When the Soviet Union collapsed, it did not descend into chaos or have a long period where no one was in charge. It was a process that began with the power struggle between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. This power struggle undermined the power of the party and eventually the government. Into the void flowed a new source of power and authority, the oligarchs. These were men with control of key assets who backed Yeltsin’s privatization plans for the economy.
Those oligarchs did not spring from nothing. Some were key party figures who had controlled aspects of the Soviet economy, but most were privateers who operated in the shadow economy of the Soviet system. They held posts in the Soviet system but had extensive contacts in the criminal underground. As the power of the state declined, the power of the underwound economy grew. When the system collapsed, they became the power centers providing control of the country.
This was not unique to the Soviet system. Whenever power begins to wane, alternative centers of power begin to flourish. There is a period in which the real power exists in these distributed power centers, but the façade of the old system remains. Collapse is merely the formal recognition of reality. Germany in the interwar years is another example of what happens when there is a power vacuum. The fascists did not spring from nothing. They had roots in German history and culture.
The Western Roman Empire is probably the best example of the process of collapse and what follows. For a long time, the empire was mostly a fiction. The daily life of the people was controlled by the local powers, the large landowners. These local authorities had power through ownership of land and authority through the administration of the law and regulation of local economics. They even supplied local security in addition to providing men to fight in the legions.
The latifundia was what we would think of today as a plantation. It was the closest thing to agribusiness in the ancient world. It was a large parcel of land worked by slaves for the purpose of export. By the late stages of the empire, these enterprises were common throughout the empire. After the empire, they became the basis of what we understand to be feudalism. The slaves became peasants, and the landowners became the feudal lords controlling the administration of Western Europe.
There was a lot more going on at the end of the Western Roman Empire, but a critical and necessary element was the rise of distributed power centers. Like the ethnic gangsters in the Soviet Union, these agricultural enterprises initially filled in the gaps of the system to keep it functioning. In time they began to rival the power of the empire and when the empire collapsed, they filled the void left behind. The resulting system was built around those local centers of power.
Just as there is a point at which a number of grains of sand becomes a pile of sand, there is a point where the decentralized power centers go from subservient to the central authority to rivaling the central authority. There is a paradox at work in that we can know this point exists but can never identify it with certainty. How many grains of sand constitutes a pile? At what point do people look first to the oligarch for leadership rather than the central authority?
It is a useful question to consider, because there was a point of no return in the Soviet Union just as there was in the Western Roman Empire. Many of those oligarchs in Russia were just the guys who noticed it first. Mikhail Fridman was active in the underground economy in the later years of the Soviet Union and quickly moved to the newly privatized economy as soon as it was possible. Like most of the oligarchs, he was an early adopter who saw the writing on the wall.
In other words, the men who would eventually become the oligarchs after the fall of communism were the first to see that the old system was doomed and something else was coming to replace it. They did not know or care what was coming. They just wanted to profit from the chaos. In fact, when the opportunity arose, they promoted the chaos, backing Yeltsin over Gorbachev because it was good for business. They profited from the collapse before anyone saw the collapse coming.
In current year America, this is relevant because it suggests that the American empire has been in collapse for a long time know. The rise of the financial oligarchs in the late-1980’s and 1990’s was one sign. The rise of Silicon Valley oligarchs as a rival power center to Washington is another. The assault on small business and the middle class by the combined power of the oligarchs and the political class is analogous to the late years of the Soviet system.
In other words, the American empire may already be in collapse. The geezers in Washington are allowed to pretend they are in charge as it benefits the oligarchs, but they have no real power. Legislation is written by the army of scribes known as lobbyists and think tanks, underwritten by the oligarchs. Elections are determined by the money and media supplied by those same oligarchs. The real power lies in boardrooms and villas, while the political system is just a show.
The Soviet and Roman examples suggest such arrangements never last as reality eventually forces its way to the front. In Russia, the oligarchs were brought to heel by the one universal source of power. Vladimir Putin, with the support of the intelligence community and the military was able to reassert civil control of Russia. The oligarchs still exist, but enough have been killed, exiled, or jailed to make sure the rest know who wields the real power in the country.
This is the other shoe to drop in the American empire. The intelligence services have real power, as we saw with the FBI efforts to overturn the 2016 election. The military has real power but lacks real leadership. Their willingness and ability to thwart Trump’s efforts to get out of Syria and Afghanistan should be of concern. Somewhere in the officer ranks there is a man with the skill and desire to change the relationship between the military and the decaying civil control.
Historical analogies are never perfect and are useful only in comparing the broad outlines of times and places. A smooth landing for the empire is not guaranteed any more than Caesarism is a certainty. The military could blunder the empire into a war it cannot win and destroy its credibility in the process. A financial collapse could lead to a popular revolt against the oligarchs. Of course, there is the looming demographic crisis that will bring unimaginable social upheaval.
Even so, what history is telling us is that the American empire is well past the point where reform is possible. It is past the point where the decaying system of imperial control can expect to outlive its current operators. The system is on life support and powerful interests are evolving in response to this reality. The collapse is now certain, but the timing is what is unknown. Another lesson of history here is that no one saw the Soviet collapse coming. The end is always a surprise.
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“Another lesson of history here is that no one saw the Soviet collapse coming.”
Not true. The Soviet Union’s economy was visibly declining by the early 80’s. The failure of the Red Army to stop the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. then parts of the Soviet Union, staring in 1986 was another clear indicator the days of the Soviet Union were numbered.
Visible to whom? Not US intelligence. The CIA released a report in the late 80’s claiming that Gorbachev’s reforms were working and the Soviet economy was strengthening. No one in Western media claimed the Soviets were collapsing. No one in government made such claims.
Maybe there was more than finances in Tesla’s move to Texas.
IMO we’re going through a replay of Rome’s transition for. A republic to an empire. Which lasted about a century and most likely wasn’t realized as completed by most people at the time for another half century or so after Octavian’s ultimate triumph.
I’d also say we’re closer to the beginning than end of that transition.
Heres a bit from Geuranger’s Liturgical Year on todays saint, Pope and Martyr, Saint Callixtus of the 3rd century:
“Thou wast a bond-slave, it is true, but not now for thy former master. And when delivered from the mines at the time appointed by Him who regulates circumstances according to His good pleasure, thou wast ennobled by the title of Confessor…..”
Its so hard for our small minds to comprehend anything close to the big picture. I know its simplistic, but even a intellect like Tostoy knew it. We have no control of this.
The best piece I read on the Russia takedown was in The Nation of all places back in 1998, called “The Harvard Boys do Russia”.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/harvard-boys-do-russia/
It perfectly described the destruction that Sachs’ etc wreaked upon the country and their role in the creation of the nine Oligarchs.
I thought of it a few years back when it was becoming obvious that the Harvard Boys are now doing the US.
As Thomas Sowell said in an interview on Uncommon Knowledge,”behind every great disaster is a Harvard man”.
Sowell was a Harvard Graduate.
Summary version of my comment in moderation — Skilled White men are the most valuable resource. Whoever can rally them into a loyal group, like Napoleon, like Cromwell, like Charlemagne, etc. will dominate North America.
ONLY skilled White men can keep the modern society running. No other group of people is capable of doing that at scale, and certainly not in times of massive constraints on trade and resources.
I think the collapse is more Late Bronze Age than Western Roman. In Western Roman Imperial lands, there were still people. There was still land. The new rulers actually improved things for the slaves who were made peasants (White slaves did not reproduce) as the barbarian invaders were certainly not going to farm themselves. Trade collapsed with the failure of the Romans to control the Med and bring North African grain and olive oil and wine to the West, and loss of Roman knowledge of aqueducts, maintenance, and the like meant water no longer went to cities but the new… Read more »
Wow. What an amazing comment, worthy of Tom Clancy.
Thanks for writing it.
In other words, another Little Corporal?
First, we need to change the connotation of the coming reality. Yes, collapse (in whatever form it takes) will bring with it great hardship and death, and wishing won’t change that. We are now dying in slow motion and the longer it takes, the lower the bottom. The collapse is actually the cure and the weeds must be killed before the garden can be restarted. Second, it the old days, warlords could be effectively shielded by a personal guard force and food-tasters. But we now live in a modern technological era in which neither of those ancient methods has any… Read more »
New acronym for your
Local Accountability list.
LAL. Lol.
History, of course, affords many more examples of empires collapsing, or in gentler cases, waning peacefully. Several European empires from “modern” times (past few centuries) would be in approximate terms of global influence: Spain, England, France with honorable mentions to Portugal and Netherlands. The mother country profited for a while, usually. But in many cases the cost of occupation exceeded the benefits. This made it easier to grant independence peacefully. This was certainly the UK modus operand, 19th-20th century. In the remainder of cases, the locals were not averse to revolution to gain their independence. They correctly (in most cases?)… Read more »
bitcoin et als are guaranteed to reach $0 once shit gets real. even before then, really.
If the oligarchic analogues are Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Intels and the military, with the Fed running backup, there could be a smooth transition through collapse, bankruptcy and much reduced national balance sheet in line with the goal of the Great Reset being population reduction to relieve the burden on an overuse of limited material resources. Why else would the nominal President be insisting that everyone line up for the potentially lethal spike protein? Inter-power-center rivalry is to be expected, and, as you say, an American Putin may be waiting in the wings. So post-collapse may give rise to… Read more »
In the background, Rome as it dissolved had the papacy, with such strong figures as Gregory the Great; St. Augustine’s theology; and the rise of St. Benedict’s monasticism, with its emphasis on work and stability, which spread to the local laity throughout Europe. In the background of Russia in the 1990s, it had a restoration of Russian Orthodoxy and a strong identification, for the core people, of Russianness. Solzhenitsyn and his writings on how to restore Russia with federalism combined with a fairly strong central state. And the memory of Stolypin’s reforms before WWI. What equivalent to either does America… Read more »
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
The first great Christian cuckold-via-media (5’2″) and his “gay icon” tranny-lookin’-ass gold-digger wife?
These are, in fact, our people.
These comments make me laugh but our situation is anything but risible. Sam Francis was correct about our political parties: i.e., “The Evil Party” and “The Stupid Party”; and John Derbyshire is correct about our future: “We Are Doomed.” Me? I am just waiting for the comet to sort things out.
Mikhail Fridman
Didn’t even have to look.
They have destroyed European rule of law, therefore no respect for either property rights or citizenship rights of enemies of the European tribes and nations.
It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out. At least Russia was a largely homogenous nation, where we are anything but. Maybe that’s why their collapse could a deflating type. Ours, when things go really south, may not be that fortunate – diversity will not be our strength.
“At least Russia was a largely homogenous nation, where we are anything but.”
True, RUSSIA is. The USSR had lotsa “stans” that said “Screw this, we’re outta here!” when the edifice crumbled. They were held there by the heavy hand of the state until they realized the heavy hand was old and liver spotted. Could such a thing happen in the US of A?
The demographics are the curveball. I can see it being anything from Somalia to Haiti to a crappy version of Brazil. We don’t really know what the mass asian immigration will do either. They did ok in Singapore – but Asians have a very low birth rate, and they’re also not in charge in the USA. Tons of indians continue to pour in and while they initially are extremely selected towards having a high IQ, we see in Canada that as more pour into the country they are actually quite dumb, corrupt, rapey, and criminal on average. I’d say the… Read more »
Demographics are not necessarily a death sentence, if (and it is a big if) the minority determines to rule through more, physical methods and control lessers. There’s a reason that our overlords are terrified of history, because there’s quite a bit of it where a small number of Europeans dominated numerically superior others by force, and the will to rule. Take any example you want. The Spanish in the New World, the entire history of colonialism, the South before 1865 (and arguably from 1876 to 1954), and apartheid South Africa. I might be speaking heresy to many here, but demographics… Read more »
If that small demographic that rules us now would change course and have a come to Jesus moment, maybe they could rule and control to our benefit.
You know like make the ADL more like an early Father Coughlin system.
“If that small demographic that rules us now would change course and have a come to Jesus moment…”
That’s not happening, any more than any other ruling elite in history changed course of their own volition.
Besides, there’s a pretty influential cohort up there in the Cloud that’s kind of hostile to the J-man.
The will to rule, which amounts to the will to use force. For all our supposed progress that is still the foundational prerequisite to assuming power. It must be crystal clear to even the most staunch civ-nat spirited military men that there has been a usurpation of the civilian governance of the US by an oligarchy of rapacious parasites and lunatics. A direct threat to The Constitution of the United States. Only the dullest drone could avoid recognizing that truth.
Keep thinking of a bit of writing by Mike Vanderboegh. One of those fringe guys who had moments of utter clarity. Once wrote something along lines of “…when black people get scared they’ll destroy their own neighborhood or city…when white people get scared they’ll burn entire continents”
when white people get scared they’ll burn entire continents
Which is precisely why people who have taken the time to read The Georgia Guidestones don’t have the slightest doubt in their minds as to the true underlying purpose of the V@xxines.
No, that was said by a Finn whose name escapes me now.
The real kicker is low fertility everywhere, Even Mexico is running out of people to push over the border and fairly soon will not need to. Once they get here fertility declines below replacement in a generation or so. As far as I know this has never happened historically and it will make any kind of planning very difficult. The South Asians scare the establishment, they are highly nepotistic, decently competent and once critical mass is reached will take over an organization and lock Whites out . Too hard to control. East Asia is all low fertility so no surplus.… Read more »
the worst case scenario for whites is that the asian / brahmin IQ is used to create a crappier Singapore / Brazil hybrid controlled by Joos Wasn’t that effectively Ridley Scott’s vision of Los Angeles, in the original 1982 “Blade Runner”? Then about 15 years later, in “The Fifth Element”, Luc Besson pushed the dial way on over towards LGBTQ/POCs. It’s weird how the most lunatic of the SciFi guys seem to have the best foresight in predicting the future – apparently H.G. Wells was notorious for this – enough so that you almost wonder whether the entire SciFi genre… Read more »
This is where the rise of crypto currency is inevitable. You have a highly skilled class of the some of the world’s smartest people with loads of disposable cash who are ideologically opposed to the current corrupt system. At the same time they are facing highly ambitious, but inept and horribly compromised people. The politicians that crypto cannot buy, it will outclass in intellect and competence to such an extent that those left to oppose it would be incapable of concrete action. Perhaps 10-25 Congress critters can even accurately describe something as simple as blockchain. Imagine them trying to write… Read more »
Crypto people have to be among the most delusional out there. Banning crypto is extremely easy, or at least the converting of it to cash. The tech still hasn’t scaled and until it does it won’t be able to handle real mass adoption. The space is absolutely brimming with scammers and huxters making promises they have yet to keep. One example is Vitelek Buterin himself saying ETH should be priced hire than BTC even though even at it’s current price Ethereum is totally unusable. Bitcoin is probably a good bet as a store of value and the space in general… Read more »
I think the crypto ecosystem started out with a few bright, optimistic thinkers (and a bunch of clueless lolbertarians), but was very quickly hijacked by clever people who knew just enough technical jargon to allow them to fleece gullible boomers of their money merely by shouting “blockchain!” and “smart contract!” repeatedly.
There are hundreds of thousands of the brightest people in computer science and cryptography devoting their lives to building out the space right now. Ask any graduate from a top tier comp sci/engineering/AI program where they want to be when they graduate. Work for some mindless tech borg improving an algo? Crunch numbers for an i-bank? Or own equity and work in a space at the cutting edge of computer science, economics and information technology? The answer is simple for many.
I wish all you bright-eyed optimists the best. But I’ll side with the old fashioned advice: “In God we trust, all others pay cash.” And in the future, perhaps, as in the distant past, that cash will be gold, silver and other physical media that governments — or propeller heads — can’t create out of thin air.
crypto is not cutting edge technology. it is however, world class scamology.
Ben, Gold and Silver are just as frequently debased as paper money alas.
How is banning crypto extremely easy? Why has China not been able to do it? Why hasn’t Turkey? Or Venezuela?
Crypto is very new and scaling is occurring at breakneck speed. The amount of block space is growing exponentially and it’s only going to continue apace.
The most frequent use of money for most people as a buying groceries. If the government wanted to kill crypto, or prevent it’s common use, it would have grocery stores charge, say, a 25% surcharge tax on crypto transactions. Most people would stop using it after that. It’s also way less efficient at transaction processing, and is at a huge cost disadvantage for merchants, so the government might look to intensify that pinch point as well.
How are they going to accomplish that? In Venezuela people use apps on their phone to change their crypto into fiat in order to use it to buy groceries. These on ramps have been challenged many times but they keep popping up. And people keep using them. The government will not win in that game of whack-a-mole. Particularly if their nation’s fiat system becomes so untenable. Let’s expand and say “are you going to ban currencies in blockchain video games? Or the ability to swap/trade your built up character? Or it’s armor/weapons/etc?” Because those are forms of crypto value as… Read more »
@Yak They already have. Corporations are the main branch of the IRS’s collections department. They currently collect FICA and income taxes for the feds and sales tax for various states. Their accounting software automatically does this. It wouldn’t take a tremendous amount of effort to add more code to surcharge tax based on tender (some small retailers already do this to recoup CC fees). Further, it’s a bit thick to claim that the future will have government that can’t manage a currency but can manage an electric grid (especially ludicrous in the US’ situation since most exchanges are electronic anyway).… Read more »
You pull the plug on the internet, you shut that motherfucker down. It’ll happen soon, trust me, too many people are catching on to the genocide.
Mesh networks make that a lot harder. Even so getting rid of the internet would make people have to live in reality and quickly realize how isolated they actually are and speed up the collapse not slow it. That said if our guys get power we may be the one’s shutting it down. The ruin that social media and dating apps make on pair bonding is a serious threat. Every Facebook account might as well be an abortion. Hell given fertility decline starts right around the time color TV becomes common in most countries if we don’t get a stable… Read more »
well, for a start, they can just empty all the wallets whenever they want. like they have done a couple of times with hacking groups.
my advice to you is to convert all of your assets to crypto, and enjoy the ride.
No, you’re misinformed. The hacking groups made mistakes and had their wallets public. Literally didn’t do anything to protect their coins. No wallets have been hacked like that by gov.
Current ethereum is very usable and useful. But it’s expensive to use for anyone using it for less than $10k in transactions. But it’s scaling. Massively. With a year or two it’s capacity will be 100x what it does today on the main chain alone. That doesn’t even account for side chains or roll ups. Not to mention, there are dozens of other competing chains with arguably better tech, scaling solutions ans upgrade capacity.
You probably would have had the same arguments in 2012. And you’ve been proven wrong. You have an opportunity to be a part of a potential ecosystem that is outside of the banking system. Instead, you say it’s not possible and it’s stupid. Meanwhile many of the smartest people in the world continue to build and many people in space grow enormously wealthy. Many large institutions are buying in and many Senators are becoming large proponents. Sam Bank Friedman was the largest private donor to Biden in 2020. And that was before the bull run we’ve had where the value… Read more »
Knowing a little bit of financial history is helpful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company
The south sea bubble wasn’t premised on new technology. Cryptocurrency is literally at the vanguard of many important disciplines: computer science, Mathematics, database theory, economics and computational economics. There is no question it periodically comes into bubble economics. But it has done so 4 times. Yes. 4 times it has gone up and crashes 80%. Ask yourself, why does it keep coming back? Why are serious people in charge of billions of dollars investing? Why are so many brilliant softwares developers jumping into the space and sticking with it as the value of their holdings has seen those 80-95% drops.… Read more »
> Ask yourself, why does it keep coming back?
Because the Tether scam hasn’t been shut down yet.
Tether is no more a scam than any other fractional reserve bank. And their are many competitors to tether. But you’re so what correct – if tether gets pinched, things could get very very interesting. But it seems more like they want to regulate it. There even been talk of FDIC insurance for tether (which is essentially a money market).
Everyone down voting is part of the pessimism that is pervasive on our side. I am pessimistic as well. While crypto is very flawed and there are many attack vectors, it’s one way forward. It’s one way to take on the system, to throw sand in the gears. It’s a way around the financial system that is stacked against you and seeks to destroy your nation. Rather than saying “no way it works” based upon half premonitions, why not spend a month reading about its promise. Go into the communities. Learn what they are talking about. Expand your mind. Join… Read more »
All the governments need to do to take full control of BTC is grab the 12-13k full nodes that contain complete copies of the BTC blockchain.
You can bet that the governments know exactly where each any every BTC full node is located.
Don’t think they can act in lockstep?
Just look at what they’ve done with the scamdemic for the past 20 months.
It would work the same for similarly configured crypto coins.
If that were to happen, which would be very hard, there are many honest nodes who would have the correct history. Look up “Byzantine general’s problem.” It may set the system back slightly, but the honest nodes would then fork to create an honest blockchain. Most major cryptos have simulated such an attack.
Crypto will be suborned by the State as Fed Coin or the like or just eliminated . China already has an its the worlds largest economy.
If they don’t want to do it by main force, treat it the same as money laundering simple energy rationing will do the trick.
Short term there might be a bit of money to be had, long term it has no future.
How do you suppose they are going to be able to counter a vociferous, quasi religious community composed of some of the smartest minds of the globe who have hundreds of billions to spend upon “democracy?” The US can’t even effectively regulate narcotics or even PE/VC/HFS/SPACs. It’s because those things spend lots of money on politics. Already, 10% of the US population holds crypto. Many hundreds of thousands of millionaires have been minted. Do you think a political party wants to be responsible for destroying the wealth of many people? Including some of the leading experts in cyber security, computer… Read more »
Btw, does anyone have a few suggestions for books about Europe in the aftermath of the Roman collapse. There are endless books on the collapse itself but not that many about the hundred or so years afterward when the various invading tribes integrated with the existing power structures around Europe.
I read a few books about that time a couple of years ago but would like to see if there were others.
Try St. Augustine’s “City of God”, written shortly after Alaric sacked Rome.
Whether you are religious or not, it contains many an interesting observation on a collapsing civilization.
“The Church in the Dark Ages” by H. Daniel-Rops . It covers far more than the Church.
“The Venerable Bede,” aka “A History of the Church in England”.
Of course, the United States has natural alternative centers of powers. It’s in the name: States. Granted, they were supposed to be much more independent and have lost a lot of that over the years, but the infrastructure is still there. Indeed, Lefty states and cities have been rejecting federal control for years by ignoring immigration laws via sanctuary cities. Now, you could argue that they were allowed to do that and other things because those actions agreed with the real powers and that would be true. But they set a precedent. If things ever started to accelerate, I’d expect… Read more »
Agreed. My thought upon reading Z’s post was “Would this bring a new rebirth of Federalism?” I remember a section in Ken Burns (yeah, I know, I know) Documentary “The Civil War” where IIRC Shelby Foote states the biggest change to come out of the war was people went from saying the grammatically correct “The United States Are” to “The United States Is”. In other words the country was viewed as a whole, rather than independent states within a country. So all it took to reunite the country was a bigger, centralized government. Could the constant screw-ups by the centralized… Read more »
“Ironically, that would bring the country back to what was intended in the first place.”
Interesting point, and maybe a saving grace. Americans are an independent and self-organizing people. The problem, of course, is that we’ve been swamped with slavish sorts.
How that plays out is hard to figure.
The emerging independent states could take the form of two or more parts of states joining together. For example, the Greater Idaho Project. Since the Seattle area and the Portland area are increasingly diverging from the eastern and central parts of Washington and Oregon, joining Idaho makes sense.
I could see the same happening in other states.
Florida and Texas (sort of) are showing the way in actively pushing back against the Feds. However, as Z has opined, Abbott is a fair wimp. If he really wanted to send a message, he’d put their entire national guard on the damn border. None-the-less, it’s good to see a few states standing up for themselves. Here’s hoping it’s the beginning of a trend.
There’s no point putting troops on the border unless you give them live ammo and tell them to shoot anyone coming in. Republicans politicians aren’t ready for that, and probably never will be.
The majority of politicians are the establishment or want to be part of it.
Most can only go so far and keep that status.
Wolf Barney: Parts of states with like-minded people could join together, but unless they then strictly control interstate immigration they will shortly become the same as the place they left. I would expect any sort of real chaos would cause larger population shifts – and it was the original importation of thousands of liberals that ideologically split the states of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado – and is currently threatening Idaho. I don’t have any real numbers to cite, but I would guess a significant cohort of White Americans don’t have family in their current states back more than 1-2 generations.… Read more »
There are many of our like-minded people in blue states, including metro areas, like myself who would move to the red areas. I have many friends here who are talking about getting out. Some already have.
I think we are going to start to using language about protecting states borders, now that Texas is allowing in hatian invaders, all states need to protect their borders,
THis needs to enter into common language in public
The problem is that the states are rotted as well. The state courts are loaded up with left wings freaks. The universities and K-12 in the states are all corrupt and rotten. The same finks and grifters sucking the federal blood have been feasting on state blood as well. All of the states are run by the two corrupt parties. Whatever happens, it is going to be unbelievable painful. Everyone with their lips on the nipples of the state/feds is in for a nasty surprise. There are a lot of people whose only source of nourishment is the state nipple… Read more »
Its 40% of the economy or so as of 2018. If you take out the FIRE sector bloat but leave needed and useful government the real economy is about 3/4ths of its its current size Because of the bad wealth distribution, the real economy for most people sans government is probably around that of Russia, maybe less. This is why we have so much bloat, big business is quite willing to destroy the country for a slightly higher profit margin If our guys get power, we’ll have reign that in and very probably control scale. Given the hate the government… Read more »
The states are not as uni-cultural as they used to be, which creates difficulties for grassroots, local control. And there is a lot of rot in Denmark. To re-assert state’s powers will require a lot more building than falling back on, I suspect.
The states are corrupt immitators of the federal behemoth so that ship has sailed. Federalism would only thrive on the Swiss model, by county. And even then– “Between 2005 and 2015, eight unincorporated neighborhoods in Georgia’s three largest counties—Fulton, Gwinnett, and DeKalb—voted to form their own cities. In doing so, they rejected the county’s political leadership and withdrew much of their resources from the county’s tax pool. Prior to incorporation, all of these areas were putting more money into the county via taxes than they got back in services. ” Actual sovereign counties would have the power of states back… Read more »
Wow, Gwinnett is filled with Latino’s and blacks.
I’ve been reading about Camp Anacostia, when the “Bonus Army” of vets from World War I went to D.C. to try to get retroactive backpay for their time fighting over in Europe. The documentary has a very PBS vibe, so of course they sneer at the idea that communist subversion may have been part of the deal, but who knows? The point is, though, that a young Douglas MacArthur was as comfortable firing on American civilians as that retarded black cop in D.C. was. MacArthur, of course, wasn’t a retard who forgot his firearm in a bathroom, but his actions… Read more »
Spoken with plenty of 20+ year retired vets who’ll tell you that the Obama senior brass purges were very real, surgical, and precise. Any normal non-woke general officer has been retired from the senior ranks; the ones there now are all in on “woke”. You saw what they did to Lt. Col. Scheller, USMC. He was only an O-5; you can be sure the purges will now extend to the lower officer corps ranks. So, yeah. Whether it was fear from the civilian government of a coup, or a desire to promote woke officers for eventual deployment domestically against the… Read more »
The video of the Loudoun dad getting strong armed by a state thug is a good image for something on a larger scale.
Do we know who that enforcer is? DO we know where he lives? Does he have family?
Thats, I think , what a KKK was fpr!
I’m increasingly of the mind that our military is a paper tiger. They have the finest weapons and technology and a pretty good fighting base, but the officer core is completely rotten. Maybe at the lower levels you have good men, but a system that produces General Milley has very deep problems. The Putin-like player I see in our drama is the intelligence community. They can use the façade of democracy to operate wield real power in the shadows. They don’t have to assassinate Jeff Bezos. They can knock off one of his key aides to get the message across… Read more »
Exactly. The military still has plenty of people who know how and are willing to kill, but it doesn’t have the leadership nor is the “tip of the spear” trained for the kind of killing and intimidation needed grabbing and maintaining power in its own country. But the intelligence agencies have all of those abilities. I’ve said many times that our rulers are wimps compared to the Bolsheviks or fascists. They can give an electronic punch but they definitely can’t take a real one. Look how they panicked when some middle-age Trump supporters got a little unruly. Imagine AOC if… Read more »
You know the old joke about the one-eyed man being king of the blind, well something similar happens in the land of the estrogen. The few with even a little testosterone can easily become king. Think about it. The people rolled over and accepted the Covid stuff. Would they rally to the rescue of the civilian leaders if the military staged a coup? If the intel services installed a president of their choosing? The trouble for all of these guys is it would not take much for a group of serious men to organize and throw their weight around. If… Read more »
Yeah even one man sawing a chunk out of a railroad track, then dropping bent nails on the highway while driving home could cause havoc.
Imagine a group, more devoted and perhaps more willing, as you describe.
Lessons about the fragility of the supply chain…
Back in the Bush years I pointed out that we were lucky that the Muslims are so dumb. Bombing planes is hard and offers little return. A truck bomb in a tunnel is cheap and had a massive return. If the next round of terrorists are a SD brighter, the result will not be the same.
I can’t remember if I saw it here, but I recently finished a book titled “Unintended Consequences” that speculated on a similar situation, though the story was totally 2nd amendment specific. Still, a group of hard, focused men…
At a certain distance, you have to chuckle at how they are busting up that which makes them possible. Those rules that make the orderly business of governance possible feel like an obstacle, but they are what separates these rather soft people from the harsh reality of the human condition.
“Would they rally to the rescue of the civilian leaders if the military staged a coup? If the intel services installed a president of their choosing?” Both of those things actually happened in 2020 and, yes, people rolled over. In fact, the coup and subsequent installation started in November 2016. We tend to discount the abject horror the purported insurrection caused among the Ruling Class, but the terror was quite real. These people are craven, weak pussies but so are most of the folks they oppress. I think you are pretty close with the suggestion warlordism is a future stopgap… Read more »
Question for Dobson. Can you expand on why you say that the military can be characterized as being in the Clinton faction while the security agencies are in the Obama one?
” If the local cops suddenly see that they and their families can be targeted, they stop looking for enemies of the state. ”
This is me tapping my nose….You know how the ADL the FBI, ANTIFA target dopes like me? We need to start doing that with these state goons
Corrupt “health officials”, lawyers, judges, and politicians all have homes and families. too. So do people who employ illegal aliens, promote CRT on the school board, or work for (((open borders NGOs))).
One might find they are not very well guarded or equipped defensively, not very situationally aware, and are not formidable opponents in the street (without the weight of the state, tech, and legal protection behind them).
Totally random comment though with no relation to today of course.
This is why BLM is so disappointing. Cops live in the same community and their children go to school in the same community and their wives live in the same community. If BLM were actually serious, they would be the most dangerous group in America today. They are loaded up with cash and it would be very difficult for the lugenpresse to turn the tables and start calling them terrorists.
Make no mistake, the cops are the front line troops of globohomo.
@Tars Tarkas
BLM targeted police officers at their homes in a community near mine early on. That got squashed flat very quickly. Burn Loot Murder the inconvenient white proles to your heart’s content, but don’t frak with those who protect the property of the oligarchs.
@horace
Protesting is gay. That’s not what I meant. See Micah Xavier Johnson, multiplied a few thousand times with higher IQ.
Policing is based on voluntary compliance. Police are very easy to identify and helpfully walk/drive around in uniforms with their names on them.
I absolutely do not advocate anything Micah Xavier Johnson did, just noting that he in fact, did something. Right or wrong, he thought to the police were murdering African Americans for no reason whatsoever. Assuming BLM believes their own BS, that would make them VERY dangerous.
The only former military the oligarchs could hire would be PFC Dontrelle and a bunch of Chair Force office flackies. The real killers all live in “fly over” country and have a deep seething hatred for the oligarchs.
Mr. Generic: I’m not as certain as you that those ‘real killers’ are as raring to go as they claim. Scanning ex-military and prepper sites/blogs (and yes, I realize there are also ‘private’ (Ha!) Faceborg groups and some on Telegram) I read a lot about people’s hip and knee surgery, or supplies they brought back from combat . . . decades ago. My husband and I want and plan to leave the city, but we don’t fool ourselves that we have the experience or the physical wherewithal to become genuine ‘homesteaders.’ Everything’s harder at 60 than at 40, and at… Read more »
The real secret to our power is our tech. If our society falls apart killers will not be in short supply since almost any man can become a good killer with a good reason Maintaining a professional soldiery is harder but what you may get is warlords and local autodfensa/militias Areas with weak social bonds like say Phoenix will fall to warlords, cartels, cops, corporate s groups of hard men. Those with strong social bonds will have militias. Klamath Falls is an example here, when Antifa showed up to mostly peaceful protests they were met with a lot of armed… Read more »
Imagine AOC if she found her pussy boyfriend dead in his car. ”
This kind of stuff might $$$$ to ******.
History illustrates that in a major crisis the leadership of the military or a civilian government may change very rapidly. 😈 For the present, I shall leave out the details of how such might transpire.
thezman: Warlordism is definitely a possible outcome, but the oligarch armies would not be the only players. Drug and criminal gangs (of all races) already have well established networks. Usually extralegal, they routinely move information, money, product, and people. Their ‘soldados’ are accustomed to following orders and reacting rapidly to changing situations, and they keep an eye on local and federal official rulers. They’ve also been pushing members through the US military for years now, and they’re not all blacks who shoot sideways.
To tashtego, since I cannot reply directly:
The real power center, the MIC, is totally dominated by Clinton acolytes, some of whom are very dangerous and unsavory individuals. Obama may have larded-up the officer corps, but the real power is in the MIC. This is from the cucky Spectator but is on the money: https://spectator.org/why-the-military-industrial-complex-loves-hillary/. The motives behind NeverTrump Republicanism quite often is explained by the connection to the MIC.
Obama preferred domestic warfare. Clinton had no problem with that, either, but was much more ready to buy and use weaponry and then start wars to use it.
I’ll check it out, thanks JD
My MIC plant can’t get parts to build. All that gear left behind in Afghanistan ain’t being replaced anytime soon.
All the major MIC companies have jumped on the clot shot mandate.
The lifer I spoke with yesterday said, “…man, we’ve lost a lot of the braintrust…”
I assume it’s similar at the other big companies.
In the home improvement space, handyman I know said Square D circuit breakers have gone from $10 to $30 if you can find them. 2/12 gauge wire is about $30 for 15 feet.
I suspect replacing The Big Red One with the Limber lilac, too, Isn’t going to win any wars any time soon.
And stay away from “retired” FBI or CIA people. They’re still no damned good.
You broke Hannity’s heart.
For some reason all us enemies of the state have silently agreed to go cuckservative on this and pretend it didn’t happen, but there was a military coup about a year ago, and this is the regime it installed. I guess the event was outside even our mental range of possible things, and the state and purpose of “our” military isn’t really true in our hearts yet, so it all refused to register. Remember if you can: At the rhetorical height of a political purge of its ranks, tens of thousands of soldiers of a partisan army occupied the capital… Read more »
Yes, thank you, and widespread cuckery has indeed been the response. Some of that is a facade, though, because there is a very justified assumption the collapse is underway now and states and localities are about to become more and more independent.
I would argue the coup and installation actually started the day after the 2016 election and the lack of pushback emboldened the main actors.
The reason is that people become dominated by fear as they get older. Anyone with an elderly parent will notice this, everything scares them. Since the dissident right probably has an average age of about 50, no one is going to recklessly run up a clock tower and get themselves killed. With no crazies to set the ball rolling, you don’t build enough momentum for the people who will only rebel when they think they can come out of it unscathed. Unfortunately, all the disaffected young people who would serve as cannon fodder get sucked up by youtube communists preaching… Read more »
Factionalism is the wildcard, no? You allude to the aspect with the biggest prospect for violence, demographics. But the factions that we see at play behind the scenes from time to time are financial and there are deep and hostile divisions among them. While politicians and bureaucrats are paid and ultimately expendable whores, the two groups that seem most at each other’s throats are what I’ll dub for simplicity’s sake are the Clinton and Obama factions. The Tribe is aligned mostly with the former and seems to have the upper hand now. Biden was supposed to solidify power in the… Read more »
The “looters” and the “true believers”, or as Z put it once, the slow and fast revolutionaries.
They both are looting as fast as they can although one faction is in fact doing so more quickly. Imagine the competition post-economic collapse.
Reminded of the saying:
“I don’t fear an army of lions led by one sheep; I do fear an army of sheep led by one lion.”
When you read about the infinitesimally small number of Bolsheviks who took over and terrorized Russia, I’m not sure that betting on the masses is where hope lies.
“Like the ethnic gangsters in the Soviet Union . . .”
I wonder what what “ethnic group” these gangsters were from.
You must be pretty ignorant if you haven’t figured out the answer.
You must be pretty ignorant if you can’t figure out a joke.
Probably those pesky Seventh Day Adventists.
This may be a joke but in reality it was politically-connected, zealous vegan SDAs who gave us breakfast cereal and the inverted “food pyramid” that contributed greatly to the obesity crisis. Don’t discount their organization and influence.
Some of those dimwits are over in my wife’s extended family. She won’t talk to them.
Not really.
The Food Pyramid is the creature of the Department of Agriculture, who tell you to eat what the Farmers grow. Pretty much in the proportions that they grow it.
You must have wondered why it wasn’t produced by, say, Health and Human Services.
You wish! Come to think of it I believe the answer to the above question rhymes… 😎
Excellent stuff Z. Given the competitive nature of our global polities, the lack a true vacuum in power amongst the competing states probably means, as you outline, collapse will be limited and variegated. Whatever form post-collapse governance assumes, the collapse to a sustainable, stable level seems sure. Dynamic equilibrium…true in chemistry, true in economics and political economy.
I’m sure a lot of people are breathlessly anticipating getting to bow before Lord Zuck the Cuck and Jack “Duke” Dorsey of Twatter. The main difference I see is that these underground black market kingpins who became the oligarchs were there providing goods and services that people needed to survive in the collapsing USSR. Or at least that is my assumption. On the other hand, these financial oligarchs and big tech companies are just skimming off the top from the people that do the real production. The finance parasites are obvious. When the economy collapses and the government is powerless… Read more »
“But if the networking infrastructure fails and cell towers stop working…’ IMO this is already past the “if” phase, at least where I live near a giant, blue shitlibopolous. The roads, that cross two state lines, are terrible. Granted, the dropped cell calls are mostly because rich people and their NIMBY fetish means gaps between towers. But bad roads, communications dead zones are coupled with illegals living in the woods and more coming. Men standing by the roadside, just one no work day away from not being able to afford to wander around the streets with their Corona, then looking… Read more »
I’ve never understood the people who say that cell and radio towers are ugly. They are functional and to be honest I think most people just pass them by without even noticing. I know I used to before I started working in that field. The worst thing about cell towers from my perspective was that they were more of a bitch to climb since most of them were monopole towers rather than open truss type. These are the same people who live in tacky McMansions and hang garbage modern art on their walls. And they have the nerve to call… Read more »
Your remarks remind of when I had to do some work in a graphite operation, hands the down the dirtiest* place I’d ever had to work. Thing is, that “dirt” paid for my room and board so while I never saw it as “beautiful” I did learn to not see it. *(Graphite in a manufacturing operation is ugly just due to it’s color. A cardboard recycling plant I had to go to on occasion was worse in just about every way, but since it wasn’t like going into a dark coal cavern it was a little bit easier to deal… Read more »
Your smart phone is your prison. Your tv is your prison. jew cattleprods….guiding you to the pen, to have your nuts cut off. Branded, ear tagged, marked as meat.
My Mother told me (decades ago, probably in 1970s) the saying “Everything happens first in California and New York.” Those States set the trends. And they likely still do. Certainly, in mid-20th century that was a valid observation, as Hollywood and Big Finance, respectively, hail(ed) from those States. But the saying seems as much a truism today as it was half a century ago.
Perhaps the whole country is going to shit, but at least it won’t have to go any further than the nearest sidewalk or alley… 😡
SunnysideUp: Thank you for a sobering portrayal of your local reality. The big question, in any sort of political or economic collapse, is what will be a genuine store of value. You note that the tech oligarchs’ source of income would disappear, but that raises the question of where they’ve invested their lucre. Not merely in New Zealand bunkers or Hawaiian acreage – what will they have to offer their army of mercenary protectors? Surely they’ve already considered and planned for this possibility. Wads of treasury bills aren’t going to cut it. They’ll need to have arranged locations and goods… Read more »
There is no getting around the fact that our oligarchs are much faker and gayer than what the Soviets sported. Even mainline tech companies like Salesforce and Google are completely dependent on the grifting economic arrangements provided by GloboHomo while Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, etc also depend on being able to play fast and loose with employment, regulatory, and tax laws. If any amount of grift was to be removed from the system these places would cease to exist while a Soviet oligarch’s oil fields that he bought for $50 aren’t going anywhere.
Tesla is the worst.
They only make money on the carbon trading scam, yet they’ve hoodwinked people into believing they are a viable carmaker.
Remember the joke Cybertruck demo two years ago?
Lol. I remember looking at it and thinking if that was the future of transportation for tradesmen, I was going to stick to an ICE as long as I could.
This summer I was shooting the breeze at the bar in a moneyed resort area with a guy who worked for a high-end homebuilder.
He stated the business owner was planning to buy multiple Cybertrucks to virtue signal to their typical clientele.
You just can’t make this stuff up anymore.
Most of the oligarchs made money by stealing from their country. They had the right connections – to government officials who were in charge of managing public property and privatization. The story about the oligarch’s humble beginnings providing services to the people is mostly just that – a story – made up to make them look better. In reality, they privatized for peanuts (almost literally) or were managing state enterprises and funneled money out of them. If they had provided any services before that, it was usually in drug trade, people smuggling or racketeering. Most of those are dead now,… Read more »
So how is the transition from state ownership of almost everything to private property to be managed? The “oligarchs” are supposed to write a check to whom? The Russian farmlands and forests are returned to the boyars or auctioned off to Soviet apparatchiks for sacks of rubles?
The “oligarchs” are supposed to write a check to whom? Is that a serious question? If the government sells public property to a private entity, then the payment recipient should be the government (state coffers). Isn’t that obvious? However, the oligarchs only had connections to the people in charge of the selling and criminal minds. Here is one common scenario how things worked: A person in official power put one or more of his friends or family members in charge of some state owned enterprise – a bank or a steel mill or a textile factory, etc… Then these people… Read more »
Anything that could be sold for hard currency was decades ago and the proceeds, and often the wealthy individuals, got the hell out to Western Europe or other relative havens. Of course none of this helped the supposedly newly “free” nation(s) but it was a rational calculation by the holders of the economic power.
Yes, that was part of the big theft, a myriad of different schemes and scams to move the formerly public property into the private hands abroad and away from any local authorities that may not cooperate.
If the government sells public property to a private entity, then the payment recipient should be the government (state coffers). Isn’t that obvious?
No, it’s not. The socialist government is illegitimate or the transaction wouldn’t be necessary. The new government doesn’t necessarily have the right to distribute the property. At one time all of it was owned by entities other than the government, who then confiscated it. See Cuba. When Romania ditched the Caucescu regime the biggest problem was determining who were to be the next owners of the assets. It still hasn’t been figured out in its entirety.
Then we have the case of the Russians “selling” a large piece of property that the Tsar had never laid eyes upon to a “democratic” entity that didn’t bother to ask the occupants their opinion of the matter. That would be what’s now the state of Alaska. Democracy doesn’t mean much when the object is empire.
Some of it. Not all. That should be obvious too.
And yes, those that were confiscated by commies without compensation should have been returned to the original owners. The post-communist governments even had policies to return property like this and they did return some of it.
All of that is besides the point, so please stop being obtuse.
Hun: That’s the same route taken in Western ‘democracies’ too, by much the same people. Consider how ‘brit’ Philip Green got his money, and why he lives on his yacht rather than in a Mayfair mansion.
It has been brought up occasionally here, the development of parallel “societies”, such as the Amish and other groups. I see the benefit, but I have a question for the posters here.
Does one seek out fellow travelers, or let them come to you?
I’m thinking the later.
Which kind would be harder to vet?
Thoughts would be appreciated.
You act completely normal, happy, wholesome, and put together. You make it clear through your actions throwing people under the bus is beneath you. Then you let them come to you.
My family got redpilled a couple of years ago, and the families that we thought were nice but a little too hard core for our tastes became our closest friends. They didn’t have to advertise anything but drew us in by virtue of being right and 100% loyal to their allies.
This is a great answer, Chet. Very concise and very true. Far better than the essay I was going to write.
I’d just bolster the being normal/wholesome thing: when encountering others, simply don’t talk about the stuff the LMSM tells you to care about. Bin off the Covid, Climate Change &c. A good indicator is somebody who can actually converse about things of import to them – without the need for LMSM autocues.
I’ll never forget a while back when I felt completely alone in my political outlook, we visited a family we met at a social function and I saw Ian Smith’s “The Great Betrayal” in their library.
Instant ally.
Yeah like attracts like. Somehow I managed to find a super right hairdresser and esthetician(fyi for the men, that’s expensive skin care) which are both highly feminized leftist professions. Now I recommend them to my friends so I support people that would be on my side. Don’t give money to leftists
Thanks Chet, and the others who contributed.
The Amish community I landed in is fascinating. I’m careful to watch what and how I say things, as I know I’m the “outsider”.
It’s refreshing to commiserate with hardworking, no nonsense people.
The short version is “Our public relations is attraction rather than promotion”
Thank AA.
“If you build it, they will come.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3c_pJ_CLJQ Probably there will need to be a small number of people who strike out on their own first and are then joined or emulated by others. A similar example can be found with the YouTuber EVS. He was a former comic book pro yeeted out of the industry because he supported Donald Trump. He went to YouTube and built his own comic book community around crowdfunding, which has been successfully copied by several unorthodox creators that’d never be hired due to their beliefs and demographics (heterosexual Caucasian male). Several guys now have… Read more »
One can see the collapse of traditional authorities in a microcosm in many organizations. For example, the Southwest Airlines Pilots sick-out was not union sanctioned, and they are staying out in fear of liability. In the Covid fiasco they are essentially a shell that has no authority over its own members. One is going to start seeing many more de-facto unions with no discernable official organization flex their muscles in the middle class. As schools start to garrison themselves from parents and show open contempt for the children they are supposed to teach, even hard left parents are starting to… Read more »
I live in a rural community and can confirm that getting away with things is in full swing. It’s rare to see state enforcement officers of any agency anywhere, and feds are basically an extinct species. The nature of the tax code and demographics means that rural folk don’t pay much in taxes either. Were it not for propaganda broadcasts, it would be easy to forget the federal government existed.
Can confirm. The only evidence of FedGov in my area is the teets, not the claws and certainly not the brains. The irony is that lots of the Fed gibs are “delivered” as block grants that pass through state agencies. Our governor is so displeased with our rural deplorability that we generally get our gibs last from the leftovers pushed away by the urban sinkholes. So, as a bonus, we tend not to attract the freeloading diversity. There is an entrenched cohort beneath the poverty line, but local private charity is so generous that our climate (snow is very rare)… Read more »
That’s a good trend (for a DR viewpoint.) Someone else has said that within living memory (OK of very, very old persons) the average U.S. Citizen’s interaction with the U.S. Government were probably the Postal Service and perhaps a tour in the military.
Heck, in our neck of the woods, the people delivering mail are contractors, not employees, so we don’t even deal directly with the feds even then.
Agreed in full. Also, once the federal government cannot meet transfer payments, it will not be able to hold basically any locality.
Right now, I think the US is in free-fall mode. We are at the point where the elites intentionally broke global trade and can’t put it back together again. Empires cannot survive broken trade routes for very long. The Bronze Age Collapse is the best example of this, where some unknown threat (“The Sea Peoples”) put pressure on some kingdoms and it set off a chain reaction that led to a near-complete wipeout of civilization for hundreds of years. The Roman Empire was done and dusted for good when they lost control of the Mediterranean and couldn’t feed their people… Read more »
Globocapital hubris may have busted up trade and logistics but these are just systems. The hubris of globocapital, like that of its political corollary, is that of extreme detachment from the “human capital” as they have come to call it. Which is to say: “us”. Labor, “votes” etc. we don’t really exist in their minds as complete human beings. Davos/WEF oligarchs love to huff the pages of brave new world but their lives in the cloud obscure them from the reality that humans are a lot more than economic units to be traded, hypothecated, and arbitraged. All the JIT logistics… Read more »
In some cases the answer may be as simple as would-be employees refusing to sign on if the vaxx is mandated. The claim is that 55% or so of the population is fully vaxxed, but as I often note, there are reasons to distrust many official claims, since there is always an agenda (hidden or otherwise) to support.
There are still a lot of grey areas vis a vis mandates and the administrative process involved in regulating and enforcing. To mr Z’s point, this grey-going-black market will favor those who adopt early and often – and those who can play the inside/outside game as the centralized power crumbles. I see a lot of opportunity for co-ops, small businesses, and organizing in general around the forced vaxx issue. While it tends to be “our guys” in the crosshairs of the vax mandates, we should be looking at that as an opportunity to kill several birds: facilitate economic mobility for… Read more »
I can’t speak for other workers, particularly since I’m a contractor, but I’ve cut back my availability a lot this year, and have shed several clients as well. The main reason for this is that I just don’t like the bustle of modern life and would rather tend to my farm, grill and brew rather than work twelve hour days for money to buy stuff that I don’t really want. I’m not sure how much the shutdown forced people to show their pace of life down, but it seems a lot of people prefer it. The past twelve months marks… Read more »
Probably no point in checking the early life section of ‘Mikhail Fridman’
Many of the oligarchs were from the Tribe. They had ties to the Jewish gangsters that controlled the underground economy in the Soviet system. Other ethnic groups were represented, but the Jews have always had the most talent for such things. From the late 1960’s until the end, the shadow economy was what kept the system going. Even state industry relied upon contraband to meet their quotas.
Strangly it was the underground economy that actually kept the system running a little longer, the black market actually supplied goods that people wanted
Just as in the Western Empire, where the conquering barbarians kept the peace and provided at least an roughly equivalent standard of living at a much lower cost vs. the last Emperors.
I’m sure that the tribal connection was useful as well when Wall Street came to loot the place.
Quite a few also had ties to Israel. That was always a western tentacle into the old Soviet Union. In the end, the oligarchs sided with Putin against Wall Street, which is why our politicians hate Russia.
Because American Jews are so wealthy and educated, a lot of Americans don’t understand that Israelis and Russian Jews were (and probably still are) big-time gangsters in Europe – and the USSR when it was still around. In Germany in the 1990s, Russian Jews and the Israeli Jews ran a lot of the prostitution and drug business. They were also behind the sale of a bunch of black market goods like cigarettes and alcohol and God knows what else. But you’re right that the Jewish oligarchs in Russia got behind Putin to kick out Wall Street. It would interesting to… Read more »
Even today, Odessa is pretty much run by Jewish gangsters. Ukraine is run by Jewish gangsters. What Hollywood portrays as the Russian mafia in the United States is really the Jewish mafia that settled here after the cold war. The role of Jews in that part of the world is much more complex than our anti-Semites need to believe. It is not a one-way relationship. That is probably why they ended up backing Putin. He is the devil they know and trust.
Yeah, when I say “Russian” Jews, it’s probably more accurate to say ex-USSR Jews since they came from other places besides Russia.
Also, I’d guess that those ex-USSR Jews have a lot more contact with (and feeling of attachment to) their Israeli cousins than their American cousins. But that’s just a guess.
It would interesting to know their motivations.
The official non-official story is that Putin made them an offer: stay out of politics and keep your ill-begotten gains. Meddle in politics and you lose all your money and rot in jail.
Khodorkhovsky reneged on the deal and it transpired that Putin was as good as his word. The rest of the scoundrels took notice.
Yes. Fridman has Israeli citizenship.
Most of the oligarchs were of a similar age, and they were members of the youth wing of the communist party, so they had the contacts needed to profit from the collapse, being Jewish also helped because it was a little easier for them to get outside laons, a few million dollars to pay bribes and buy hard assets while the ruble becomes worthless
The stories from Russia in the 90s are crazy, most of the population had no idea what was happening
This is correct. The youngsters knew that under the old system, the best they could do is to manage a state enterprise or rise the ranks of the party, have the ability to travel (unlike the plebs) and own a dacha in Sochi. So they actively undermined the old system and quickly embraced the new one.
The outright gangsters were mostly killed within the first 10-15 years after the fall of Soviet Union. The smart gangsters joined forces with the well connected party youths and ex-KGB agents.
I followed a israeli blogger that once posted that “jews created and destroyed the Soviet Union”.
The power to create and destroy should not be allowed to be in the hands of any minority.
You very well may have read it, but Jack Womack’s LET’S PUT THE FUTURE BEHIND US (1996) really captured the comically sinister weirdness of post-collapse Russia. There is no way the multiethnic United States cities will be half as functional as the dysfunctional society Womack detailed, either.