The Ideology of Putin's Russia

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learning a language you wish to focus on be it conversational writing or reading skills you get to pay pick and decide what you believe you need to improve more and what your circumstances require speakly is ideal for if you need to Fresh up or build up some skills for required circumstances like getting through some French lectures or texts speakally is available for both web and Mobile use the link in the description to download the app for a seven day free trial and get up to sixty percent off if you join an annual subscription many thanks to speakally for sponsoring this video hello this video is a bit different a patron asked me well the political theory is an ideology of the Putin regime are I wrote a very long Google doc explaining it to him and he and later other patrons insisted that I should make this into a video because of the nature of this topic I decided to not use Poland Bulls in the editing I hope you are okay with this but I hope that you still enjoy this video the question of what the political ideology of Putin's Russia is this both surprise me and not surprised me at the same time you will find people of both the far right and far left in support of Putin and his regime which I guess can cause confusion over where exactly this regime politically lies and some just outright dismiss the idea of there being any sort of ideological purpose behind this regime and claiming it's dead that it is just a self-serving authoritarian Mafia State I have to counter that claim in particular by saying that there isn't a contradiction in being a criminal and being ideologically driven it is possible to be both at the same time in fact I would argue that most authoritarians are gangsters and that authoritarian politics is Gangster politics to give an example host vessel was a Nazi brown shirt who was killed by a communist in a street brawl the Nazis made a propaganda song praising host vessel as a martyr to their cause but what you won't find mentioned in that Nazi propaganda song and what is curiously also missing from host vessels Wikipedia article is that horse vessel was a gangster he was a pimp who ran an illegal prostitution ring and ran an extortion racket the Berlin criminal justice archive has extensive records of his criminality there's a common misconception that crime in particular organized crime is inherently apolitical or something that is outside of the political process and that is just not true if you read a political science book especially if it is about Italy you will realize that crime and in particular organized crime is in fact a system of political brokerage and engagement you will find it throughout authoritarian regimes there is for example a common myth that Mussolini cracked down against the mafia in fact many of Mussolini's Brown Shirts were mathiosi Thugs who joined to get away with murdering competing mafiosis read any historian studied Italian fascism and they will universally tell you that Mussolini's policy on the mafia was not a policy in opposition to criminal violence it was in fact a policy of gaining a fascist Monopoly of criminal violence for applying a divide and conquer policy on the Italian mafia Stalin was a Street gangster nikolaj chesku was a Street gangster also many of the collaborators in Nazi occupied France were originally Street Gangsters pimps and heroin Smugglers and there are many more examples so to summarize there is no contradiction between being a criminal and being an authoritarian organized crime is just a means of anti-democratic politics with that out of the way what is the ideology of Putin's Russia I will try to summarize by using the three most important political thinkers and theorists of the Putin regime and a spoiler ahead not one of them is Dugan Alexander Dugan's influence on what Russia is and has become under Putin is very overrated in the west but more on that at the end of the video the three figures are Ivan Elin Lev gumilev and Karl Schmidt with Ivan Eline being the most important political philosopher of the current Putin regime in the speech that Putin gave on Friday the 30th of September 2022 during a ceremony annexing for Ukrainian oblasts there's one thing that stands out to me right at the end of his speech to quote him and I want to close with the words of a true patriot evaneline if I consider Russia my motherland that means that I love as a Russian contemplate and think sing and speak as a Russian that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people its spirit is my spirit its Destiny is my destiny its suffering is my grief and its Prosperity is my joy evaneline is a recurring feature in the entire political career of Putin Putin has been citing Evangeline since the early 2000s Putin on several occasions declared evaneline was his favorite philosopher and historian in 2006 Putin had evaneline's body that was buried in Switzerland exhumed and returned to Russia where he was reburied during a state ceremony at which Putin was present a year before that ghoulish ceremony Putin on his own costs had the entire ivaneline archive which was kept in the United States returned to Russia Eline is not just cited by Putin but by all of his ministers by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church and promoted by several artists oligarchs and other prominent figures across Russia Eline is even a core part of the Russian education system you will find Eileen's right writings and theories taught to Russian kids and youths in high school and University textbooks in 2017 Russia commemorated the Centenary of the Russian Revolution with a series about Trotsky the series although centered around the historical figure of Trotsky is narrated from the perspective of Ivan Elin the message of this film to the Russian public is that the Soviet Union and its history and in particular the revolution must be examined and understood through the lens of the writings of Ivan Eileen curiously the presence of Ivan Eileen in modern Russian politics is almost completely ignored in the West in many of the translations of Putin's recent speech many even just cut out the mention of Ivan Elin I guess many in the west do this because they see citations in politics not worthy of translation but this is a huge mistake evaneline evidently is one of the core influences in Putin's understanding of Russia of politics and of Putin's political beliefs to understand what the ideology of the Putin regime is one has to understand and confront Ivan Elin so who was Ivan Elaine and what were his political theories about I will try to explain in two segments first a short summary of His Life Second a short summary of his work if aniline was born into an aristocratic Russian family in his early years he was a Russian reformer who mingled with socialist and liberal reformist groups Elaine studied law and his early work was about abolishing something called Russian lawlessness and instead establishing a new rule of law what is this Russian lawlessness I made an entire video on this which I will link in the description to summarize a legacy of Mongol rule over Russia was the creation of an absolutist Russian State institution that lacked rule of law it separated Russia from political developments happening in Europe and instead set it onto a different path that strengthened authoritarian rule as a result rule of law meaning law as a standard that applies equally to all and law as a mechanism to hold rulers accountable never existed in Russia law was always just a cudgel used by rulers to enforce their will and if you were wealthy or powerful enough you would always stand above the law this has historically been true throughout the entirety of Russian history since the 1400s many Russian intellectuals have over the centuries debated this Legacy the novelist Dostoyevsky despised the west and declared Russia's difference from it to be a mark of cultural superiority which he called the Russian soul in contrast many Russian reformists like dugenev began despising what they also called Russian backwardness conservatives who argued in defense of this Russian backwardsness or Russian lawlessness eventually became known as eurasianists there are many words for it Russian lawlessness Russian backwardsness or the Tata yoke I prefer using the term Russian lawlessness and will continue using it throughout the rest of this video Eline was in his student he is a Critic of Russian lawlessness but as the first world war rolled in he took a dramatic shift in his political beliefs he had studied Kegel in Germany and became a right-wing political theorist ivaniline from there went on to become one of the founding fathers and founding theorists of a completely new political ideology of the 20th century fascism Ivan ilene's fascism is often called Christian fascism because of its religious overtones after the Russian Revolution Eileen was arrested by the communist secret police the Checker but not executed the reason for this is that Lenin admired parts of eline's work specifically its anti-western aspects Lenin therefore personally intervened and instead of Eline being shot he was exiled and deported to Germany you have to keep in mind that this was decades before the second world war and years before fascism became a major political force Lenin famously claimed that fascism was the last stage of capitalism which some marxists to this day like to repeat as if it were some sort of Genius insight into the machinations of history but instead it was really just an expression of Len authoritarian cynicism fascism to him was just useful in ending Western liberal capitalism so it served his purpose better to deport a Russian fascist to the west where that fascist can help amplify the supposed decline of capitalism evaneline spent some years in German Exile and eventually moved to Switzerland here he continued writing and expanding on his fascist theories as well as commenting on current events he believed that Russia was a uniquely innocent nation of God which was destined to carry forth and fulfill the promise of fascism that eventually a fascist Uprising would overthrow the Communists and redeem Russia's innocence when fascism came to power in Italy first Ivan Eline dismayed at this but never gave up the hope that fascism would eventually come to Russia where the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union evaneline wrote In Praise of the Nazi invasion he believed that the Nazis would dislodge the Communists and help fascism rise to hour in Russia where the Nazis started losing the war ivanolin did a 180 degree turn on his previous comments and began praising the Soviet victories over the Nazis claiming that those victories were actually not communist victories but Russian victories and that the Russian Victory over the Nazis would prove that Russia was still an innocent and morally Superior nation of God after the end of World War II evaneline continued writing and advocating for fascism in his Swiss Exile he believed that communist rule of Russia would eventually collapse and that a fascist state must replace whatever comes afterward to preserve a Russian Empire the books Ilene wrote in Exile were intended as guidelines for the leaders of a post-communist Russia to build that state after Eline died He was largely forgotten his writings were banned in the Soviet Union anyway and in the west he was widely seen as some obscure far right lunatic but Eileen emerged after the Soviet collapse and his books became very popular during the Yeltsin years and as you saw became popular among the Russian leadership so with the biography out of the way what did Eline write elin's fascism is often called Christian fascism because its foundation is a reinterpretation of Christianity Eline wrote that politics began with God's creation through creating mankind God destroyed the singular truth that was God through this he doomed Humanity through the creation of rationality factuality desires and passions which people may pursue but are unable to gain from them a restoration of the soul and only good that is God elin's theology if one can even call it that breaks with conventional Christian but also abrahamic theology proclaiming that God's creation was essentially a mistake Elaine basically claimed that God was fallible and you will not find that in any conventional abrahamic religion in the abrahamic religious tradition God is almost always universally seen as infallible Eline wrote that it was the duty of mankind to restore God's truth for Christian Fascism and that the country destined to undertake this task is Russia this is because of the previously mentioned concept of Russian backwardness Eline wrote that Russian backwardness or Russian lawlessness was in fact a blessing things like rule of law or state accountability when fact rationalities and passions that drove people away from God there were symptoms of a western degeneracy and through not having these modern political Concepts as part of their society Russia was in fact a blessed and fundamentally innocent Nation the nation that was closest to God so to summarize elim believed that Russian lawlessness was in fact a blessing the concept of an Eternal Russian innocence is also a core element of elin's writings Russia for being blessed by God was an internally innocent Nation no crimes and no wrong could ever be committed in the name of Russia because Russia is the nation of God it is the duty of all Russians to never question Russia or its leader and to unconditionally worship Russia flaws are in fact positives and all that Russia does must always be an act of righteousness as elene said and Putin recently quoted if I consider Russia my motherland that means that I love as a Russian contemplate and think sing and speak as a Russian that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people its spirit is my spirit its Destiny is my destiny its suffering is my grief and its Prosperity is my joy because of this the Communist Revolution was not a Russian evil Elaine wrote that communism was merely the ultimate expression of Western degeneracy that Russia still remained innocent and that Western Jews and Communists had deliberately targeted Russia in an attempt to destroy its innocence this message by the way is reflected in that 2017 Netflix series about Trotsky the Soviet victory over German Nazism was ultimately evidence of a superior Russian spirituality and Russia would be destined to resurrect From the Ashes of Communism for an act of righteous Mass violence that would destroy the west and restore the order of God Mass violence and Lawless violence also play a prominent role in ilene's writings Elin saw violence when committed in the name of Russia as the ultimate good an act of sacred Redemption that would restore the order of God lawlessness in the lean's view was a necessary precondition to enable this excess of sacred violence Eline also always put any mention of ukrainians Georgians and other nationalities of the Russian Empire into quotes this is because he believed that these were only sub-nationalities or parts without any true difference to the larger Russian body National he called them a fraternal people in God and any mentioning of Ukraine as a separate National or cultural construct or identity that could act independently of Russia was to be seen as treason against Russia and severely punished Eline also advocated for inequality he wrote that the middle classes were the most lowly of all social classes that is because the middle classes where symbol of social mobility and in the one true Godly order of good a society should not have any social Mobility the middle class is ought to be trampled upon eradicated and destroyed the ideal city of a society was one with no aspirations for social advancement in class or identity but a vast mass of uneducated peasants obedient to the leader of Russia inequality was God's will attempts to escape one's social status where Rebellion against God and therefore Society must be a static and ossified as possible the economy must be owned by a small oligarchy not for the purpose of innovation or economic advancement but because a small oligarchy would be easy to control by the leader and could therefore make the economy available to serve the leader in all ways the destruction of the middle class is also intended to annihilate the idea of any and all political participation Elaine believed that politics ought to be destroyed for God's divine order to be restored history must be ended there were to be no political parties no Parliament no political organizations instead there should be annual elections but with no secret ballot publicly with only the option of voting for the leader of Russia in many ways this ceremony would have been intended as a mockery of Elections as carried out in Democratic societies through the elections being neither open fair or in service of any political purpose the participants essentially surrender their rights to political participation and renew that surrender annually through this ritual Eline obsessed over the idea of a Russian Redeemer especially after the Communist takeover of Russia he prophesies that eventually From the Ashes of communism a great and powerful Russian man would emerge this man would be masculine powerful dedicated to God and in the words of Eline the living organ of Russia and the instrument of its self-redemption the great Russian leader would direct the sexual desires and passions as well as the false rationalities of the Russian population through his Persona and thereby cleanse Russia of sin he would destroy rationality and factuality restrain the passions of the Russian people and banish the corruption of ideas and politics it will be this great Russian Leader's Destiny to go to war against the West to end its corruption and redeem it through Bloodshed and sacred violence thereby the great Russian leader will end history itself through the restoration of God's totality outline of what illene believed and considering how often Putin's side Celine it can give you an idea of how the current Russian regime views itself from the destruction of the middle class the establishment of an oligarchy the belligerent militarism the denial of cultural and National identities outside of those of Russian and the destruction of politics with its degradation to a ritual of self-humilation we find ilene's writings reflected in many aspects of the Putin regime I would argue the most important purpose Elin served for the Putin regime however is the concept of Eternal Russian innocence all authoritarian movements are built on a claim of their own innocence they are good cannot do wrong and must always be an outsider who is the enemy self-reflection is always rejected you can observe this in all authoritarians regimes or browse far left or far-right social media and watch them constantly blame outside forces for everything Putin's Russia faced a problem in constructing its myth of national innocence its communist historical Legacy when communism died Russia could have honestly confronted that history examine it through a process of self-reflection and build a better historical understanding of themselves from there instead Eline provided an excuse to continue a myth of a national innocence that rejected any and all self-reflection when Eline was reburied in Russia the presiding Orthodox priest called him a checkist in the name of God that statement is an absurdity the Checker which was the Communist secret police was an utterly ruthless and cruel organization particularly in its persecution of the religious but the point here is not grounded in any sort of political or historical realities the point here was to marry the new authoritarian rule of the right with the historical Legacy of an authoritarian left to make the Communist heritage part and parcel of the new authoritarian right-wing State and to avoid any serious self-reflection as absurd and utterly confusing as modern Russia with its state propaganda that combines religious tsarist communist and fascist symbols can be it serves a purpose of casting Russia as an innocent Nation at its core where none of these are in any way contradictory evaneline is the most important political theorist shaping the ideological underpinning of the modern Russian state of Vladimir Putin but there are other political theorists who have influenced over the politics of the modern Russian regime after Ivan Elin one of the most important among them would believe gumilev Lev kumilev was a Soviet intellectual who wrote during the second half of the 20th century he attempted to explain the presence of Communism in the Eastern Bloc as opposed to the west through the means of geography climatology anthropology and weird astrology when the Communists took over Russia they faced the problem of the Tata yolk or Russian backwardsness which I prefer to call Russian lawlessness they initially saw themselves as tasked with overcoming it but they failed at that task so instead of confronting its legacies and institutions the Soviets came up with a different idea the crafting of a new Narrative of political history we are no longer the backward ones we may have once been backward but now in fact you in the west are the backward ones and through the guidance of Marxism we have leapfrogen ahead of you and we will eventually guide you into that progress Lev gumilev was one of the Soviet intellectuals tasked with creating narratives of history that could explain and underpin this idea his political Innovation was to Rebrand eurasianism a traditionally right-wing position as part of the Marxist political Canon he described the separation of east and west as a phenomenon created by geography climate astrology Mongols and Jewish conspiracies he claimed that by having access to the world's oceans the peoples of the West be they British Scandinavian Dutch French Iberian or American had lost their societal and cultural connection to land rather than working their lands as peasants they had become peoples of the sea through traveling the oceans and trade they thereby surrendered their deep rooted traditions and cultures that tied them to land in favor of capitalism and the politics of individuality and selfishness Russians meanwhile through remaining landlocked were people of the soil for never developing a merchant class in bourgeoisie or an industrial proletariat the Russians remained a nation of peasants a people who worked their lands and were also bound to them gumilev claimed that through being forbidden to ever leave these peasants developed a communal culture that tied them deeper and more consciously to their Land by these means they were never corrupted by capitalist ideas that had corrupted the west and remained a people deeply tied through their labor and communities to the soil they lived on it has to be pointed out that gumilev and his writings are anti-semitic and are an expression of the often ignored Marxist anti-Semitism he described the Jews as an inherently landless people who through having no conception of a connection in Tradition and culture to land or soil nor an idea of tradition of manual labor in agriculture on land or soil developed an inherently parasitic culture and politics of feeding off and manipulating other peoples gumilev claimed that the Jews had manipulated the Mongols into conquering and oppressing the Slavic peoples so that the Jews could then parasitically feed off the Slavic peasantry as tax collectors and Merchants of monopolies such as in alcohol it should be pointed out if it wasn't obvious is enough already that this is completely false a historical nonsense in part disclaimed by gumilev draws on the anti-semitic publication on the Jewish question by Karl Marx which describes Judaism as a religion that merely provides some spiritual wishy-washy justification to what is actually a material practice by the Jews of being money hoarders and schemas it is in fact often forgotten today that Marx reinforced the anti-semitic stereotype of the Jews as money holders and manipulators from the perspective of Soviet Marxist Scholars Jews were a group of people who had developed a distinctive cultural and ethnic Consciousness that made it difficult for Jews to develop a class Consciousness because of this Jews were categorized in the Soviet Union as a special nationality group and were often surveilled and treated with suspicion across communist countries the Communists believed that they had to break a Jewish ethnic Consciousness to replace it with a glass Consciousness you can see this attitude towards Jews as inherently part yet apart reflected in modern Russia to this day where Jews are often described and shown as both part of society but also different and separate from society it is also reflected among a certain type of modern Marxist in our day and age who believe they have the authority to select and categorize Jews as either good Jews with class Consciousness and bad Jews who want to preserve and Define a Jewish cultural identity this anti-semitic idea of gumilev is very much in line with these Notions and was very popular in Soviet Russia you will find for example that social needsin evoked this idea in his own writings about Russian Jews gumilev also based much of his ideas on interpretations of geography he used meteorological statistics and temperature measurements to draw a line straight across Europe that conveniently went straight through the border of Western and East Germany and claimed that because of the colder temperatures east of that line Siberia began in Germany east of that line he claimed Winters were colder peasants had to work harder agriculture was more widespread therefore peasant culture prevailed storage economies were more necessary and because of these supposedly Geographic factors these places had an easier start into communism while those living to the west of this line had more comfortable lives richer harvests access to the Seas and therefore stagnated into capitalism this is also nonsense famines were widespread and regular all across Europe before the Colombian Exchange brought potatoes Maize and corn but also if you look at European metrological data you will realize that by the standards of gumilev you can pretty much draw the borders of his imagined Siberia everywhere you can just as well declare Norway Iceland and Switzerland to be part of Siberia by his imagined Geographic standards gumilev's final contribution to the rebranding of eurasianism didn't come from ripping measurements out of any scientific field like geography but from a weird esoteric writings about astrology he claimed that the success or failure of a civilization depended on cosmic energy emitted from the Sun that once every few centuries the sun emitted a burst of energy that would hit Earth and energize a people into greatness the cosmic rays that had invigorated European civilization happened long ago during the Roman age Europe's cosmic energy was therefore decaying and spent the West was therefore a dying civilization that had run out of cosmic energy but the Russians had not received but inherited the cosmic rays and energy of the Mongols for being conquered and mixed with the Mongols therefore the Russians were the youngest and most cosmically energetic of all civilizations and it was with this Cosmic Mongol energy that the Russians will carry communism into the world as the historian Timothy Snyder described his summarized theories gumilev believed that it was Russia's Destiny as a civilization to conquer the west and turn it into Mongolia if you ever heard marxists ramble about Eurasian civilization or the Mongolian civilizational mission of Marxism as mad as these ramblings may sound they are based on actual political theories written by a Marxist finker namely levkovilev gumilev's rebranding of eurasianism made it part of the Soviet Marxist Canon it is the reason why you find eurasianism advocated in some Marxist Corners to this day in particular those circles that still adhere to Soviet communism the Russian lawlessness was rebranded as a Russian progress or as a means by which Russia was uniquely able in the world to advance communism by overcoming others as a result you still have marxists today who argue in defense of Russia under the Putin regime even though it has little to do with Marx's Doctrine anymore gumilev provided Marxist with a rebranded enlightened nationalism of sorts the idea of Russia's unique positioning through history as the vessel of a civilizational mission in destroying Western capitalism formulated by Lev gumilev plays the central role in this phenomenon gumilev's eurasianism remains popular in Russia to this day he is widely commemorated and celebrated by the Putin regime Putin has stated that he believes in gumilev's theories and that gumilev's writings are the foundation of how he views geopolitics gumilev's eurasianism is Putin's eurasianism minus the Marxism in internal politics how he views the role of State Society politics and Russia's role Putin still relies heavily on Evangeline but on foreign policy and what Russia's role in the world ought to be gumilev plays a significant role in some ways Putin combines the ideas of a fascist and a Marxist political theorist in his regime's politics there's a final influential thinker whose influence can be seen in modern Russia specifically in its preservation of lawlessness this one however isn't Russian but German Karl Schmidt Karl Schmidt was a Nazi law professor became the chief legal theorist of the Nazi German State he provided the legal justification and framework for Hitler's seizure of absolute dictatorial Powers was instrumental in creating the legal framework and theories of the Nazi State and after the second world war Schmidt remained an unrepentant Nazi a committed fascist and vicious anti-semite this barred him from any work in Germany so he direct as a law professor at a university in Francais Spain way formulated more theories Carl Schmidt's influence specifically the influence of his writings is far more widespread than many first assume two historians who study law or legal history Karl Schmidt is sort of an unwelcome ghost of sorts we're kind of potent of Doom his writings always creep up and appear among politicians when something really bad is about to happen the most infamous example is that Karl Schmidt's legal theories can be found in the Constitution that Pinochet forced on Chile karlschmidt's theories in geopolitics can also be found reflected and discussed in the school of international relations called realism not just popular in the far right his theories have also been repeated and used in the far left you will for example find the influence of Karl Schmidt's work in the writings of Michelle Foucault his legal theories are also frequently discussed as a negative example to criticize Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal Kissinger's foreign policy in South America and East Asia and the warn Terror Kyle Schmidt's most influential body of work as a political and legal theorist attacks against parliamentary democracy liberal democracy a liberal World Order popular sovereignty and constitutional rule of law among these is his State theory of the state of emergency during the chaos of the Weimar Republic Schmidt proclaimed that rule of law was an unfit construct to provide security in times of Crisis and therefore fostered insecurity therefore it was an unfit construct to govern a society in general the liberal order of a state through rule of law and accountability is according to him too weak to preserve a sovereign and permanent social order because politics to Schmidt is nothing more than struggles over power he invented the legal concept of a state of emergency which you all are probably familiar with but he expanded it from being a temporary State of Affairs into being the permanent status quo of a state he declared that sovereignty can only be achieved through ignoring law and the destruction of rule of law by a leader that a political leader to secure the state must Place themselves Above the Law act without the constraints of Law and be be Unshackled from any accountability to law to guarantee true sovereignty of the state the leader must be placed in a state of exception in the words of Schmidt sovereignty is defined by he who decides the exceptions the state ought to become a permanent state of emergency so that the leader can secure the state for having absolute power rather than Society succumbing to endless struggles overpower Schmidt's writings are known to have been read and appealed to many Russian political leaders of the 1990s who saw the state of Russia during the chaos of the Yeltsin era reflected in the chaos of Weimar Germany Schmidt's writings about the solutions to the chaos of Weimar were seen and interpreted in Russia as solutions to the chaos of Yeltsin Eline may have provided a spiritual and philosophical justification for a leader to emerge with absolute Powers within a fascist State Carl Schmidt provides a legal and political justification for a fascist leader Above the Law and in preservation of Russia's lawlessness to ensure the very existence of Russia as a sovereign entity it is very much of note how Elaine and Schmidt both of them were pioneer years of fascism came to a very similar conclusion on Law and both embraced lawlessness and the destruction of the rule of law but ultimately it is also not surprising from Mussolini's march on Rome to the violence of brown shirt Nazi street gangs fascism ultimately is a movement of violent lawlessness might is what makes right the will to exercise power is what matters and the restraints on power dictated by the liberal state are something to be destroyed so that the fascist can exercise power without restraint as a different Nazi legal theorist Hitler's personal lawyer Hans Frank once said law is whatever serves the race Eline viewed lawlessness almost like a religious blessing Schmidt provided a secular justification for it he was in some sense the lawyer who abolished law for political thinkers with an interest in unrestrained power or those who wish to overcome restraints and power or obsess over the Dynamics of power Karl Schmidt always had a very seductive appeal for those who see their society as threatened and believe an act of lawlessness and unrestrained power can save them Schmidt has the greatest of appeals Russia must have an absolute leader Above the Law because Russia is under threat from outside and therefore Russia must have the absolute leader Above the Law or it will be demolished and ceased to exist as a sovereign entity the dear leader Above the Law not only exists in elin's Divine Mission from God but with Schmidt's theories the leader Above the Law also exists to ensure that Russia can continue to exist despite its enemies the sense of outset threat and outside enemies also plays a key role in the writings of Carl Schmidt's political ideas he believed that all politics must always begin and be defined for identifying the enemy of the group this is a direct attack on the liberal Democratic order which advocates for governance for change in leadership popular sovereignty consensus and compromise there can be no such thing as compromise in Schmidt's politics Society is in a constant struggle for power between groups and for the body National to be preserved it must identify the enemy group besides serving the purpose of securing the state from any and all threats the identifying and pursuit of an enemy also provides a foundation of common unity in struggle to the group that makes up the body National politics must be understood as War there are no people who you can have disagreements with those who you have disagreements with are in fact your enemies the enemy can only ever be an outsider and you must rally your group against the enemy finally there are also his theories on geopolitics Karl Schmidt saw the modern world as divided into spheres of influence these spheres of influence which he called great spheres are geopolitically dominated by a great power that dominates over the geographic landscape of that great sphere the West mainly through the conquest and colonization of the Americas managed to create the first true International order in which the Western concept of the nation-state became the predominant Global Order but the system of nation states did not replace the system of great powers and great spheres great power still continue to determine the political outcomes and course of the smaller nation states within their own great sphere the politics and ideologies of these spheres are therefore Irrelevant in terms that the smaller nation-states do not get to pick them if a great sphere adheres to a certain ideology it is because that great sphere has a a great power with that ideology Schmidt believed Eurasia was a great sphere with the great power of Russia and Russia as a communist state therefore gets to decide the politics and ideology of everyone in that great sphere be it Poland Belarus Ukraine Finland Kazakhstan all the Baltic states what the rulers of Warsaw Kiev talin or Helsinki want or were the peoples of their countries want is irrelevant because it must be decided or bowed to the whims and demands of the great power of that sphere so in the end Moscow gets to decide for all of them Karl Schmidt's writings on spheres of influence and great Powers were not a defense of the Communist Soviet Union he was after all an unrepentant Nazi right up to his death in the 1980s no his theory on geopolitics was an attack on the liberal West liberal democracy and the idea of liberal universalism because at its core this idea by Karl Schmidt attacked the idea of there being a universal Humanity a core component of the liberal framework specifically he attacked the idea of there being an international law which he described as little more than a thin veneer to disguise American imperialism there cannot be a rules-based World Order let alone one based on liberal values because there are no rules only geopolitical Power and the exercising of that power for great powers and the global game of power dynamics the liberal West cannot apply its values universally because this would lead to direct confrontation and war with those great Powers who do not share its values the liberal state must therefore compromise and accept that its values do not apply to all and thereby surrender its liberal core claim to universality of values and thereby expose itself as a lie according to Karl Schmidt geopolitics and the politics of great Powers will ultimately destroy the liberal West by forcing it into positions of hypocrisy the more the liberal West will concede to other great Powers the more its own political foundations of rule of law will be undermined and eroded by being increasingly exposed as worthless hypocrisy on the international stage will lead to hypocrisy on the domestic stage which will erode the foundation of domestic politics to defeat the west and its liberal order the West must surrender to the whims of anti-democratic great Powers within what Schmidt saw as their spheres of influence it is not difficult to see how this Theory falls on very open ears in the Kremlin it is not difficult to see how it appeals to both the anti-democratic left and the anti-democratic right with this theory in mind and knowing that this is how those who rule Russia see the world one can understand why Putin went through so much effort to ensure that Assad would step over Obama's Infamous Red Line the universal claim of a common humanity and rules-based order was surrendered in Syria and forced to not apply to syrians in opposition to the rich machine of Basha al-assad if the Democratic Ambitions of the Ukrainian people can also be crushed under a Russian boot then not only does this mean that Ukraine must subordinate to the rules of assyrizam power game in which it is merely a chess piece played by the great power for Russia no it also means that the idealism of the West is at its core lie and must be surrendered to rules of a game of power between great powers in which nothing but the exercise of power matters to Schmidt an international set of rules where an idea of universal human rights and laws are little more than a disguise of American imperialism of power politics with the intention of destroying the sovereignty of other great powers to Schmidt both in internal politics and in international politics all that matters is the Dynamics and exercising of raw power these are the three main political theorists who influenced Putin's vision for Russia what secures to me is that much of this was very much in the open as mentioned before Putin was never quiet about his admiration of Ivan Elin I'm also pretty sure that some of those in the audience who have read the books of Alexander Dugan had their Jewels drop a few times let me explain to you and all those who have not read Dugan's books close to nothing that Dugan wrote is original almost everything in durian's books is just ripped from evaneline Lev gumilev and Karl Schmidt in particular from Karl Schmidt there's not a single original fought or political theory in anything that Dugan has ever written he basically just summarizes political theorists that have influence over modern Russian politics and tries to Market these ideas as his own Dugan's role in Russia is vastly overestimated in the west he is not the Kremlin Whisperer as some may say Putin cites Elin and not Dugan Dugan is merely a sort of brand manager and marketer something Russians call a police technologists I like to think of Dugan as more of a useful bigot his English translator was the wife of the American fascist Richard Spencer and Dugan has ties to various European fascist circles from the late French Romanian fascist pavileshku who was one of the founding thinkers behind generation identity to the Canadian fascist Lauren Southern to many others I believe the reason he is prominent in the west is because the Russian regime would like him to be prominent in the west as a Salesman of the ideas behind Russia's new fascism in Russia itself Dugan only has a minuscule political role if any at all which is why rather than calling him the Kremlin Whisperer I prefer calling him the kremlin's useful bigot there's a final note I wish to give on all of this the most baffling thing about all of this to me is how widely unnoticed it went the Trotsky series from 2017 is something that really cashes my attention and I'll get into why this series is an overt piece of fascist Cinema there is absolutely no doubt about this it depicts the Russian Revolution as inherently Jewish it depicts the Jew through the figure of Trotsky as the grand schema and Shady manipulator of Lenin the revolution is driven and manipulated from the Shadows by the Jew Trotsky the Jew Trotsky is responsible for the violence and Terror of the Revolution and the Jew Trotsky creates Stalin as a sort of Golem to help him in his Shady schemes and acts of violence the Jew Trotsky then loses control over his terrifying creation the Russian Revolution is presented here as that time that the Jews were in charge of Russia as a sort of Jewish mistake and presented it is something Russia had to redeem itself from it also presents the idea and notion that communism was a sort of Western degenerate idea that infected Russia which was promoted and driven primarily by the schemes of Jews and don't forget that this entire Narrative of this film is told and presented from the imagined perspective of the fascist political theorist Ivan Eline you really can't get more in your face fascists than that this is fascist Cinema it belongs into the same category as the Goebbels film yutsus and the KKK movie Birth of a Nation the reason this series stands out to me so much in all of the contexts that we just discussed is because we live in a time in which a post-modern cultural politics is very popular the study of fascism through its history and its political theorists is widely discarded I bet you most self-declared anti-fascists watching this video have in fact never even heard of evaneline or Karl Schmidt instead politics is increasingly understood as a process driven by art and culture and therefore the study of movies and fiction of artistic narratives and the supposed hidden political meanings of them is emphasized the study of politics has increasingly been surrendered to pop culture critics literary critics and artists from Umberto ecker's famous list tuslava zizek's interpretations of films to also a countless series of essayists that you will also find here on YouTube throughout all of them people will tell you how to recognize a fascist based on a set of Aesthetics or pop culture phenomena rather than based on the interpretation of any real political Theory text or practice and it is almost funny to me how you have this almost massive industry of sorts of Pop Culture critics and essayists educated and specialized in art college in how to find the hidden political meanings and the hidden fascisms within modern pop culture and yet not a single one of them recognized piece of overt fascist Cinema made in our time they universally failed at the one thing that they claimed to be their purpose of existing the only people you will find who recognize this series for the piece of fascist Cinema that it is are people whose background lies in history and political science in particular the historian Timothy Snyder has been sounding the alarm bells for years on the Sinister implications of Putin's obsession with evaneline and was one of the few people who recognized this series for the piece of fascist Cinema that it actually is so one takeaway when it comes to the study of politics and history is that maybe we should listen more to actual historians and political scientists rather than just pop culture critics I would however also blame a willful widespread ignorance especially where I live in Europe cultural politics may be more of an American problem but it cannot be denied that many European Advocates of liberal democracy were in a state of self-denial over the direction that Russia was heading into European in particular Western European policy towards Russia was dominated by assumptions of an inevitable democratization of Russia all the Putin regime did where just criminal excesses that would fade away with the eventual demise of Putin in a decade or so whatever nonsense he spewed was irrelevant because the neoliberal economics of shared trade would generate Prosperity a middle class and consequently democracy in Russia anyway this was probably one of the most demonstrably stupid foreign policy approaches in recent history I am certain that a few years from now Schroeders and merkel's approach to Russia will be remembered in the same way as Chamberlain's appeasement approach to Hitler and his notorious piece of our time it is almost a symbol of an enormous problem in modern European foreign policy we Europeans like to arrogantly point at the Americans as supposed enablers of foreign dictatorships and go very silent when we are asked how French Mirage fighter jets ended up in the hands of Saddam Hussein and apartheid South Africa where they were used to bomb Kurds and angolan Villages how Pinochet used helicopters that he bought from Germany to murder dissidents ordered throughout the 2000s Italy sold billions of modern weapon systems for tanks to the Syrian Assad regime where they were used against the Syrian people or that the French when actually just about to sell an amphibious assault ship to Russia right after 2014 the majority of my subscribers and audience are European and I really want to hammer this point in especially to you our foreign policy towards dictatorships especially in Western Europe is dangerous and hypocritical we have a long tradition of stupid European foreign policy regarding this capitalism and Market integration are not some magical potion that will create Democratic institutions out of thin air especially if you sell weapons to dictators the German practice of buying Russian hydrocarbons in fact Amplified the increasing Russian wealth inequality and consequent degrading of the last remaining Democratic institutions of Russia there's this funny incident from a few years ago which I believe is very symbolic of Western Europe's and in particularly Germany's mistaken assumptions on Russia that was when the Russian foreign minister lavrov visited Germany gave a speech at some Gathering and in that speech said that the German reunification of Western East Germany was actually illegal and should not have happened everyone in the audience started laughing yeah what a funny joke Stefani Russian man but barely anyone noticed that lavrov was not laughing he was being serious this is what his government actually believes and when someone tells you who they are it is best for you to listen rather than arrogantly presume the right to interpret who they are for them because if you do that in the end you will only lie to yourself and this is a very valuable lesson that I hope we now learn as a result of recent events a Russian friend of mine who really wanted me to make this video and sent me screencaps of elene and her University textbooks insisted that I should not give her a shout out but asked me instead to promote her favorite LGBT charity that helps gay lesbian and trans Russians who as you can probably guess live rather difficult lives in Russia you will find a link to it in the description if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like it and share it you can support my channel through patreon Channel membership or a donation and I hope to see you soon again

Channel: Kraut

Views: 1,547,443

Keywords: Kraut, Countryball, Polandball, Documentary, History, Russia, Putin, Ideology, Mafia, State, Fascism, Nazi, Communist, Marxist, Ivan Ilyin, Lev Gumilev, Carl Schmidt, Post modernism, liberal, state, law, rule of law, lawlessness, Dictatorship

Id: sdFtqa54TuM

Length: 53min 47sec (3227 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022