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The Michael Shermer Show, 293. An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (4)

293. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (4)

2 (33m 3s):

Now, yes, the Eastern front was the most brutal, but one of the reasons it was the most brutal was Soviet tactics. It was sending men into machine gun, you know, to well fortified machine gun positions with no regard for their lives whatsoever. And of course the Soviet union would've been completely unable to defend itself against Nazim. Had it not been for the tremendous support that Lenley's provided. And for the fact that of course, Germany was having to fight a war on two fronts. And so the battle of curses, for example, which the Soviets rightly considered regard as a huge turning point in the war was happening at the very same time that German cities were being wiped off the face of the earth by allied bombing attacks.

2 (33m 43s):

If, what do you think the Germans cared more about some battle in some nowhere in, in far east or in, in the far east of their periphery or their cities being wiped off the map and German children burning alive and fire bombing. So I think so the, the Soviet narrative and the Russian narrative about it is very one sided. Now you could argue the Western narrative is also one sided two, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, which is the three, these three great empires work together to defeat Nazi. But I, I coming back to how we started this conversation, this part of the conversation. Yeah, of course the Russian narrative is going to be the Russian narrative, but you gotta remember that in a dictatorship, like the one that Russia has today, narratives are even more important because they feed the political structure.

2 (34m 31s):

Let me explain what I mean by that. Think about this in the nineties, Russia is liberalizing. It's a very difficult and painful process, which is one of the reasons you get a hard man like Putin being, you know, being welcome in because he stabilizes the country. I have a whole sub stack about this, which is called the why Russians support Putin. And he comes in and he stabilizes the country. But think about this. Vladimir Putin has been in power since 1999. We were worried when he came to power. I always say this, we're worried about the millennium bugs. He's had plenty of time. And, you know, from the democratic and constitutional norms that were in place in Russia at the time, he should have stopped being president over a decade ago.

2 (35m 17s):

And he's manipulated all the rules to remain in power. Now, if you are, if you are destroying the, the, the sort of fledging democratic institutions of your country, how do you explain this to the public? Well, one of the best ways to explain, why do you need a strong man like Putin? Once the economy is recovered, once life is stabilized, why everything is once everything is great by the sort of late naughties. For example, when everything is going just about fine, why do you still need Putin? Well, you don't actually, if your comfortable, if your life is predictable, if the economy is doing great, oil prices have never been higher. Everything's brilliant. You don't need a strong man dictator in place.

2 (35m 59s):

Who's gonna, you know, give all, all the money to his pals and, you know, make Oli guards out of his, the guy who used to clean his car and all this sort of stupid stuff. Why do you need 'em? Well, what if we say that the evil west is about to attack us and destroy us suddenly you have a very good idea why you need Putin. Putin will defend us against the evil west. So this narrative about history and history is being rewritten all the time in Russia, it's against the law. For example, in Russia, to compare what the Nazis did with what the Soviets did, even though what the Soviets did in many ways was actually far worse, killing millions of their own citizens, not another ethnicity or tribe that they hated with a passion, but actually their own people, their own people, just because they had the wrong opinion on because they've refused to comply or because they had the wrong ethnicity or they, they came from one wave of communism and not another, or they were Trotskyists.

2 (36m 54s):

And not all of this stuff. It is illegal in Russia to make any illusions to that. It is illegal in Russia to make any comparisons between Russia, the Soviet union and the Nazis, even though world war II started Michael. And you know, this I'm sure with the Soviets and the Nazis dividing Eastern Europe between each other, invading Poland invading and taking over Lavia, Estonia, Lithuania, a bit of Bera, a bit of other parts of, of Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and massacring, many of the local elites, intellectuals, and so on. And so the priesthood and so on and so forth, even though that is all a fact, it is illegal to make this comparison. So history is a weapon always has been, and is being used today in order to justify the leadership and the regime that exists there and to allow them to continue rebuilding the empire.

2 (37m 45s):

Yeah.

1 (37m 46s):

So from the Russian perspective on the west, do they have any argument that NATO is a threat? I mean, at least from their perspective, it looks like we're constantly building up. Well,

2 (37m 56s):

Of course, well, of course, as I explained, of course, NATO is a threat and it helps them to think that way because it justifies the existence of this strong man leader. Who's gonna rebuild the military, et cetera. I think we all know living in the west, that there's very little intention of anybody in Britain or in America, whatever, to, to invade Russia or to attack Russia or whatever. People are quite happy to trade with Russia. As we're discovering Russia is an important part of the global economy. And the Western model is very simple. Let's do business together. Let's not poison each. Other's former citizens in each other's streets with radioactive poison.

2 (38m 37s):

And let's just get on with life. I mean, here in, in London, we, we spent many decades laundering Russian oligarch's money through our financial and legal systems with no complaint whatsoever. This idea that we were about to destroy Russia, completely absurd, but, but it serves the Russian elite to spread this narrative because it helps them justify their own existence and justify their Imperial ambitions.

1 (39m 4s):

Why do you suppose Putin? Didn't just take the Dom bass region. Like he did the Crimea and, and then just, and then just go back and the west probably wouldn't have done anything. Like we usually don't and instead he does the full on invasion and now we, you know, pretty much have to do something.

2 (39m 20s):

Well, he tried in 2014, if you remember, when they took crimee, they also tried to take all of the Don bass, but they couldn't do it because the Ukrainians defended it. And so that's why this war essentially started is they were trying to capture the rest of those areas. And of course, since you're going to war, you might as well take all of Eastern Ukraine with it because remind you, you're trying to recapture the, the, the Imperial lands of Ukraine. So that's why I think it's happened. They tried in 2014, didn't quite work and they were always gonna come back from all.

1 (39m 51s):

All right. Let's well, let me just ask you, what do you think the outcomes of all this is gonna be, you think he'll just press on for years and it could just drag out for, in a definite period of time, or do you think he'll give up?

2 (40m 4s):

I think it's very difficult to say, and it depends very much on what happens first of all, on the ground, obviously how the war is going right now, the way the war is going is there is a, it's not a stale mate because Russia is continuing to inch forward slowly, and both sides are taken very heavy casualties, but it also depends on what happens internationally. What is the resolve of the Western powers? One of the things that the Russians are desperately trying to do is to blackmail European nations like Germany, particularly, which have deliberately over time, partly due to the corrupt links between the elites in Germany and the Russian regime to make Germany more dependent on Russian gas, over time, shutting down the nuclear power stations, et cetera.

2 (40m 54s):

And so what the Russians would like to do in an ideal world is forced Germany, basically into a very difficult choice. Either you continue. I mean, they've been quite weak anyway, but either you continue to support NATO and your pension has frees to death in the winter, or you bend the knee, you undermine Western efforts to support Ukraine, and then you can have all the gas that you want. That is the game that's being played. How either of those things place out is difficult to say. And primarily depends on what support the Americans are willing to provide in terms of the hardware, because some of the latest heavy weaponry is making a big difference. You're seeing strikes in crimee you're seeing strikes in, in Eastern Ukraine, there was a missile strike recently or HIAs.

2 (41m 41s):

I think it would've been that destroyed the headquarters of the Wagner private military contractor headquarters. And they're doing a lot of the fighting in the east right now. And the high are basically uncountable. So if the west continues to provide this sort of weaponry, the Ukrainians have a very good op good opportunity to, I don't know whether, you know, I don't know that this war ends with, you know, the Ukrainian flag being raised above the Kremlin. And I don't, I wouldn't like to see that either frankly, but, but what it could do is inflict such heavy casualties on the Russians that they have to settle for what they've got now, or even perhaps have to settle for what they have when the casualties have been incurred.

2 (42m 23s):

So it remains to be seen whether the Ukrainians are gonna be able to push them back because we remains to be seen how much more support they are going to get from the west. But I've said from day one and I mean, day one that however, this ends Ukraine will not be a viable state, whatever shape that country is in at the time, unless it has physical security guarantees in place. And I'm talking peacekeepers in place because otherwise what is there to stop Ukraine from being invaded again, a few years down the line when the west, you know, another COVID happens or we suddenly, you know, decide that we need to spend two years talking about how we're the most racist people in the world.

2 (43m 5s):

And we take eye off the ball in that way, or we decide, you know, we've gotta have another election in the United States where no one believes that either side got elected or whatever, right? And so these opportunities will be there for the people who want to take advantage. This is one of the things I talk about in an immigrants love letter to the west, Michael, I dunno if I'm allowed to swear, I won, we can. Sure, but we don't have time to mess around. Right? We don't have time to mess around, you know, we've got enemies and they are aware of the weakness of our societies. They're aware of the division in our societies. Now. Fortunately they like me, by the way, massively overestimated the extent of that division.


293. An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (4)

2 (33m 3s):

Now, yes, the Eastern front was the most brutal, but one of the reasons it was the most brutal was Soviet tactics. It was sending men into machine gun, you know, to well fortified machine gun positions with no regard for their lives whatsoever. And of course the Soviet union would've been completely unable to defend itself against Nazim. Had it not been for the tremendous support that Lenley's provided. And for the fact that of course, Germany was having to fight a war on two fronts. And so the battle of curses, for example, which the Soviets rightly considered regard as a huge turning point in the war was happening at the very same time that German cities were being wiped off the face of the earth by allied bombing attacks.

2 (33m 43s):

If, what do you think the Germans cared more about some battle in some nowhere in, in far east or in, in the far east of their periphery or their cities being wiped off the map and German children burning alive and fire bombing. So I think so the, the Soviet narrative and the Russian narrative about it is very one sided. Now you could argue the Western narrative is also one sided two, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, which is the three, these three great empires work together to defeat Nazi. But I, I coming back to how we started this conversation, this part of the conversation. Yeah, of course the Russian narrative is going to be the Russian narrative, but you gotta remember that in a dictatorship, like the one that Russia has today, narratives are even more important because they feed the political structure.

2 (34m 31s):

Let me explain what I mean by that. Think about this in the nineties, Russia is liberalizing. It's a very difficult and painful process, which is one of the reasons you get a hard man like Putin being, you know, being welcome in because he stabilizes the country. I have a whole sub stack about this, which is called the why Russians support Putin. And he comes in and he stabilizes the country. But think about this. Vladimir Putin has been in power since 1999. We were worried when he came to power. I always say this, we're worried about the millennium bugs. He's had plenty of time. And, you know, from the democratic and constitutional norms that were in place in Russia at the time, he should have stopped being president over a decade ago.

2 (35m 17s):

And he's manipulated all the rules to remain in power. Now, if you are, if you are destroying the, the, the sort of fledging democratic institutions of your country, how do you explain this to the public? Well, one of the best ways to explain, why do you need a strong man like Putin? Once the economy is recovered, once life is stabilized, why everything is once everything is great by the sort of late naughties. For example, when everything is going just about fine, why do you still need Putin? Well, you don't actually, if your comfortable, if your life is predictable, if the economy is doing great, oil prices have never been higher. Everything's brilliant. You don't need a strong man dictator in place.

2 (35m 59s):

Who's gonna, you know, give all, all the money to his pals and, you know, make Oli guards out of his, the guy who used to clean his car and all this sort of stupid stuff. Why do you need 'em? Well, what if we say that the evil west is about to attack us and destroy us suddenly you have a very good idea why you need Putin. Putin will defend us against the evil west. So this narrative about history and history is being rewritten all the time in Russia, it's against the law. For example, in Russia, to compare what the Nazis did with what the Soviets did, even though what the Soviets did in many ways was actually far worse, killing millions of their own citizens, not another ethnicity or tribe that they hated with a passion, but actually their own people, their own people, just because they had the wrong opinion on because they've refused to comply or because they had the wrong ethnicity or they, they came from one wave of communism and not another, or they were Trotskyists.

2 (36m 54s):

And not all of this stuff. It is illegal in Russia to make any illusions to that. It is illegal in Russia to make any comparisons between Russia, the Soviet union and the Nazis, even though world war II started Michael. And you know, this I'm sure with the Soviets and the Nazis dividing Eastern Europe between each other, invading Poland invading and taking over Lavia, Estonia, Lithuania, a bit of Bera, a bit of other parts of, of Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and massacring, many of the local elites, intellectuals, and so on. And so the priesthood and so on and so forth, even though that is all a fact, it is illegal to make this comparison. So history is a weapon always has been, and is being used today in order to justify the leadership and the regime that exists there and to allow them to continue rebuilding the empire.

2 (37m 45s):

Yeah.

1 (37m 46s):

So from the Russian perspective on the west, do they have any argument that NATO is a threat? I mean, at least from their perspective, it looks like we're constantly building up. Well,

2 (37m 56s):

Of course, well, of course, as I explained, of course, NATO is a threat and it helps them to think that way because it justifies the existence of this strong man leader. Who's gonna rebuild the military, et cetera. I think we all know living in the west, that there's very little intention of anybody in Britain or in America, whatever, to, to invade Russia or to attack Russia or whatever. People are quite happy to trade with Russia. As we're discovering Russia is an important part of the global economy. And the Western model is very simple. Let's do business together. Let's not poison each. Other's former citizens in each other's streets with radioactive poison.

2 (38m 37s):

And let's just get on with life. I mean, here in, in London, we, we spent many decades laundering Russian oligarch's money through our financial and legal systems with no complaint whatsoever. This idea that we were about to destroy Russia, completely absurd, but, but it serves the Russian elite to spread this narrative because it helps them justify their own existence and justify their Imperial ambitions.

1 (39m 4s):

Why do you suppose Putin? Didn't just take the Dom bass region. Like he did the Crimea and, and then just, and then just go back and the west probably wouldn't have done anything. Like we usually don't and instead he does the full on invasion and now we, you know, pretty much have to do something.

2 (39m 20s):

Well, he tried in 2014, if you remember, when they took crimee, they also tried to take all of the Don bass, but they couldn't do it because the Ukrainians defended it. And so that's why this war essentially started is they were trying to capture the rest of those areas. And of course, since you're going to war, you might as well take all of Eastern Ukraine with it because remind you, you're trying to recapture the, the, the Imperial lands of Ukraine. So that's why I think it's happened. They tried in 2014, didn't quite work and they were always gonna come back from all.

1 (39m 51s):

All right. Let's well, let me just ask you, what do you think the outcomes of all this is gonna be, you think he'll just press on for years and it could just drag out for, in a definite period of time, or do you think he'll give up?

2 (40m 4s):

I think it's very difficult to say, and it depends very much on what happens first of all, on the ground, obviously how the war is going right now, the way the war is going is there is a, it's not a stale mate because Russia is continuing to inch forward slowly, and both sides are taken very heavy casualties, but it also depends on what happens internationally. What is the resolve of the Western powers? One of the things that the Russians are desperately trying to do is to blackmail European nations like Germany, particularly, which have deliberately over time, partly due to the corrupt links between the elites in Germany and the Russian regime to make Germany more dependent on Russian gas, over time, shutting down the nuclear power stations, et cetera.

2 (40m 54s):

And so what the Russians would like to do in an ideal world is forced Germany, basically into a very difficult choice. Either you continue. I mean, they've been quite weak anyway, but either you continue to support NATO and your pension has frees to death in the winter, or you bend the knee, you undermine Western efforts to support Ukraine, and then you can have all the gas that you want. That is the game that's being played. How either of those things place out is difficult to say. And primarily depends on what support the Americans are willing to provide in terms of the hardware, because some of the latest heavy weaponry is making a big difference. You're seeing strikes in crimee you're seeing strikes in, in Eastern Ukraine, there was a missile strike recently or HIAs.

2 (41m 41s):

I think it would've been that destroyed the headquarters of the Wagner private military contractor headquarters. And they're doing a lot of the fighting in the east right now. And the high are basically uncountable. So if the west continues to provide this sort of weaponry, the Ukrainians have a very good op good opportunity to, I don't know whether, you know, I don't know that this war ends with, you know, the Ukrainian flag being raised above the Kremlin. And I don't, I wouldn't like to see that either frankly, but, but what it could do is inflict such heavy casualties on the Russians that they have to settle for what they've got now, or even perhaps have to settle for what they have when the casualties have been incurred.

2 (42m 23s):

So it remains to be seen whether the Ukrainians are gonna be able to push them back because we remains to be seen how much more support they are going to get from the west. But I've said from day one and I mean, day one that however, this ends Ukraine will not be a viable state, whatever shape that country is in at the time, unless it has physical security guarantees in place. And I'm talking peacekeepers in place because otherwise what is there to stop Ukraine from being invaded again, a few years down the line when the west, you know, another COVID happens or we suddenly, you know, decide that we need to spend two years talking about how we're the most racist people in the world.

2 (43m 5s):

And we take eye off the ball in that way, or we decide, you know, we've gotta have another election in the United States where no one believes that either side got elected or whatever, right? And so these opportunities will be there for the people who want to take advantage. This is one of the things I talk about in an immigrants love letter to the west, Michael, I dunno if I'm allowed to swear, I won, we can. Sure, but we don't have time to mess around. Right? We don't have time to mess around, you know, we've got enemies and they are aware of the weakness of our societies. They're aware of the division in our societies. Now. Fortunately they like me, by the way, massively overestimated the extent of that division.