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"Project Russia," Unknown in the West, Reveals Putin's Playbook
- bnetd 2y ago[flagged]
- ramesh31 2y ago>"Meanwhile, they say, voters behave like easily manipulated children and don’t have enough information, education, or domain expertise to weigh in on national leadership matters." You see in all of this stuff at the core is a resolute disdain and distrust of the average human individual, seeking to treat them as little more than obedient automata. Some things about fascism never change. >"Woah shit fellas Russian propaganda fake news shut them down immediately!" Typical run of the mill Russian whataboutism. Ah yes, things are not perfect, therefore we are just as bad as them!
- ossobuco 2y agoTypical run of the mill USAer mindset. Ah yes, we are "better" than them, so our problems don't really exist.
- ramesh31 2y ago>Typical run of the mill USAer mindset. Ah yes, we are "better" than them, so our problems don't really exist. No, we just have higher level problems to deal with. Running global trade, providing the reserve currency, generating nearly the entirety of high tech IP, outputting the vast overwhelming majority of culture and media, and continuing to provide the only real sustained economic growth in the entire developed world is a lot more complex and nuanced than LARPing as a 19th century imperial power bullying neighbors or submitting their citizenry to full obedience and worrying about grain imports. It requires more complex systems with greater levels of feedback and autonomy than any centrally commanded ideological fantasy regime could ever provide. The drawbacks of such a system are that they end up seeming messy and imperfect from the outside. But it's the only way such an organization can actually work in the modern world.
- ossobuco 2y agoOh glorious child of freedom, heir to the beacon of liberty and burger-fueled enlightenment! I kneel before your radiant stars and stripes, humbly begging your divine intervention in my lowly, uncivilized land. Please, O harbinger of freedom fries and democracy, rain your benevolent drones of cultural superiority upon us! Invade my country, shatter my outdated customs, and replace them with the gleaming perfection of Walmart aisles, NFL Sundays, and pumpkin spice lattes. I yearn to sing your anthems while sipping on a 64oz soda and binge-watching reboots of shows that ran better in the '90s. Let your Hollywood blockbusters teach me the true meaning of heroism, your fast food teach me the joys of high-fructose corn syrup, and your reality TV show me the deep complexity of human emotion. Oh merciful dispenser of freedom, take pity on my backwards existence. Supersede my wretched culture with your superior one—bless me with the gift of questionable foreign policy decisions and an uncanny ability to add cheese to everything. Only then can I ascend to the higher plane of existence that is AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM™. Please, I implore you, invade us swiftly and mercifully. Turn my humble homeland into a shining franchise of your illustrious nation, and I shall forever pledge allegiance to the flag, even as I drown in the sweet nectar of Diet Coke. Amen.
- benterix 2y agoHaving talked to Ukrainian refugees I strongly believe there's is some civilizational gap between certain countries in how they perceive systematic violence, especially killing people for resources. In Western civilization, there is no universal support for it. That's why when Bush prepared for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, he couldn't really count for a wide coalition (his infamous "you forgot Poland!") and there were the biggest anti-war protests in the history of modern Europe, with millions of people going out on the streets. We, Westerners, hate killing people - whether they are Arabs, Afghans, Vietnamese. As for Russians, I'm not so sure - it was enough to convince people that Ukrainians are Nazi and the killing started.
- api 2y agoWestern distaste for killing is a recent-ish phenomenon and is by no means universal. I don't think it would be that hard for us to go back to those days. Civilization can be a thin veneer.
- benterix 2y agoI disagree. After the two wars there is nobody who couldn't see that war is pure evil. That's why the initial project than later became the EU appeared - so that a war never appears in Europe again. If anything, today we hate it more than ever.
- mindslight 2y agoAnd when all of those people who remember the horrors of war, or at least heard first person accounts, have passed on?
- ossobuco 2y agoFacts simply disagree with you. The USA took part in (too) many bloody wars and invasions since WWII. After Iraq, one would have hoped Americans finally learnt the lesson, yet Biden was voted president, after backing the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lybia. Even Obama championed drone strikes around the world and supported Saudi Arabia's invasion of Yemen. If there's a lesson to be learned, it seems to constantly evade Americans' attempts to grasp it.
- paganel 2y ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoUh huh. It's people you don't like. Got it. Got anything to say about the content of the article? Do you think Russia is actually trying to do these things, or not? If they are, does it matter whether you like the people who are warning us about it? And if you don't think Russia is trying to do this, do you have any reason not to believe it, other than "I don't trust the author"?
- ceejayoz 2y agoThey're openly pro-Russia on here; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586470
- paganel 2y ago> Got anything to say about the content of the article? The medium (or mediator, as it happens) is the message, and I tried explaining who this mediator was. I can't take anything seriously coming from a guy who works for a Department of State blob agency. > And if you don't think Russia is trying to do this, do you have any reason not to believe it, other than "I don't trust the author"? My beliefs of what Russia may or may not do are in no way, form or shape influenced by what blob companies set up by the US Department of State might push forward, so I'm afraid I can't you help with that. If you want we can instead discuss about guys like (post-1950) George Kennan and similar, i.e. American thinkers who still dared have their own opinions about the Soviets (and, to be clear, I also think that Kennan was wrong on some stuff, but it was his right to be wrong as an independent thinker, unlike this guy Troy here).
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoReading this (and looking at the dates), it struck me that Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin) was a shill for Project Russia's narrative. The dates fit well, too.
- piva00 2y agoIt's quite bizarre, and a little scary, to start seeing how the threads of a fringe weirdo like Yarvin are starting to weave into the politics of the most powerful country on Earth. Yarvin -> Thiel + Musk -> JD Vance + Musk, they are basically getting their seat time on the throne, bringing Yarvin's deranged philosophy to it... What the actual fuck?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kgeist 2y agoIf I understand correctly, there's a fringe book from 2005 about uniting the world under a single religion led by the "Prince Monk." The article attempts to frame this as the official Kremlin playbook without giving any substantial evidence (other than "some ideas seem to be aligned with Kremlin's"). It also includes speculative filler about Xi Jinping, Trump and Musk, who weren't politically relevant when the book was written. The article, just like the book, reads like a piece of speculative fiction full of wishful thinking.
- api 2y agoI posted it because I found it interesting and it was new to me, but I'm skeptical of how influential this is too. This stuff is perhaps the Russian analogue of American think tank outputs like the old Project for the New American Century that received so much press back in the 2000s -- stuff that feeds into the thought processes of certain factions of the state apparatus. In the end the agenda is probably to make money for the oligarchs, much like the US. In any case if Russia did actually succeed in the first parts of this agenda the beneficiary would be China, which is vastly more powerful, and it would become a Chinese world with Russia as a vassal state. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy and less than half the size of California, its demographics are terrible, and its military is old junk. Who wants to bet on whether their nukes would actually work? Those things require upkeep. Of course on the flip side -- a formerly proud global superpower fallen on hard times is exactly the kind of place where delusional nonsense gets a foothold. You'll see it in the USA if we actually undergo a partial collapse. You'll see all kinds of crackpot insanity being taken seriously... more than you see now. "How did we get our first Scientologist president?" "Well, after the dollar collapsed..."
- benterix 2y agoThe key is the first sentence I suppose. But probably, all in, Dugin's book has been more influential, and here the influence is well-studied.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics Also, some aims from the book have already been achieved (like 'The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from the European Union.[9]').
- jacknews 2y agoA more likely influence is "The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia" by Alexandr Dugin.
- benterix 2y agoWhy is this flagged? I find this article quite interesting.
- api 2y agoHN doesn't like politics, which is not a totally bad thing. I figured it'd get flagged and killed but someone would find it interesting.
- myrmidon 2y agoProbably because this almost begs for accusations of shill-ing, worthless altercations via comments and generally degraded discussion. I had heard about the book before, but just found out that they printed 3 millions of them (which is a lot for whats probably mostly ideological drivel)... Distribution via semi-official channels is also concerning. This is generally an interesting datapoint. I used to believe that 2010s European policy (treating Russia as somewhat flawed democracy, and trying to positively influence via mutual trade) was generally a good idea that could've worked, but have realized that this was probably pretty doomed from the outset and almost negligiently naive from European leaders. 2014 was a wake-up call that Russian imperialism is alive and well, but it was conveniently ignored because Russian gas was such a nice pillar for EU electricity.
- slowmovintarget 2y agoBecause this is the "Russian Collusion!!!" nonsense all over again.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- tim333 2y ago>...“monarchy” at a global scale, where Putin is effectively “King of the World.” I can't see a lot of enthusiasm for that.