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If I understand correctly, there's a fringe book from 2005 about uniting the world under a single religion led by the "Prince Monk." The article attempts to fra

by kgeist 2y ago

If I understand correctly, there's a fringe book from 2005 about uniting the world under a single religion led by the "Prince Monk." The article attempts to frame this as the official Kremlin playbook without giving any substantial evidence (other than "some ideas seem to be aligned with Kremlin's"). It also includes speculative filler about Xi Jinping, Trump and Musk, who weren't politically relevant when the book was written. The article, just like the book, reads like a piece of speculative fiction full of wishful thinking.

api 2y ago
I posted it because I found it interesting and it was new to me, but I'm skeptical of how influential this is too. This stuff is perhaps the Russian analogue of American think tank outputs like the old Project for the New American Century that received so much press back in the 2000s -- stuff that feeds into the thought processes of certain factions of the state apparatus. In the end the agenda is probably to make money for the oligarchs, much like the US. In any case if Russia did actually succeed in the first parts of this agenda the beneficiary would be China, which is vastly more powerful, and it would become a Chinese world with Russia as a vassal state. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy and less than half the size of California, its demographics are terrible, and its military is old junk. Who wants to bet on whether their nukes would actually work? Those things require upkeep. Of course on the flip side -- a formerly proud global superpower fallen on hard times is exactly the kind of place where delusional nonsense gets a foothold. You'll see it in the USA if we actually undergo a partial collapse. You'll see all kinds of crackpot insanity being taken seriously... more than you see now. "How did we get our first Scientologist president?" "Well, after the dollar collapsed..."
benterix 2y ago
The 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]').

by kgeist 2y ago

api 2y ago

I posted it because I found it interesting and it was new to me, but I'm skeptical of how influential this is too. This stuff is perhaps the Russian analogue of American think tank outputs like the old Project for the New American Century that received so much press back in the 2000s -- stuff that feeds into the thought processes of certain factions of the state apparatus. In the end the agenda is probably to make money for the oligarchs, much like the US. In any case if Russia did actually succeed in the first parts of this agenda the beneficiary would be China, which is vastly more powerful, and it would become a Chinese world with Russia as a vassal state. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy and less than half the size of California, its demographics are terrible, and its military is old junk. Who wants to bet on whether their nukes would actually work? Those things require upkeep. Of course on the flip side -- a formerly proud global superpower fallen on hard times is exactly the kind of place where delusional nonsense gets a foothold. You'll see it in the USA if we actually undergo a partial collapse. You'll see all kinds of crackpot insanity being taken seriously... more than you see now. "How did we get our first Scientologist president?" "Well, after the dollar collapsed..."

benterix 2y ago

The 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]').