Russia is Not the Country you Think it Is

In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the complex geopolitical landscape surrounding Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. Malcolm breaks down the true motivations behind Putin's actions, dispelling common misconceptions about Russia's defense against NATO and the reunification of ancient Russian territories. He reveals how Russia's heavy reliance on oil and gas revenue drives its foreign policy decisions, leading to a catastrophic miscalculation that has essentially resulted in the self-genocide of the Russian people. The discussion also covers the surprising Muslim population within Russia, the country's masterful propaganda tactics, and the potential for a future power struggle that could reshape the global political landscape.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] this also shows me that the argument that this is about self defense for Russia is wrong, or that this is about defense against NATO

Simone Collins: is wrong.

Oh yeah, because they're destroying any human capital for self defense capacity that they have. Yeah, if he

Malcolm Collins: was actually worried about self defense, he would, he would have stopped the war a long time ago leaving a government like that in power in the Ukraine was not worth a guaranteed death of his entire ethnocultural group. Yeah. Which is what he is putting in place.

You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.

Malcolm Collins: Like we should stop sending billions to the Ukraine. Like, Whoa, don't you know that a lot of it is being like funneled back into Democrat politicians pockets and stuff like it.

It's like, yeah, all of that is true, but you would know what we're not sending to the Ukraine right now, our own people.

Simone Collins: Because it's neutralizing what was once a non trivial threat. Not a non trivial threat,

Malcolm Collins: the single [00:01:00] greatest threat to America's geopolitical power for the last century.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited for you to bring some stats to the table. Stats episodes are always the best, but I also want to apply sort of geopolitical knowledge to a world issue that I've noticed, especially within right leaning communities. There's a lot of misconceptions about what's going on and what the motivations are of various players.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I I titled our stupid stream yard room, Russia. I do not think that country means what you think it means, which is. The thing that came across my inbox this week, which I thought was fascinating. So. And very underrated sub stack called axis of ordinary by Alexander cruel is a daily part of my reading routine, even though I have cut pretty much everything else out, sadly, due to workload and whatnot.

Y'all check it out. It's great. He has a lot of spicy links. A lot of it's AI, a lot [00:02:00] of it's Ukraine, and then a lot of, some of it's psychology and science. He'll share a roundup of links with short summaries. Very great sub stack. It's free to subscribe. And he's a very thoughtful person, though I've never talked with him.

I don't know him. But on a recent roundup, a daily roundup that he shared, he shared this about Russia, which very much surprised me. So he starts with a quote from Vladimir Putin. Russia's cultural and ethnic diverse diversity is Russia's strength. Our state was built around the values of multi ethnic harmony.

Then Krull proceeds to write, many people on the political right, admire Russia and see Putin as the savior of white Christendom. What they don't know is that Russia is a higher percentage of Muslims than, say, Germany. And it's not because of an open border policy. Worse, instead of building a wall, Putin has sacrificed thousands of Russian soldiers, not only to keep Muslims in Russia against their will, but to give them Russian passports, which has led to numerous [00:03:00] major terror attacks, such as the Beslan school massacre that ended with the deaths of 334 people, which I haven't even heard of,

at an official event where Putin gifted a copy of the Koran during a visit to a mosque, he noted that the desecration of the Koran is a crime in Russia. Nikita Zurolev, a teenager who burned a Koran, was extradited to Chechnya under Putin's watch. There he was tortured and beaten on camera. In 2015, Putin inaugurated the Moscow Cathedral Mosque, a city where tens of thousands of Muslims fill the street for Eid prayers.

Russia has also introduced the Islamic banking system. P. S. One of Russia's most famous TV hosts, the Jewish Vladimir Solovyov, recently chanted Allahu Akbar in front of Russia's Islamist mercenaries. So I think the biggest thing that really surprised me here was this. This note about Germany that there's a higher percentage of Muslims in Russia than Germany [00:04:00] wild because everyone, you, you have this vision of Russia, which is these blonde bombshell women and these stoic.

Statuesque men,

Malcolm Collins: right? Well, the vision, I mean, I want to be clear, and this is where people get Russia wrong, they get it wrong for a few core reasons. One is, is they are aware that there is this superficial view of Russia. That was the way we painted them as our enemy in the cold war. There's the new view of Russia, which is coming because of.

Putin's PSYOPs campaigns in the West. Specifically, he wanted to appeal to right leaning political groups. And he did that by acting as if he was like this and keep in mind, like we've got nothing against Muslims or anything like that, but what I would say is that the image that a lot of people have of Putin being a Is not correlated with his behavior at all.

Simone Collins: Yeah, he represents a bastion of, well, they say Western culture, Western civilization, but really people are referring to broadly Christianity. If I [00:05:00] had their,

Malcolm Collins: they're referring to like an old school, like homophobic which, which Russia is, I should be clear about that. White centered Christian and And a lot of people, as we point out, I mean, racists are generally dumber than the general population.

So it's very easy to confuse them with these sorts of tactics. And a lot of them have actually been swayed into believing this iteration of Putin and believing his motivations around this war. Because I think the question could be. You could say, well, why is Putin doing all this if his goal is the savior of like old European values and a return to, you know, Christendom and a return to ethno states?

And it's because that's not what Russia is doing. That is not what Why they are invading the Ukraine that has nothing to do with it, this idea of they're not, and a lot of people on the right, I've actually seen believe this like, like a right wing conspiracy theories that there are like Nazis in the Ukraine, which there were, there were Nazi sympathy groups in the Ukraine that were [00:06:00] bigger than in other regions, but they were not it.

Like it wasn't like the country was about to become a Nazi state or something like that, right? This would be the same way that the left will find, you know, somebody making okay signs at a rally and then be like, Oh we're, we're gonna go attack them because the, the, 4chan, that's a long story about how that became a thing in the U.

S. But there are occasional Nazis in like U. S. rightist groups as well, right? If we allowed that to be used as justification for the extermination of those entire populations, like that's quite another thing. And that isn't his justification because that, that