Angry Planet - Putin, Ukraine, and Russia's Daddy Issues

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Everyone has an opinion about Ukraine, but something I’ve noticed in Western media is that no one really seems to be asking Russians what they think of the situation. The reasons for that are extremely complicated. So let’s talk about them.Here to talk about Russia’s view of the Ukraine conflict, Putin’s motivations, and to do a little … psychoanalysis … is Peter Pomerantsev. Pomerantsev is a returning guest, his latest in Time Magazine is What the West Will Never Understand About Putin's Ukraine Obsession. His latest book, which is also excellent, is This Is Not Propaganda.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello, welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. Seems like everyone has an opinion on Ukraine right now. But something I've noticed in Western media is that no one really seems to be asking Russians what they think of the situation. The reasons for that are extremely complicated. So let's talk about them. So here to talk about Russia's view of the Ukraine conflict, Putin's motivations, and maybe we'll even do a little psychoanalysis, is Peter Pomeranzov.

Pomerantsev is a returning guest, his latest in Time magazine, which is kind of what all this is about is what the West will never understand about Putin's Ukraine obsession. His latest book, which is also excellent, and we've talked about on the show before, is this is not propaganda. Sir, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's my pleasure, and I wish it was in happier times. Yeah, so there's a lot going on over there right now.

And I think a good way I want to kind of get into this conversation is by talking about a sentence that's in the opening of your piece. You call Ukraine and Russia part of perhaps the most, perhaps the unhappiest family in the world. And I really think here we're already kind of butting up against ignorance in the West and America in particular. So can you explain the view of Ukraine and Russia as part of a family? Well, firstly, this is very much a Russian view.

This is the way that, you know, Ukraine is talked about by, Russian politicians, but also like more generally in kind of a lot of Russian sort of popular culture. This is much more about Russia's slightly warped family dynamics vision of Ukraine rather than the other way around. So, I mean, going way back, you know, Kiev is always referred to as the mother of all Russian cities, according to kind of an idea of Russian history and especially Russian imperial history, kind of the, you know, the seat of orthodoxy passes from Constantinople to Kiev to Moscow. The roots of Moscow lie in Kiev and Rus, the sort of medieval kingdom. It's all largely very dodgy as historiography, to put it mildly, but these kind of these mythical constructs. And Kiev has

always referred to as the mother of all Russian cities. And then kind of been propaganda, when Ukraine behaves, the mother suddenly becomes a prostitute. It was like, you know, Kiev as a whore who sold herself to the West or a zombie mother that's been weaponized by the West against Russia. So this kind of very, very weird relationship towards Ukraine as either an idealized mother. And if the mother doesn't do what the kind of infant wants, she sort of castigated as a whore and evil person. I mean, the idea that you have her own desires or kind of free will kind of just doesn't exist. She only exists in relation to the infant. So there's that. Then there's this very strange, very old sort of framing of Ukrainians and Belarusians and Georgians as younger brothers. Russia is the older brother and Belarusians and others as the younger brother and they have to stay and stay in the family and they're not allowed to leave. And it's kind of both, you know, it's both sort of patronising and a touch sort of suffocating, you know.

Like the older brother who's got your embrace around the neck and kind of squeezing it. And then it got even weirder recently when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs start. There's an official tweet from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so official bit of diplomatic speak, said that the countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, who kind of really ran away from the Warsaw Pact, orphaned. And they were just like, you know, they were like, you know, it's almost just talking about them like these lost tensions looking for Big Daddy Moscow, which kind of, you know, was a bit of a surprise to a lot of these countries. So it's kind of, you know, all this language isn't just about kind of like security and spheres of influence and all this kind of language which sort of theoreticians of international relations are very keen on. It seems to really be a, you know, there's something else going on, something a bit weirder.

So I try to dig into that in my essay and various other pieces that I've written. Well, the history is weird, right? I mean, the borders have shifted over and over again over the sense. centuries. I mean, Poland was over here, now it's over there. So is there any truth to the idea that it's all one thing? What do you mean that it's all one thing? No, historically, you know, I mean, the borders have shifted a lot, but, you know, Ukraine was part of the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth for a long time in Austria-Hungary. And no, there is no direct line between, there is no direct line between sort of Kiev and Roos straight into Muscovy the way they claim. And there is no, they weren't one people. They were always different ethnicities and speaking different languages and so on and so So no, of course not. Of course not like one thing. It's many different kind of tribes and ethnicities and languages and religions moving around, lying, breaking up again. I mean, it's like history. It's like, it's like that. So, so, no, that's complete myth. They're all kind of like one

brotherhood of ethnicity that belong together. That's, that's nonsense. So, so no, obviously not. But this has something to do with history, history. This has got to do with identity and perception and kind of, you know, Russia's imperial myth-making. In terms of the borders moving around, yes, they've moved around. They've moved around in Europe. They've moved around lots of places. But, you know, we have reached an acceptance on what the borders are for a while. And the only country that still has a kind of a fluid sense of its own borders is Russia.

So that is very true. Russia is a real kind of, there's even a phrase, like, where does Russia end? You know, Diagrania. So that's kind of a trope. And it's true for many Russians, that's kind of, like, well, it's sort of this and can give me that and it can include Belarus and bits of Ukraine and, you know, bits of Central Asia. And it is very, very fluid. And, you know, sometimes it's equated with a Russasphere. Where do people speak Russian? And other times it's sort of

equated with the Eurasian Empire from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. And it kind of moves like this weird sort of, you know, fever dream. And, and again, it makes you think that what to play here isn't just kind of a rational, you know, a rational doctrine of security in your neighborhood. There is actually much deeper identity and a lack of sort of control over one's identity that is really playing out here. So do you think this is much more psychoanalysis than it is geopolitics for Putin? Or, as you say in your piece, is trying to divine motivations from him a mug's game. So, okay, so no, we can play the mug's game of Putin's motivations. I was in my piece, I'm from talking about the thing a bit deeper, I think, about the

culture and the language and Putin, in that sense, just an expression of something much deeper, and he's a symptom as much as a cause. So, I mean, we can play around the psychoanalytic stuff, as long as we don't take it too seriously. But, you know, it's no less, it's no less, I'm trying to think of a less unkind word than specious, but it's no less specious than international relations as a kind of, you know, theory to explain the world. I mean, both of them are fun intellectually enjoyable theories that are only tenuous connection to how the world works. But, you know, we have some, I mean, let's take one. Let's take these kind of spurts of aggression and the lack of a sense of borders.

We do have some history with this. I explore this a bit of my piece. And there's a book I'm working on about World War II propaganda where I explore this a lot more about sort of psychoanalytic or just psychological analyses of German soldiers in World War II. There's a lot of analysis done quite a statistical way by psychoanalysts at the end of the war, looking at German POWs largely and trying to work out, okay, what was it in their mentality that the Nazis managed to exploit? And making a very, very sort of long story short, it was basically kind of like this very strange relationship with authoritarian abusive fathers, who you both resented, but whose attention you desperately wanted, a lot of the soldiers interviewed, had this really

weird kind of relationship with women where they either deified them, said they were amazing, they were like these ideal virgins or they were just like these dirty whores. So, and then these kind of like what's what Cycle is called secondary narcissism. So not kind of rational self-interest and like the narcissism we all need to survive, but this kind of like bizarre claims of things that belong to me are mine despite them not really being yours. To kind of make up for this sort of lack of attention from abusive fathers who you both, you know, whose attention you crave and who then abuse you, this weird sadomasochistic creation. So this is based on interviews with German soldiers.

This is not like, you know, this was based on actually kind of being quite scientific, the extent that this stuff can be scientific. And it was very interesting. One of the things the psychoanalysts who worked on this called Henry Dix, very interesting guy, said was like the Lieben's round, this, you know, this idea that Nazis had that there was land that was the by rights theirs. He said, okay, obviously that's partly a geopolitical concept and a historical concept, but it's also the articulation of this kind of like weird family,

and sociodynamics where you have these sort of generation of men who feel that they're somehow, they have this grievance narrative, that they're somehow, they've been wronged, and they're going to make up for it with these sort of like claims, like a small child says, that's mine and that's mine. You say, no, child, here are your borders. This is what's yours. This is what's not. But there's kind of like demented infant just saying, no, no, this is mine as well. This is mine. And this is mine. And, you know, if you've got little kids or little kids go through that process and slowly. You say, no, actually, you can't have, you know, that's not your toy. That's not your country. So Russia, I guess, has gone through that. And looking at Russian culture, this kind of, you know,

you don't have to be a psychoanalyst to notice there's this weird relationship, both kind of like this incredible sort of deification of authoritarian political father figures like Stalin, Lenin, Peter the Great, who are literally voted the nation's favorite historical figures. You know, it's not just propaganda. The propaganda works because it resonates with something. And at the same time, obviously feared and resented for, you know, butchering their own people. So there is some kind of weird relationship with kind of authoritarian father figures. Door and I'm scared of and abuse you. And then that, you know, spills over into aggression.

There's some very unhealthy dynamics going on there. That's, you know, I don't think they can be quelled with some sort of nice little pretty treaty that's drawn up in Geneva. I'm not against pretty treaties in Geneva. I think, you know, politics is full of treaties which, you know, mollify, slow down, you know. But I don't think they can be resolved like that. We're talking about something really quite deep and maligned that has never really been addressed in Russian culture. I mean, Russia never went through its kind of facing up to itself, period. So those are the kind of concepts I was playing with.

If it's about Putin's motivation, I think we can play that Mug's game. I don't think we need to psychoanalyze him. I think we can just think about what impels. his behavior? That's really the big question. As we look at what he's doing, is his behavior impelled by geopolitics, by the desire to restore an empire, by fear of NATO, or is it impelled by all Russian leaders by the fear of a palace coup? Because change in Russia happens through palace coups. And you care about public opinion in the sense that you fear a palace coup, for that palace coup to work, they will need public opinion. So it's not as if you care about

public opinion in terms of elections, but if oligart number five or six is about to pull something, he will need to use the people, so you have to keep an eye on public opinion. And Putin trusts six people, I mean, maybe seven, like the people he knew from St. Petersburg famously. He really doesn't trust very many people outside of that. And beyond that, he thinks everybody, you know, wants to get at him. So if he's impelled by that, if that's his, what drives his behavior, what decisions will that lead him to do? Or if he's impelled by geopolitics and empire building, what decisions will that impel him to do?

So I think a lot of the conflicts at the moment between different analysts are actually about that. They're actually what is Putin's behavior rather than his ideas motivated by. So he may well think that Russia deserves an empire. He may well want the mummy back. He may well want all of that. The question is, as a politician, is that what defines his behavior?

And I don't think we know completely. And I think we are in the, we are slightly in the realm of speculation, however high our security clearance is. Do you think that he is sensing weakness in the West? I mean, if we're going to psychoanalyze, does he actually have a nose for that? And is that part of the reason why he wants to reach out now? Yeah, that's one of the ideas. Maybe. Clearly, it's not at peak strength. I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, probably. He's always probing weakness, isn't he? Yeah, without a doubt, that's part of it. But again, what do we mean by weakness? I mean, if he's going to invade Ukraine in the way that Biden just told Zelensky he will, sacking Kiev, I mean, that seems to be what the message that Biden has communicated and certainly what is, you know, people with high security clearance in DC have been saying for a while that we are getting ready for the type of war that will change the face of Europe. If he's doing that, obviously he senses weakness, but it also means that he's really ready to embrace

a level of risk that he hasn't before. And it could be he's at that stage. He could be in that late dictator phase where he's like, I'm going to raise the stakes. You know, you thought I wouldn't raise the stakes. I'm going to raise the stakes. It could be. I don't know. But it would be clearly out of character for the Putin that we know so far. Your background, I mean, maybe not your recent background, but your distant background is in Russian television, right? And you do a lot in your work kind of talking about that frontline culture in Russia itself. And I'm wondering what is the presentation of Putin over there now? What does it look like?

How is the media in Russia talking about Ukraine? Is he still, is Putin specifically still this kind of vaunted father figure? I remember, I think one of the first things that I really that really caught on in my cultural consciousness was like 2008, the man like Putin or the one like Putin music video. I don't know if you recall this. The one who doesn't drink. Yes. Yep, the one who doesn't drink, the one who will never go away. I'm wondering is, does he still occupy that position or has it changed? What does it like now? He's been there a long time. There's a young generation who just completely like, like, why is this man still here? Do they just don't know anything else? So he always presented himself as the, you know, the one who doesn't drink was in contrast to the

president beforehand, Yeltsin, who had a serious drinking problem. And so he was always like the bring your stability after the time of chaos. You know, have a generation who can't remember the chaos and they just know the stagnation. So they're completely either apathetic or the Poland shows really kind of really itching for change. They just don't know how to get it. But so you have a young generation who just don't buy into any of that, I think. Then who are, they might just be very cynical and very apathetic. Then you have, you know, I think there's a general tiredness.

His ratings are low. Stay low. They peaked with Crimea. They came down again. You should always look at the ratings of the government because actually you have. how people like, you know, express their unhappiness with him. There's been protests throughout the country. So a lot of Russia Watchers will say it's because of those factors that he's now engineering

a foreign policy. And the idea that he's motivated by rebuilding the empire is naive, that he's motivated really by, you know, the way he always has been, internal dynamics. So yeah, no, no, no, it clearly is wobbling that image. But neither are there any kind of alternatives, you know, Neither is there any kind of crack that you can do anything with. But it's like, you know, it's a country of stagnation. There's no sense of thrust of development.

They've closed down. I mean, it's not just a dictatorship. I mean, it was like this weird hybrid or authoritarian model. Now it's just a dictatorship. I mean, they've closed down to anyone who even sort of squeaks. We're at the level where kind of like news photographers are leaving the country. You know, not even, not even journalists like news photographers are like scared of, you know, their photographs will get them in trouble.

I mean, that wasn't the case for a long time. So, you know, a lot of suppression to make up for that lack of enthusiasm. And we should remember last year was a year of kind of like huge protests throughout the country. For many different reasons, not sorry about Putin. It can be just about local dynamics. Belarus protests. Navalny comes back very much, you know, the agenda is setting very much not in Putin's hands. And, you know, some people would say what we're seeing now as a response to that,

rather than, you know, a response to Western weakness or something. So I don't know. We'll see. I mean, there's a lot of other people who think differently, who think this is all about Western weakness, all about geopolitics, all about Putin seeing his chance to remake the world order. And maybe those two things aren't mutually exclusive, though I think they are when you get down to his level of risk perversion.

So if he's the former guy who's worried about domestic problems, he wouldn't then do something that would increase. increase those domestic problems. So a massive, you know, sending his own economy into a tailspin is not something you do if you're worried about a coup. However, if you now just dream of, you know, empire and and rebuilding, you know, the USSR in some form, then you don't care about that because you have a higher mission. So look, it's a moot question, which Putin it is, what informs his behaviour? I find that when I talk in English, I agree that he's, with the sort of DC blob opinion that he's, you know, he's lost his mind. He's going to invade Ukraine.

He doesn't care about the consequences. When I speak in Russian, I'm like, why would, I mean, it's always like Zechem. Like, why would he do that? That's so stupid. So, I don't know. I don't know. I'm completely schizophrenic. I think one thing in one language and another in another language. What's the TV like over there right now? Do you know, do you happen to know? What are they talking about? Yeah, the TV is not about war. It wasn't like the last war where they kind of like, in two, the last invasion in 2014, when they went on a very classic and very successful, sort of hysteria against Ukrainian. Say Ukrainians are fascist. They're killing ethnic Russian kids. We've got to do something about it. Classic kind of make the enemy into a devil so you can have, you can motivate

people to fight him. That's not happening at all. They're not even mentioning Ukraine. They haven't mentioned the word war, quite the opposite. We're the ones we're talking about war. They're like, we haven't said anything about war. We're doing some exercises. It's really quite funny. It's the, it's all about the West World. war, Putin is the bringer of peace. Putin is the one who's trying to save the world from war because America has gone mad, because Biden's ratings are down, whatever. America's got mad. They're trying to push the Ukrainians into war. Putin is the one bringing peace. So which is interesting and would be one of the data points that would make you think that he's

not playing the game that everybody in D.C. thinks he's playing. But it's only one data point. Also, it can flip overnight. I've seen it flip at. I remember being in Georgia, when the Georgian war happened in 2008, I was in Moscow. And it was, overnight. They went from really not attacking Georgians very much to like, Georgians are trying to mass murder people and Ossetia. Georgians are causing a genocide. We have to intervene. So that media narrative can flip very fast. But so far, it is Putin wants to bring peace and he's saving the world from a dangerous war. So the catharsis of that would be Reykubik, Putin and Biden have done a deal. Putin has saved the world from war. He stopped the warmongers and the deep states and

the military industrial complex in America, you know. So that would be, you know, in that kind of, you know, drama that they're setting up and they always think in terms of a script, yeah, there's always meant to be a catharsis and a denouement, and then a season two, that's what it's being scripted towards, which is one of the reasons all the analysts in Moscow think, think he's not going to invade. Again, that is one data point out of a lot of other data points. So I wouldn't see that as a, that might, that might not be the most important data point in our analysis. I think it's interesting that he's not just asking for Ukraine, right? I mean, he also is saying that the NATO should pull back and maybe he'll take a piece of Lithuania too.

I mean, what he's asking for seems to be the moon. And you ask for the moon and then you negotiate. Oh, or you don't. You know, this is the thing. That's what I'm wondering. Yeah. One of the arguments is he's asked these crazy demands so that's because he's going to go to war. It's a way of saying, but, you know, I don't care anymore.

Like here's my crazy demands. Oh, you didn't fulfill them. Sorry. Boom. You should have fulfilled them. He surrounds Kiev, takes half of Ukraine. Then he says, are you sure these were crazy demands? And then he goes back to the negotiating table.

That is the theory of change that most very, very senior and highly respected security clearance to analysts in DC think. You know, that's the official version. The other one is that it's a bit of a game. So, look, yeah. I mean, look, the one thing that they keep on talking about is, is Minsk about getting the Ukrainians to sign up to this, what could be a very dangerous agreement for them

because it could tip the country in civil war. It doesn't have to, but it could be. And then, yeah, and then everything else can be negotiated. So, yeah, Ukraine never entering NATO, I think that's something they want, whether officially or unofficially. Definitely something signed on paper somewhere. Some Molotov-Ribbentrop signatures have to be somewhere.

Maybe they're not in the press, but they want their guarantees from America about Ukraine never being in NATO, and probably Minsk. those are probably the really important, if this is a game, those are probably the really important things, and the rest is, is negotiable. The rest is, you know, that's why you need Reykiewick for. Three months of Reykovic, followed by two weeks in Helsinki, you know, you're going to repeat the Gorbich of Reagan thing. But again, look, this is, this is, you know, that's kind of,

I still think that's kind of the hopeful variant that Putin is still playing a game. A game with blood and a game with victims, but still a game. There's a lot of very serious people who say all the games are over. This is it. He's done. with that, he's now just going to show brute force and show that the world is defined by brute force. And that is reality. And we need to deal with reality. And he is reality. All right, angry plaintiff, plaintiff, listeners, we're going to pause there for a break.

We'll be right back on after this. All right, angry planet listeners, thank you for sticking around. We are back on with Peter Palmerensive. Let me ask you about a sentence and towards the end of your piece here. I mean, it's interesting because I always, whenever we have these discussions, I always hesitate to think of America as the center of the story and as something that other nations are playing off against. I think that can be dangerous and plays into American narcissism. But I think, you know, there's something here, right?

A quote, the Kremlin needs to permanently keep the attention of a superpower to validate itself. Whether this entails gobbling up half of Ukraine along the way, I don't know. But even if it does, the appetite will only increase and not be sated. why does the Kremlin need to keep the attention of a superpower to validate itself, and why don't you think they would be sated? Because at the end of the day, this does come from an internal dynamic. Russia can't, hasn't been able to transform into sort of a developing modern economy due to the corrupt system that Putin created.

I mean, he's gone as far as he can with it. For it to become a normal country, which is someone like Alexei Navalny argues for, you need reforms and then you'd have an inner kind of engine for development. But all that's left is a sense that Russia is great, that it's bestrides the world stage like a Colossus. People enjoy that feeling. They enjoy feeling great. Yeah.

That's one of the few things left. What does it mean to be Russian? It means to be big and important. There's hardly anything else left as a kind of value. There's no mission anymore. There's no kind of like incredible science, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It really is just like, we are Russians, we are big. Therefore, we are Russians kind of cycle thing.

Also, he needs it in the sense that he has to appear big and strong all the time, and the way to appear big and strong is to be, you know, compete with America. I mean, I'll tell you a taxi driver story once. I kind of, I really get this as well, I mean, on some sort of level. So I talk to this, I know, it's a conversation with a taxi driver, but a friend of mine was talking to a taxi driver in Moscow, and he was like thinking, do I emigrate to Canada or the US? And my friend's like, look, look, Canada much better.

Social welfare, benefits, easier to integrate, more work, all this stuff. America, you know, you know all the negatives and text drivers like, yeah, I know that, but I can only live in a superpower, you know, when you're Russian, you think of your, you perceive yourself that way and you've got to have that validated. And it goes all the way through society. You know, that's who we are. That's our level. But also what's the point of Putin if he's not giving that, you know, if he's not bringing that. But also if he's at that level, he's more intimidating, you know, if he's, you know, he's also more powerful and impressive. if he's at Reykjavik or bombing Aleppo and the whole world is scared of it.

I keep on saying Reykjavik, by the way, because in my head, like Reykjavik, the Gorbachev, sort of Reagan meetings at Reykjavik and sort of the symbol of, you know, status, you know, being taken very seriously. So, so, you know, there is, I mean, the Putin, the Putin propaganda is really about one line, which is there is an alternative to Putin. You know, that's his own spin doctor's describe it that way. You've got to make him seem so, you know, like this. you know, super father figure, that, you know, he's up there on the biggest stage.

You know, he's got to be at that level. And if he's not, then that's not satisfying for anyone. So that'll go on and on. That'll go on and on. So we don't think, I don't think it's like Russia has a deal that comes down and goes away and never bothers anyone again. You know, it is a need to feel its hot table. And it's an itch, which isn't quelled, really.

So something I want to, I want to make clear for people here, too, something that you kind of get into a little bit in the piece. And that's the kind of the ritual humiliation of the Russian people. Almost as, and you kind of get into this more in your, in, you know, one of your other books, nothing is true and everything is possible. We have this anecdote about conscription and how the life of every young man in Russia is defined in young adulthood by how they choose to deal with the state in a certain way, right? And whether that is joining the military or getting your parents to pay you to pay for you to get out or your mother hiding you, you have some sort of conflicted and often fucked up relationship with the state right away. Can you kind of talk about that and like how the Russian idea of the Russian conception, the Russian conception of themselves fits into all the psychoanalysis that you've been talking about.

Yeah. I mean, look, look, the humiliation is, it is a system that's built on humiliation. So, so the, the army one is a very good idea. Yeah, there's a very good example. How you're kind of... So military service is meant to be for everyone. If you're rich, you kind of pay off and pay a bribe and try to get off it. But in order to get off it, you have to kind of like fake that you're ill,

which means going to the doctor and getting a paper from the doctor, who knows that you're pretending. Then you have to go and pretend to lie in hospital. It's not just not to get a piece of paper. So either you go into the army and get humiliated by the... By literally, like, humiliated with this horrible hazing. And you kind of like made an... into the sort of pulpy, humiliated matter, which makes a good Russian. Or you kind of avoid and

cheat your way through it, which kind of makes you complicit in the kind of deception of society and means you're already corrupt. But even without the army is happening all the time, you know, you go, you come down, you go and get in your car, you drive out, there are traffic cops who, you know, they put traps everywhere the traffic cops. They change signs and stuff. So like, you know, you go around a corner suddenly like, there's a stop sign there that wasn't there before and they're like, they're there and they grab you and they extort to extort money out of you. So, so you're like, you know, you're being humiliated by the officials straight away. Work, there's a culture of humiliating people of screaming and the people under you.

And that goes right at the top. I remember somebody going into a meeting with the head of gas problem and then, I wouldn't say which head of gas problem. But like the guy at Gaspron's like, like, okay, is you picking up his phone and just like screaming at his deputy. He's like, you know, another multi-millionaire. And like, and that guy, you know, everybody's screaming at. everyone. It's this culture, ritual humiliation. I mean, there's no rights built into any level of

school as well. You're humiliated in sports as well. You know, very successful sports, but there's a very famous videos recently actually about kind of like sort of a Russian trainer really kind of like humiliating her Olympic protege. So it's a culture based on humiliation at every level. And you come home at the end of the day, resentful, raging at the system inside. And you switch on the TV and the TV basically goes, America is humiliating us. And they kind of sublimates. that resentment onto somebody else. And again, I don't think you need to be a psychoanalyst or a psychologist to just get that. That's just how it's all arranged.

And yeah, there's just this pent-up aggression and anger all the time. They must think we're soft as hell, right? I mean, we don't scream at each other. We, well, I mean, mostly. Speak for yourself, New Yorker. So, yeah, though. I mean, what is their view of your average American soldier? I mean, how is the person like that portrayed?

So, I mean, as you know, there's a lot of propaganda about woke culture and how evil that is. And that's all done very much the West's decadent. This idea of the West is decadent and soft and effemnate and weak and sort of let alone, obviously sort of like, you know, not straight. That's used all the time. And I guess that's some little message, isn't it? That's like, say, oh, look, they're weak and a feat. We are the real men. We are the strong men.

you know, Putin's, you know, imagery is pretty blatant that way. The thing about the Putin regime is, it's kind of very almost sort of like self-consciously post-modernist about that, like, you know, they're like, where, you know, we pose as fascist macho leaders and we know it, wink, wink. And it's so sort of like extreme that way.

It's almost sort of like sort of self-ironic. But it is persistent. So that definitely is there. I still think they respect American soldiers and stuff. So I was remember, you know, there was a paper that was written by very good Russian media scholar called the Sili Gartov about, you know, if you did better public diplomacy with Russia, so talking directly to the Russian people, who would you nominate to do it?

Who would be the kind of speakers that would speak to the Russian people? And he was like, probably not the politicians, maybe like generals, you know, General Schwarzkopf, he's not around anymore. But, you know, someone like that, Arnie, you know, they'd listen to Arnie. You know, if Arne who did like, I have a message for the Russian people, you know, stop invading Ukraine, we can be peace together. People would listen to him. You know, they respect that. So, so, you know, there's, there's, no, I think there's also a lot of, with America, there's a lot of respect as well. It is a superpower and they, they respect that. So, so it's, it's a very, you know,

I suppose the relationship they have with America is kind of a microcos, sort of an extension of the relationship they have with these weird leaders. America is both kind of like the big figure whose attention you want, who you claim is abusing you, and whether it is or not, it's a different question, but it's kind of like a further projection of the relationship that you have with Russian leaders and with kind of like a certain type of father figure and families. So it's like, you know, it's a very weird relationship with America, which also I think offers possibilities. It's not a genuine, there's resentment, but there's also the need for attention and love and respect. It's all mixed in. So which would mean that if, you know,

America would actually talk to the Russian people, which they stopped doing off the end of the Cold War, people would listen. People would respond. Would we even go about doing that now, though? Like, how would you... Yeah, much easier than it was in the Cold War. Back then, like, Ronald Reagan had to go on, like, Soviet TV, which he did once, and then Margaret Thatcher did very famously. But...

So it's not... It'll be... You know, it's very easy on social media. You know, really, it's not hard. You don't have to wait to go on Russian TV. Start with a YouTube address. You know, create a public forum for discussion. I mean, it's...

Russia is... doesn't have a firewall. I mean, you can talk to the Russian people if you want to. So, like, Radio Free Europe all over again. That kind of thing. The Voice of America exists. So you could do those. You could just do it with a YouTube channel. I mean, what's the big deal? I mean, like, you do directly. You have a... I mean, Mike Ford did a bit of that, but he's a diplomat. So he was piled on and trolled very heavily. But if you do it and he's kind of alone, but people responded in Russia.

But you want someone who's like more of a celebrity, not like a diplomat. or an academic, you want someone who's like, like, Arnie, Arnie is perfect, you know. You know, doesn't matter how much the Russian troll farms troll Arnie, more people will listen. You have a wild habit of answering my questions before I ask them. So we've kind of come to the end of this. I do have two more, though.

One is kind of, what is a little bit out of left field, just because I've been kind of fascinated with what's going on. What do you make of Tucker Carlson? Or do you even think of him at all? No, I haven't. I've written about him before. but I was just, you know, I was very interested, but when he was just kind of beginning on Fox, really. I was very interested in that kind of whole triad of, of, of, of Hannity.

Because it was like, it was like another unhappy family, the way they used to do Fox. They still do it, but less so, but it was like, it was the Comodginly Uncle, the kind of sarcastic uncle. What was that guy who was on, you know, who lost his job in the end? O'Reilly, Bill O'Reilly. Yeah, so you start the evening with a whiskey with your cynical uncle, then the kind of earnest son, it's like an Arthur Miller's play, almost. Then the earnest son comes home, like really angry at what he's seen with his really sarcastic brother, Jesse Waters, like, you know. And then at the end, the drunk dad comes home, like, Sean Hannity, he just rants and rages and stuff like that.

So you had this very interesting male family that you spend the evening with. And but now obviously Carlson's on top. And I haven't, I mean, I did that for my last book. I can't remember if that went into my book, but I had to watch a lot of Fox for it. I'm going to start again with Carlson because obviously he's spreading, you know, pro-prongman propaganda and has for a while and pro-a-bond propaganda. And that's up is quite tactical and obvious in a way. What I'm fascinated by with Carlson are two things, really. One is the grievance narrative and how popular it is, because Putin uses the grievance narrative.

NATO has insulted us and, you know, while Carlson uses, you know, the poor white middle class have been, have been humiliated. And sometimes that's righteous grievance. I mean, there are clearly people in America who've been, who've been disenfranchised. and I kind of, I think that's okay for those people to feel the grieve, but a lot of people who listen to Soca Carlson are very well off and doing very well and they're not the oppressed. Same as Putin is not the oppressed. He's the leader of a superpower and a billionaire and stuff like that. So when you have people who are not oppressed doing the grievance narrative, something else is going on. And again, it's something that was looked at a lot with Nazi Germany. It's basically the grievance narrative is adopted by those who want to humiliate others. So you claim it's being done to you to give you the reason and the raison-dent detriment. do it to others. So when you have successful, well-fed, rich, very clearly and not-oppressed people doing grievance narrative, be very careful. That is their way of saying, I want to do that to people. But what I'm really interested in about Tucker, because I don't think the other stuff is new. That's very classical. What's new is his laugh. Now, I want to understand what does that laugh

about. You know, he does this crazy hysterical joker laugh. It's bizarre. It's like controlled, hysterical performative laughter. And he uses it as a trick. Sometimes it's controlled and he's using it to like shock and divert. But what on earth does that laugh to say about him? What does it say about his genre of propaganda? And what does it say about his audience?

And I don't know. I might spend some time trying to work that out. Because it's not just a, it's a party trick. I get that. And everyone needs a party trick. But why that party trick and what does it say? And I thought there'd be loads of stuff about this. I spent a whole 10 minutes on Google.

And there's nothing about it. No one's done like a sort of like psychological analysis of his laugh and what it means. And why, why something that should just delegitimize him is, is, is really popular. I mean, like, he does that. Let me, let me, I'm talking through my thoughts here. I think that either he or people on his writing staff, and we kind of know because of, of one famous incident, are pretty deeply connected to some pretty nasty parts of, internet culture. Uh-huh.

And I think that, like, the laugh and also when he's doing stories about how they took away the sexy M&Ms and no one want, you know, the left doesn't want you to fuck M&Ms anymore. When he's doing that kind of stuff, I think it's for that audience. I think it's for 4chan. I think those, that kind of laughter is kind of for that nihilist chunk of the internet that's out. So I think it signals to that. them. And again, I'm just, that's just off the top of my head just popped in. Could be complete bullshit.

What do you advertise to them? They have like, depends. For the, for the four chanters? I don't, man. I think they're, you just want them to be watching the clips and spreading them online. I don't think you're trying to get advertising dollars from them. It's a whole different game. Got it. Got it.

So, fine. I can see that. But, but it's, but the main, the other people, the normal, like my, like, you know, normal, middle-aged people who watch him who are not on 4chan or they probably don't even know what it is they're not put off by it and they like it as well so they can't just be for them it's not just a niche thing he's doing it's his trademark it says like it's his thing and and i don't know i still haven't been able to break it down i mean there's something about something about insanity it's the joker's love it's closest to the joker so it's something about insanity absolutely it's the joker

One of almost signaling, yes, I'm mad, or the world is mad, or we live in this inverted reality, and this is, you know, I don't know. There's something, the laugh is actually the most important thing. Everything else can change. Like, with Hannity was the rage. It was like, you know, white guy disenfranchised rage that Hannity was so brilliant and could just turn it off and on and he's clearly it's an act. And he just got it. And that was what he was all about. With O'Reilly's the cynicism, you know, it's that kind of like, you know.

but with Carlson, it's the laugh. And what the hell does that laugh signify? I don't know. I'll work it out. Maybe you should have me on the pot. Give me a week. I'll have something. That'd be great.

Yeah, no, I would love to talk about this because now all I can see in my, I see Joker and I see like the Wojacks. The Wojacks. The Wojack, it's the, you've seen it before, I'm sure. It's a popular online meme. It's kind of like this very kind of smoothed out bald head. Here, let me. I can pull up. Let me ask just a really quick question while Matthews plug it up.

Is there a Russian Tucker Carlson? Is this a similar thing on like Russian media? Sure. So Russia has its own, you know, its own panoply of, of really nasty current affairs talk show hosts who have made current affairs into identity and performance and a show. And again, similarities for the Fox crew in their sarcasm, their nastiness. A lot of it's about legitimizing nastiness. They sort of like, so one famous guy is Solov, who's probably the closest to Carlson. And he's, again, former liberal, obviously,

used to be very liberal, as all of them, you know, and went to the dark side. But he's very interesting. He talks like, actually he talks a little bit like a soldier hazing someone, very purposefully using that really nasty, aggressive tone. He dresses like a baddie from Russian fairy tales, again on purpose, like in a black cassock. And he's very dark. His whole thing is very dark and that's very conscious. So he's playing like the evil guy from Russian fairy tales with the language of the sadists in a Russian army. And again, it's legitimizing humiliation. Like, you know, all the nastiness you feel, let it out. Instead of a presenter, like you used to have these presenters on Russian TV who were very educated and were aspirational. This is the opposite. Sod the

aspiration. Be all the evil that you want to be. Again, look, they've all read their Freud. They've all read their Le Bonn. They all know that, you know, the idea of somebody on screen, a leader or somebody on screen who plays the role of a leader. It's about identification. It's not about aspiration. It's about, you know, that person being the thing through which you can express all your narcissism or your anger or all that stuff. That's your job. And the Russians take that social psychology stuff relatively seriously. They definitely know it by heart. So it's quite a conscious attempt to do that. There's another one called Kishlyov, who might be more a realish, in a sense he's very pleased. playful and intellectual, doing these very, very Arabesque conspiracy theories, very acid, again,

slightly playing the Russian idea of the devil in Master Margarita, Voland. This is a very, very recognizable, very sophisticated, deeply cynical worldview. Putin likes him a lot, apparently. There's a one called Skabeva and another one called Porto Tvostoy, who are literally like goblins. They taught like goblins from Russian fairy tales. I mean, a lot of them take on the tropes of Russian fairy tales. like they're angry, they're seething in a very, very kind of self-conscious and grotesque way. I think a lot of Americans went through this analysis of Trump. Like, what's the appeal? Oh, the appeal is the nastiness.

You know, like, he's so horrible. That's the point. You know, these are old things. You know, there's nothing. It's shocking to see them in the modern age. But I think what's new today is that all of them do it with a kind of a postmodern grin. You know, they're kind of doing it. And then they're winking you saying, we know that we're doing this.

And so was Trump in a weird way, you know, he was kind of winking and saying, yeah, I'm doing this. You think I'm going to do this? I'm going to do this. You think I'm going to call Mexican rapists? I just did. So there's also this, and maybe with Carlson as well, that maybe that hysterical laughter is part of that. It's kind of signaling. Oh, yes, I'm playing mad.

I'm being mad. I'm saying fake news. I'm saying propaganda. You know I am. That's why I'm doing the crazy laugh because I'm the Joker. I don't know. We need to think about this much more, why that jokery laugh, which should delegitimize him. The first time I heard that laugh was like, oh, that guy doesn't have a career on TV.

And he's like, oh, no, he does. They like the laugh. It was very popular. Yeah. Anyway, so yes, there's a lot. And look, Russian TV, imagine all you had was prime time all the time. And then, you know, because you guys got primetime fox, but you've also got other stuff, which has its own weird stuff, let's be honest. But at least you have a bit of pluralism out there, yeah? Just that Russia is like prime time fox all the time and nothing else.

You know, there is no other bits. There's entertainment. You can, you can switch off from politics and just do reality shows and sitcoms, yeah? You know, you can just go apathetic. There's no other news. You know, all the news content is now like that. There's no alternative. So imagine that you didn't even have a choice that all you had was Tucker and Hannity and Jesse Waters all the time. And it wasn't, you know, in America, you can just switch them off. In Russia, you can't. That's the big difference. We need to let you go. But first, you were working on a book. What is it about? Do you have any idea when it's coming out? Well, I was very lucky because COVID, I mean, made a reportage kind of book pretty much impossible. I'm doing a history book. It should be done by

summer. So out 23. It is about Second World War propaganda, as you probably noted. I'm thinking a lot about Second World War propaganda. So it's a Second World War propaganda book, which, you know, it's basically trying to understand Nazi propaganda and there were different attempts to undermine it. So it's looking at some of the campaigns to undermine Nazi propaganda. And without kind of overdoing it thinking what we can learn today, you know, what we can, you know, what can we learn from the attempts to undermine what the Nazis were doing and battling nasty propaganda today. But it won't be that linear. It won't be like 10 lessons or something.

It'll just be the story of those things. But clearly I'm coming at it thinking, okay, what can we? What might be interesting to learn from these stories, which are just great stories anyway. So that's the book. A lot of work. I didn't realize just how much time you have to spend with primary sources and how time-consuming that is. It's not hard.

it's just there's a lot of stuff to get through. And I'm being helped by like amazing archivists who are like, like halving my work because I go, do you ever see anything about this? They're like, oh, yes, I did actually. But so I'm getting help. Oh, my God. History is like, I think we just lost him. Yeah, you get that feeling.

He's off laughing with Tucker Carlson. All right. Well, I'm going to go ahead and say, thank you, Peter, for coming on to the show and walking us through this, even though you've disappeared to think about German propaganda and WoJack memes. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then. All right. Thank you for listening. Angry Planet listeners. Kind of already did the outro there suddenly. But, you know, Angry Planet is made by me, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. And if you like us, if you really like us,

you'll go to AngryPlanet.substack.com or Angry Planetbod.com. Where, for your $9 a month, you can get commercial free access to all the mainline episodes. and two bonus episodes a month. The next one is rolling out on Monday. It's a bit of a rebuttal to the last premium episode. A very spirited conversation about some militias in the West. It's extremely interesting. It had a lot of fun having it.

And for $9 a month, you can listen on Monday. We will, of course, be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.