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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Boundless and Bottomless (Bonus): Putin Vs. Putin by Aleksandr Dugin with Donald Parkinson
Step into the complex world of geopolitics as we engage in a provocative dialogue with Donald Parkinson from the Marxist Unity Group and Cosmonaut Magazine. Ever wondered how Aleksandr Dugin's perspectives on Vladimir Putin shift when viewed from Russia's internal lens? Discover the nuances of his book "Putin vs. Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right," and how it provides clarity on Dugin's ideological leanings compared to his more globally recognized "Fourth Political Theory." We unpack the influences of far-right esoteric thinkers like Julius Evola on Dugin, his critical take on Putin and Medvedev, and the convoluted relationship he has with Nazi ideology, all while maintaining his Russian patriotism.
We then scrutinize Dugin's admiration for Putin's centralizing strategies as outlined in "The 12 Labors of Putin." Find out how Putin's efforts to stave off Russia's disintegration, particularly in the Caucasus, and his suppression of ethnic separatism align with Dugin’s vision. Our conversation spans from the federal structure of the Russian Federation to Putin's methods of curbing regional autonomy and disciplining oligarchs. We also delve into the intricate dance between Eurasianism and Islamism, and how Dugin selectively aligns with certain Islamist factions. This discussion paints a comprehensive picture of the ideological and geopolitical strategies at play within Russia.
Finally, we tackle broader geopolitical ideologies, juxtaposing right and left strands of Eurasianism with insights from thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer. We navigate the complexities of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the contentious "land back" movement, and the evolving nature of counter-systemic politics, including the rise of MAGA communism. Reflect with us on the future of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the critical need for a cohesive programmatic vision. This episode offers a treasure trove of insights into Dugin’s political theories and their far-reaching implications on global geopolitics. Don’t miss this thought-provoking conversation!
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Hello and welcome to Boundless and Bottomless Seas here on VarmVlog, and I am here with Darnold Parkinson of Marxist Unity Group Cosmonaut Magazine. What else are you doing these days? Democratic Left, a bunch of stuff.
Donald Parkinson:Yes, I'm on the editorial board of DSA's official publication, democratic Left, and I'm also, as you said, I'm involved in Cosmonaut and the Marxist unity group. But yeah, I also enjoy reading sketchy far-right philosophers and discussing them.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, so today, you know we're taking a break from my word-for-word almost slog through fourth political theory and we're not going as in-depth today, but we are talking about a book that I think is actually maybe even more clarifying to what Alexander Dugan is up to Right right, actually.
Donald Parkinson:well, yeah, I was going to say reading this, I was thinking this is actually probably a better introduction to Dugan than the fourth political theory book is, at least as someone who is not very familiar with his work. But as far as what I found more illuminating, I actually found this a bit more interesting and giving an idea of what Dugan's all about. And giving an idea of what Dugan's all about.
C. Derick Varn:Well, I think that fourth political theory is written for an external audience, it's written to win people over, whereas Putin versus Putin and the foundations of geopolitics are written for people who are already on board.
Donald Parkinson:Right right.
C. Derick Varn:And I guess this was written in 2012, so it is now well over a decade old.
Donald Parkinson:It is before the Ukraine war begins at all, before Maidan, before the Donbass separatists, and all that as well it's very interesting.
C. Derick Varn:I was actually thinking this Putin, when we get to the 12 labors of Putin. Yeah, I was actually thinking he's actually done a couple of 12 labors of putin, yeah, yeah, um, I was actually thinking that, like he's actually done a couple of the labors that dugan wanted him to do now, right, right, and I think this was actually written during mid mediev's term as president, when putin, yeah, the prime minister?
Donald Parkinson:yeah, and he's. He's very skeptical of medvedev. You know he kind of sees him as like a you know, a potential Western, you know Westernizer to balance out Putin's, what he sees as Putin's Eurasianism.
C. Derick Varn:So I'm just going to point out something in the title. The title is pulled Putin versus Putin is not it, but the subtitle Vladimir Putin viewed from the right. That is pulled from Julius Evola. So the two books that I'm thinking about that have that same title is what is it? Fascism?
Donald Parkinson:Viewed from the Right.
C. Derick Varn:And Hitlerism Viewed from the Right, or Nazism View for the right. Uh, there's two avola critiques of of mussolini and hitler. That um are red and right wing circles and this is one of you know. This is in that tradition explicitly. If you're um, if you know the kind of esoteric far right, then you know that, and if you don't, you probably missed that in the title.
Donald Parkinson:Right, yeah, that is the thing about Dugan. I think a lot of honestly some of his modern supporters at this point are kind of trying to de-emphasize the reality of his origin in kind of esoteric far-right circles of Soviet dissidents. Basically.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I mean people don't. I remember when someone was like, well, putin's, well, not Putin, well, dugan's an anti-fascist, and I'm like, okay, maybe in regards to Ukraine alone. Sometimes.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean, I think he's anti-Nazi. I think genuinely, because I think you kind of have to be anti-Nazi if you're a Russian patriot.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, because you know Hitler wanted to kill all the sloths.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it doesn't make. I mean, and that's the thing is like I feel like if you're, the Russian, nazis are actually more likely to like, probably be pro-West in a weird way, whereas like actual Russian patriots, I feel like you kind of have to hate the Nazis. You can be sympathetic to, you know, I think the German right, which I think Dugan is Like, he talks about Arthur von Mauerbrock and Spengler and Schmidt, even in very positive ways, but in the end I think you kind of have to hate Hitler and Nazism in the end if you're going to be like a russian patriot right, although I do think he he tries really, really hard to distance smith from the nazi party.
C. Derick Varn:In a way that's kind of dishonest. Yeah, um, uh, but that doesn't actually show that much up in this book. This book, uh, since it was clearly written for a russian audience, um, I think it's a lot more direct about what dugan believes than the other book that we're covering. And, um, and we can kind of I mean, there is some stuff in here of the one thing. I will say that for people who are not used to, if you don't know a lot about politics internal to, like, say, to Russia and the various factions within, like Putin's party, etc. The first little bit of this is probably going to be pretty alienating. You're going to get a long string of names that you probably know nothing about, um, and so I think that is probably why this book is not as well read um on the right, um, and, and yet I do think we do have to kind of cover it, um, because I, you know, I, like you, think this makes what he's actually up to a little bit clearer.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, and one thing I thought was really funny was like how much he like kind of like emphasizes his success and influence in russia. Yeah, well, I mean, he, he actually kind of says at one point that's like basically I've already won, it's just a matter of, like my ideology being implemented over time, like you know, he kind of like you know, because it's interesting you see people kind of downplay how influential dugan actually is.
Donald Parkinson:But um dugan himself is kind of just like yeah, actually he kind of plays into this like idea that he's like secretly, kind of like you know, behind the scenes pushing like politics in his direction in russia yeah, well, this is.
C. Derick Varn:This is a thing when I talked to to both russians and expatriates who lived in russia, I get the dugan doesn't matter, he's a laughingstock. Um, I have revised that to think that that might be somewhat true, but that Dugan's audience is not internal to Russia, that it's actually external to Russia, even though he's writing in Russian, because that outreach is a big thing for him. He's been in dialogue with Greca, the European new right group, for decades, the, the, the European new right group, for decades, and one of the interesting things that I've noticed about for political theory is that a lot of it's really like ideas that you get in the Alain Desmonois and people like that. This seems to be more his stuff. This is what he believes, yeah, but you know he's a he's a remarkably difficult man to pin down. I mean, like one thing I will say about this maddening about Dugan is, every time I listen to an interview with him, he changes his beliefs based on who he's talking to. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
Donald Parkinson:Well, yeah, that's I was going to say. And for political theory it's almost written for like a Western like kind of leftist theory cell audience in a way. I think Right, you know, you know I could cause it's. You know, compared to this book, it's more you can say like, for example, I was thinking in a four, political theory is writing, the stuff on gender is a bit more acceptable, I think, to a Western leftist line that, like lgbt and sexual minorities are kind of like uh, you know the ultimate, like um battering ram for liberals project to destroy humanity and whereas, like in you know you hear some of that in for political theory thing, but it's kind of like softened with, like it's almost like you know, queer theory sounding like talk about like how we're all genderless angels or whatever or something like that it is interesting how different this is.
C. Derick Varn:I actually was kind of thinking why did they translate this?
Donald Parkinson:It was translated by Arctos Press, which is a far-right publishing house that kind of just tries to translate European new-right literature and classics of the European far-right publishing house that kind of just tries to translate european new right literature and classics of the european far-right or you know, an english-speaking audience but that in that most of dugan's books I mean that's true for for political, yeah, yeah.
Donald Parkinson:So I think you know, you know this is. You know, this is basically dugan's fans trying to make more of his work like available to more far-rightist and in the english-speaking world basically right.
C. Derick Varn:So if, if you were, you know, if I was like dealing with I don't know, shabob duggan um and he went, he wouldn't give me this book. First he gave me fourth political theory, then maybe origins of geopolitics, and then, if they won me over, this is a book they give me right.
Donald Parkinson:Well, yeah, yeah, um, there's another one that's kind of like his eurasianist, it's his eurasian mission. I think I haven't read that one. But, um, and there's also, he has another one that it was kind of supposed to be like a popularization for americans, called like the new great awakening or something like that right, which was kind of a play off alex jones as well, I think he was like definitely kind of like trying to appeal to the alex jones audience well it's.
C. Derick Varn:It's one of the interesting things it you can. It's made so many forays into the alex jones and turkle carson world as well as explicitly to the left. I mean, he's been courting people like Caleb Marpin since probably 2013. It's not earlier and I don't feel like it's. You know, I've been somewhat cagey about that accusation in the past, but I feel like it's like come out now. It's not deniable that you know that Moppen and Haas and a lot of those people have met Dugan at this point.
Donald Parkinson:Oh yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely become a kind of tendency within Marxism-Leninism to see Dugan as a legitimate intellectual. That actually is compatible with Marxism-Leninism.
C. Derick Varn:That's kind of the line of the Maoist comments.
Donald Parkinson:I mean philosophically. It's so far removed from Marxism in a lot of ways.
C. Derick Varn:I guess one of the things that I should say is we're also going to talk about an essay by has called the rise of macro communism, and it's in its relationships to this book and forth Right, right.
Donald Parkinson:Cause we were both talking about this earlier and we were both like you know, this is just. This is so mega communist, like there's so much, so much of the MAGA communism tropes that have been kind of memed into existence by the infrared crowd and now increasingly the Midwestern Marx crowd are like oh, this is straight Duganism.
C. Derick Varn:Well, it's interesting who this was aimed to court. Because one thing I will say in the beginning of the aught teens I had this weird infiltration of one of my facebook groups by this group called american revolt. Um, revolt which was, uh, which was a duganist rebranding of american third position. Um, they were literally ex-neo-nazis who were pro the DPRK. They really like Yaki. So there was this explicit national Bolshevism. They seem to have moved away from that. But I mean, if you call them Magna Communist National Bolsheviks, they're like oh, you're just doing the liberal thing where the only eternal political position is fascismics. They're like, oh, you're just doing the liberal thing where the only eternal, uh, political position is fascism.
C. Derick Varn:And then you're like, yeah, but aren't you though?
Donald Parkinson:Well, yeah, that's it's like some of the defenses. Like you know, some of the people have attempted to make more intelligent defenses of MAGA communism as a slogan and not communism as a slogan and not not. This I actually do think like haas does actually have more of a coherent argument in this. I disagree with it completely, but there is something there to engage with intellectually. But some of the other people defending the use of the maga communism I kind of said, oh, it's more of a kind of a almost post-modern gesture to kind of disrupt like typical political thinking. It's a provocation. It's like, well, that's essentially what original, like Limanov national Bolshevism was not the Ernst-Nietzsche German national Bolshevism but like Limanov's whole idea of like taking the hammer and sickle but putting it on, like you know, a swastika style flag was essentially just like a provocation to disrupt the um, the way he looked at it was there's this political spectrum and liberalism is, like you know, taking over and it's all it's.
Donald Parkinson:It's it's a matter of no longer left or right, but with the system or against the system. And we're making this kind of provocation, this combination of like nationalism and bolshevism to like trade, the ultimate outside to a totalitarian liberalism. And this is a provocation to disrupt this false political spectrum that's being imposed on us, you know yeah, I mean, and the way it reminds me of yaki's fascist international are.
C. Derick Varn:I've been really thinking about this bizarre group that I remembered now from the early aughts called the national libertate, uh, the national socialistate, uh, the national socialist liberal. It was either the libertarian national socialist green party or the or the national socialist libertarian green party, which was another one of these like insane provocation groups.
C. Derick Varn:Um, it was like oh, we're beyond left and right and we're going to take that as far as we can. Let's just like, and I'm like oh, we're beyond left and right and we're going to take that as far as we can. It's just like and I'm like oh okay, right, yeah, I mean, it was a lot cruder than this. Yes, yes.
C. Derick Varn:But I do think it's interesting. But let's get into the book. I think we have to kind of focus on a little bit of the 12 labors of Putin and we can go from there little bit of the uh, the 12 labors of putin, and we can go from there and we'll we'll go back to mega communism's relationship, right?
Donald Parkinson:so yeah, let's get into the dugan itself.
C. Derick Varn:So yeah, so labor number one okay, even from the outset of his first term, putin accomplished, many uh accomplished labors worthy of hook hercules very concrete, but I do love dugan's penchant for, like, almost absurdist levels of hyperbole like it's it's hilarious. Um, I mean, this book was actually unlike for political theory, which is kind of a slog.
Donald Parkinson:This book is actually kind of fun to read because sometimes it's both deliberately and accidentally funny um yeah, um so there were multiple parts of this book where I just cracked up, I can't, I honestly like I. I just find dugan to be a very funny person. I know I might you know this is, you know, probably getting in trouble for saying this, but like I, just I just find it to be an incredibly funny person in a way that, like you know, I just it's kind of like zizek as well.
Donald Parkinson:I think I don't really like zizek's politics, obviously, but I think he's just an incredibly funny person. I like listening to him talk sometimes yeah, zizek is a.
C. Derick Varn:Jesus is one of these figures that I also like listen, I enjoy listening to, I enjoy making fun of. I actually don't know that he even understands. Yeah, yeah, um, because somehow it always feels like the status quo is what he's defending, but in the weirdest way fucking possible. Um, uh, but, nonetheless, um, anyway. So we have these, these 12 labors. Labor number one he prevented the disintegration of russia, uh, in the caucuses, built a bulwark against the wahhabi invasion of dagestan and repossessed two-thirds of chechnya.
Donald Parkinson:Yes, I'm gonna say this is a big emphasis in his book as well as how he really sees like um, this threat of separatism in chechnya as like an existential moment for Russia and like kind of why he sees Putin as like this, um, why he one of the reasons he likes Putin so much is how he reacted to it and how he like cracked down on any kind of ethnic separatism and like discipline of the national republics, and he's he's very good, he wants to get rid of any kind of national republics.
Donald Parkinson:And he'll say like we got to get rid of these national republics. We can have some kind of reparations and ethnic autonomy of some kind, whatever, but regardless we need to centralize everyone as much as possible. He really likes the centralizing aspects of Putin.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think that was really interesting. I mean it's been a long time since I've thought about Chesney and Dagestan until recently, dagestan coming back up because of its martial arts, but it is interesting how they were very worried about Saudi incursions into Dagestan. Yeah, it is also interesting because it reminds me of the there's an interesting relationship of of Eurasianism with Islamism, because they're okay with some Islamist groups and not others. Right, and that's, that's well, yeah, they don't like the Salafism.
Donald Parkinson:They don't like. I mean they like the Salafism, they don't like. They like the Islamist groups.
C. Derick Varn:They like Shia a lot.
Donald Parkinson:The ones that are aligned with Iran and they're okay with Hamas Because, of you know, they're kind of part of this Anti-globalist alliance Right.
C. Derick Varn:Also like Not to get too into. Like is like uh muslim world details, but like wahhabi salafism and al-qud salafism are very, very different. Yeah, so like, and they kind of compete in egypt and probably I don't know much about it competing in Palestine, but I suspect they probably do. There's that Okay. So library number two he cracked down on the parochialism fostered by the previous regime. I think he's here referring to Yeltsin. At first I was like, is he referring to the Soviet Union? But no, in his one Swiss movie cut the Federation Council down to size. It went from being a body of dissentant to a quietly obedient organization. He boxed the ears of the governors and and and booed the brash national separatist in the republics. I do think this book reminded me of how federalized the russian federation is. I think we forget that because we focus on, like Putin's power, but like there's a lot of of uh of internal republic and also like um oblast power in in the Russian Federation.
C. Derick Varn:Like I don't know that.
Donald Parkinson:But at the same time you know Dugan, like you know he just he wants the crack down on that as much as possible, absolutely, he wants a centralized as possible unitary executive. In the next one, labor no 3, he introduces federal districts to a military, he ties the administrative territorial structure of the Russian Federation to a military scheme which gave ample, albeit nominal, powers to civil servants who were not elected but appointed by Moscow, who were responsible first and foremost for national security. So you know, he's basically praising him for kind of establishing a more military chain of command style around.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, A military administrative state as opposed to the American Civil Service administration. It's basically what he's praising. Yeah, when I was going through these I was like, okay, let's remove the content of what Putin believes and just think about the structure. How would I feel about this if we did this in America? I'm like I don't know about that one.
Donald Parkinson:No, no, I mean, I think you, I think this kind of centralization is probably not good. I don't think I would be for this.
C. Derick Varn:He exiled two of the most notorious arch-narrows from Russia. I didn't know who he was talking about here. Did you know who?
Donald Parkinson:Baranovsky, how do you say his name?
C. Derick Varn:Baranovsky or no um baronovs? How do you say his name baronovsky or no um? I feel like I should have done the research to be able to um this one was hard because I feel like if I did all the research on this, I needed to learn fucking russian, so like um I think it was barzovsky might have been who he's thinking of.
Donald Parkinson:I might be butchering that name as well. That's the classic. Putin clamps down on the oligarchy. He doesn't get rid of the oligarchy, but he disciplines it to him, he disciplines it.
C. Derick Varn:The oligarchs there's still plenty of oligarchs in russia, but, unlike in other post-soviet spaces, they know that there's limits yeah, and they know there's a top dog that they have to answer to right um.
C. Derick Varn:Labor number five he gave a green light to the process. The uh, the common Commonwealth of Independent States, proclaimed the creation of a European economic community supported by the Eurasian idea in his Tasha speech, and the common economic space including the RF, belarus, ukraine and Kazakhstan. That, right there, the Ukraine part of that's going to become a problem. That is the basis of what you know from euromaidan forward, which leads to, um, you know the situation we're in today. Yeah, um, because ukraine didn't ever completely sign on to that. Ultimately, um, and and then, labor number six, he included the concept of the multipolar world in his national security policy for the Russian Federation, which practically means that Eurasianism has become legally recognized as the primary international strategy of Russia. Now, that's interesting.
C. Derick Varn:I mean one, multipolarity is not a concept that is inherent to Eurasianism, it's actually a concept from as I've pointed out, it's actually from british and american neo, uh, not neo-realism, political realism from hans morganthau and eh car yeah, yeah, morganthau right, um, and it was that a multipolar world would be more stable than a bipolar world, and what that was about was trying to peel off either Russia or China from each other into taunt and getting one of them to cooperate more with the West. To break the other Like that was the strategy there, and I do find it interesting that that's just not talked about like at all.
Donald Parkinson:Like you know, I think with dugan is he is basically looking to um he creates? This whole theory of multi-polarity is essentially about this idea that world history is defined by land powers versus sea powers yeah, the philocracy versus whatever I can.
Donald Parkinson:can't always remember what weird yeah and that essentially the sea powers, because they kind of have to spread out and expand. They have this they have an imperialistic tendency to take over other countries, whereas land powers are more rooted in the soil and the people and are basically integrating cultures into their over other countries, whereas land powers are more rooted in the soil and the people and are basically integrating cultures into their, like you know, civilizational space marxist version of this.
C. Derick Varn:Uh bordiga actually talks about it when he talks about uh aircraft carrier imperialism, where he yeah, no there is something to this.
Donald Parkinson:I think it's not entirely fantastical. I think you can incorporate geographical differences into historical materialism. But you know, dugin kind of takes it to the point where this is like the primary contradiction, to use Mao's speak, I guess where, because you know the end of the Soviet Union doesn't end Western hostility to Russia. He argues that there's something deeper than the conflict between capitalism and socialism or whatever, and it's really this conflict in the deep history of land powers versus sea powers. And because the US and the UK is kind of this Atlantic nexus of power, there's always going to be this contradiction between Russia, which is a land civilization, and these sea powers.
C. Derick Varn:basically, Borga argued. I mean, when Borga argued, he argued the opposite that basically the sea powers have, because of the nature of capital, the sea powers have an advantage period, like because they control trade Right and and like blue, you know, I would say what. What makes it? Yeah, I was talking to someone. I was like you know what the problem with all this is? That was the Vietnam War hadn't happened yet and that kind of complicates this thesis kind of a lot, but nonetheless, today the whole situation with Yemen.
Donald Parkinson:We aren't able to actually enforce our shipping lanes against a land based insurgency what good is enforcing shipping lanes against an?
C. Derick Varn:insurgency yeah oh no, I mean, what good is enforcing shipping lanes against an insurgency that you know? I mean? There's other reasons for that.
C. Derick Varn:The other thing is like our logistic trains are too expensive and they don't need that much like right it is one of these things where, like, well, if you have to have a ton of resources to run your carriers and you've wasted money on on shallow water boats that are useless, um, that's another fun thing that unis has done um, that it really does become a problem because, yeah, like this, like this isn't going to help you, and it's. It's another thing. Uh, the russia ukraine war. Um, whereas, like, as soon as russia gave up on trying to do like the swift you know, get in aircraft care thing and went back to just good old fast fashion cross, cross, willy and artillery, it actually started taking territory. But because these war methods are, they're four different things and, um, and I do think, like this eternal battle issue, I mean it does sort of been like, well, if you need to take land class, which is probably your guy, if you need to, like, maintain blue water shipping lanes I don't know, due to otoloop or something, but like, these are different warfare strategies and they have different, different needs and different costs.
C. Derick Varn:But one of the things about the united states that I'll just say that is a real problem right now on the war front is that we do everything for profit, even war, so that means that it's all more expensive because there's way more middlemen involved. Like, instead of just like, okay, we're going to pay people to directly produce it, we're like paying people to pay people to pay people to pay people to pay people to like move it around in this weird neoliberal way and, frankly, I've been a little bit shocked that the military allowed it to get this bad like, um, yeah, yeah so there's gotta be people in the military who probably are like upset about this as well and probably like, oh, you know, this is not, you know, the best way oh yeah, but I, I sort of wonder anyway that this is, this is off topic, but every now and then I'm like when are we gonna get our military coup in the united states?
C. Derick Varn:we're like one of the only new world countries that hasn't had one, so like um trump wins the election, maybe that will happen I have thought about it as a possibility. Yeah, I mean, it depends on if they really mean everything in project 2025 or not. Yeah, um, anyway, um. Back to this. So we get these six. I love that he said he completed 12 and then, when you actually read it now, there's six unaccomplished labors. I'm like dude, okay, so he did six heroic labors.
C. Derick Varn:And then his subject is that he hasn't fully completed the six and labor number unaccomplished labors of the rest of the 12, he didn't fully complete the first six points. Okay, he has not finally made up his mind concerning relations to the United States. Don't forget that Dugan, and the foundations of geopolitics, actually wants a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which I think is insane even from his perspective. Yeah, paper number six he has not understood the dead end nature of using radical liberal paradigm in economics. Ironically, the American sanctions seem to have fixed that.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean two and three. I think I feel like, yeah, putin has made up his mind about the US at this point.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I mean I think it was a still open question in the first half of the Obama administration. Yeah, I mean I think it was a still open question in the first half of the Obama administration.
C. Derick Varn:Number I also think, yeah, the radical paradigm in economics is no longer true, although, as I've said to some people who've talked to me about decoupling, I'm like the interesting thing about that is that's actually been forced on the us onto these places. It wasn't them pulling out, it was us making them. Um, so it's a little bit more complicated than that, um, but it has not. It has had a cost to the russian economy, but it's also strengthened other parts of russia. They've had to do things for domestic production that you know. I've. I've criticized, for example, that during the entire period of the russian federation until literally the sanctions were introduced, there has not been a major focus on domestic consumer production in in russia. Um, uh, and that goes all the way back to Brezhnev, and that's just not the case anymore because they have to Right, right.
Donald Parkinson:So he's not a fan of liberal economics at all. He says he actually kind of prefers socialism, at least in his idea of socialism, but he definitely doesn't like that Putin is. You know, he constantly talks about how Putin is like combining patriotism and liberalism and he kind of concedes that, oh, for a while this is like the necessary combination. But it's going to come up against its limits and Putin is going to have to either like go with the globalist or like embrace you or embrace an anti-liberal economic agenda.
C. Derick Varn:Which I would still say you've kind of had because of the sanctions, but he really hasn't actually embraced a totally anti-liberal economic agenda. It's more like military Keynesianism plus increased focus on domestic production because they no longer have access to as many foreign markets Right, which can be good. I mean, like you know, okay number. So this is one thing I'll say about Dugan. That's really interesting. That's really frustrating to me. He doesn't like liberal economics at all, but he doesn't have another economic theory that really makes sense to replace it Exactly.
Donald Parkinson:Exactly yeah. Like even his comment with like far right thinkers in general, I mean yeah, for them, it's the economics.
Donald Parkinson:Economics are like a kind of just a secondary, like the whole idea is to subsume economics to the uh, to the nation, to, you know, to the dictates of the nation or whatever. So it's kind of it's it's. They don't start, they don't understand, like you know, the economic system as the basis upon which everything else in society like kind of comes together. For them it's a matter of like making economics like submit to, like the kind of medical, physical principles that they want the state to embody, right. So it's, it's more about like okay, so you know, if, if liberal economics actually is what you know, the um is what the uh kind of community of the Volk or whatever, wants and fulfills a national mission, and that's what we should have. If it's not, then we all will do more collectivist economics.
C. Derick Varn:It's interesting because in the early 20th century you could talk about a political economy of fascism and a political economy of Nazism and political economy of fascism and a political economy of of nazism and political economy. Nazism moves from like shaktism, which is kind of like proto keynesian, to just fucking open markets like and right, right and you know, uh, but we, we just tell the corporations what to do, but it's an open market.
C. Derick Varn:Otherwise, whereas, like fascism, proper in Italy's goal was like we're going to subsume everything to the state, but we're going to have these national syndicates, and I mean, weirdly, even like the collective bargaining system that the communists used in the Italian Republic period after the fascists it was actually set up by the fascist very weird economic but there. But it's, it's interesting to think about because basically, because of the I think because of war two, the far right just gone, you know, we're not going to deal with the economic stuff, which is going to leave it out of the question, right, which I guess marxists have always been like. Well, that gives us an advantage in fighting, you doesn't it? Because we actually have economic theories, as do liberals, and you kind of don't. Yeah, I guess you can steal ours and that's a problem. But right.
Donald Parkinson:I mean the thing is, is, you know, they do steal from marxist marxism a lot of the descriptive aspects of capitalism. I mean, mnuchin talks about liberal market economics he talks about, you know, he kind of describes it as like leading to the breakdown of all collectivity, of all identity, and that's kind of his critique of liberalism. It's not the Marxist critique at all, which is, you know, primarily, I mean it is about, you know, the infeasibility of the capitalist mode of production and its inherent tendencies. Liberalism, his critique, is about how it replaces loyalty to any kind of identity of collectivity with, you know, the profit motive and loyalty to money ultimately. And so for him, like, the problem with capitalism is ultimately that it makes people put like kind of more instrumental goals over these kind of primordial, like um, civilizational values of, um, you know, identity basically.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I think that um which is honestly when every like it's such a tired. We've heard it a million times from like right wing critics of capitalism. Absolutely, I mean the thing is, it sounds like just aristocratic complaints about capitalism, absolutely.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, it sounds like just aristocratic complaints about capitalism.
Donald Parkinson:Right, it's a typical romantic critique of capitalism. And you know, I think you can also the left also does sometimes fall for it, you know often, I mean I wouldn't say sometimes, I would say it often falls for it. Donald, right, yeah, I mean yeah, definitely, I think it's Anyway.
C. Derick Varn:so I thought this was interesting. Labors 4 and 5 are interesting because I actually have critiqued this as being a problem in the Russian sphere of influence for a long time. I mean, like my critique of Stalin, as you know, is a little bit different from like Trotskyists or Westerners. One of the things is like well, between the Yuzovchina and the war, you like whenever you complain about Khrushchev, but like literally he's all you got left. Most of your good leadership is gone. I mean like unless you want to do barrier defense, which is to me like I'm not going there, but this seems to be like a tendency and it's interesting that Dugan sees this, because I was surprised. I'll just read it. Labor number four he has not implemented a rotation of political elite. The old political apparatus is still working according to the previous model. I guess the soviet model and it's seemingly technical efficiency conceals its fundamental inadequacy. Let me tell you about the yeltsin model yeah, I was.
C. Derick Varn:This is where some of this is unclear, like, but I do think that he has not, that he he isn't able to get a rotation of political elites in as an interesting idea.
Donald Parkinson:Right right, and he goes into it more later. But he kind of talks about his whole idea of a prachina. I think is how you say it. It's a creation of this kind of hierarchical parallel elite that can kind of um, revitalize the elite as it kind of withers and decays yeah, basically, he wants a constant counter elite to come in through the decadent cycles of the elite, which isn't like you know.
C. Derick Varn:If you want elites at all, that actually is a real thing you have to deal with because it's going to happen, right? Yeah?
Donald Parkinson:For Dugan, though. He also says it's almost like mystical orders, almost or kind of like the source of these counter-elites, or whatever.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, we also get into this weird part where he's basically a theocratic anarchist at one point. So we'll get there Because it gets wild. Alright, but I do think this is it. And number six he has not yet tackled an earnest strengthening of the Eurasian ideology as a basis for a worse place in the future of the world. And I was going to say that I was not convinced that Putin was a Eurasianist until 2021. Until 2021, and that's when his rhetoric went from being vague and talking about multi-polarity, which, of course, like he's, you know, putin wants russia to be recognized as a major power.
Donald Parkinson:of course he's going to talk, argue about multi-polarity, like that's obvious, like, yeah, the multi-polarity rhetoric I think is very common in like semi-peripheral, like yeah, states like that's just kind of like what the rational interest of you know. A semi-peripheral like yeah, states like that's just kind of like what the rational interest of you know a semi-peripheral bureaucracy is is, yeah, we want, like we don't want one global power, so in game, we want like kind of like multiple global powers, kind of balancing each other, like that's kind of sensible. But yeah, that's not full-on eurasianism and right and and I think in 2021 I did. You know, you do actually see Putin using more and more directly Eurasianist rhetoric in his speeches.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I don't know that it comes from Dugin explicitly either because the other thing is we don't have enough Russian. I don't feel like enough of these Russian political thinkers are translating into English for us to say, like some of the more just like technocratic ones probably aren't. Um, and one of the issues that I think we have with dugan is there's also, in addition to the far right kind of wanting him to be more influential, there's also a bunch of liberals who wanted him to be more influential because he's scary right, yeah yeah, and it's actually a problem.
C. Derick Varn:I remember when I was trying to, and also the. The degradation of google is a problem, but I was trying to find these articles where, uh, I know that dugan in 2014 endorsed golden dawn and some other like uh, european, like uh, quasi, quasi or explicitly post-fascist groups, and I couldn't find it. Whenever I went to look for, I just found, like, oh, dugan, putin's rest mutant. I'm like, oh, fucking, get that shit out of the way. That's not useful for me, like it's not even. Like you know, those analyses are as like, an inch deep. Um, so it's. It is funny how that's. I actually think that has helped us not understand him, like the liberal use of him as a boogeyman makes it harder to understand uh dugan in a way that may help him.
Donald Parkinson:Um, you know, yeah, definitely, you know, like I said in the book, I mean honestly he kind of leans into that. You know, like, like I am the have to remember that.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, one of the things that's interesting is that I think Dugan's right about is after 9-11, russian-american relations became ambiguous. They were during the, during the the the George W Bush administration. It was unclear how the United States felt about Russia. It was unclear how the United States felt about Russia Because, honestly, the United States saw the stuff going on in Chechnya and Dagestan as in its interest. In the war on terror, which I think we forget.
Donald Parkinson:Oh, yeah, no, I mean yeah, no. There was definitely a period where, you know, we were trying to figure out how we could, you know, basically integrate Russia into the imperialist world system well, I mean, it also seemed like the bush administration might, yeah, do what that?
C. Derick Varn:exactly that? Because, because george kennan, back when our, back when our imperial overlords were more rational, wanted to bring Russia into NATO. Yeah right, exactly.
Donald Parkinson:That was on the table apparently at one point, right.
C. Derick Varn:As opposed to the Rand Corporation, which wanted to try to break Russia into several separate countries Right, and neither one of those really won during the Clinton administration, which is just interesting to think about what was going on there. The other thing that I was interested in is he admits that there's both a right and left Eurasianism and I was like there's a. I did not know that. Yeah.
Donald Parkinson:I mean, he talks about the communist party a lot actually, and he sees them as kind of, um, you know, taking up a left Eurasianist ideology, which I think is honestly probably true.
C. Derick Varn:Um, yeah, probably true, yeah, it's also interesting how much he focuses on Zemuniev Brzezinski, who he knew and had met. It's an interesting thing to think about.
Donald Parkinson:Well, yeah, brzezinski is kind of like the. In a way he's arch nemesis but also a fellow, a worthy enemy. I guess he's just very geopolitically focused thinkers who kind of think in terms of like grand civilizational, like strategy.
C. Derick Varn:What's interesting to me when I think about you know we have a similar pairing. Now I'm going to talk about the pair. So you have Zdeevinsky as kind of the left liberal end of pair. So you have Zeb Brzezinski as kind of the left liberal end of Empire and you have Kissinger as the right end of Empire, but on this issue was much less hostile to Russia. And it's kind of similar today when you have someone like Peter Zion and John Mearsheimer on China, china, where meersheimer wants a direct war and peter zion's like, no, we're just gonna let it fall apart.
C. Derick Varn:And I was like you know, we need to mess with china, but we need to like not go to war. And I'm just like, hmm, that's it. I mean, it seems like a similar kind of debate and I think a lot of leftists, because they don't follow, uh, very closely like the theories of political realism, like people like there's a lot of leftists, for example, because mersheimer said some decent things on russia. In fact, I thought mersheimer was right on russia till they invaded ukraine. Um, uh, forget that mersheimer does that because his larger vision is a war with China.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, yeah, that's the thing about Mersheimer is you really have to like realize that he is not like some lefty, he's not like you know, but he actually has been pretty good on Israel, which isn't you know?
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, he's been good in israel the whole time because he sees israel as a liability for him, for the american yeah, yeah, yeah which, interestingly, I'm surprised, more people don't. Well, yeah, I've sort of been like this really is a us imperial weak point, right, like like the fact that we seem to be doubling down on this, even irrationally.
Donald Parkinson:Um yeah, no propping up. Uh, you know the state in the middle east that is seen by everyone in the middle east as an occupying power imposed by imperialism. It's not, it doesn't help. You make good alliances in those regions, you know I mean in to I mean there is a logic to it, though there is a logic to it.
C. Derick Varn:What's it?
Donald Parkinson:there's a military logic to it yeah, and there's also, you know it's. It basically gives us a way to kind of like force all of these countries to um have governments that are like friendly with us. It gives us a way to kind of prop up all of these, uh, arab dictatorships and have like western friendly governments, because it's like if you don't do this, then Israel is going to fuck with you and you have to deal with Israel. So you know.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean there's a lot, you could say, that ends up enforcing US interests, but it's also a weak point, you know.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, it's a major weak point. I mean because even for these moderate, fairly pro-Western regimes, it's like a major flash point in their own domestic politics. Like, yeah, there's no way around it. Yeah, um, in a region that you know, most americans like, oh, it's like sena, sunni and shia politics. Like no dude, you don't understand how complicated the uh, the competitions are between, like say, turkey and saudi arabia, and cutter and like like I've like tried to map who's aligned with who wants.
C. Derick Varn:I'm like even I don't fucking get it and I lived in egypt for two years. It's just like. It's like it's not even predictable by like religion, because, uh, both cutter and saudi, for example, they're both Sunni Salafist governments Like I don't know what you would think they get along. They do not.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, it's definitely more complicated than that.
C. Derick Varn:So uh and similarly, like was. I've tried to tell people like iran and russia tend to be copacetic because russia is afraid of a sunni bloc and a neo-caliphate. They really are. That's one of the reasons they interviewed in syria. Um and uh, they tend to favor, like secular bathys and and uh, you know that sort of thing, and I'm not to say that Bathism is good or bad, but I think it's kind of not great, but probably better than it's definitely better than what happened afterwards, but like yeah, Bathism's always confused me, because you end up with two Bathist countries that hate each other and end up fighting each other basically.
Donald Parkinson:So it means to me that the ideology kind of fails on its own, failed at least on its own standard of success, which is kind of a pan-Arab unity, which is itself an desirable goal in my opinion. But yes, pan-arabism.
C. Derick Varn:What I mean, you know? Uh, definitely, copacetic blocks are probably not a bad way to organize the world, like if I was going to like if we had a world socialist republic, it wouldn't probably be the actual nations that existed.
C. Derick Varn:It'd be like, okay, well, there's cultural regions yeah like um, uh, you know, that's, that's my personal way around a lot of these problems, but like so, pan-africanism to some degree, um, at least in blocks that make where that makes sense, pan-arrabism to some degree. There's going to be areas where it doesn't make sense, but nonetheless, I don't think in an ideal world where we won and there is a communist world, I don't think we totally get rid of all the civilizational cultures. I just don't think that happens?
Donald Parkinson:Not at all. That kind of gets to the Dugan's civilizational cultures. I just don't think that. No, not at all. Yeah, and that kind of gets to the, you know, dugan's civilizational perspective here is he's, he's not a nationalist.
C. Derick Varn:No, I've tried to make that clear, he's a civilizationalist, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Donald Parkinson:He like constantly sees nationalists as, just like you guys are, like going, you only have sovereignty to the extent that you are united with a broader civilizational block. Like this whole idea of national sovereignty is a myth, like you, it's a pure legal construct, like the real power, real like sovereignty for him is kind of on this unique civilizational, cultural, almost primordial essence that they're all incommensurable with each other.
C. Derick Varn:Right, yeah, and that second part where I'm like these civilizational blocks kind of make sense because they're these long crucial dures, where I'm like like civilizational blocks kind of make sense because there's long cultural duress, you know I mean, yeah, we talk about continental unity, for example, and I get you know more orthodox Marxist circles.
Donald Parkinson:you know, right, we want pan-continental unity, we want to like. You know we want larger. You know societies that are integrated on a democratic basis. You know we don't want everyone carved up in the tiny little ethnic fiefdoms. You know that itself isn't inherently a reactionary.
C. Derick Varn:Right, I don't know you and I will one day talk about the fact that I kind of agree with Otto I go between Luxembourg and Otto Bauer on what I think the answer to the actual question is, depending on the day. But and I know you're more of a classical readiness, but I do sort of think like we just have to admit that like okay, so like North America, I want you like dealt with indigenous issues and repowered indigenous people is basically a it's a post settler block you have to deal with. And then like Europe, it's you have to deal with. And then, like Europe, it's it's actually probably two or three blocks, even though it's not very big, and then Africa is probably like two blocks, and there you go. But I mean, like the one thing I will say is, outside of Europe, the imposition of European style nationalism, which was imposed by Europe, is a prior Cause, like those maps were drawn just oh yeah totally.
Donald Parkinson:You know Europe is a problem Because those maps were drawn just kind of like it is a problem. But I think some the problem is that the alternative that's kind of pushed forward is basically just smaller ethnostates, which is itself a European concept as well.
C. Derick Varn:No, no, I don't know that. We mean like biafra and like uh, you know, I always go to nigeria because that's where where this is really obvious, but like, um, or like, okay, we have kurdistan and, and uh, uh, alawaitistan, and um, uh, I don't know, like, uh, hutistan, and yeah, like, like, like that's not ideal and honestly I I think it was the soviets trying to do that they hit pretty hard problems no, it was incredibly difficult what they try to do with the national question I you know it wasn't perfect, but it was a decent try, I think I think what you're trying to do is you're trying because the orthodox marxist position has always been like larger multinational states are preferable to small states of single nationalities.
Donald Parkinson:Absolutely Right, and but nonetheless, you know this integration of states has to be on a democratic basis. It can't be done on the basis of one nation oppressing another nation. So for that reason there is a national right to self-determination. It doesn't mean that we want separatism, but the idea is that if you want people to be able to integrate on a truly democratic basis, you can't tell people oh, we welcome you as equals and we'll live with you as equals and you can have cultural autonomy and express your language, but don't you dare separate. That's not allowed.
C. Derick Varn:The idea was the right to separation was a way to kind of facilitate merger into a single, ultimately, world culture yeah, I think I think the problem, uh, for me, ends up being the fact that, to enable that, there was this, there's this attempt to, frankly, synthetically build nations. I mean uk Ukraine is one of them, right, right, she's not like because when people go, oh, you're saying the Russian claim about Ukraine is correct, no, ukraine is two different cultures, frankly, like Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine are very, very different.
Donald Parkinson:And should they be, you know know, should they be an independent state I honestly think, like I actually think lenin handled ukraine probably the right way, like maybe the borders weren't right, because the reason the donbass ended up being kind of incorporated into ukraine was because it was a heavily proletarian area and it was a way to kind of keep with the western ukraine, which was more petty, bourgeois and even like aristocratic and, like you know, nationalist in a more right-wing sense, under control.
Donald Parkinson:So there is a sense in which the way these borders are drawn up is actually, you know, of course, political, but that's, you know, this is nation building. But regardless, like you know, I do think like there was a ukrainian nation that had to be recognized in some way. And I think the issue is is like my issue with rosa luxembourg's critique of lenin on national self-determination is she kind of just says oh, you know, these nations are faked, they're being artificially created, they're not like real, but you know. And so what's the alternative? Make everyone speak russian and try to like eliminate, like any kind of national sentiment towards, in the example of Ukraine existing as Ukrainian nation. That's just going to inflame that national sentiment and make it more reactionary and create a basis for counter-revolution.
C. Derick Varn:We see that in the later ratification policies in the Soviet Union. I mean, we really do. I mean that's one of the. But I do think synthetic nation-building also becomes a weird problem, because you start with I mean all nation-building in a way is synthetic.
C. Derick Varn:You're correct, although it does help if you do usually need to have a printed language. Oh yeah, that is true, that is true, you know. I mean there's a reason why I say like, uh, the cherokee nation, it got so suppressed because it was one of the people that like, okay, we're gonna make a printed language and like play by your rules. Um, and that particularly, and that this the the situation us could not have been allowed like, um, but I do, I mean you and I've talked about this before I mean we're not going to settle this today. Um, I, I do agree with you that one of the problems that you have with the rosa luxembourg thesis is basically like we're just not going to answer the question of how we do administration which is different languages like it just ends up default being pro-rucification, right, um, which is like, if her position on ukraine is like not that different from putin's, like like a fake nation.
Donald Parkinson:It's really russia, it's, it's only like, um, a few, you know, people came up with this crazy idea that we're ukians and then, you know, let it for some reason, is entertaining this nonsense and helping create this fake nation. And you know, I mean I agree that, like it's a very tricky process because you know you can end up creating more division by creating national units where they're not appropriate, right, I mean, well, you think about, in the United States, for example, if we were to divide it up into national unions more division by creating national units where they're not appropriate and right.
C. Derick Varn:I mean well, you think about, in the united states, for example, if we were to divide it up into national unions? I have no idea how we do that.
Donald Parkinson:Like there's right, intermix peoples like yeah, no, you would have to. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. You'd have to create some kind of.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, the united states is a multinational republic already, basically right yeah, I mean, this is, this is something that I also kind of hate about liberalism is like I mean I hate many things about liberalism and uh, I know that our marxist liberal friends are going to be bothered by this, but um is like we have to like pretend that somehow, like, the united states is a nation state and not just a state Like, because I was like we're not, we're not one people, the whole nation, like whiteness exists, so we can synthetically claim to be a nation state without being a nation state, right.
Donald Parkinson:Like, yeah, it's that whole national question of the United States is so complicated because it's just Is there an American nation or is?
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I mean the one thing will have to be settled is surviving indigenous peoples' right of autonomy over portions of historical land. I think that is with reparations and the possibility of integration.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I agree with that, of course.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I don't like to use the word land back because it means so many different things to different people, Right? I?
Donald Parkinson:mean this is off topic, but the way I look at it is land back has been a slogan from the indigenous movement for a long time. Off topic, but the way I look at it is like you know, land back has been a slogan from you know the indigenous movement for a long time. I mean absolutely. Look at um. You know photos from like the late 1960s of aim rallies where you know they have signs that say land back and a lot of the maga communists, the people, attack land back as being a bezos funded psyop because there's. You know, if you do look up land back, most of what you will find is this NGO, the NDN Collective, which is indeed funded by Bezos.
C. Derick Varn:But what's interesting?
Donald Parkinson:is. You know. I know people who you know have connections with. You know a lot of these communities. Ndn Collective is not popular amongst AIM, amongst aim. Aim will not work with ndn. Actually they will ban them from their events. So the idea that land back is like owned by one ngo is just nonsense. You know it's. There's different groups claiming the fight for land back that have different, you know, programs different ideas, radically different ideas, sometimes right, just like to me, a slogan is.
Donald Parkinson:You know, it mean a lot of different things. The, the, the.
C. Derick Varn:The promise and danger of slogans is the following is exactly they mean a lot of different things and you can mountain bailey them in all kinds of different directions. Uh, some people hear lamb back and they think, either positively or negatively, that it's literally. You know um ethnically cleansing 97% of the. Us population, which would be insane. Sometimes it means native autonomy over historical lands. In ways, it doesn't even involve anyone having to leave the land that they currently are on.
C. Derick Varn:I've heard all kinds of explanations of what it means, and so it's a contested slogan.
Donald Parkinson:It is a contested slogan and I think it's it's. You know, you definitely get edgelords out there who kind of like play into the whole, like why do you go back to Europe thing, which is obviously not a feasible political program. But you know, I mean I think you know, talking to you know indigenous people on twitter, for example, who defend land back. A lot of them will just say, well, look at what we did in standing rock, you know trying to claim, you know, protect our land from being, like taken over by these pipeline developers. And you know that's land back. That's what we mean when we talk about land back. It just means, like, asserting sovereignty and control over, like our, our lands that are. You know, and I think really the way I look at it is like you know, there needs to be a process where these, um, indigenous nations are recognized as sovereign nations and the treaties are then kind of renegotiated as sovereign entities.
Donald Parkinson:Essentially the way I look at it is essentially we have to get rid of the bureau of indian. We have to get rid of this nonsense idea that they already have sovereignty Because they can't even you can't fix a pothole on a reservation Right exactly. Because they use the existing idea of sovereignty, as it exists in the existing system under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to actually undermine any possibility of economic development in these communities.
C. Derick Varn:Absolutely, and it's really twisted how it works actually, the more you look into it yeah, I mean, this is when I say whatever, I hear a lot of leftists, even anti, but even some pro. I feel like you really need to learn more about indigenous issues before you talk about this.
Donald Parkinson:You actually have to learn about the politics of these communities. I'm not saying I'm an expert or anything. I'm definitely not the little that I do know tells me that a lot of this online discourse is just removed from the reality of the situation.
C. Derick Varn:Absolutely Sweet.
Donald Parkinson:But yeah, I mean the whole civilizational perspective is interesting in a lot of ways, because I think with the United States, like we were saying earlier, it's not really a nation state but it's not really a historic civilization either.
C. Derick Varn:No, no, I mean no settler state is. I mean that includes the latin ones.
Donald Parkinson:So um, you know, I I think there is something to this kind of looking at civilizations as entities in a political sense, but uh, I also think it's you know I mean it causes problem.
C. Derick Varn:I mean one of the things that I was thinking about, we were talking about lamb back, but we also talk about this context. Right here is, for example, sunyatsin and early mal. Both recognize like national autonomy for certain peoples, including, like tibetans, western muslim uh uh chinese speakers, etc. And various forms of Western Muslim, chinese speakers, etc. And various forms of imperialism made that hard to do.
C. Derick Varn:Right, like you know, leveraging religious tensions in Tibet, leveraging religious tensions in the Western provinces, right, leveraging religious tensions in the Western provinces, leveraging ethnic tensions in Taiwan, which is, in addition to the KMT, hanging out there to this day. There's also both indigenous and haka issues in Taiwan, and early Mao, for example, thought that Taiwan was both a bastion of imperialism but probably should have had some sort of uh uh sufficient regional autonomy, like, say, the korean autonomous zone, and uh and like xinjiang or something like that and like and most westerners have no idea that, like chinese, that Chinese politics is that complicated, yeah, but that our interventions in things like Tibet actually make things worse for Tibetans, right.
Donald Parkinson:Oh yeah, I mean, it's the same with imperialism loves to weaponize minorities.
C. Derick Varn:Absolutely.
Donald Parkinson:But also sexual minorities loves to weaponize minorities, absolutely ethnic minorities, but also sexual minorities. Like you know, I and this is always kind of the argument I make against like the you know, people who are pro-lgbt but also pro-imperialism is that?
Donald Parkinson:well, you're actually making like life, life harder, for lgbt people in global south countries because you're making their identity be associated with imperialist subversion. So this whole idea of, like you know, we need to like you know, do you know? Interventionism around the world, spread our values. That actually probably hurts people more than it helps them absolutely. And those minority groups absolutely.
C. Derick Varn:I mean because I mean you know there there are plenty of, say, queer Russians, queer Palestinians, pick any nationality you want to. The fact that that is now associated with the West has given people like Dugan a leverage that they didn't have, right, right. And it has been a political pressure, probably from people like I don't know that Putin really cares that much.
Donald Parkinson:Political pressure probably from people like I don't know that putin really cares that much no, I don't think he gives a shit about gay people or trans people but he also realizes how useful homophobia is as a kind of cultural rallying point against, you know, against western values, as this abstract thing right, I mean, you know, similarly, we didn't give a shit about what about?
C. Derick Varn:about that until very recently either.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, like, right, I mean, you know, people forget, but in most states in the united states time well, not most, but what's like something like 20 it was uh, homosexuality was illegal till the very late 90s, so like during, you know, I am 43 years old, for a little under half of my life, I know in my home state, uh, they didn't, they didn't actually prosecute people for this, but in georgia sodomy was illegal until like 1999, I think. Um, yeah, so it's just something like whenever we're like, oh, we care about this, like our caring about this is pretty fucking recent, um, uh, uh, you know, and it has been a thing that's hurt. I think it's hurt multiple times, but anyway, I do think this is something to see that it gives people like Dugan an advantage on this idea of like consolidating this under a religious thing, and I do think people miss how religious Dugan is by the end of the aughts, in the 90s and early aughts, he was a weird esoteric and he still is a heretic. I'm just going to void that out.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, In the 90s he was doing weird Aleister Crowley cosplay like cosplay stuff with right, but now he's pretty much an Orthodox Christian and that's a big part of his uh political identity. I think people miss.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I know it's, it's definitely there.
C. Derick Varn:So but, uh, we get to the second chapter. Um, oh boy, I mean. But we get to the second chapter. Oh boy, I mean. I love this part. There's some stuff in this that makes me feel like maybe this will be easier to fight than people think.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, because one of the things he's talking about was, you know, the economic on the bleak and collapse, and his answer to and this was I think people forget that like this is during the oil shock. People forget that like this is during the oil shock, uh, right right after the recession, um, where saudi arabia uh pumps up in opec, pumps a bunch of oil and lowers the price of uh, of oil in um in russia. Russia thus has you know, uh, it's, it's economy at the time was way, way heavily too, invested in oil and energy exports. Uh, similar problem in Venezuela, actually, um, and that opened them up for you know uh, market class.
C. Derick Varn:Whether or not you think it was intentional or not and I go back and forth on whether or not I think it was, um, I've seen evidence both ways it nonetheless happened. And what I find interesting is uh, dugan's answer to that is basically well, I believe in the imminent absolute and god's going to make sure we're going to be okay. I mean, I can literally read it like in the context I understand power, by byzantine standards, as a kind of imminent absolute. Any way, power comes from God, and God does not always bring about good news, but ultimately it's for the good of the Russian.
C. Derick Varn:I'm like, okay, okay it's amazing you know, and there is a way in which like this reminds me of, like, different kinds of dominionist, like bending over backwards to justify Trump as a power for God, and I'm just getting into this Like Putin is an ideal ruler for the current period. He's a tragic figure. He has horrible entourage made up of exhausted people, a sea of despicable worms who are fouling up the entire field of the of his movement, but he is methodologically steady. I'm like where have I heard that before?
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it's very similar to how a lot of MAGA people look at Trump. I was surprised that I actually thought Dugan would be a little more critical of Putin.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I thought the Putin versus Putin would be more versus yeah, I thought it would versus Putin would be more versus yeah, I thought it would be more 50-50, like you know, half Putin's good, half Putin's bad, but it's really more like 80-20, even like, maybe even more. Yeah, even when Putin's bad, he's still probably good.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, exactly because, like God, is on his side and you know, it's trust the plan, Just trust the plan. There literally is like parts where it's just kind of trust a plan, just trust it literally is like parts where it's just kind of trust the plan. It's all unfolding according to plan. Eurasianism is descendant. I've already basically won the ideological battle.
C. Derick Varn:It's just a matter of like how long it takes to implement my ideas this book made me actually realize his four ways with alex jones are actually more organic than maybe we think.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think, yeah, because if you read, you know you, when you read, like for a political theory, there's so much that there's layering on layering of layering of ideal. I mean, like suga's not a, not a dumb man, uh, but and I've said that but like, when you read this you're like no, he, when he's unvarnished, he actually his unvarnished self, is closer to the Alex Jones self than I thought. Like um, so uh, he, he's really in the conservative revolution We've already talked about. He can't like Nazis, both legally and also just logically. It doesn't make sense because they wanted to exterminate Slavs. So like you can't really be Uma, but he does like a lot of German conservative revolution people. There's a lot of Jünger in here and a lot of it's interesting.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it reminds me of something that Haas said in one of his streams, actually, where he's talking about the conservative revolution and Heidegger and he's like one of the great tragedies of history is that some of these people, like, have either linked up with Hitler or kind of just fell into isolation, instead of linking up with Stalin and saying that Stalin was actually the true figure that would achieve what they wanted, which was this kind of resolution of modernity, I guess.
C. Derick Varn:I think it's funny that Haas doesn't get that. Some of them did try that. It didn't go well for them.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, some of them did try that, like it didn't go well for them. Yeah, yeah, no, um. They kind of try a kind of unity and it's interesting because the maga communism essay, like haas, from the very beginning is like no, this is not a third position, this is not syncretism, this is, you know, not like um, no, it's actually it's.
C. Derick Varn:he uses uhordicus talk about like invariance and the eternal Right. I mean what?
Donald Parkinson:he does is he takes that invariance thing from like left communism, from that specific extreme of communism, and then ties it up with like a religious notion of like eternal civilization or something. Yeah well, it's interesting because he says you know, the left light, the left right spectrum, as it's understood in the united states, is a false spectrum, but there still is a left and right spectrum and I am on the left because the true left, not the fake left right spectrum that's created as an abstraction by liberal modernity, but the true like political spectrum is really partisans versus you know what's the word he uses Like essentially like the kind of global, the liberals, the leftists. It's interesting because we're against the leftists but we are of a true left Because the modern leftists are just the ruling class, the culmination of a ruling class, having fully, kind of universalized this fake political spectrum.
Donald Parkinson:He kind of tries to have it both ways where he's like we're going beyond the political spectrum and rejecting a political spectrum, but we're not red-browns, we're not syncretists, we're not Nazbols, because we actually are true leftists Right because the leftist is an idea that's beyond which, again, if you know left communist theory, that aswell is because we actually are true leftist right, because the leftist is an idea.
C. Derick Varn:That's beyond which, again, if you know left communist theory, that rhetoric is familiar to you not on the communist side, but I kept something like yeah, haas is still sold his old left.
Donald Parkinson:Calm days are never fully behind him right, it's like they're fully behind me, you know or me even.
C. Derick Varn:I mean the fact that I even know all this theory as deeply as I do, and I will admit that I have very countless inclinations about how I think we should actually run things. Um, but anyway, back to this ideological perspective. We're gonna talk those of you who who stick around, we actually are going to talk about the relationship between dugan and haas explicitly at the end of the show. So, um, ideological perspective, the, the, the eurasian. So I did not realize that he has an evolution like he has, like this evolutionary theory of what eurasianism is. I would.
C. Derick Varn:That's not in the other books, at least not the ones I've read, and I've read a fair amount of Dugan at this point, although I think the first time that I read a lot of this stuff, I wasn't reading it very closely, but nonetheless, what I find interesting this is another thing where you know the difference between a Dugan book that's written for people outside Russia and a Dugan book for written as people inside Russia, because a Dugan book for written as people outside Russia he is more, he is way more pro-Islamist, but in this book he's very clear that, okay, some types of Islamists are okay, but not if they're in our civilization, like, um you know, even though, like you know, daghestan and chesnia have been muslim for a pretty long time, um so, uh.
C. Derick Varn:So he goes into the ideological evolution uh around daghestan and chesnia, um talking about the chesham rahabi specialist, and then you know what happened in grozny, um the reformation of the russian council, all that stuff, uh, okay, um, then we get to putin's ideology, which, um he does start with. Some analysts call putin a patriot, others call him a liberal, and I will admit that I've always thought that that putin's ideology is sort of shrewd, reptile brain and like that's pretty much it, because I'm like I have no idea, like I don't know what ideological basis putin is really arguing over, except that he thinks Russia should return to some kind of major power in the world, like that's pretty much it.
Donald Parkinson:I would describe him as a Eurasianist. I think at this point honestly, I do think Putin actually probably does believe to some degree in the Eurasianist ideology, in the sense of belief of the Russian world.
C. Derick Varn:I think that's kind of what the Ruskimir is very much a Putin belief of the russian world.
Donald Parkinson:I think, right, kind of what.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, the ruski mir is is like yeah yeah, is is very much uh, a putin, a putin thing, and that's eurasianist one thing. That one thing that's interesting. You know, we always talk about like, uh, one of the things is interesting about tensions between countries of the office who are allied, as they often can't talk about it, like we don't talk about our tensions with britain in america hardly ever, yeah. And there's very little talk about the tensions between china and russia, but eurasianism would be a problem for chinese strategic development.
Donald Parkinson:That is a good point, yeah, and so I have.
C. Derick Varn:So I've always like wondered, like, okay, so eurasianism, what part of Asia is not part of that? Is it just what we can sell now, the contiguous Russian Federation, and maybe I don't know the Stans, or is it? It's one of these things, for they're another one. A place where you see this tension rise up is eurasianism and say turkey versus, uh, odragonist, neo-ottomanism. Those are actually opposing ideologies, uh, but you like, given the political allegiances, they can't be brought up too heavily, but like, but thendogan's in a really weird place, cause he's aligned both to Russia and to NATO. So it's, it's, you know, it's the the. These things get very fraught when you're like, okay, where, where, where do you think your civilization ends and begins? And a lot of people think that, what, that, what Dugan's on is like, oh, they're pro-multipolar and they're pro-national Bolshevism in Europe, so that you don't have a European solid bloc, so that you can conquer it. And I don't know, I don't. Having read this, I see hints at both, that he's sincere and that this is cynical.
Donald Parkinson:And like what's your take on that? Well, you know, this is my whole problem with multipolarity theory is that it kind of thinks that you know a common, you know cause, you know you have the pre world war one classic era of classic imperialism, of competing European empires competing which is a multipolar model.
Donald Parkinson:I mean, that's where the model yeah, I mean, yeah, that is what classical like theorists of multipolarity, me like the kind of, not the duganist, but I think a lot of people would refer to that as the multipolar world. But it was really a. It was a matter of, if you know, it was an anglo-dominated world where you had other imperialist powers competing with England to carve up the world, essentially.
Donald Parkinson:And so you have a very. It's multipolar in that sense there's more than one imperialist power that's contesting for domination, but it's still a world essentially divided between the powerful European imperialist powers and this colonial and semi-colonial world that they're all in control of. And then, you know, post-world War II, you have the creation of. You know, really, in my opinion, unipolar US power begins after World War II and US takes over as hegemon status. Soviet Union is kind of, you know, it's the challenger to the US, but it never was really able to offer a total challenge. That was in a lot of ways. I still think it never actually became the superpower that a lot of people claimed it was, and so.
Donald Parkinson:But you know, after Soviet Union falls, then you have, like, the true unipolarity period, where the US tries to consolidate its status as a hegemon now that there is no longer any major challenger. And so the idea is today that we're going to see the end of the US hegemony. There's no longer going to be US hegemon. Instead, we're going to have BRICS, we're going to have these other global polarities are going to rise, but it's not going to be a return to pre-World War I. Instead, these new global powers are not going to compete to carve up the world and do imperialism. They're going to kind of create this new world order. That's not imperialist, basically, and that's kind of like when I talk to people who are genuinely like pro-multipolarity, yeah, they tell me that's kind of what they argue for is that it's it's wrong to say that multipolarity will be a return to imperialism.
Donald Parkinson:It will be a post, and that's kind of. The argument is that the telos the way things are heading with china as a rising power and russia's lines of china is they're kind of already the telos is actually already towards a post-imperialist world order. I don't, you know, I and the way I've always understood it is, as long as you have global capitalism and nation states that are competing in this global capitalist market, those dynamics themselves will eventually produce imperialist competition.
C. Derick Varn:At least in proxy wars, because you're going to need to get various states and other people's sphere of influence to give you goods, if not right and so I guess you know this is one of the reasons why I can't like support operation z, because I don't see russia's.
Donald Parkinson:What russia is doing is leading to this post-imperialist multipolar world where these different polarities are going to exist in a creative tension, but ultimately it's not going to be this violent game for one to rise up on top and dominate everyone else. I see it as essentially Russia trying to become an imperialist power. I don't think they're an imperialist power yet, but I think in a lot of ways what they are trying to do is kind of jump start to becoming an imperialist power. So I don't see russia is that you know? I don't see it as like them fighting against the. You know the nazis that you know like I do think there are nazis in ukraine, obviously, and I don't support ukrainian government. But I don't see it as this noble mission to create a multipolar world and I'm very skeptical of the multipolarity arguments.
C. Derick Varn:You and I. Interestingly, I think I've become closer to this over time, where I become more more understanding of the Russian position but still think it is fundamentally it was a mistake.
Donald Parkinson:Right, Cause it is fundamentally a ruling class project. This whole mirror thing is this fundamentally ruling class project that it's. It comes up in contradiction to this current global system.
C. Derick Varn:But it's solidified.
Donald Parkinson:I don't want to undermine that, because I do think that there are aspects of multi-polarity that I think are progressive, in the sense that it is opening up new possibilities for politics globally, but I also think it offers up new possibilities for horrendous barbarism and destruction.
C. Derick Varn:I also think it doesn't just hurt the West, I think it's hurt China.
Donald Parkinson:That's interesting.
C. Derick Varn:One is decoupling, plus Chinese internal problems, has led to a massive slowdown in the Chinese economy, and I think that people used to argue me against this. I think it's objectively like no one's arguing to me that that's objectively not true. Now, the other thing that it has done is it stopped it had there are fracture points in the break of the belt and road initiative, which was which I think uh was an attempt to do what the imperialist did with the marshall plan um, without gunboat diplomacy and at a much larger scale, which would have at least complicated the US Blue Order trade route.
Donald Parkinson:Right and.
C. Derick Varn:I no longer. Even though BRICS is a thing, I no longer see Belt and Road as nearly as viable as it once was.
Donald Parkinson:Belt and Road as nearly as viable as it once was. Well, yeah, it's interesting how China, in a way, they're kind of operating under the assumption that there is a multipolar world and that they can actually do this kind of civilizational collaboration without having imperialist hegemon enforcing it.
Donald Parkinson:Right, yeah, I think this is where they're, where you see people who advocate for the china end of the multipolarity and people trying for the russia end of multipolarity sometimes agree and sometimes they're radically apart, and yeah, yeah, and I think that's going to be one of the contradictions in maga communism, I think, is when the contradiction between russia and China becomes more apparent, and I think a lot of people don't see it now, but I think they will become more apparent.
C. Derick Varn:I think the other contradiction that's obvious, that is obvious to a lot of people is the problem with BRICS is C and I don't get along yeah.
Donald Parkinson:I mean, I do see constant jokes about that. It's like, oh, it's funny how India is the eye and bricks.
C. Derick Varn:Right, it's like. It's like okay, so, yeah, india has good relations with Russia, but these good relations with the West and it's trying to undermine China all the damn time. So it's like it's. It's like when people tell me okay, what? That I have another vision of multi-polarity, I'm like okay, but then say that because multi-polarism by itself does not imply anything about the content of the various poles. Like it just says there are multiple hegemonies and the little powers are going to try to buy. For you know, I mean.
C. Derick Varn:Another thing that's interesting in multi-polarity theory that isn't talked about is that small states in your sphere of influence are going to want to try to move to the hegemon that's far away, right, because they can't enforce their supply chains easily, but they might give them good notions of trade, which is why there is so many proxy wars. The eh car morganthal thing was like yeah, there's a lot of proxy wars, but proxy wars are not going to probably lead to a global nuclear conflict, so we're okay with that. That was their theory. Like um and uh. You know that.
C. Derick Varn:And I think from the communist perspective we do have to look at like how much the sino-soviet split really screwed like. If you screw things up like really like you and I are both on, like the fact that we're just trying to play act, that the sino-soviet split didn't like hurt both sides of that like really badly. Yeah, bad enough that china made common cause with the west for a long time, um, to develop the productive forces. They didn't try to do it the way the soviet union tried to before 1953, um, which is autarkously like they tried to do it on the world market, which which made them subject to the american business cycle in a way that say you know, you and I have talked about this before and uh, uh, when we talk about the soviet union, I'm like, yeah, it was, it was an attempt to actually socialism, but I I I am a hell of a tech theorist believer that it never really achieved a coherent model of what it was.
C. Derick Varn:I don't know if you still believe that, but I think no. No, I would agree with that.
Donald Parkinson:I don't think they actually were able to create a coherent mode of production.
C. Derick Varn:Right and but that. The reason why I rejected a you know state capitalist theory is there's no integration during at least not until the 60s into the world market. And then they kind of integrate into the world market, but in a really bizarre way, where they're taking loans but they're not totally.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it's very half-hearted.
C. Derick Varn:Whereas, after Dung, china fully integrates into the world market, including liberalizing things that like. We did not liberalize that, like getting rid of rural, like education for rural women, until it was reinstated by hu jintao or something like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was muchated by Hu Jintao or something. It was much more extreme than I think people realize, and I think this is something that actually is in the background here. The liberalism of between election cycles. What do you make of this part? Hold on, I have a different page of numbers. It's in the ideology of Putin. This is one of the things that's mildly critical where he accuses Putin of being more liberal when he's not in an election cycle year.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, yeah, no, I thought you know that was yeah. Here it is Liberalism of the between-election cycle. Yeah, yeah, as it says, his midterm was a kind of peak in liberalism, after which, as the election is drawn near, his liberal, pro-western, pro-western inclinations tend to give way to the patriotic side. Yeah, I think this is like you said. This is probably where he seems like the most critical of putin right, he says.
Donald Parkinson:In order to balance his strong position as a leader of the state, putin has always striven to keep the pre-election balance in his political practice at 71% patriotism and 13% liberalism.
C. Derick Varn:I do love when people just make up percentages.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it's just like what a random number. It's in straight accordance with the Russian Public Opin opinion research center's results ah, so it's not random, that's why I guess he's kind of saying that putin is just like directly reflecting what the russian people want in a way, yeah, that he's, that, you know he he is.
C. Derick Varn:This is the very like robert michelle's argument from mussolini, like the executive can actually, like in a Bonapartist way, reflect the the ones of the people and his weird ideological incoherencies. So I guess one of the things that I was reading, but hold on.
Donald Parkinson:He goes on and says that there's a reverse situation where the state policy is 71% prowest and 13 patriotism. So yeah, he's kind of saying that you know, putin's patriotism is more rhetoric than actual practice. But at the same time. You know it's it all fits in the plan, basically yeah, it's it's it's it's trust in the plan.
C. Derick Varn:I mean it very much, even when you talk about like you think about, for example, again, people don't tend to think about what, uh, uh, the 2015 promises of donald trump was, which one of which was like to uh turn on saudi arabia and normalize relations with iran yeah which? Which people just forgot that that was like like part of his agenda about that yeah, um, because he dropped it immediately.
C. Derick Varn:Um, uh, as soon as uh, like al-sisi and uh, prince salman and all them got together like trump just immediately gave it up, and also he had to keep his own party involved and I do sort of. This is one question I was going to ask you and I couldn't get this from the feeling from this book how much of United Russia is just Putin and how much of it actually does have two different ideological or four different ideological cores, because doing kind of implies that United Russia has Atlanticist right and Atlanticist left, eurasian is right and Eurasian is left, and there's also the communist party, which is Eurasian is left. So do we believe that's true? I mean, I just I actually have no idea and like I feel like I know the average American, but not enough to say anything meaningful.
Donald Parkinson:Well. I think it's just kind of the it, kind of like he, he, todd Dugan talks about this, but he also says well, the society is just like politicized, depoliticized as well.
C. Derick Varn:Right which.
Donald Parkinson:I think is true. Like, like the theussia seems largely kind of depoliticized until very recently, right but the politicization of you know I I don't know enough about what it's like in russia today, but the politicization also still seems to kind of be like top down, like state-directed nationalism, you know, just a little bit more intense than before yeah, it's interesting.
C. Derick Varn:Every now and then I get get weird insights from, like. One of the things that I find interesting about america right now is like we still don't sense like the america doesn't really censor stuff very well, um, like even when it tries to so, like, if you really want to, today you can get on, like, say, russian tiktok or russian instagram, and like if you and I don't understand enough russian, but from what I see on it it's, and maybe the pro z stuff is being censored, but it's like a lot of that material seems very apolitical, like um, so it's it, it is interesting uh, the thing is durian kind of seems.
Donald Parkinson:Sees the depoliticization almost as positive. He doesn't really talk about it in a negative way, from what I read no, I don't think he sees it as positive. I think he thinks that if things are going well, the population doesn't need to be involved in politics at all because, he's not a democrat, he talks about an organic democracy, but really what that means is just the elites have an organic connection to the people. That doesn't need to be recognized through democratic mechanisms.
C. Derick Varn:It's kind of similar to organic centralism actually. Yeah, it's both similar to organic centralism in Bordiga and also distributism in Catholic thought.
Donald Parkinson:Those are two things that reminded me it's interesting how Dugan talks about elites, because he talks about how there's good elites that come from the body of the people, quite literally, almost like a biological sense, and then there's the bad elites, which are foreign and are usually actually from a population that doesn't like come from the actual people yeah, so I wonder how he feels about the vulga germans right um, like it's just, it is interesting, so so it's like oh well, if you're from the folk, then great, and there's a meritocracy from you, but we can't borrow from outsiders um, yeah, but at the same time he does say, like anyone can be a russian if they like, subscribe to the eurasian ideology, basically right, I mean, well, this is
C. Derick Varn:this is there's a strain of avola and spengler that is strong and dugan. That I think is missed because because, like, for example, when I was trying to explain the difference between like a Vola racism and Nazi racism, a Vola racism is like oh yeah, jews suck, but like Jews could become Italians.
Donald Parkinson:Like yeah, they just have to abandon their Jewish like spirit and embrace Italian spirit which you know.
C. Derick Varn:I think it's interesting because it's weirdly liberal, um, but it does seem like, like, uh, it's an older idea of ethnicity than the one that kind of dominates the west after gobeno and america, like you know, biologicize our region which, like it, very much reminds me of, like some of the founding fathers, who were like well, of course, these people are subhuman, but they could become like us, like, if they just acted like us, right, um, and I, I think, I think on the far right in america we saw a battle between the alt-right, which were racial nationalists in the old biological sense richard spencer and, uh, these cultural chauvinist people who like, well, anyone can be an american.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, the proud boys yeah, like I was like we're not racist, we're western chauvinists right.
C. Derick Varn:I mean in some ways macro-communism is that too. I mean like it's, like it's like you know. So I mean we're anti-American, but we're not anti-American. I mean like that's a whole different thing. But I see this as an interesting sort of it throws Americans, american liberals, who are very much used to. There's liberal cosmopolitanism and there's biological racism, and that's really it. These older forms of ethnic identity really throw them for a loop. They don't know how to deal with it. Well, because they're like wait, you, you're a cultural chauvinist and you even had to believe in some fascistic stuff, but you're not a biological racist. I don't know well how do I?
Donald Parkinson:feel about this like you know, I didn't do again. He's definitely, you know it's, it's, it's. It's this kind of relativistic chauvinism where he's not necessarily saying that the russian culture and the eurasian culture is like the greatest and it's better than everyone else, but it's more so that it's so unique and different from everyone else that it has to kind of like exist in its own separate space and it's better than everyone else, but it's more so that it's so unique and different from everyone else that it has to kind of like exist in its own separate space and it's incommensurable of other cultures.
C. Derick Varn:And so you know it's yeah, I I that's interesting, but I have it's. It runs directly in tension and contradiction with this whole land versus water peoples, because I guess he thinks that water peoples can't have a real culture ever.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, and that also sees Donald Trump as like a positive development in the United States.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, yeah, it's, it is. It is weird, like it's hard for me to see, like, so let's, for example, say that if the United States was, you know, was to say like, do something that I wouldn't even necessarily oppose. I'm going to be quite honest, it's like somebody made a taunt with Russia at current borders and was just like okay, we're going to deescalate tensions and try to normalize relations. What I think that's bad. No, yeah, of course.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, I'd offer that to happen right like uh, but would that change dugan's stance towards the west?
Donald Parkinson:right, exactly because his issue of the west is metaphysical and he said straight up it's always, it's always. You know, there's this basic like contradiction between the two that's always going to be there, regardless of ideology, and so it's.
C. Derick Varn:Because the other thing is. Even this land versus sea thing is for him still a manifestation of a metaphysical battle.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:And so.
Donald Parkinson:I guess for him there's always going to be this kind of battle between the two as almost like a creative principle in world history, I guess Right.
C. Derick Varn:So it's interesting between the two as almost like a creative principle in world history, I guess, right, so it's uh, um, it's interesting. I mean, um, it's interesting Also. There's this, this, this theory that he does fly about how Putin functions, that he creates five departments of of political will the administration, the economic tycoons, the media, cratsats, law enforcements and the experts. So like, I guess these are five. He calls them departments of political will. I'm like, aren't these like state and paris? Are these kind of like the state, as in the state apparatus, not like as in the political state, but like in, you know, like what we might call the administrative state? Um, and then the economic titans, mediocrats, law enforcement and the experts.
C. Derick Varn:I, why is that? I'm not like, why is that unique? Yeah, I'm like, don't, don't all bourgeois countries kind of work that way? I was kind of like like, uh, yeah, like there's the bourgeoisie who fund everything, who have the most power outside of the state, or probably more power than the state itself. Um, there are the people in the media who are subordinate to that and either subordinate to either major economic powers are the state, depending on the time of year, law enforcement, which is what I guess is also part of the state, but does have a separate uh proviso than the administrative apparatus, even though they're both part of the executive and uh experts. I'm not even quite sure what that means, but like I, you know, um, and I'm like, well, that's isn't that true everywhere. Like those are like the major ways you administer political will. Like it's just, yeah, it's. I was like, okay, so Putin does what everybody else does yeah, that I didn't find that very insightful the other thing is Putin as a gatherer of Russian lands and builder of Eurasia.
C. Derick Varn:This is where I'm like. How can you not say this is imperialist?
Donald Parkinson:Right, Because basically I mean it's just irredentism, basically Right. Like oh, we're going to collect all the former parts of the Russian Empire, yeah, he's very much openly saying that's what we need to do and we need to do it, I think, through like soft power at first, but then, like I'm sure he's totally down with like doing it through hard power, like when they can.
C. Derick Varn:Right. So we got the Putin's idea ideological risk. So one thing that we don't have to worry about anymore is liquidation into the Western system. That's not going to happen. There's no way that in no world now does NATO accept the Russian Federation.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean let's say that unless NATO somehow destroys Russia, balkanizes it, then reincorporates it. Yeah, they go with.
C. Derick Varn:Honestly, it would be more likely.
Donald Parkinson:I don't think it will happen. I think that that's going to fail.
C. Derick Varn:It would be more likely and I don't think this is very likely at all, but it would be more likely for, like I don't know, like the uh republican administration to absolve nato and just be like okay, we're going to create a new strategic alliance and russia's going to be a uh advisory partner in it, or something yeah I don't see that happening either, but when tucker carlson becomes president when tucker carlson becomes not even president. I think he'd have to be dictator to make that happen. Yeah, a lot of this book is repetitive.
C. Derick Varn:It is repetitive. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm like okay, dugan, what do you do? Because he keeps on saying that. I read it because you're right. An ideology that requires money and material welfare to the to measure all things destroys the morals and spiritual fabric of society, so we shouldn't have to worry about that. Therefore, putin should adopt his liberalism, but that would even be like, I'm okay with that. If, like, russians can't eat like, I'm like what? What do you mean like like? Because you do have to provide for your society for social reproduction to happen right.
Donald Parkinson:That's the uh issue with, like you know, all these, um, all these irrationalist right-wing philosophers is that they, just they always, they never, they always forget the basic reality, which is that people have to eat and that's what everything else comes out of. Everything else doesn't come out of some ancient spiritual tradition that everything's connected through. It really comes down to people have to eat and have shelter and survive as a species.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, so ultimately, just to skip ahead, putin is great for the Russian idea because he holds up to the Russian idea, not to the Russian people as individuals or even as a collective, but to the Russian idea, and this is something about Putin's not Putin's thought, dugin's thought that I think people don't get. How weird it is. He really does seem to believe that ideas have lives that are almost sentient. He kind of says that in For Political Theory too. So the Russian idea has independence, freedom, integrity and sovereignty, and thus putin is doing a good job.
C. Derick Varn:Um, and that, uh, you know, we need a night rochman state, and once you incorporate this enough, uh, from the I mean, this is where he goes like more, more libertarian than like libertarians in America do, where he's like, you know, if you have this great, great leader, and he incorporates the spiritual values of Russian-ness and people don't kill each other because they've incorporated it, we don't need this Hobbesian state anymore. Yeah, we can go to the Night Watchman state, and from the Night Watchman state we could just be like a spiritual theocracy and not need at all like I'm just like okay, I mean that.
C. Derick Varn:I mean like I get that from a if. If you know your bible, yes, that's like the biblical goals. You're like a king is a substitute because you didn't follow god enough, but like spiritual anarchism is wild as part of the ultimate goal of this whole thing.
Donald Parkinson:Like yeah, no, but like we were saying earlier, though, dugan's politics are very intimately connected to his religious views. Absolutely, and this is very much, he kind of sees eurasianism as a fulfillment of this kind of orthodox christian messianism.
C. Derick Varn:I think but then, but if he really really does that, then then I don't know how this doesn't go imperial because like, like, then he's got to make the orthodox church the universal church. I don't, I don't, like this has been an element, this has been an element of his thought and his like relationship with elaine de benoit, who wrote on paganism like well, the problem with christianity is it's universalizing, it's going to always try to take over the world. So like, uh, we should be independent national states with our own traditional religions, and yeah, and I'm like okay that that I can get that, but like I don't see how you recognize this messianic mission with this. Like, well, but the poles are okay because there's different civilizations, I guess, because god created them, except for the bad ones well, that's the thing with the far right is that they're always going to have this religious infighting, you know?
Donald Parkinson:yeah, I mean well, I mean.
C. Derick Varn:Well, this is the problem. Like, for example, one of the one of the great debates in the european far right was like whether or not the european union is good. And you're like, well, most far rightists hate the European Union not all of them because some of them thought it created a unified whiteness in Europe. Like it's just, like it's bizarre. So and then there's a section on Gramsci. Of course there's a section on Gramsci. Because this section on gramsci? Um, uh, because I want to write a book one day and I have three other books that I'm actually writing, so this is not a book I'm probably gonna ever write, but like, why right wingers really, really love the liberal misunderstanding of gramsci as like a plan for their own, uh, success?
C. Derick Varn:yeah it's not just like Dugan, it's like I hear Nina Powers. People say Nina Powers, but I'm right with you, but I like Compact Magazine. People are talking about Gramsci and all this too.
Donald Parkinson:It's very funny, yeah, and I think so much of Gramsci is just Lenin in different language as well.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, no, gramsci is. Basically we need to create a cult. Gramsci is trying to do the whole, understand all the classes that Lenin told everybody to do, so that you can build the preconditions to build a party right. And cultural hegemony is about the preconditions to build a party, preconditions to build a party. So, and, like you know, togliatti used it to like justify what he did in the late 40s and 50s. But then, god, when the liberal intellectuals got a hold of that myth, they really ran with it. So, and then the right-wingers ran with that. I mean because, like Gramsci's, like the cultural Marxist, all right, wingers light, cause he's not Jewish, um, so like, uh, you, you, uh, you could have that. And then he has, like, uh, czarism as a way for transformation. That was wild. Um, uh, uh, although it's interesting as a way for transformation, that was wild, although it's interesting, he gets it from Gramsci's czarism. I was just going to talk about this.
C. Derick Varn:Charles' caption in his book no One's World presents a model which Gramsci calls Caesarism, which he divides into three types the modern, russian, corrupt autocracy and the other similar models in the post-Soviet landscape which appear to be dominated by corrupt groups. Chinese system of totalitarianism, which concentrates all power in the totalitarian manner on the governmental level, and I guess this is like not just like Maoist China. They think this is just how China works forever. And then the petro-ies of the middle east, where religious or dynastic aspects of domination are included, with very political structure. It's zone, caesar, caesarism, as well as examples of started sheiks.
C. Derick Varn:Let us stress one more time that russia, according to this classification, belongs to a group of countries with caesaristic rule force. It is important that these societies, uh societies, hegemony, simultaneously of force outside, uh, uh, from the stance of the side of fully bourgeois government and an internal opposition from which it otherwise tied to external factors. Hegemony from both outside and inside, compel caesarism to desauverantize and to shift to a more globalist condition of hegemony. Neo-gramscians and the international relations maintain caesarism can be considered for sub-hegemony. Neo-gramscians and the international relations maintain caesars can be considered for some hegemony.
Donald Parkinson:Blah, blah, blah, blah yeah, he talks about robert cox, who's an interesting theorist. He's like this um, he was kind of trying to make a marxist theory of international relations and he's working from gramsci, and he makes a point that I think I'm doing and picks up this point, and I think it's kind of correct, which is that, like, if you want to create a counter hegemony to like global liberal capitalism, you have to conceive of a counter hegemony that has the same scope. And you know just which is a basic marxist point, which is, if you want to overcome global capitalism, you have to think internationally, you have to have an international scope of politics right and the way that they get at, which is what I find so interesting about mega communist, because I'm like they don't have an international vision really well, they have multi-polarity.
Donald Parkinson:They kind of you know, argue for the big.
C. Derick Varn:You know, the you know but all multi-polarity means is there's multiple high hegemony. So I'm just like. I'm just like that.
C. Derick Varn:To me, yes, it's a, it's a vision, but it's a very, very, very, very, very vague vision like yeah yeah, like I mean, because one of the things that I was saying, like, okay, we can talk about multi-polarity, but what kind do you want? You want one that's not, you know, pre-war war one conditions, fine, how, like what? How do you? What do you set that up? How do you, how do you get the uh, the parties, to make peace, particularly when, like in this framework, there can be no peace between the, the sea world and the land world?
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I just don't see a genuine kind of global system of cooperation on the basis of just kind of ruling class projects.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, you and I would say it would have to be on, you know, in some kind of international.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, it would have to be international socialism as the basis for a new world order. Yeah, you know, I guess the maga comms maybe think that this is all going to become international socialism somehow, because but they believe in hierarchy, like that's the thing.
C. Derick Varn:Like dugan believes in hierarchy, there's no way around that. And I I sometimes think maga comps do too Like I don't know what they like when I read their stuff. Maybe this is a I mean we I'm not going to get into his stuff on the Bilderberger group, cause that's like standard conspiracy theory stuff. Actually Some of it's real. But the trilateral commission and and stuff advocated for Russia with the Rand corporation is what we talked about. Like you know, balkanize it and the Balkan wars, I think is a real site of trauma for for you know, the, the Russian imagination, and rightly so, yeah, yeah. And then at the end we get some like we get Ernst Nekist actually brought up positively. We've mentioned him, yeah classic, classic, national Bolshevism.
C. Derick Varn:Right, but why? But both, as some of this is good, but it's never going to be good enough because the nation is not a big enough. You know, counter-political vision, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, there we go, I think. Is there anything else you want to talk about, uh, in this book? Because the last part's just a restatement of fourth political theory. Um, and then like uh, the conclusion he simply is the best, which is like, for everything we might have criticized putin on, he's still our god king yeah, good day, like I mean.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I think that kind of summarizes it. I think, um, I we covered the stuff that I took notes on all right as far as this book goes. I mean, there's some other stuff about liberalism and nihilism and yeah, I mean we kind of touched on his critique of liberalism and kind of um it's, you know, I I did mention how you know his critique of liberalism. It's funny how, like, like um, homosexuality is almost like the telos of liberalism. Right, it's actually transhumanism is where transhuman telos of liberalism.
C. Derick Varn:Right, it's actually. Transhumanism is where he's at.
Donald Parkinson:Transhumanism and negationism are two things that are really. But he kind of sees LGBT as the kind of ultimate expression of that, because it's casting away the kind of telos that's ordained on you by your biology and rejecting, like, that aspect of your identity and you know. So he really doesn't like, you know, lgbt for that reason. Yeah, um, he has a very teleological view of, like, how humans are supposed to be. Everyone is kind of like, you know, born a certain way and then born into that role and the liberalism wants us to, you know, be individuals rather than the roles that were assigned by you know, the natural.
C. Derick Varn:You know, I mean typical, typical right-wing stuff I mean, I do agree that like, yeah, it's it's personalism, but like, but it's personalism, frozen it's.
C. Derick Varn:Do agree that liberal individualism is actually dialectical in the sense that it may have begun useful to break up certain bonds, but it also atomizes everything to the point of you don't recognize that you are a product of a bunch of relations and you're not just an innate person. I get that and I get that. That does complicate the way liberals talk about stuff like sexuality because, like, for them it's all about a, an individual choice, and that's why we focus on either choice or like, oh, you're just biologically that way, and not like, well, social relations are changing and so certain things are going to be different and more possible. Like you know, I really wish actually that communists would sit down and, instead of like going one way or the other, accepting the liberal way of explaining this, are picking up like, well, people just are a certain way. We actually start talking about like, okay, relations change, why would they change? What? You know? What about? The current situation would lead to that?
Donald Parkinson:Right, right, yeah, no, I would like to see more actual historical materialist engagement with this stuff.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, historical materialist career theory would be nice. Someone do it. Yeah, yeah, I think who kind of tried? Was it Mike McNair who wrote a book on that In the 80s, yeah, but he hasn't really picked it back up.
Donald Parkinson:There's also D'Amelio D'Amelio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's, I think you know. But yeah, I think it's you know. I think a lot of Marxists are too hard on individualism and individuality as a kind of positive thing, so are too hard on individualism and individuality as a kind of positive thing, so I feel like we associate individuality with the bourgeois. It's like, well, yeah, that is true, but at the same time, like you know, I do think ontological individuals exist. I think marx believed in ontological individuals and I do think that marx believed in individuals flourishing as individuals as a kind of end goal in communism. It's just the only way to achieve the conditions for this are through collective action yeah, you know it's so.
C. Derick Varn:I I am very wary of, like um, critiques of liberalism that locate the problem of liberalism entirely with individualism, because it's often used in a way to force people back into the roles that are imposed on them bingo right where you know, whereas part of the yeah, I am one of these believers that part of the point of the project is to figure out, like, how these relations work so that we could have more control over them. Right, exactly, exactly, um, and that's kind of the goal, and that includes on social reproduction, and if you are touching social reproduction, you're touching sex and sexuality, like there's yeah, um, there's no way around that, um, so let's talk about mega communists. I mean, we talked about them a lot already, but like yeah, uh, is they is or is they ain't actually duganist?
Donald Parkinson:oh, no, I feel like I mean their relationship with dugan is very much out in the open. I mean, paul and jackson hinkle went and did like a an event with him. I think hinkle did another event hosted by duganan where actually Maria Zaricova was there. Was there, yeah, and she's a government minister, right?
C. Derick Varn:So that's kind of interesting.
Donald Parkinson:It is kind of interesting so that kind of answers our question how much is this stuff actually interacting with real power? It kind of is actually interacting with real power. It kind of is actually interacting with real power.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, this is where I was very confused about. So you and I both read the Rise of Magna-Communism, which is really sort of like the only singular statement of what this particular iteration of this theory was. I mean, there was the old patriotic socialist points or whatever, but like they don't believe that anymore, yeah, no this is the thing that if you talk about maga communism in a negative way, like they'll just spam you.
Donald Parkinson:Read the sub stack. Read the sub stack.
C. Derick Varn:You don't understand maga communism yeah, and I originally said like, I've read everything you're referencing, so I don't know why I need to. But okay, fine, I'll read it. And I did.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, I read it when it came out and I reread it recently and I'm not. I don't think I've misunderstood MAGA communism, I think yeah.
C. Derick Varn:It very much. I mean even to the point where, like no, he doesn't mention the Eurasianist part of this, but like no, he doesn't mention the Eurasian as part of this, but the stuff about land powers versus sea powers is there's a part where he talks about land empires in a positive way and he kind of talks about how the Mongols is his example, like as a part of Russia.
C. Derick Varn:But yeah, it's like land powers versus sea powers, and land powers in a positive way. He also talks a lot about real subjective conditions, not real objective condition. For that was like and I was like do people notice what he's doing there? Because he's like talking about these subjective conditions as having an existence outside of the mind.
Donald Parkinson:Um and right, he talks about um, he, he, um counterposes real subjective conditions to people's ideas, actually. And we would think, well, when we talk about subjectivity, we're talking about people's ideas. No, he's talking about something else, right? Yeah, ideas are just a minor little thing compared to what he's talking about with the subjective conditions.
C. Derick Varn:So what I gathered from this is you and I have been kind of hinting at it there's some border gism in in this and there's I. I actually think there's more border gism than there is traditional Marxist Leninism. But you need Stalin because Stalin is more popular, yeah.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:I'm like, um, because, like, okay, when we think of, like Stalin, policies, uh, uh, you know, and I I say that I'm not talking about stalinism, I'm not talking about marxist-lindianism, I'm talking about specific policies, you know, that are unique. What makes stalin different from early third, uh, third, international marxism, right, like, okay, so the popular front, like, that's not here. Um, what else makes it different? Collective agriculture, that I mean, which is also something trotsky believed, but that that's not here. Um, war, communism, that's not here. Uh, what else? Uh, uh, big, much. Last man, good, okay, that's here, but that's not the substance of what stalin believed. But we do have things.
C. Derick Varn:Now there is one bit of language from marx where this is based off of. So it is, communism is not, you know, an idea, but it's something the world has to uh, accommodate itself to. It's a real movement. It's a real movement. But if you focus not on the movement but the accommodation of something beyond an idea, it leads to this idea that you see in Bordiga of invariance. There's a program, it exists somewhere in the universe, I don't know. Marx found it, he didn't even invent it. And the entire point of the Borgas position is we're just going to wait until you can all get on board with the invariant program, because there needs to be absolute homogeneity and there needs to be an organic relation between the party and the proletariat. But the party has no democratic relationship to the proletariat, it just emerges technocratically or organically. It when you read, it's like both. There's both. The thing that kind of reads like integralism, like an integrated, and they talk about that in in borges thought, and there's also this idea that there's the real left and there's a left of capital.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:Now, and you and I have both been on the thing Like I was a left communist for a lot of my life and I was like, even if I agree with some of these things, there's no common turn, there's no second internet. I mean there there are internationals. They're not really. The socialist international is a joke. Yeah yeah, there's no common form. There's nothing like that anymore. So what would be the left of communism? That makes communism an idea.
Donald Parkinson:Right, right. Well, I think what you get with the MAGA communism understanding is like there's the left wing of capital for left comms and ben for maga communism. It's leftism, they just call it, which is also what left comms call it, and it's like right.
C. Derick Varn:They call the open society, like the ngo right right sorrow sites, the kind of um well, they seem to block all the left in, with liberals right entirely but not just, not just like, not just like the obvious people that we would call rad libs and shit libs and whatever.
Donald Parkinson:But like, like, no, like, uh like psl, for example, psl like work, you know, yeah, any any sectarian, uh, marxist organization.
C. Derick Varn:Actually, you know part of the right which is honestly what left comms do as well, you know. Yeah.
Donald Parkinson:Like you know, there's the actual left of capital, like the kind of liberal you know, Democratic Party associated labor bureaucrats and all these kind of like reformist, soft lib NGOs that actually do play a real role in administering capitalist society, versus like a bunch of like ML and Trotskyist groups that play no role whatsoever in administering capitalist society.
C. Derick Varn:Right, and there's plenty of critiques to have of them. I mean I would not include all the weird sectarian orgs in the left of capital in the sense that they mean Right, right, exactly exactly you might say they're irrelevant, but they're not the same thing.
Donald Parkinson:But the thing is, when you push MAGA commun communists on this, it always comes down to the fact that they accept cultural positions that are associated with the left wing of capital, which always, usually is like pro-lgbt in the end.
C. Derick Varn:Or yeah, it's like you don't have a problem with gay people and yeah like. And you don't like using slurs? Yeah, it comes down to this argument that they are crypto liberals because they don't oppose like but if you took, that which connects to dugan's whole idea about lgbt is kind of like this telos of liberalism and that you know, if you actually take that theory, then honestly the bolsheviks themselves would, until Stalin's war, communist period, meet this criterion.
Donald Parkinson:Well, they actually kind of say that. They'll say that oh well, the Bolsheviks, you know they had some, you know they were, you know they held all these ultra-leftists running around like preaching free love. But then Stalin came in and like re-established, like the proper Marxist-Leninist.
C. Derick Varn:Do you know who Kerry Bolton was?
Donald Parkinson:Oh yeah, he has a whole book about Stalin being like a.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, which is a bad book on Stalin, but they seem to believe that version of Stalin.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, yeah, they literally will say that Stalin's actually a Christian, that he was actually Orthodox, which is just kind of an insult to Stalin because he was an atheist and he would have been mad if anyone said anything otherwise, because that would have been an insult to Stalin, quite frankly.
C. Derick Varn:I was about to say like yeah, he studied to be an Orthodox priest and gave it up.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, he was an atheist. I don't buy this whole thing. He was secretly a Christian the whole time and he was really, you know, like, I was like yeah, he was willing to make like like amends with the Orthodox church and bring it back in ways. But people forget he was harsher on them at first than Lenin was by far Like the harshest anti-religious campaigns were under Stalin.
C. Derick Varn:That's when you know more people were shot, like it's just, it's uh. I mean, they just kind of use Stalin as a, they use elements of Stalin to project things on. I've always said, yeah, okay, sure. So there's this weird mixture of what we might call ultra-leftism, right-wing thought and Marxist-Leninism, but the Marxist-Leninism is a vibe that kind of covers the whole thing.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:Like you know, and what's interesting about that is that's consistent with the whole thing. Yeah, like, yeah, and, and what's interesting about that is that's consistent with Dugan in in the second chapter of for political theory. He just says it outright we only believe in Marxism as a Sorelli, and may have to get people pissed off the Capitol so we can do what we want.
Donald Parkinson:Right, right, yeah, yeah.
C. Derick Varn:Like he says it explicitly, it's not veiled like um, uh, so it. I find this really interesting also, uh, the impossibility of rightist politics. You and I together way a long time ago I think it was like seven years ago now uh, back when a bunch of our former colleague comrades didn't hate each other and and before cosmonaut existed or mug existed or any of that, we re-read demestra, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that. And like, the impossibility of rightist politics in this essay is demestra, uh, demestra's critique of conservative.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, he didn't talk about the right in this way, he talked about conservatives in the entrant regime. But, like they're always losing their politics are impossible by the time they recognize what they're. You know, we need the right to be like. You know to utilize all this leftist terror and use it to terrorize them back and like and to quit being all conservative about the status quo, like um. So, and I found it interesting because, um, they use the same argument but instead of conservatives, they put the right there, um, and I, I was, I was interested, I was. They do throw some stuff in about, uh, um, the manifesto and organic. Well, you know, he makes, you know, he makes the claim.
Donald Parkinson:You know, because a lot of this is, you know, his whole kind of argument kind of centers around this idea of you know there's political modernity is pure difference and the production of pure difference.
Donald Parkinson:And you know what we understand as the left in America, the political spectrum left is essentially the abstraction of modernity itself from the real community of the people Right. And so you know that's, you know this kind of Heideggerian point right there already, which is this kind of critique of modernity as abstraction and and so. But he also argues that you know there is a real political spectrum, there is a real left, product of this split, this difference created by modernity. The right itself is modernity. It can only kind of appeal to the pre-modern in the name of shoring up the um status quo, but and it will do this, and so he kind of like to him like the right, like the establishment, kind of using conservative ideas and traditions to store up, shore up the status quo is inevitably going to lead to, like what he says, like BLM and LGBT will become like just as right wing as anything else. And and you know, yeah, I mean.
C. Derick Varn:I mean we see this today. I wanted to ask you I don't know how you and I feel about the quote left. I know, increasingly I believe in the political spectrum. I believe that attempts to prematurely transcend the left and right almost always go right and I have my reasons for thinking that. And it's not just based off fascism, it's based off of like well, to try to prematurely change, you know, a spectrum that emerges because of the, the way we organize society today.
C. Derick Varn:Anyway, that you're going to always have to try to glom on to that prefiguration on something in the status quo or some prior ideal and like that's going to lead to a kind of conservatizing element in your thought and it's going to grow and grow and grow, most likely as you push back against the left. And I also think it's interesting that these groups always identify the left, the change, or leftists in this case, because there's the two lefts in this.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, there's leftists and the actual left.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, and you know, but the left in here is trans-historical for them. I mean, they talk about the problem of, like the metaphysical, you know, spectrum of politics, but then, interestingly, their answer to the metaphysical spectrum of politics is a more metaphysical spectrum of politics.
C. Derick Varn:It's like, because he also talks about the eternal. The partisan is fighting for the eternal and I'm like okay, what is that? Like? I also just find this fascinating. This is almost completely devoid of political economy, like there's almost no political economy here yeah, no, it's entirely kind of theories of sovereignty.
Donald Parkinson:It's very schmitty and it's very much about sovereignty as a subject in itself.
C. Derick Varn:But do you see what I'm saying about what he does with the right is identical to what, like demestra, was doing with conservatism and in the pieces we read by demestra, oh yeah, totally, totally, totally, totally.
Donald Parkinson:He's basically criticizing the right on the same ground that Demestra does.
C. Derick Varn:Conservatives in the national regime. I mean like and what do we make about the fact that he focused so much on the open society and Soros? Because I, yes, soros does stuff. Yes, the open society idea. I don't even think most liberals accept the open society idea today. Like, like, how many fucking liberals are really influenced by call popper?
Donald Parkinson:yeah, yeah I mean you know, I'm not one of those people who thinks that like any kind of like discussion about soros is like anti-semitism, you know no, no, I mean he does you know front shit all the time. That's absolutely true, yeah, but I also just think like soros is like not as important as people make him out to be.
C. Derick Varn:I don't know.
Donald Parkinson:It's like the american government like yeah like I mean, yeah, I, I, I just think about you know he's, he's a powerful person. He does fund a lot of stuff. He's very um, you know he's, he's influenced and you know a lot of the anti-china protests, apparently in hong kong he was funding, but at the same time, you know he also funds like anti-zionist groups, weirdly enough, right, and and also you know it's a lot of. It's just very opaque because we don't know how much of this funding is actually like. How much does soros himself decide where this funding goes, versus people he just hires to kind of do his work?
Donald Parkinson:You know, I think it's one of those instances where I think it's because the reason he chooses the open society as kind of like the enemy is because he's trying to set up this whole kind of dialectic of. There's the liberal open society, which is, you know, it opens things up, and it's the global market, and then there's everything that's outside that, which is against the system and against openness and for like eternal, metaphysical truth, very Duganist.
C. Derick Varn:It's very Duganist. It's very Jihad versus Mech world too. Yeah, yeahanist, it's very Duganist. It's very Jihad versus Mech world too, yeah, yeah exactly.
Donald Parkinson:It's not a theory of class struggle At all. Like you will mention, class struggle and saying this is all just a kind of refracted like this conflict between globalist modernity and the partisan is just a kind of refracted like version of the class struggle. But it's so many layers removed from what you know we understand as class struggle in a political, economic sense that it kind of becomes like to the point where now, like farmers who actually own capital and higher wage labor, are the proletariat because they're rebelling against the globalist order which is, you know, the order of the bourgeoisie or whatever right.
C. Derick Varn:Well, I mean, I I do think we've seen this before. I like one of the things that we we can both talk about a little bit is there's been a tendency in marxist, leninist traditions going back to the 70s to try to redef, not not define the new subject, but to just redefine what the proletariat is right like. Uh, I mean, jay sakai is the greatest example, like the nations, and for jay sakai, nations or racial groups, um, and I don't, I actually was like you know, I was like I know that jay sakai was a marxist, leninist, maoist. I actually know that, just for a fact, that the idea that he was a cia anarchist seemed to be, completely made up.
Donald Parkinson:But that he was around the circles of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and that kind of stuff. That was kind of familiar.
C. Derick Varn:Right and the.
Donald Parkinson:Sojourner Truth organization as well.
C. Derick Varn:Right. So I mean, you know, and these ideas come out. I mean, weirdly they come up in other places, like this comes up in this idea that you see in the Johnson-Forest tendency and the Marxist-Humanist tendency, that what Marx meant by advanced when he said, you know, socialists should join with the advanced part of the proletariat was the marginalized. So we see it, but it's a redefinition. Actually, in the case of JS Kai, it's a redefinition Actually, in the case of J Sakai, it's a redefinition of what nation is and a redefinition of what Proletariat is.
Donald Parkinson:Well, I think with Sakai it's interesting Because I actually read Sakai as A class reductionist and I think I do too.
C. Derick Varn:And a race reductionist Simultaneously.
Donald Parkinson:He tries to do class reductionism by kind of collapsing race, class and nation Into one thing. Right, and that's actually my critique of Sakai, that he kind of actually tries to do class reductionism Too hard and ends up Kind of muddying the categories.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, weirdly, I would actually agree with you and I would go so far as to say, in a way, his error is a similar thing to the error I accused Mark Fisher of and those two people would hate each other. Yeah, like um, but nonetheless, uh, yeah, I have, I have read settlers with word for word and I think you know, I would say I actually would probably surprise people. I would say that I think it's like half good and half terrible it's not as insane as people act like it is.
C. Derick Varn:Like people act like it's no, well, particularly if you read his later work, like if you read when race burns class um, like, like it's not, he's not making as essentialist acclaims as you think he's making, and then yeah, he's not, it's just.
C. Derick Varn:The problem is it's like he doesn't really have any feasible vision of how a revolution could actually occur no, and he also I will say, when you're right, he's a class reductionist and he tries to reduce class, race, nation into one thing. Um, but that also means that, like, we don't know what a nation is, other than like oppressed racial groups, because, like the idea, for example, that Chinese migrant, like Corvée labor in the West Coast, was a nation, is a weird idea. Like it's like okay, why? Like, when you go back to the national question debates, none of the criteria that anyone comes up with.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean, there is also like, also, like a theory like I'm in a new left of like anything can be a nation, like we're the, like, the yippies, the whole idea like we're the youth nation, like right, yeah, you know, anyone can band together and create a nation if they believe that they're one. So we're going to create the youth nation and revolt against the square boomer nation or not, obviously, vr the boomer square, this is the square nation yeah, I mean it.
Donald Parkinson:I think people underestimate the damage done to marxist theory during the end of the new left, like oh yeah, but at the same time I think a lot of it was people trying to like creatively apply marxism to understand their conditions and you know that leads to some embarrassing, like you know, stuff not every experimental. Or you know, album your favorite artist makes is going to be great, but at least they're experimenting, you know uh well, you and I I know I sound very critical than you left.
C. Derick Varn:I'm one of these people who thinks the problems of the american left are way older than the new left.
Donald Parkinson:Oh yeah, definitely I think.
C. Derick Varn:Way back. Basically, everything post-Devs is problematic and I actually think and I'm going to also say this I don't think the early CPUSA was that bad. So like you know it's, but it was. I was thinking like going back and reading some William C Foster stuff and I was like it's not particularly dialectical, weirdly. But anyway, that's what I hear over there. But it does seem to me that a lot of the weirdness that we see in Haas is actually enabled by other weirdness that we've seen other places.
Donald Parkinson:Oh yeah, I mean in Haas, you know he's part of. He was kind of associated also with the accelerationist circles around Reza Reza.
C. Derick Varn:Nagastani yeah, yeah that guy.
Donald Parkinson:yeah, I don't know much about him, but I know that he was kind of like around those kind of weird accelerationists, adjacent circles.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, yeah, I mean circles, and yeah, uh um, yeah, I mean, uh, raisin agastani.
Donald Parkinson:I mean who, who?
C. Derick Varn:uh, recently, uh, converted islam. Yeah, um, uh, uh. But yeah, there's, there is, which weirdly also means that that indirectly, that uh, that, uh, that haas was in. I actually was about to say there's some. There's some rhetorical tricks that I recognize from land and from mark fisher that I see here. That seems like a cru accelerationist. Yeah, uh, delusion thing.
Donald Parkinson:Um, uh, so you know that's another thing about haas is he's actually very open to a lot of the french theory in a way that the midwestern marx guys would never be, because they they, you know, they totally reject all that. It's like cia, like psyop, whereas haas is like no, let's read derrida, let's read the lose, let's read la con. You know right.
C. Derick Varn:I mean it's going to be interesting where this all goes, now that Midwestern Marx and MAGA communism are on the same side explicitly yeah, Literally the the. The day like the day before they announced that, I did an interview with like one dime and I was like you know well, I I consider Midwestern Marx, youern Marx, like I think they're wrong and annoying a lot of things, but I definitely consider them, you know, Marxist on our side and I don't feel that way about MAGA communist.
Donald Parkinson:and then they declared MAGA as like shit yeah, it's disappointing to see because, like I remember, when the MAa communism meme like first started like trending, like that guy eddie made like a tiktok, that was actually kind of a decent critique of it was like, yeah, you know, I'm not against like reaching out to like conservative, like trump voters and trying to win them the communism, but I just can't get down with maga as a slogan, because you know if america used to be great and you know why did our forefathers like john brown and frederick douglas and harriet tubman have to fight so hard? You know, and right, just like.
Donald Parkinson:And then haas kind of has this defense of um the slogan in the uh they also tried to tell me his fans try to tell me that maga is bigger than anything from the republican party and I'm like it's a republican party right, exactly like the kind of argument is is that like well, maga, what maga is doing is it's like introducing partisanship into a political system that's been like kind of domesticated by this globalist open society agenda, and maga, even though it like represents it's tainted by all the you know aspects of the old world and it's right-wing coded according to um, the liberals.
Donald Parkinson:This is just because anything that like rises against the open society hegemony is going to be coded as fascist, because that's just the ideology of liberalism. And so maga represents a true like sense of partisanship that can allow something that actually is in opposition to this global order to develop finally in American politics. And so we have to understand that MAGA, in this sense, because it's partisan against globalist hegemony, is actually truly left wing, and this doesn't, you know, there's no actual engagement with the actual what is the MAGA movement? Because they keep saying it's not about Trump, the person, it's about the MAGA movement and Trump is just a mascot for it. He's just Ronald McDonald we want the burger is what they always say, and so it's like. So what is the actual substance of MAGA as a materially reproducing community? There's no investigation into that, because I think if you do investigate it, you find out there really isn't much to it beyond a bunch of grifters and atomized individuals who give money to these grifters.
C. Derick Varn:You know Right. Well, I mean, this is the problem that I have with this transhistorical partisan thing. It's like okay, so there's just this eternal thing that emerges that goes against the system, but it doesn't exist in the system at all. It's not built into the economic and social reproductive masculinisms that everything else is, it seems, both weirdly inhumanist but not inhumanist enough.
C. Derick Varn:Like like like it's not really.
C. Derick Varn:There's a, there's a kind of metaphysical special pleading going on and and I mean I think that's true for Dugan too, I think it's true for a lot of the of the of the kind of far right in a way that like, like the quote, normal right doesn't do.
C. Derick Varn:There have been times where I'm like you know, guys, maybe you guys should read some leo strauss or some like more normal conservatives to figure out, like, where this stuff actually comes from. Because and I don't just think it's uh I, I think there's a lot of this americanist stuff that I mean we can talk about. You know, you talk about midwestern march, you talk about, uh, microcosms, but like you can even talk about, like, the milieu around where sublation is going, um, that just takes this stuff at face value but doesn't take the left at face value, and I find that weird. Like why would you take? I like, okay, I get being critical of the left, like I, you know the left, whatever that is, it's the broad milieu like you and I are not each other and we're also not like, uh, I don't know, um, anarchist in oakland.
C. Derick Varn:Uh, we're not people who take money from george soros uh you know, uh, you're not even other caucuses in your same organization right, exactly, and I'm not even everyone else in mug right.
C. Derick Varn:So like, which is not to say there isn't some continuity there, like there is. Or we couldn't talk about a political spectrum, but like why would you take any of this? If you're going to critique it, you need to critique the entire social system and then figure out our relationship to that and how maybe we can use that to our advantage and break it apart or not. And I feel like this is just not sufficient for that. And either the right-wing Duganist well, excuse me, fourth positionist they're not going to claim to be right-wing, although again feels like right-wing thought that we've seen before. Yeah, like it's right-wing as far as I'm concerned. Like there's a continuity of of thought here.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, it's.
C. Derick Varn:It's in the tradition of irrationalist right-wing thought like, like, I feel like that if isaiah boleyn was still alive, there would be a chapter on Dugan like, like, like, herder, dugan, like, but. But when we say irrationalist, we should not imply that we think this is stupid. This is one thing I think that a lot of leftists and liberals both underestimate. They're always just a meme. Okay, okay, that might be true, but it is a thought-out meme that if you get, if you look at it, uh, you do have to have to answer to it, and a lot of people seem I do say a lot of people don't seem to want to engage it, to even rebuke it, yeah, yeah, and and I I know that maybe that follows the logic of deplatforming, but can we just admit that that doesn't work?
Donald Parkinson:It doesn't work at all.
C. Derick Varn:It doesn't deplatforming.
Donald Parkinson:I mean it might work. It's like actually getting certain people deplatformed but it doesn't make the ideas go away.
C. Derick Varn:No, I mean like like OK, I'm going to, I'm going to make a claim. I wonder what you make about this claim. I wonder what you make about this claim the right is stronger as a cultural force in America after Trump left than it is during the Trump administration.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. I think it's definitely the case.
C. Derick Varn:Right.
Donald Parkinson:And the left is. I don't know if we're but like um, we're more aware of our leaders.
C. Derick Varn:They're definitely like kind of in a in a weak spot right now.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean, um, I, I, I think part of why is because so much of the left basically thought that, oh well, we can kind of like be the people who push biden to the left and not actually try to like form an opposition to the system. Which basically means that, like, maga comes out looking like the only real opposition to the system, and so it creates a problem where the left and, you know, socially progressive, cultural values also associated with the left become associated with the ruling class.
C. Derick Varn:basically, in a way, this is where Benjamin Studebaker kind of has a point, though a lot of, a lot of people in both these anti-systemic movements think that they're opposing something and they side with part of it because because the other thing we could say these people are tailing mega yeah, they are.
Donald Parkinson:They're they deny they are but like what?
C. Derick Varn:why join up with it? Like what? Why make it your like trans-historical object or whatever like? Yeah um, uh, in a way that I will actually give dugan dugan's not. Well, maybe they're tailing, I don't know. United russia I can't actually tell. I'd have to know a lot more about russia to know that. But it doesn't feel like that's as true.
Donald Parkinson:Um uh well, the problem of maga communism is also the fact that, like they're really trying to pivot to the anti zionism thing. But the actual maga movement, not just trump, is a zionist movement. Right, like it's not like they'll cope and say all the average maga is actually against israel and is america first, not israel first, and they want stop giving money to other foreign countries. But that's not true. Like I, it's the rank and file MAGA guys will like rally with Israeli flags. You know in my town, you know it's not just like no, I mean like it's the far, far right.
C. Derick Varn:That is not Well, yeah.
Donald Parkinson:The only faction of maga that's not pro-israel is nick fuentes and the groipers and right. That's just even like that's just because they're nazis like yeah, there were some like actually, you know, and and they will actually admit this if you bring it up there were some early attempts from the maga communists to form alliances with nick fuentes and the groipers, but it was just impossible because they are nazis and it's not just like an edgy posture they do, they actually are hitlerites yeah, I mean they're, they're catholic, they're catholic national socialists like yeah, like yeah, like uh, you know a uh a vaguely brown-coated and uh islamic um background.
C. Derick Varn:I'm probably practicing in some ways.
Donald Parkinson:Um person is gonna have a hard time with that like yeah, but if I don't know, if you noticed, but they are actually getting like uh muslims to come to their conferences and stuff like uh, you know, fuente's got that guy, solomain ahmed, and that sneeko guy that speak at their big like uh convention this weekend.
C. Derick Varn:So it's, it's funny how they're trying to make these alliances, even though they hate these people, but it's like yeah, I mean what is interesting to me, like, um, where the opportunism goes and I think we're going to see a lot of this, like we're talking about, like some of the most extreme examples, but there are less extreme examples, like there's a whole lot of people who seem to think that maybe tailing Republicans is going to be a way to not be associated with a shitty and unpopular democratic uh yeah, um and uh, but in a way and this is a broader left problem you know um, the worst, one of the worst periods for alex jones popularity was when he actually got on the Trump train and lost his counter-systemic force within the Republican Party.
C. Derick Varn:Now that they're not in power he's actually not going to be around very long for legal reasons, but his popularity seemed to be more relevant again. I think that one of the dangers with just superficial counter-systemic things when you're basing your counter-systemic on just who's in power of a faction at any given time Benjamin Studebaker's right about this you're just empowering one part of the state against another and one part of the faction of a league against another right, yeah, and that is what most dissident politics amounts to yeah, and one of the things I kind of admire about Duke is he admits it.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:These other people don't. It's a weird position to be in. Yeah, anything you'd like to say, donald, anything you'd like to say Donald, anything you'd like to plug, we've got 30 hours.
Donald Parkinson:Well, I enjoy talking about all this stuff. It was kind of it felt refreshing to just, you know, talk about all this insanity and just get it all out there, because it's and also because there aren't a lot of people who like know about all of this stuff like we do, so we can kind of just really yeah yeah, I am a I'm kind of like the reverse haas.
C. Derick Varn:I am a former reactionary who uh went through a normal uh left phase, a, a uh a platypus phase, whatever that is, uh a left comp phase and have kind of ended up as, like you know, uh, I, I would, I would I always say I'm either the right wing of the very far left or the are the left wing of the marxist center. I have no idea where that would put me, but, like, like you know, and I very much believe the political spectrum is relative, so it is so. That's why it, until we get out of capitalism, it's going to be relevant.
C. Derick Varn:Well, yeah, I would say, I'm the center left of the left, right, yeah, and I would be slightly left of you, but like, nonetheless, like the other thing that we share is we're big tent leftist and I'm not. I'm not saying that means that everybody gets to be involved. There's gotta be a line and but and I do think mega communism's on the other side of the line- um, yeah, yeah, no, I think.
Donald Parkinson:Um, I think, if, uh, you know, they start intervening in real world politics, we'll start seeing uh some very crazy stuff happening and that will make it more apparent, I think.
C. Derick Varn:But uh, do you, do you actually see them intervening in real world politics?
Donald Parkinson:It's hard for me to know they're starting to try to, because they now have their Institute for a Free America. But isn't?
C. Derick Varn:that going to go the way of the Center for Political Innovation. There's been institutions where we go that way.
Donald Parkinson:I know from, because I do talk to some of these MAGA communist people. I'll admit to that.
C. Derick Varn:I talk to some of these MAGA communist people you know, like I'll admit to that, like I'm not, like you know, I mean I talk to conservatives, dude. Like it's not, the thing is like I'll talk to anyone like?
Donald Parkinson:I don't feel like talking to someone is like a showing, all in complete agreement or anything, of course. So I will talk to them and they will always like say, oh, the CPI is what we're not going to do. So what? What are you going to do then? What is it going to look like? And so I'm curious to see where this all goes and where this Midwest Marx Alliance goes. I predict it's going to go nowhere.
Donald Parkinson:Good, like, jackson Hinkle is kind of who they're all banking in, banking on for their success, because he's got 2 million followers on Twitter and he's been on Tucker Carlson and Russian TV and the Houthis, tucker carlson and russian tv and the hoothies watched one of his speeches and he's everywhere and he's a spokesperson for american communism. And if you make any criticism of jackson hinkle, they will always say this but he's so popular you can't. Can you not see the value in this? And it's like, well, you keep pointing to him as a spokesperson for american communism with a lot of power and reach, so what he says really does actually matter quite a bit and the stuff he has to say is horrendous. Right, like I'm not. You know, mr, like you know, cancel everyone who has any kind of conservative view whatsoever that's what hengel says it's just just very old-fashioned misogynistic crap.
C. Derick Varn:You know, I just I also feel like I would want the american communist movement to be associated with like I don't know man, I'm not gonna say I know that he's astroturf, but he feels like he came out of a lab like it's so weird.
Donald Parkinson:You know I don't know what to make of him sometimes, but you know the way that people talk about him. Like he actually represents a movement. Like you'll see, like the Midwestern Russell, there's this new American communist movement Forming. You can join it or stay left behind In the mainstream, compatible Pan-leftist, and you can complain about us with your purity fetish. Or you can join this great new american communist movement of jackson hinkle as the spokesperson.
C. Derick Varn:It's like yeah, I don't know, man, like, look like, I have never seen these people in my city, um, and I have seen, for better and for worse, uh, the psl, the dsa, even the cp usa sometimes in my city. I've never seen these people in my city, yeah, and the thing is, we know how big we we have. We actually don't know how big the psl and the cp usa are, but we know that they're probably, you know, between five and Between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and the DSA is between 60,000 and 80,000 people, and I see them, and I see them in a nation of 350 million people, whereas I've never seen these guys except on Twitter.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, but I mean, I will say their kind of. I will say they're kind of in the real world.
C. Derick Varn:So, like I, I I don't want to say that they're just. And the other thing where people go, oh, the engagement fake. And I'm like, well, you know, that might be true, it might not be true, I don't know, um, but uh, I can tell you, this fake engagement becomes real engagement eventually. Yeah.
Donald Parkinson:No, I think that the strategy seems to be that like, listen, we're going to kind of fight the culture war to information or online and then it will kind of seep into real world success and how that happens, you know, unless you expect it to kind of be like completely stochastic and like spontaneous, or people just kind of spontaneously form aga, communist clubs or whatever because they watch haas, and you know there's gotta have to be some kind of plan to make it into a coherent movement and that's just gonna end up like q anon, I mean like right, right and that's yeah, but the thing is is like to have a coherent movement like you need people who actually know how to organize.
Donald Parkinson:You have organizational skills and experience.
C. Derick Varn:All those people are in the mainstream left, like dsa and cp, usa and pso, that they all have declared war on yeah, I know it's like, it's like okay, so even it's just like yeah, I get like I get declaring war on politicos, like I sometimes wish the left would declare more war on Democrats, frankly.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, yeah.
C. Derick Varn:I kind of wish we did. People are kind of finally doing it because of Gaza. Yeah, there's a whole lot of people who were very soft and Democrats that at least this was a damn line. Yeah, but, yeah, but, but. But I don't see on turning on, I don't see like, oh, we're going to turn on the entirety of of the left, all these organizations. We're not gonna try to run any of them over at all. I mean, let's be honest, though, they did try. They tried to do entryism into CPUSA, like I don't think patriotic socialist, pre mega-communist prior mutation did.
Donald Parkinson:That was a big failure.
C. Derick Varn:So it's interesting to see where this all goes. So, yeah, it's been nice talking to you. It's nice talking about this stuff because I think a lot of people don't really understand it and I know that the people who believe in this are going to think we treated it unfairly and fine, don't really understand it, and I know that the, the, the, the people who believe in this are going to think we treated it unfair, unfairly and fine. I don't really care.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah, I mean I'm sure there's going to be plenty of people combing for this first clips of us saying something that will be evidence that we're either soft on MAGA communism or soft on the open society, or you know, I don't know. But whatever.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I mean, people are going to use it for whatever. I mean. Like, one of the things I've learned about being on the left for so long is, I think I've been accused of being everything. I've been accused of being a Stalinist. I've been accused of being I get accused of being a Trotskyite a lot which yeah oh, lot which, yeah, oh yeah. No, people call me all the time um I I guess they've never accused me of being a social democrat, so I guess you know that at least is clear.
Donald Parkinson:Yeah um, I've definitely caught the social democrat quite a few times.
C. Derick Varn:I know you stand kowski, so yeah yeah, um, I mean, you even say like old social democracy may be even worth looking at like pre-19.
Donald Parkinson:Well, no, I actually would be fine with calling myself a revolutionary social democrat. I don't even hate the term social democracy because it's kind of a cool term. It's just, we live in the 21st century and social democracy as a movement is now essentially just the same as neoliberalism.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, particularly after Bernstein's neil assalian turn and then whatever the fuck happened in the in the 50s, where everyone became keynesians like it's, it's pretty much you know, yeah, post 1914 you can't call yourself a social democrat, but it's not because like the term itself is like bad right, yeah, um, so uh, thank you and uh people can check out your work over at uh the democratic left and on cosmonaut magazine.
C. Derick Varn:um, and uh and people should watch what uh mar Unity Group is doing and if you're in the DSA, support it. If you have some weird hang-up, like I do, that you can't give the DSA money until they form a little bank or Democrats, then help them out.
Donald Parkinson:You should join the DSA. I will say that. I know, join the DSA and support Mug and if you want to join us when you're ready.
C. Derick Varn:I'll think about it when you actually get the DSA to adopt a program, I might, but if you're the dsa, uh, I think right now, actually in a very real sense, the dsa is really being contested for what it's going to be in the future. The prior phase, the bernie phase, is dead. It's done. Yeah, you're not getting it back. Bernie's too old. That politics doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
Donald Parkinson:A lot is up in the air right now.
C. Derick Varn:A lot is up in the air.
Donald Parkinson:Mug is working on co-hearing a more cohesive programmatic vision for what we want to socialist a democratic program, so uh. I like programs. But yeah, we we're all working on kind of developing a vision and you know so things are going good. Keep an eye on mug, keep an eye on cosmonaut and uh all right, yeah, what would you?
C. Derick Varn:Oh dang an eye on cosmonaut and all right, yeah, what would you? Oh, dang, we almost talked for three hours. Yeah, let me get this off.
