and they all stabbed us in the back, and they are planning on making changes to the way they get key people in place.

        We want winners, Trump lives by this and should expect to be held to the same.

      10. Good points. Yes, the Republican Establishment conservatives have been soft on China. Very upsetting. Trump pushed China on trade and — thanks to some Democrats pushing Biden — some of Trump’s trade policies remain in place. That is very interesting to me and I wish I knew more as to the details. Some revival of American manufacturing interests perhaps. I heard of an argument in the White House last year. Not all leftists are Chinese agents.

      12. Malone said ““Welcome to the fever swamp”

        Steve Bannon, in response to my briefing him on recent attacks describing me as controlled opposition.” ”

        Steve Bannon said “Welcome to the fever swamp”, not “controlled opposition”.

      14. “Tact is the art of getting your point across without poking the other person.” One of my high school teachers.

        “I think I differ with you … We have to find someone better.” I agree with some of your points and disagree on others, but I think it would be a distraction for me to get in a point-by-point debate with you. My main point is this: HOW we present the truth can have a major impact on how much influence we have. If the threat from Russia and China are as great as you believe it is (and as I now believe it is having followed you a few months now), it is important to all of us that you maximize your influence.

  17. Re: There is no turning back,” Medvedev stressed.
    —

    “Referendums will be held, and the Donbass republics and other territories will be accepted into Russia. The protection of all the territories that have joined will be significantly strengthened by the Russian Armed Forces.

    “Russia announced that it is not only mobilization capabilities, but also any Russian weapons including strategic nuclear weapons and weapons based on new principles that could be used for such protection. Therefore, various retired idiots with general lampasses do not need to frighten us talking about NATO attacking Crimea. Hypersound will be able to reach targets in Europe and in the United States much faster, guaranteed.

    “The Western establishment, in general, all citizens of the NATO countries need to understand that Russia has chosen its own path. There is no turning back,” Medvedev stressed.

    –Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation,
    22.09.2022

    https://english.pravda.ru/news/world/154077-medvedev_hypersound/

    ______________________________________________________________________

    STANISLAV POHORILOV — TUESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2022, 19:09

    Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has called the recommendations of the Kyiv Security Compact for the strategic partnership of Ukraine and the guarantor states “a prologue to WWIII”.

    Source: Medvedev on Telegram

    Quote from Medvedev: “The Kyiv camarilla has drafted “security guarantees” which are a prologue to a third world war. Of course no one will give any ‘guarantees’ to the Ukrainian Nazis. After all, this is almost the same as applying Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (the Washington Treaty) to Ukraine. For NATO, it’s the same s**t, only from a side view. That’s why it’s scary.”

    Details: Medvedev believes that NATO is waging a hybrid war with Russia by supplying weapons to Ukraine. According to him, if Ukraine continues to be “pumped” full of weapons, then “sooner or later the military campaign will go to another level”, with unpredictable actions by the opposing sides.

    Medvedev is afraid that then “everything will catch fire”, and the West, which is “weakening Russia by proxy”, will not be able to sit it out. “Everything will catch fire around them as well. Their people will be devastated. Their earth will literally burn, and concrete will melt. We too will suffer a lot. It will be very bad for everyone. After all, it is said: “By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulphur coming out of their mouths” (Rev. 9:18),” Medvedev concluded terrifyingly.

    https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/13/7367319/

  18. Perseus, near the top of the comments (9/23, 3.17am) made what I think is an excellent point:

    The vast power of the left-wing media apparatus has been turned against Russia and they have done quite some damage to its reputation. … [T]he Russian Communists have decided to sacrifice Russia’s reputation for now, content to have them play the bad guy, while China does not take much heat. It is remarkably similar to their False Split strategy, with Russia playing the bad guy and China playing the good guy in order to deceive Westerners. … [S]tark lines are drawn and contrasts are made. The Democrats can pose cleanly as the opposition, thus provoking the Right to reflexively side with Putin. It also draws attention away from China as an equally dangerous power. But boy oh boy, Russia and Putin’s image is definitely taking damage worldwide. And these kinds of perceptions are not something that can be easily reversed.

    There is at least one other precedent for this in Cold War history, with the advantage that the details are out in the open. Golitsyn, in “New Lies for Old” presents the emergence of “Eurocommunism” as just such a deception, allowing the Soviet Union to be seen as the bad guy in the eyes of European liberals and leftists. This was for the sake of establishing the Western European Communist parties as the good guys. The opening act was the fraudulent “Prague Spring” exercise of 1968, a bloodless theatrical re-run of the real and blооdy Budapest uprising of 1956.

    The European parties were given permission by Moscow to repudiate the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the forced reversal of the (staged) liberalisation process. The European parties were given seven years to distance themselves progressively from Moscow and polish up their image in the West. Stage Two began in 1975, when the leaders of the parties were each invited over to Moscow to be briefed on the coming (fake) split between Moscow and the European parties. They then began issuing statements and manifestos that renounced the link with Moscow and reversed long-standing Communist policies. Much of this activity laid the foundations for what is now known as “wokeness”. Golitsyn documents the movements of party leaders, showing how the most prominent would absent themselves from various important events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, while their immediate subordinates quietly took their place so that the usual channels of communication with Moscow were never severed.

    Substantial benefits began to accrue to the new “anti-Moscow” Eurocommunists, from the legalization of the Spanish Communist Party in 1977 to the four Communist ministers who entered the French government in 1981. But aside from such public events, the fake split with Moscow greatly assisted members of the Communist parties in their “long march through the institutions”, since they were no longer seen as a threat. During this period, it suited Moscow’s purposes to maintain a bad-guy image in contrast to the Eurocommunists, until the long-planned moment arrived when Moscow itself would no longer be seen as a threat.

      1. You deleted from previous essay comments. Resorting to name calling is a Communist tactic.

    2. Putin does not at all seem to be complacent about being cast as the villain. Every step of the way, he has presented each move pursuant to international law. The big corporate media, along with Jeff, censor Putin’s fine statesmanship, which Biden officially also ignores.

      It’s ironic how those who otherwise, criticize Biden, quietly accede to his adventures in Ukraine. Say what you will about Putin’s ulterior motives, but the reason that Jeff has given for ignoring Putin, is that there is no negotiating with Russia, because they never deal honestly. The problem is that if the West fails to deal with Russia within the framework of international law, then Russia is handed the propaganda victory.

      As Biden says that the US does not want nuclear war, it would seem that the US is doing all that it can to provoke Putin into nuking the United States, and that so many here at Jeff’s blog, root for that foolhardiness, including Jeff. Russia expends a lot of old army surplus junk, along with Russian lives, but still has plenty of WMDs up it’s sleeve. I wouldn’t count on them being expired.

      Putin made every effort to at least appear to avoid war in Ukraine, and nobody paid any attention. Maybe Russia is behind the global depopulation agenda. Maybe Putin is sacrificing so many of his generals, because they are the ones who threaten his leadership position. Former Soviet presidents aren’t always gifted with golden parachutes.

      Putin has captured East and Southern Ukraine, eliminated a great many internal competitors, and cut off Europe from energy. Nobody can do anything to change any of that. Even the pipeline to Germany, Putin says is due to a breakdown on the EU side, which requires parts made in Russia to fix, but that sanctions against Russia won’t permit Europe from buying them. Putin says that he want’s to sell energy.

      If Ukraine hadn’t been enabled by the US, Zelensky would likely have held to the Minsk Accords, or never been installed as defacto dictator, and he wouldn’t have lost lives of Ukrainians, and cities in Ukraine, but now we will never know. When the dust settles, who will be prosecuted at the UN, Russia or the United States?

      Where in Eastern Europe are NATO weapons stationed? I fully expect Biden to continue to provide more high tech weaponry to Ukraine, inducing Russia to eliminate armaments of NATO.

      1. If you consider sending hit squads to murder your opponents such as Alexander Litvinenko, or using false flags (apartment bombings) as a means to rise to power and attack Chechnya, then, yes, Putin is a “fine statesman.” Was Putin’s aggressive military action in Geogia to seize control of the Tbilisi pipeline, just another demonstration of his good statesmanship? Certainly, the leadership of the US isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean that Putin is the good guy in the equation. Or is locking up protesters a good thing? Doesn’t sound very democratic to me. On all fronts, Putin is a tyrant and his close ties to the KGB and other institutions of the Soviet era, bring into question the view that he is not a communist committed to reconstructing the old Soviet system, piece by piece.

      2. What you assert has no bearing on the facts that Putin has followed the letter of the law with regard to Ukraine, only to be ignored by Biden and the likes those here, who are all for abandoning the rule of law and going full cowboy on Putin’s ass.

        Big mistake.

        You clowns are following Biden. Do you intend to vote for him? Did Trump know about the CIA training Azov NAZIS? Would Trump continue providing weapons to Ukraine? Was Trump aware of the 35 US biowarfare labs in Ukraine?

        The United States needs to withdraw support for Ukraine, pull NATO back from surrounding countries, and see if there are any legitimate charges to bring against Russia. Although, Putin has dotted all of the eyes and crossed every tee.

      3. I am politically opposed to Biden. An Putin has not followed the law. Russia is a signatory to the Budapest memorandum, guaranteeing Ukraine’s border.

      4. Another thing Jeff, while you think up a snappy reply, I first heard about Smartmatic voting machines, made in Venezuela to install Hugo Chavez. Were those not used to elect Zelensky, and do you believe that US elections aren’t rigged? Deleting questions you can’t answer and censoring comments that go against your own wishful thinking, don’t bring us any closer to viable solutions.

      6. There is no point in arguing with people like Lanyard who think that levelling whole cities off the face of the earth is following the letter of international law. And what Putin is doing now, blocking military-age males from leaving Russia, is what “dictator” Zelensky was excoriated for doing by the pro-Russia crowd. The only difference is that Putin is not following the law — he has not declared martial law because 1) unlike Ukraine, Russia was not attacked* and fighting for its survival, and 2) formally declaring martial law might finally bring things to a boiling point in Russia.

        * Actually if one accepts the illegal annexation of Crimea as legitimate, then Russia was already attacked lasts month when all those military bases were targeted by long-range rockets from Ukraine. Which means that the formal joining of the fake Donbas republics to Russia does not really change the situation at all, despite the Kremlin trying to draw a bright red line around the LPR/DPR.

      8. This is inverted rhetoric. Putin invaded a neighboring country without provocation. He could have avoided war by respecting Ukraine’s border from 2014 to the present. Putin annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas. Nobody has attacked or threatened Russia — the world’s biggest nuclear power. Who is crazy enough to invade a nuclear power? Yet Putin somehow makes Russia the victim. Which Russian city has been turned to rubble? None. Look at the massive damage to Ukraine. It is shameful to justify this aggression. Truly.

      9. To dismiss me as not to be argued with, is the same mistake Biden and Jeff makes with Putin, aside from the fact that I don’t have nukes.

        If I am inaccurate, then counter with facts in evidence.

        Jeff has deleted this several times, but maybe you will have the chance to read this first, for a change.

        As Putin built up forces along the Russian border with Ukraine, he called again for adherence to the Minsk Accords. Minsk II involved a vote by the Ukraine Parliament, which granted the Dobas status as an semi autonomous enclave. As soon as the vote was tallied and the results announced, a riot broke out on the floor of Parliament. There was no dispute about the validity of the vote, but the legislation was never acknowledged, and persecution of and military attack on ethnic Russians in the Donbas, continued.

        Putin, sent a letter hand delivered to Biden, by the second highest ranking ambassador of the US to Russia, pleading for a return to the Minsk process. Biden ignored the letter. So, Putin as revolving chairman of the UN Security Council, unilaterally recognized The Donbas as two, separate nation states; Donetsk and Luhansk. These countries invited Russian peace keepers to provide defense. Ukraine continued to attack the Donbas, militarily. Then in defensive response, Russia retaliated on Ukraine. It then became imperative to both Russia and Ukraine, to widen the conflict. Zelensky even went so far as to demand nuclear war with NATO against Russia.

        I really don’t appreciate Zelensky trying to do for me what he does for his own people.

      10. I’ve have never deleted this because I have never read it. When you lie like this, you get deleted. This entire argument of yours is not honest. Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed its territory in 2014, starting the war in Donbas. Why do you repeat Russian lies and distortions to justify aggression? You are justifying Russian military aggression against its neighbor in the basis of Minsk? How can this make sense? There would be no Minsk Accords if there was no aggression in the first place! The Ukrainian people will not accept Russia biting off chunks of their territory and tying them to a treaty. Stop already with this low grade propaganda. The nation of Ukraine has stood up to the invasion. It is Ukraine resisting them! Ask yourself why.

      11. Putin calls the Ukrainian election in 2014 a CIA coup d’etat. Shirley, you’ve head this.

      12. To Lanyard: I am going to insult you now. You are pretending to know about this subject. Zelensky was not elected president of Ukraine in 2014. He was elected in 2019. You are evidently unfamiliar with the details of the Revolution of Dignity.

      13. Russia as head of the UN Security Council acknowledged the independence of the Donbas nations, which Ukraine granted independence to under Minsk II.

      15. “Putin does not at all seem to be complacent about being cast as the villain. Every step of the way, he has presented each move pursuant to international law. The big corporate media, along with Jeff, censor Putin’s fine statesmanship, which Biden officially also ignores…

        Putin made every effort to at least appear to avoid war in Ukraine, and nobody paid any attention…

        Putin has followed the letter of the law with regard to Ukraine, only to be ignored by Biden and the likes those here, who are all for abandoning the rule of law and going full cowboy on Putin’s ass…

        You clowns are following Biden. Do you intend to vote for him? Did Trump know about the CIA training Azov NAZIS? Would Trump continue providing weapons to Ukraine? Was Trump aware of the 35 US biowarfare labs in Ukraine?”

        Here is a man who revels in the false narratives of his enemy. Those who lack clarity and indulge in confused self-flagellation can scarcely contribute useful solutions.

        ‘Putin’s fine statesmanship’ – are you considering a career in comedy?

      17. My error in the dates does not change what Putin says about the election. There’s no insult to me if you don’t listen to Putin.

      19. “…provoke Putin into nuking the United States…”

        Why did you make me hit you? The creed of every abusive psychopath everywhere…

      1. While Xi is disappeared, the foreign minister seems to walk back Xi and Putin’s public declaration of solidarity. It seems that the CCP disavows Xi and Chinese support of Russia in Ukraine.

        —
        https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/23/ukraine-war-as-its-happening-a76553

        China on Saturday at the United Nations urged Russia and Ukraine not to let effects of their war “spill over” and called for a diplomatic resolution.

        “We call on all parties concerned to keep the crisis from spilling over and to protect the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

        He called for “fair and pragmatic” peace talks to resolve all global issues.

        “China supports all efforts conducive to the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis. The pressing priority is to facilitate talks for peace,” Wang said.

        “The fundamental solution is to address the legitimate security concerns of all parties and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture.”

    2. I would honestly be very skeptical of these rumors of Xi or Putin being under risks of imminent “coups” – to me, they seem designed to project an image of chaos and volatility at a time when I think both nations are ruled with an iron fist. It is reminiscent of Operation Trust, when they wanted the West to not interfere, so they projected an image of imminent overthrow. The only reason I think they could be doing this is because we are imminently close to a strike and they want to throw out a smokescreen right before just in case the West was catching on. I hope I am wrong.

  20. How can one not be resented and angry with the current West and its degenerate woke liberalism and increasingly PC totalitarianism? I think you believe Russia is behind all this, but most of the anti-Russia Western leaders support the woke agenda and even weaponize it against Russia and their allies. I am not rooting for Russia because I fully know their evils, but the way this ideological dispute is framed in the West it’s hard for a national-conservative not to root for Russia.

    1. You are characterizing the entire West as being represented by a loud minority that has media and academic influence. The West is not one thing. You are also crediting Russian misrepresentations. We cannot allow them to turn us against our own country.

      2. They have power. They not only dominate the media and academia, but are supported by most corporations and all branches of most Western governments. Conservatives are being prosecuted, this is not made up by Russia. I get that we can’t let the KGB conquer us, but we can’t also deny reality. It’s so depressing. On one side we have evil monsters who blow up apartments full of innocent people saying stuff I agree with, on the other side we have less evil Western leaders preaching the values I most abhor.

    2. Who are these “anti-Russia” Western leaders you speak of? My guess is they are pro-Russia and posing fraudulently.

    1. No, Western media says that Russian state TV says. There is a lot of Russian, state TV. No broadcast company is specifically attributed. Can you provide that or are you just repeating, gossip?

  22. Pride and humility, the two great master powers at work in all of us. One straight from the pit of hell and the other the attitude, mindset & image of our Savior. How can we overcome our deceitful, desperately wicket hearts (Jer 17:9) but to guard our heart above all else from pride hourly, and remain humble under the hand of God, for it determines our destiny.

    Job is the greatest example of overcoming suffering & pain by standing firm in the faith, so as not to despair unto death. We are to never lose hope and always wait expectantly for God to show up-He is faithful and cannot lie.
    What can be shaken, will be shaken. We have been running with man while God has been training us to be over-comers of all things, so we can run with horses. We will be hated and persecuted by our enemies and even our own families but love them extravagantly anyways as Jesus does us. Dust the dirt off your feet and keep running forward, never looking back!

    Americas Pride, abundance and idleness will cause it to fall as it did Sodom and Gomorrah (Ez 16).

    What is in your heart?…it determines your destiny. (Prov 4:23).

    Thank you again Jeff,
    Be strong and courageous,
    God Bless!

  23. “And while Job’s friends told him to “curse God and die,” faith tells us to rebuke the counsels of despair.”

    Actually, it was Job’s wife that told him to curse God and die. And notice that Satan took all his children, but left his wife who gave him such advice. A point to ponder.

      1. I just corrected the text. Thank you. [PS – I thought I’d corrected it. But the corrections were not taking. I spent many hours to fix a long list of edits I had made when the article was first posted — so the site is not responding correctly. Many apologies.]

  25. Here is one commentator in the mainstream media discussing the possibility of Russia using tactical nukes in Ukraine.
    Putin’s tactical nukes ‘won’t be much use’ in Ukraine | Times Radio 9/16/22
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORpqeFqGqDU

    I don’t know how accurate this is, but he makes the point that for Russia to use battlefield nukes to any effect, it needs a concentration of troops to use the nukes against; what the UAF has done, and what the West is trying to learn to do, is to keep all their forces dispersed as a division, and then come together very quickly to make a breakthrough. Western forces/Ukraine are not usually amassing for an offensive for 2 weeks so the opposition can easily see where they are.

    2. The difficulty of using tactical nuclear weapons against dispersed formations is real. I have discussed this with experts in the past. It all depends on the concentrations brought from the Russian side, forcing Ukraine to match up; and there are strongpoints in this war — including urban areas — that could be hit by nukes. It would be useful to hear more expert opinion on it. One Ukrainian analyst recently cast doubt on the viability of the old Russian nukes. An intriguing question given Russia’s neglected logistics and maintenance.

      1. It sounds like it would be a good idea for the US to at least disperse its nuclear arsenal around the country as much as possible. Maybe even construct some clever decoys. That way there is at least a chance that Russia/China will not be able to sufficiently destroy the US’s arsenal in a first strike, and so the risk of a retaliatory attack and subsequent collapse of their societies might make them delay their plans long enough for the US to rebuild its nuclear deterrent.

      2. From the Executive Summary of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review for February 2018, we read: “While the United States has continued to reduce the number and salience of nuclear weapons, others, including Russia and China, have moved in the opposite direction. They have added new types of nuclear capabilities to their arsenals, increased the salience of nuclear forces in their strategies and plans, and engaged in increasingly aggressive behavior, including in outer space and cyber space.”
        https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872877/-1/-1/1/EXECUTIVE-SUMMARY.PDF

  26. Something HUGE is happening in China right now. A coup, Xi under house arrest, or something else

    2. Why would anyone believe this, knowing Communist deception? You should be disturbed it is even a rumor, as you should ask yourself why China wants to project an image of chaos RIGHT NOW.

  27. I think an edit is in order here, there’s a word missing in the first sentence. Is this sentence restated in the last one I reproduce here?

    “As Putin said in his 21 September speech, people who the Kremlin lies are now subject to elimination. They are “fair game.” This is not merely a declaration of war against Ukraine. It is a declaration of war on freedom of speech. If anyone dares to contradict the Russian lies, they are “fair game.” “

    Please delete this comment, just letting you know. Thank you for a great article.

  28. Hey, everybody, could we all be a little more careful to proofread our words before hitting the “post comment” button? Lots of typos lately, causing quite a bit of confusion, at least for me. If people are bothering to read another person’s comment, it seems only respectful to take a few seconds to review what one wrote to make sure it clearly and correctly conveys one’s idea. It would be appreciated.

  29. Earlier in the comments, Jeff, you discussed the early alliance between Russia and the USA. I am reading a book by Gary Allen called None Dare Call it Conspiracy.(1971). Have you heard of it? It is a fascinating story of who financed the Bolsheviks. Some of them, sadly, were Americans. They even helped them build oil refineries. “In 1927, Standard Oil of New York built a refinery in Russia, thereby helping the Bolsheviks put their economy on its feet.” Chase National Bank was “instrumental in establishing the American-Russo chamber of commerce in 1922.” In fact a certain professor Sutton wrote a 3 volume book that illustrates how the history of Soviet technological development was “literally manufactured by the USA.” And that was going on while the Soviets already had a complex spy operation in our country.
    So, history shows us that there will be men willing to undermine their own country for private gain. The communists have partnered with billionaires like the global minded Rockefellers practically since the beginning. This book shows they have been at this partnership for a 100 years plus. @RETIRED, so do you see how deceptive and complicated this is?
    Now the elite/communists think they are close to achieving their goal of world authoritarianism, but they underestimate what the faith of His People can do. Maybe Faith moves mountains in our time and not just in parables.

    1. They did not “finance bolsheviks”. They invested in the USSR during NEP to make themselves rich. There was no relation between bolsheviks and monopolist capital contrary what antisemites say. Except maybe infiltrators undermining the movement like Trotsky.

      1. Slight correction, Commit. Kaiser Wilhelm’s bankers financed Lenin’s Revolution so the Kaiser could collapse Russia and win the war. Aside from this, the Bolshevik Revolution was not financed by Jacob Schiff and other Jewish bankers on the Lower East Side. Schiff bankrolled Admiral Kolchak’s White Army. But yes, the capitalists were just trying to get rich after NEP. But which one actually made money in the USSR? They lost money.

      2. The WW1 was a war of Anglo-French primarily finance capital against German-Austrian primarily industrial capital. If German industrialists helped Lenin, it was against shared enemy. The war itself was against Russian interests, Nicolas II was pulled into it by whoever was behind the assassination in Sarajevo. Russia served as a mere cannot fodder for western plutocracies. There was nothing treasonous on stopping the war, or even switching sides. Later Treaty of Rapallo showed there are long-term mutually beneficial interests in cooperation. Still true today American strategy is to push Germany (and Ukraine) against Russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFmfwqzWmHk

      3. You communists must make everything about the wickedness of Western capital. If you read the actual events, however, they do not fit into your theory. As Joseph Schumpeter’s excellent study on imperialism (which directly contradicts Lenin’s theory) shows that colonial powers lose money on their colonies. Imperialism was an adjunct of the old warrior aristocratic class which had no role in the emerging bourgeois monarchies (and the French Republic). Read Schumpeter. Lenin’s theory is not tenable.

      4. I do believe there is some credible evidence that financiers like Schiff were duped into supporting the Bolcheviks, at least for a time. Anthony Sutton documents that financiers from the US as well as the government, itself, at times was duped into propping up the Soviet system. They had to get financing from somewhere. Otherwise, the Revolution would not have succeeded. Just like Ukraine would be in big trouble if the West were to stop lending arms and aid, the Bolcheviks had to get financial and other support from somewhere. I believe they duped left-leaning rich people into doing so. It doesn’t mean, though, that communism is controlled by a cabal of capitalists in some secret room, or whatever. People can honestly be duped and I believe this was the case with a lot of people during the early years when the communists were having success. Rich corporations continue to be duped to this day into supporting Marxist causes such as BLM, etc.

      5. Are the corporations being duped or have communists taken control of them? Or are they selling rope and not caring that they are going to be hanged with it?

      6. I think it is a combination of all three. There are so many businesses in Big Business, with so many different personalities, there is probably no “one-size fits all” answer. In historical survey’s like Joseph Finder’s “Red Carpet,” we see mostly stupidity animated by cupidity.

      7. Nearly everyone has invested in Soviet industries at one time or another, as nearly everyone has been fooled into thinking Moscow was “normalizing” its regime. It is the INITIAL establishment of the Bolshevik regime that is flasely attributed to Schiff. And this attribution is entirely false. It is an anti-Semitic smear.

    2. In Mr. Nyquist’s previous essay I mentioned a speech Allen gave that describes the communist/globalist crusade. I’ve learned that The John Birch Society is proving to be correct. But back in the Seventies, we were afraid to be called a “Bircher.” Stigmatizing conservatives isn’t a new phenomenon.

    3. The context for investing in Russia in the 1920s was Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Just as big business was fooled after 1991, it was fooled after the Russian Civil War when Lenin ordered a retreat back to capitalism. In those days the Bolsheviks turned into capitalists. Everyone was fooled thanks to Operation Trust. All intelligence services believed that monarchists secretly held power behind scenes in Russia. We were fooled back then, just as today. Moscow needed investment then and later. All they do is lie and the suckers come. The problem with Gary’s book is that he thought the investors controlled the communists. He did not think they were the ones tricked. Finder’s book, “Red Carpet,” is better, as it underscores how much the investors all lost.

      1. I will read that next. So amazing how we are constantly fooled. Thank you. By the way, I have to say ask what you think about Gorbachev’s death. What will his legacy be?

      2. Re, Birch. I thought Edward Griffin made sense in old, old, videos where he described the communist threat. Ok, so one more thing to research.

      3. Griffin started out making sense about communism. Then Robert Welch influenced him with his “Blue Book of the John Birch Society” in which Welch said the communist threat is not really a threat. There is no Soviet war machine to worry about. It is a sham so that the Western “insiders” can dominate us. Here anti-communism was hijacked into a kind of anti-capitalism. The year before the Birch Society was formed Khrushchev made a speech in which he complained of American anticommunism, saying that “We need to form anticommunist organizations in the West under our control.” Griffin’s later work consists in demonizing the Federal Reserve and our banking system, under which we have enjoyed a great deal of prosperity. There is nowhere an appreciation that capitalism depends, for its success, on investment and assuring adequate investment capital to keep the great machine moving foward. To be sure, we have misused our prosperity, but now the maintenance of that machine is a matter of physical survival. Without it, hundreds of millions will die because we cannot go back to the nineteenth century and support these large urban populations. Those who want to “kill for the fun of it” see a great opportunity here. This may be what is unfolding now.

      4. Successful investment is not a function of having a central bank. Are you joking that since FED inception in 1913 “we have enjoyed a great deal of prosperity”?

        The Dollar lost 97 percent of his purchasing power since then. Inflation is a wealth tax that hits the uneducated and poor hardest who cannot even differentiate between real and nominal. And even small and medium businesses cannot shield themselves against the devastation of a collapsing currency.

        The opposite is true. A central bank (and a fiat currency) have nothing to do whatsoever with a free market economy. Money naturally emerges without a central bank.

        Bill Still’s legendary documentatio on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlnM481Gcg

      5. I was born in 1958, and objectively, under our banking system, the prosperity I was born into was unprecedented in history. My grandparents grew up with much less, and so did my parents. The system served us well until fairly recently — when truly crazy policies became the word of the day. So it is not quite accurate to paint the picture you have painted of economic misery since 1913. Historically, the system has been successful (until the first decade of this century, with crazy military spending in Iraq and massive social spending). Throughout history most people have been desperately poor. American “poor people” are sometimes even fat.

  30. Jeff, I learned about you shortly after you appeared on Art Bell’s broadcast. I have a copy of Stanislav Lunev’s talk recorded by the Prophecy Club back in late 1990’s. I began to buy into the pro-Putin view after seeing his interview with Oliver Stone and watching Ukraine on Fire, produced by Oliver Stone. Stone is the type of liberal I have respected in the past who I define as different than a leftist. Putin speaks about the West and NATO’s plan to gut Russia. Is he entirely delusional or does he pay attention to what Western thinkers and leaders have been saying? I have not yet read the books by Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages” and “The Grand Chessboard.” Brzezinski’s model is the one that dominates the thinking and direction of U.S. foreign policy under Democrat rule. He say’s something in his writings about the division of Russia into four different pieces, breaking up it’s power and threat to the World Order he and his buddies want to bring forth. Are you familiar with these writings?
    I played ice hockey from my youth and have admired Russia’s contribution to the sport. I saw the Soviet national team in N. America several times in San Diego. As a twelve year old they were scary to me with their red uniforms and all those surnames ending in “v”. I hate to think of anyone as an enemy especially someone like Alex Ovechkin. I agree with you about the inevitability of war with the United States that Mr. Lunev pointed out in the strategic thinking of Russia. I pray it is not so and peace will prevail but I also know the trendline of history and what the prophetic scriptures have to say.

    1. I do not agree with your claim that “Brzezinski’s model is the one that dominates the thinking and direction of U.S. foreign policy under Democrat rule.” It’s like saying Herbert Hoover’s model dominates policy under Republican rule. If breaking up Russia becomes our policy it will be because of Putin’s aggression, and not the cause of the aggression. A very old Cold War Polish advisor to Jimmy Carter does not make policy today — or at any time after 1981.

      1. Jeff, this whole thing has been a fantastic learning experience, especially for us old followers. Terrific work.
        This China “Coup” is obviously a feint, but for what purpose. Actual deployment, or C3 purposes, more lockdowns, flight changes, supply chain mods, a pre-combat clean up job of suspicious persons, code changes, whatever, this may be an artificial disaster in much the same mode of the created ons we have seen with SARS-CoV-2 and so forth.
        And for the same purposes, war preparations, population lockdowns, rationing, shortages, tightening your grip.

      3. This may sound apropos of nothing and even a tangent from your article and commentary, but much is not understood. I am a rather simple man, or at least try to be, but I take the longer and broader view which is to say, for example, that Jacob Schiff bankrolling Admiral Kolchak is one of the reasons Kolchak lost. And I know that might seem inexplicable to you and others, perhaps. And so it is with more modern historical ephemera I could provide by way of demonstration. The fish does not see the flowing water all around them. And Westerners do not see what’s around them because their Intelligencia are ” excrement “, to paraphrase another member of the Intelligencia, Vladimir Lenin. He would have known, being one of the Westernizing elites in formation . They are psychopaths, sexual degenerates, pederasts and drug addicts. They are also the final product of a rotting civilization (but I repeated myself…), which can only produce such excrement and call it the ” necessary creative minority “, so prone to Gnosticism. Events are proceeding as they should, so that the schism between East and West will be final as Modernity implodes. Yes, I know, I’m a Barbarian, a reactionary traditionalist, guilty as charged.

      5. > I do not agree with your claim that “Brzezinski’s model is the one that dominates the thinking and direction of U.S. foreign policy under Democrat rule.”

        it was dominant during the nineties, but it has failed spectacularly long ago with the inability to extend the war on so-called terror into Iran and Central Asia as was originally planned by PNAC.

        Brzezinski at the end of his life changed his mind.

        https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/brzezinski-us-could-offer-russia-compromise-241889347829

      6. Do you really imagine that such a dinosaur as Brzezinski actually made policy in the U.S. during the 1990s? President Clinton was not trying to destroy Russia and break it into different countries. How could you possibly maintain such a brazen fiction? That is a crazy claim. Russia imploded itself by intentionally falsifying its capitalism along gangster lines. All that drug trafficking, and cheating Western investors, kept the country from economic recovery. Then came the 1998 collapse, and Primakov finally adopted a more sensible policy which Putin later abandoned for the planned military buildup. I interviewed people who did business in Russia tin 1999. Only small service companies made money in Russia then. How can you make money in a country where there is no rule of law and no real protections for property? Russia should have the largest economy in Europe. But no, it is economically behind. Nearly every one of the of the big investors in Russia got screwed, including British Patroleum, whose executives saw their visas revoked. Russia routinely cheated its Western partners, and continues to do so — to its own detriment.

      7. Ahoy, Vladimir, in your cryptic commentary, do you consider Putin will nuke any part of the geographic contiguous United States, or merely Eastern Europe stations of NATO armament installations?

      8. If it is response to the strike US side is talking about, hopefully, he will nuke only the US, Britain and maybe France and Israel in retaliation.

        Nuking rest of continental Europe makes no sense militarily as they have no nukes.

      9. You hope they Nuke Britain and America only? What?! Are you really a self-caricature of the empty supporter of mass murder I wrote about in the essay? — clinging to a pseudo-self that seeks validation through destruction and murder? Because the world is imperfect, and evil is always there, you will kill and destroy until your ideal world somehow appears!How can you read an essay that dissects this kind of psychology and then immediately exemplify that same psychology for everyone? Surely you are pulling my leg.

  31. Mr Nyquist, we are looking at the end of Modernity, and events are simply out of individual hands, least of all the feckless and vacillating. Character is destiny, and there’s no room left for the present crop of leaders in almost every field of endeavor today because of the near universal lack of character.

  32. No, I hope this crisis will be solved without nukes involved. I write about possible retaliation strikes. Of course I hope we won’t be the target in that case. Really makes no military sense anyway.

    1. What you left out, Commit, was that America would only strike the Russian headquarters if Moscow uses nuclear weapons on Ukraine. Then you say, it would be right for Russia to destroy Britain and America. To hope for such a “retaliation,” as if the West started this war (and is not defending a bloodied and beleagured Ukraine), is to adhere to injustice. Ukraine has the right to exist and enjoy its independence.

  33. > “Do you really imagine that such a dinosaur as Brzezinski actually made policy in the U.S. during the 1990s? President Clinton was not trying to destroy Russia and break it into different countries. ”

    Brzezinski’s ideas were more dominant among neoconservative think-tank like PNAC during the nineties. They attempted to implement it only when they got into power with Bush jr. Grand Chessboard reads like a blueprint.

    While he also possibly influenced people like Albright during the nineties, she had hands tied by public opinion. “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” , in PNAC’s words, was needed to start implementing this policy seriously.

  34. Jeff, what can or should we the people do? Should we petition our congressmen, build a website, blog, try to raise awareness? Or is it too late to prevent an attack and should we focus 100% on water, food, etc.. what is the duty of every American who loves his country or at the very least feels some obligation to it?

    1. Perseus: what do you think? If what Jeff has reported is accurate, and I have confidence that his message is accurate, the attack is not if, but when? The enemy has been preparing for it starting decades ago. Do you think they will abandon their plans now that they think that victory is almost in their hands?

      I see survival as an important obligation for our country, which is not only food and water, but also knowledge and tools to rebuild after the war. In order to have an after the war, there is the need for weapons and ammunition to fight the war. And before the war, tell people in the most effective ways that you know that war is coming and they ought to get prepared for it. The most important preparation is spiritual and mental, knowing what to expect.

      The war will be brutal with massive civilian casualties. Let people know what to expect so they are not shocked into defeatism when the war comes.

      1. There is one thing that the Chinese are now sensitive about; namely, the food supply to their people. Could this dissuade them from going to war now. Could the drought conditions in China save us?

      2. They have been hoarding under these conditions for 3 years at least. I suggested the severity of the climate crisis was inflated to cover for a pre
        War stockpiling. You suggested that China’s policy was based primarily on environmental factors. True numbers are not known

      3. Jeff: I think the drought in China, coupled with the killing frost in northern China, actually makes them more dangerous. They’re hungry. Historically peoples have migrated because they were hungry. Götland repeatedly got overpopulated and no longer able to support its population, leading to groups of Goths leaving the island in search of more fertile lands. There are similar histories from other peoples and places. Without food imports, China would already be starving. Their demand for Lebensraum makes them look for lands that are fertile and can support large populations. So what that they will have to slaughter the peoples who already live there, the important thing is that Chinese will be able to grow the food directly for Chinese consumption without having to worry about pesky things like political interference.

        Taiwan is a small, mountainous island with limited farmland. Will it fit the bill? Or is it just a diversion to keep the primary target’s eyes off CCP preparations?

        Which of the other island nations will fit the bill to satisfy the demand for Lebensraum?

        Three years of stored food isn’t that long, and that is assuming the stored food is still good.

        So how can the drought and other food shortages not make China more dangerous, more likely to fight for Lebensraum?

    2. It’s always prudent to be a prepper… what is it the government think-tanks speak of in justifying their own preparedness? “High consequence, low probability events”? Except, of course, the world situation is so grave that no part of the threat matrix is truly low probability any more.

  35. > “Schumpeter’s excellent study on imperialism (which directly contradicts Lenin’s theory) shows that colonial powers lose money on their colonies. ”

    I haven’t read this, I will try to find an audiobook. What you say does not fully contradict Lenin (or Hobson). According to them, imperialism leads to degeneration of the imperial core by the rise of rentier class and their servants at the expense of productive capital and productive labour. Nowadays the process is called de-industrialization. This was actually observed by many, including supporters of imperialism like Churchill in “History of the English-Speaking Peoples”. He was unable to offer a solution though.

  36. https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2022/09/24/progressives-demand-two-migrants-for-every-u-s-baby/

    What a**holes these authors sound like, pushing such an insane, suicidal agenda for the U.S. They are described as “democratic-aligned” and “progressive” in the article, but they seem far worse than that, being, I bet, truly hard-line Socialists, or Communist sympathizers. People like this continue to spin such grotesque lies and hyperbole about U.S. society and about U.S. history, it’s just horrible.

      2. There are no stages to capitalism. Capitalism can only be perfect capitalism (fair competitipn, stable currency) or sabotaged capitalism (depreciated currency, rigged game, monopolies). Many industries in America are rigged games and not capitalism at all.

        The Communists have sabotaged capitalism in order to blame it for what they have done. They have depreciated the US currency, impoverished the poor, created monopolies, and crushed individual businesses. Then they call it “late stage”. A sad, tired, transparent trick.

  37. Does Russia need to wait on troop mobilisation before turning to nukes? That would delay the launch by a couple months right. I’m also concerned that Russia doesn’t need to wait on troops at all if China is prepared. If China is already capable of mobilising a large force, Russia could fire the nukes and China could provide a bulk of the forces as they previous discussed. If true, would that not mean they are ready to go at any time?

  39. I am writing this on September 25. What is going on in China with flight cancellations and all the rest?

    1. The restrictions on movement of people in China has been ongoing since the CCP ordered the “transition from normal to war” in April. This is the real reason behind the mass lockdowns and port closures. Air travel restrictions may have even more sinister significance. We do not know what the Chinese are planning, only that they are preparing. Seeing both Russia and China mobilizing in the same time frame is worrying. I fear the worst. Some larger war is contemplated. Everything here was predicted by the KGB defector A. Golitsyn as “one clenched fist.” The communists want to convert their clandestine victories into one grand open, and visible, victory.

    2. Are there any non-paywall news sources for this? I’m not seeing anything in the Chinese or Russian state media I look at, or U.S. sources. I may not have enough breadth but usually I can find something.

  40. Jeff, in another post you mentioned Joseph Schumpeter did a study on imperialism, finding that the imperialists lost money on their colonies. Which book of his do you refer? I took a look and seems he has more books written than I have hair on my head (but in fairness I am balding).

    1. @ Ricardo Galván: The book you are looking for is Imperialism & Social Classes: Two Essays by Joseph Schumpeter, which is available for free in pdf format here:

      https://mises.org/library/imperialism-and-social-classes

      The first essay, on imperialism, was originally published in 1919. The earlier parts of the essay may not be of great interest to you, unless you want to know about Schumpeter’s views on various ancient and medieval empires, so you may want to skip to the fourth and final section, “Imperialism and Capitalism”, which you’ll find on pages 64-98.

      Schumpeter was writing, partly, in reply to recent Marxist accounts of imperialism: he mentions Hilferding and Luxemburg, and although he does not refer to Lenin, he discusses the work of John A. Hobson, from which Lenin had drawn. Schumpeter’s arguments lead him to state (p. 84) that “it is a basic fallacy to describe imperialism as a necessary phase of capitalism, or even to speak of the development of capitalism into imperialism.”

  41. China might be attempting to hide the mobilization of military vehicles and hardware from other parts of the country to be loaded onto the newly converted transport vessels by cancelling all incoming and outgoing international flights.

    1. From a logistical perspective, cancelling international flights would seem like one of the last things you do before going live. 🙁

      1. That’s what it seems to me. The question is whether the Strike happens before Russia’s mobilization is ready.

    2. Analyst Ivana Stradner has been very influential in getting NAFO going. She’s definitely not a Conservative as we probably think of the term, but she calls herself Conservative. But she is very sharp on Russia. She isn’t versed in the history and long term strategy as Mr. Nyquist, but she is good on the current aspects of their propaganda and working in eastern European nations, as I think she came from one of the Balkan nations.

  43. Someone here asked what they needed to do to fight the events we are seeing or get ready for the consequences: I don’t remember and I cannot find the comment, so here’s a suggestion:

    Civil Defense Manual, volumes 1 and 2 by “Jack Lawson”.

    Local! Neighborhood protection, preparedness, and much more.

  44. Dal, I agree with your comments earlier about Trump and Ben Carson, but I agree with Jeff’s analysis of Steve Bannon. Russia is our enemy. If Bannon sides with Putin, he is not a friend of this country. Bannon is very smart and has lots of connections so I am sure he has taken this position for a reason. Now, Jeff was on Steve Bannon’s show. His lack of tact didn’t seem to hurt, and by the same logic Trump’s lack of tact is also a strength. Americans are sick of hypocrisy. Trump says a lot of things that people thought but wouldn’t say aloud. Jeff also says a lot of things that challenge conventional wisdom. Both men are not afraid to speak their minds. Trump was invited to DAVOS and told them them he was going to put America’s interests first and that he did not support their globalist agenda. He removed the USA from the Paris Accords. That takes a lot of courage. What Jeff is doing here also takes courage. People should accept others the way they are, warts and all when they are on the same team fighting the same fight. Bannon doesn’t seem to be on the team.

    1. It’s complicated, right?

      Bannon is doing something by trying to mobilize people to win elections. Some on our side have given up because they believe George Carlin’s nonsense that “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it”, so why bother voting?

      Net result? It’s cool to give up and not vote.

      Some won’t vote because they think the system is hopelessly broken. Bannon is working against that; the tables have turned since I was studying political science in college, where Republicans were out-registered by Democrats but got elected because the Democrat base that was apathetic didn’t vote, and now they ARE motivated and we are the defeatist, and by Democrats who “switch voted.”

      I don’t agree with some of the stuff in the article below, particularly the shallow anti-semitism: the author hasn’t met Jews who agree with us, but the article seems to reinforce the “complexity” problem we’ve been talking about, particularly the accurate part about subordinating ideology for pursuing personal interests in living free, while being safe and having a fair shot at becoming prosperous, at any level of comfort one chooses.

      I am still new at understanding Mr. Nyquist’s position and have been reading his posts and reading about A Golitsyn. I find myself going back to my pre-Nyquist-blog state of mind when I get confused by the deception: is the bigger threat the one clenched fist or the globalists hegemony, and a different kind of tyranny? I read where Mr. Nyquist wrote an article for The Committee on The Present Danger and knew that Bannon is part of that organization, but that doesn’t mean Bannon and Mr. N are on the same page. Life would be so much easier if they were!

      All of the time I am spending on trying to figure out the truth instead of learning how to can food, instead of practicing at the range, instead of digging a nuclear blast shelter, instead of figuring out how to save my IRA, instead of you name it, makes me want to just punch these leaders in the face and scream:

      “WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO KILL US WHILE USING OUR MONEY TO DO IT?!”

      Jesus, arm us and put your protective shield around us as we prepare for battle! 🙏

      https://www.unz.com/aanglin/the-situation-in-the-ukraine-is-an-historical-event-of-immense-magnitude/

      1. This isn’t one of your better comments, but it would be funny if you wrote “root’n for Putin.”

    2. Who’s to say those people are against him? All I see are Putin agents, witting or unwitting.

    3. Retired – our news has focused us on the corruption of the individuals in that picture for about the last 5 years, to a lesser extent before that. Ask yourself why? Why are sharp-minded conservatives untroubled or unsuspicious about the kool-aid our side has been drinking? About what it means for patriots to be cheering a former KGB dictator?

      Mental and emotional fatigue adds to the attraction of thinking “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” but realize the appeal of that mindset makes us ripe for manipulation. We have been wronged by our national leadership and the broader elite in the West. But we MUST stay focused. Really think through the folly of positing our hope in the success of foreign dictators. What mindset and behavior does it inculcate? Imagine if you were to try to get the most patriotic, can-do, capable Americans to sit back cynically and do nothing? What lies would you seed to push them there? How about the idea that there’s nothing worth saving.

      Here’s another metaphor. Let’s say we’re on a terrible, decaying ship that’s taking on water. There are holes and it can barely sustain us. When waters are calm and a beach nearby – or stronger ships nearby – it may be helpful and even courageous to abandon the ship. But what about in a storm and treacherous waters? With enemies aiming weapons and sharks circling? That boat’s all you’ve got. If you SEE that that’s your circumstance, you stop complaining and you start patching, you fix whatever you can. It may not save you, but if you jump ship you’re dead.

      Those people in the pic that none of us like – that’s our ship. If we jump, we’re dead. If we complain and do nothing, we’re dead. We may be dead anyway, but rallying behind what we’ve got is the only hope.

      1. Thanks to this blog, Putin won’t be a choice for me, but the other guys were never my choice either. The media has not demonized the people in that photo, and the people in that photo are either trying to take me into one or two places, both of which are bad: communism or one world global government. Are they the same thing? Leyden (no, all of them) want to punish their citizens for resisting their agenda.

        I made another comment that is still awaiting moderation. One commenter met me here for the last article Mr. Nyquist published and now this article. He thinks I have had enough time to digest years of research and that I root for Putin. And there is always the problem of understanding the difference between defectors who are real and defectors who are piling on the deception tactics: make the Americans think that they have got the truth but confuse them even more bull. Like Weiner(?) said in his book on the CIA, the CIA was no match for understanding Russian diplomatic and intelligence information because the Russians have hundreds of years experience being deceptive as compared to the Americans. I’m trying to sort it out and am done saying, “I ll just listen to Sundance at CTH,” and follow along. Questions pop up and I need answers.

        Who in the picture wants national sovereignty?

      2. We need national sovereignty and common sense, too. I did not see a post from you waiting mediation. I will check the log. Sometimes there are glitches.

Comments are now closed.