Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Night Wolves (False Alarm! part xiv)

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

The Night Wolves are a Russian biker gang. Their rallies and bike shows run on state TV and Putin gave members medals for their contributions to the annexation of Crimea. The Kremlin outsources violence, propaganda, and intelligence gathering to groups like the Night Wolves because it supports the intentioned ambiguity of Non-Linear Warfare. Trump is now openly calling for a biker gang of his own. Is this the real Russia connection or is it simply more theatrical ambiguity?

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Night Wolves. Here's the scene. Donald Trump is at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, for a photo op with a bunch of motorcycle dudes who call themselves Bikers for Trump. It's raining, so Trump has brought the bikers and the press inside the ballroom. Does everybody like the press? No!

Do you think the media is fair? No! No! Try all! Tell the truth! I better not go any further. You can see and hear that Trump feels extra emboldened with this gang of tattooed burly biker dudes dressed in leather at his back.

The threat of violence is real, fake, and absurd. Bikers for Trump? Here's the scene. Vladimir Putin exits his motorcade where a group of bikers dressed in black leather stand waiting by the side of the road. Putin gives a manly bear hug to the leader of the pack, a bearded, tattooed giant, followed by handshakes all around. Despite the fact the Russian president seems to be enjoying himself, he departs after just a few minutes.

I'd love to stay, says Putin to the bikers, but I have some boring work to do. Charles Mainz is a radio producer based in Moscow. He says if we truly hope to understand how the real and the fake blend together in Putin's Russia, and how Russia is exporting this intention ambiguity, well, first, we must familiarize ourselves with the Russian biker gang known as the Night Wolves. To enter the world of the Night Wolves, even if just for a while, is to enter the motherlands embrace, sometimes gentle, other times rough.

My neck snapped along to patriotic bands that sang of Russia rising from its knees. My eyes widened as a crowd unfurled a Russian flag the size of a football field, the largest of its kind, I was told, 1423 square meters. And I was blown away by the bikes when they came, for they were something to behold. Steampunk vehicles with snarling wolf features and red glowing eyes tricked out dirt bikes which defied gravity with wheelies, flips, and jumps. It was like Mad Max, only it was real. And so I could definitely understand Anastasia who marveled at these men, these night wolves who had brought their fleet to a neighborhood school in Moscow for National Flag Day. They don't just bring bikes, they bring kindness, she told me.

Look at them and you see strength, bravery, you see hope. This is what men should be like, strong and athletic. I feel younger just looking at them. Her husband Sergei, who, like me, looks neither strong nor athletic, agreed wholeheartedly. Young guys who see this, it just makes them feel good. me looks neither strong nor athletic, agreed wholeheartedly. Young guys who see this, it just makes them feel good. They're ready to go join the battle right now. But the night wolf I met wasn't leading any battle.

Yuri Volkov was more concerned about when to release the balloons for today's show. He'd gotten into the Night Wolves over 10 years ago, attracted, Yuri said, by a sense of brotherhood, but also the freedom for travel. He'd been to 92 countries on his bike so far and is hoping to see the rest. I'm a patriot, he told me. I love my country. But I like Europeans. I like Americans.

I have lots of friends there. And why not? When politics came up, he said he never tries to impose his views on anyone. I just want things to be good here, he said. I want things to be good everywhere. This is one of the face of the Night Wolves. Fun-loving patriotic motorheads who embody Russia's rising confidence in itself. And that's who I saw at the school rally.

Guys like Yuri doing their best to put on a good show. To release the balloons on time. But there is another face, the one the West sees. That's the Night Wolves as Vladimir Putin's leather and denim militia. A mustly form of Russian nationalism that sets off alarm bells every time these guys head out for a ride or roar across the border. And the Night Wolves, they're an easy way in to understanding how theatre and reality blend together in pursuit of Vladimir Putin's goal to make Russia great again.

The Night Wolf started out in the Soviet underground of the late 80s, influenced by Hell's Angels, rock and roll, and Western counterculture. Even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the bike club was mostly about having a good time when good times were hard to find. This is from 1996. These guys came to forget about their problems for a while, touts a video from an early bike show, an annual motorcycle festival, that would come to define the group's evolution from underground misfits to the center of Kremlin politics. The group's leader from the beginning was a guy named Alexander Zatulstanov. Known as the surgeon, Zatulstanov had come from a family of doctors in Crimea and studied

dentistry before finding motorcycles and his nickname. Oral surgery just didn't have the same ring to it. For a time in the mid 80s, the surgeon worked as a bouncer at a rock club in West Berlin. But his infatuation with Western culture, capitalism didn't last long. The problem was upon returning home,

he also grappled with his disgust at the state of his own country. This is a recording from the Night Bull's first bike show back in 1995. Addressing the crowd, the surgeon boasts of his vision, a bike festival that's better than anything the fucking US or fucking Europe could match. And maybe if all of us here get together once a year, says the surgeon, maybe it'll prove our world, our country, isn't as shitty as it seems. Meanwhile, for the other 360 odd days of the year, there was enforcing to do. The night wolves provided hired muscle for

clubs, businesses, and gangsters needed protection from other gangsters, as well as the police. We were modern-day Robin Hoods, insisted the surgeon in a later interview. They also opened a bike shop called Wolf Engineering, and they launched a line of biker clothing called Wolf Wear. But the main event was always the annual summer bike show, and in 2009 the Night Wolves moved it to Sevastopol, Crimea, the surgeon's childhood hometown. Performances start reenacting the city's historical role as the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in World War II. They also lament the breakup of the Soviet Union. And this, perhaps, is how the Night Wolves end up on Vladimir Putin's radar.

Putin had his own annual staged event. Well, he had a bunch, but one included a question-and-answer session that aired on state TV every December. In 2010, the surgeon was not only included, he was given that rarest of gifts — the chance to ask Putin a question. VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President Could we defeat fascism today, now that Ukraine and Russia are separate states, he asks. Putin, first thanking the surgeon and the night wolves for their patriotism,

replied, of course Russia would always win in battle. But as to the question of Ukraine's independence, his answer was more nuanced. Those who don't lament the end of the Soviet Union have no heart, says Putin. But those who want it back as it was, they have no head. The seed was planted. After this, the annual night show becomes a pageant dedicated to Sevastopol's rightful return to the Russian Federation, with foreign guests and night wolves championing the cause of reunification. Welcome here in Sevastopol. It's great.

Congratulations that you have such a great event here in Sevastopol. And, yeah, what should I say? I wish you a reunion, like in Germany, West and East, you know. Rock and roll! Have a good night! And now, like Putin's Q&A, these bike shows are shown on state television, the staging more complex, with pyrotechnics and growing ensembles of dancers and musicians. And increasingly, these performances, they also feature dark warnings about Russia under

siege by homegrown conspirators and a Western cabal. All this is set against the backdrop of the surgeon's budding friendship with the Russian leader, forged amid a growing political crisis. Tens of thousands of Russians had taken to the streets of Moscow and other large cities to protest rigged elections in favor of Putin's ruling party. Challenged in the capital, Putin embraced the Night Wolves in the most visible way possible. He got on a bike and joined them for a ride. The image of Putin on a three-wheeler at the head of the Night Wolves motorcade, it may not be as famous as the one of him shirtless on a horse, but it's just as significant.

Russia's westernized urban classes were the main drivers of the protests. The punk feminist group Pussy Riot, the movement's more radical face. In donning leather and hopping on a bike with the wolves, Putin signaled he was a true patriot, conservative, Orthodox, blue-collar, and ready to rumble. He was now part of the counter counterculture. As the security forces squared off with protesters over a series of months, the Night Wolves not only joined the battle, the surgeon outright condoned violence against Putin's critics, calling for death to pederasts. For the night wolves, there were only patriots and subversives. They were proud to help Putin deal with his critics by labeling them all enemies of the

people. When Putin formally annexes Crimea in 2014 at a ceremony in the Kremlin, the Night Wolves are there again. Eleven members of the gang, including the surgeon, are awarded state medals for the return of Crimea. After all, the surgeon and the other bikers had taken active part in the fighting. They'd overseen roadblocks, captured a senior officer of the Ukrainian border service, even conducted a raid on a naval facility. But it wasn't just muscle and guns, as the surgeon noted in an interview at the time.

He says Russia is losing an information war with the West, but that one of the ways it can fight back is with the bike show. We always believed one way or another Crimea and Sevastopol and maybe other regions of Ukraine would join the Russian Federation. They'd shown the bathroom. The first bike show of post and ex-Crimea took place in the summer of 2014. It was called Culmination and it really was everything, everything the Night Wolves stood for. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story. Clips of Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Hitler interlaced over the speakers as masked Nazi drummers spurt fountains of blood.

Dancers reenacted pitched street battles between Ukrainian fascists and pro-Russian forces. All the while, giant hands bearing a ring with an American eagle loomed above the carnage and the surgeon read mystical poems to Russia's greatness. The violence of the imagery is astounding, as is the casual color commentary from the broadcasters in Moscow carrying the event live on state television. In the broadcast's final scene, the Soviet Union's national anthem plays as a reimagined national coat of arms ascends. Only now it's Russia's imperial eagle that sits in place of the USSR's old hammer and sickle. The television cameras, they lingered on young Russians' faces as they craned their next skyward. It was time, at last, to release the balloons. So when we first talked about the Night Wolves,

what really grabbed my attention was how they embody this concept of intentioned ambiguity, which is central to the Russian idea of nonlinear warfare. Putin can outsource military propaganda, intelligence activities to outside groups like the Night Wolves, and it comes with this air of ambiguity. So yeah, I understand how some folks could, you know, maybe watch this video and see crazy bike nuts into homoerotic musical theater, whereas, you know, other folks, say in

the Donbass, could see crazy Russian thugs who are out to kill them. But it also seems that in order for this to work, the ambiguity has to be able to sustain itself. And isn't it absurd to say, you know, now after everything you just told us about the rides and the medals that, yeah, these guys have a lot in common with Putin and Russian aggression, but, you know, we can't say with certainty that they're working together. You know, Benjamin, let's maybe try this from a different angle or maybe a different country. So last summer, we learned that the Night Wolves had opened up what looked like a new training camp or a base. Well, the point is we didn't know what it was, but it wasn't in Russia or even Crimea.

It was in Slovakia. And the timing of this was really suspect. The base appeared just ahead of the anniversary of another key moment in Soviet history, the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. We decided we're going to have this is all anonymous. Is that right? Yeah, that's OK. So I reached out to a guy I know who works in Slovakia. We'll call him cameraman. Some real scary shit happened on Facebook where people were like, I became a fucking meme, like CIA Jew. It was really fucking scary. So when Cameraman learned about this new Night Wolves outpost, he and a Slovakian journalist,

a guy named Alan, they drove out to a field near the base and launched a drone armed with a lens. And, you know, within a few minutes, he's looking down at the screen of his controller and seeing what looks like tanks, APVs, and other military equipment. And then he sees movement. I see a car on the move, like people scrambling in the base. I'm like, holy shit, there's like a wasp there. And then a car, like, snakes out the front gate. And I can see that through my mobile device.

But I'm like, ah, it's fine. He drove the other way. It's cool. I got to concentrate and get this shot. But that car leaving the base, it isn't driving the other way. It's coming right at him. And sure enough, this guy in this like, in this like Mad Max style, all terrain buggy comes screaming up, slams on the brakes in a cloud of dust as the drone is coming down towards me. And he's like in my face right from the beginning. It looked to me like it was a sort of textbook military roadblock operation where you're like,

get on the ground, get on the ground, you know, like to show the threat. That's the way he was gesturing at me. And it was really, it was really intimidating. It really felt like we were in the fucking Donbass or something. It felt scary as hell. And just as a photographer,

like it's fine to be beaten up if you get the footage. So I'm standing there in the middle of this field where no one can hear me scream thinking, okay, I'm going to get my teeth stomped in and I don't even get a clip. Like this is such a shitty situation. Your colleague is doing the same thing.

I'm saying to Ellen, dude more guys are gonna show up let's get the fuck out of here. Let's go, let's go. Like it's gonna be hard for them to physically stop us leaving even though it looks like they were eminently prepared to try and so I'm saying let's go, let's go. And then he says to the journalist, stay here or I'm going to get my weapon, which we took to mean go. So this guy, is he Russian? Is he Slovakian? He's an interesting guy. So the guy that attacked me, he's very well connected in the Slovakian government.

There was a major feature on him done by a young journalist called Jan Kruciak, I think, a Slovakian journalist. And I'm not saying the two things are related, but about seven or eight months after that story came out, which seemed to show, from what I can make out from Google Translate, corruption and connections to the government, within a year or slightly more, that journalist had been murdered along with his girlfriend. So just as the Nightwolves are talking about weapons, the police show up. Alan, the journalist, he called them. But the thing is, the cameraman and the Nightwolves, they both seem to think the police are there for them.

You could see from their body language, they just answered the wrong call. Meanwhile, this guy's like, we're going to do this for terrorism and we're going to put you away behind bars and blah, blah, blah. And the cops are like, OK. And then the night wolves guy is on the phone to his lawyer, like trying to figure out how he's going to destroy my life. He was saying to the cops, I don't know if it had a cannon on it or not. You know, like I was under threat of, felt like I was under threat of a terrorist attack. Anyway, so we get back to the cop station. And then suddenly this guy who's been all agi-bagi, all in my face, screamingly, is suddenly like, hey, I tell you what.

And he turns into like a fucking cheshire cat and like hey man you just show me your id and then i'll drop everything and i'm like i don't know who the fuck no like no dude jesus christ why are you so weird that was really spooky so they're're like, listen, man, the cops have seen my identification. They can verify that I'm some kind of journalist. That should be all you need. The cops are not going to

lie to you. He's like, no, no, I want to see your ID. I want to see your name. He's like, I'm going to find it out anyway. And so it was really, it was and that set me up for about three weeks of like, you know, glancing over my shoulders, I'm walking to work paranoid. Because these guys want to find out who I am.

And why is he suddenly gone from being like pedal to the metal aggression to being all simpering and kind? It was really feckin bizarre. So it's been six months, and I think the initial concern is wearing off. But after this incident, the Night Wolves guy posted Cameraman's picture to Facebook, recounting the story. And the comments from Night Wolves supporters got pretty ugly. They focused on the size of Cameraman's nose, trying to prove he's Jewish. He's not. And placing him in, you know, memes with the Hungarian financier, George Soros,

who's kind of a boogeyman in Central Europe. But, you know, let's be honest. There are stories of online harassment by pro-Russian trolls that get a lot worse. You know, you could say that Cameraman kind of got off easy here. And what about the Night Wolves? What did they say about this drone incursion? Well, they say the Slovak base, all that military hardware that cameraman filmed, that was just part of a new museum. They said it had nothing to do with the invasion of 1968. The equipment was part of an exhibition focusing on the Soviets' liberation of Slovakia from Nazi

rule in World War II. And of, and of course, all this made headlines. The surgeon came out and blamed liberal Western media for stoking anti-Russian hysteria. Yeah, I don't want to sound stupid or naive, Charles, but again, I get how this could be seen as ambiguous. You know, we don't know for sure what these guys are up to, but the Night Wolves have medals from Putin hanging around their necks. I mean, their cover story has been blown. Yeah, well, even when the cover story breaks down, the ambiguity doesn't necessarily go away. I mean, I think you can see this at work with these two Russians who got bused in Salisbury, the ones that claim they were tourists interested in checking out this, you know bused in Salisbury, the ones that claim they were tourists interested

in checking out this church in Salisbury, the big spire, 123 meters. They say it's just a coincidence that they happened to be there in Salisbury at the time. Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with this nerve agent. And even now, when we have photographic evidence that the two men are part of this Russian military intelligence, this ambiguity still holds up. In fact, it gets introduced in other ways. Here in Russia, after these two guys appeared on RT with this ridiculous alibi, the debate here shifted to whether the two of them were gay or not. Well, here in the U.S., Trump has, you know, in the run up to the election, totally amped up the falsehoods. It's

become like a torrent of lies. And I guess you could say there is some ambiguity here. You know, are these jokes? Are these lies? But if we take this ambiguity, you know, as intentioned, you know, again, we should be able to come out and say with authority, hey, these are lies. But the media doesn't seem to be able to do this, which makes me think, listening to what you just said, maybe a better translation here is theatrical ambiguity. Not bad. I like that. I think you can get some traction with this, Benjamin. Well, here's the big question then. We're turning everything upside down right

now looking for evidence of Russia's hand, right? Social media, real estate, banking. But coming back to this bikers for Trump thing, is this perhaps the best evidence of all? Well, it's interesting. There is this slogan that the Night Wolves put on to one of their t-shirts. It's one of the more popular items from their wolf-wear line of clothing. And the slogan, you know, in Russian it goes like this. It says, Which translates to, where there are Night Wolves, there is Russia. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's theory of everything. This installment is called Night Wolves. American fascism is something that's come up a lot in this series. And after this short break, we have another update from TOE's Andrew Calloway.

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Go to dashlane.com slash theory and use my promo code theory to get 10% off Dashlane Premium. We spent a good part of False Alarm, episodes 5 through 10, looking back at history. I wanted to compare what's going on now with other eras when people got confused over what was real and what was fake. Especially the 1930s, which is why we spent so much time talking with Eric Kurlander, author of Hitler's Monsters. We learn from Eric about Hitler's paranormal, spiritual, and pseudoscientific beliefs. And at the end of the conversation, it inevitably turned towards the present. If we simply had a distribution of resources and a meeting of labor and capital the way we used to have with all the wealth we have now, people wouldn't be flocking to Bernie Sanders or Trump. And that means that if we do hit a crisis like the one we had in the 20s and 30s, where most Western states form

coalitions between the left and the center, So liberal capitalists and socialists basically said, we don't want to go fascist. Let's figure out how to distribute less income in a more equitable way. Well, now I don't see how that happens in a period of crisis. Do we trust American voters or even British voters anymore, the countries that won World War II in the name of democracy, to actually act like good Democrats?

Or are they going to go full fascist? I'd say all evidence suggests right now they'll go full fascist. When the center and the left are so weak, how can we not go fascist? And I'm scared of that. So for this week's Extra, I assigned TOE's Andrew Calloway to give us an update on American fascism. Yeah. Oh, man. I mean, it's crazy to think that we recorded that interview back in April. Because listening to it now, it just seems like, yeah, no shit, we're going fascist. But at the time, it was absolutely haunting. Like, of course, I understood and all the Trump-Hitler comparisons.

But I mean, it's different when it's a Nazi historian, a man who has spent decades studying fascism, telling us not that it's possible for it to happen again, but that it's actually far more likely than anything else. That, for me, was next level. He did say, if we have another crisis, which might be what's happening then. Yeah, totally. A perpetual crisis. But so, when I heard that the Unite the Right 2 rally was happening in August, I broke my month-long streak of being too exhausted and depressed to go to protests,

and I drove to Washingtonhington dc because last year you know the fascist white supremacists killed a socialist there and so i felt it was important to show up just to say that you know even if you're gonna fucking kill us you know that we're not scared of you okay but there was one group that we were scared of. The cops are supposed to be there. Listen, they're supposed to be there for public safety. If they insure us of public safety, then we shouldn't feel threatened.

The cops. Oh, yeah. In Portland, they beat up the counter-protesters and protected the Nazis. Of course, of course. For that agenda. That's all it is. So you're going to protect them, the national, you're going to protect them, the supremacists, but the counter-protesters, you're going to go ahead and beat them.

It's sad. I felt more safe when it was just the protesters. And now that there's cops involved, I feel unsafe. Cops in the Klan go hand in hand. Cops in the Klan go hand in hand. Yeah, I remember when you told me that you went down and recorded, but we decided it wasn't really enough of a story because there were like a million protesters and like five dumbass Nazis. But this cops thing is pretty interesting. Yeah, especially because of what's been happening with the Proud Boys. Pick him! Pick him! Pick this motherfucker!

Fuck you, dad! boys in manhattan on october 12th a bunch of the proud boys you know who self-describe as a western chauvinist gang uh met at the metropolitan republican club to reenact the assassination of enegiro asanuma a japanese socialist who was killed by a nationalist on live television back in the 60s. This is why Gavin McInnes, the leader of the Proud Boys, was wielding an enormous sword in the streets of Manhattan to pay tribute to a man

who kills socialists. Good God. And while the Proud Boys beat the protesters outside, the police came and arrested three people. But none of them were Proud Boys. The Proud Boys, they got to walk away without consequence. Dude, I had one of their fucking heads, and I was just fucking smashing it in the pavement.

Yeah, I remember hearing some of this. And even reading how the Proud Boys have like a sort of undercover police detail that follows them around to make sure, you know, everything's okay with them when they're, I'm a big boy beer crawl thing. Yeah, I mean, so the police obviously claim to be completely neutral. They're just like following the letter of the law. But, you know, everybody on the left can see pretty clearly that, you know, they're on the same side as the Proud Boys.

And actually, the leader of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, agrees. I have a lot of support in the NYPD, and I very much appreciate that, the boys in blue. But honestly, like, even if these particular cops aren't in the Gavin McInnes fan club, taking Trump's position, you know, there's violence on both sides, and being neutral in this battle between violent fascists and peaceful protesters is kind of just as scary. Yeah, it's like not like the Blues Brothers movie anymore, you know, where we have to let them march because, you know, freedom of speech.

But they've gone beyond marching now. Totally. But to bring it back to this idea, because, yes, the Proud Boys, they're a fascist street gang. But is America going to go fascist? Well, for any listeners who aren't fully convinced yet, I have one more clip to play. You know, they have a word. It sort of became old fashioned. It's called a nationalist.

And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist, okay? I'm a nationalist. Nationalist. Nothing. Use that word. Use that word. Yeah, okay. Again, you know, this is something I just read about and not listened to. Oh, man, thank you. And I hate you for making us listen that but um uh it is time to stop debating when this is gonna happen and we have to start thinking about what we're gonna do next how are we gonna fight back whoa whoa benjamin okay listen there will be no audio tape of us saying

that we should fight back against fascism okay I can already hear them playing this episode at our trial. Yeah, we should maybe backtrack here? To steal a line from the police, everything you say can and will be used against you. Yeah, you're right. We should probably admit that this is hypothetical Josh in here, just joking around. These are total jokes, like satire segments.

This is a comedy podcast. Me and my buddy, Benjamin and Andrew, we are the No Fight Club. This episode was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, with Charles Maines and Andrew Calloway. You can see photos of the Night Wolves and Bikers for Trump at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.