The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 2

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

69 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson begin a reading and commentary of Ivan Ilyin's 1925 book, "On Resistance to Evil by Force."Tolstoy's "What is a Jew?"The Lies of Leftism: Ivan Ilyin, Atheism and the Death of Reason in the East and West by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonDr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonJohnson's Law in Action: Venezuela and the Foreign Policy of Mass PresumptionDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Article: Karl Marx’s Theses on the Jews and the Necessity of Free Trade: Zur Judenfrage (1844) by Matthew Raphael JohnsonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take a left and then you go past Murphy's house. Do you know the Murphy's their young lad, Sean, I think he's off in London now. Oh yeah, you... Ah, FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to 75% of new van policies. FBD insurance. Support. It's what we do.

I can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase you. And once he gives up, you should be there. 75% off based on five years no claims discount. Terms and conditions apply. FBD Insurance, PLC, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Notice a change in your hearing? Well then, get a hearing check from Specksavers.

Oh, not sure where to start. Well, we're very flexible. Book one online, on the phone, on your lunch break on Saturdays, on the same day if you're lucky. Oh, you only miss the odd word. But what if the odd words you're missing are nice ones like Love You or important ones like, Doc? Oh, too expensive is it?

Hmm. All right, we like you. We'll do it for nothing. For free hearing checks should have gone to Speck Savers. So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take a left and then you go past Murphy's house. Do you know the Murphy's their young lad, Sean? I think he's off here in London now. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions.

FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to 75% off new van policy. policies. FBD insurance. Support. It's what we do. Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase you. And once he gives up, you should be there. 75% off based on five years no claims discount. Terms and conditions apply. FBD insurance, PLC, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. With election time approaching, political ads will be inserted into the episode along with other ads that, frankly, I'm not going to like and you aren't going to like. So please ignore them, skip buy them, whatever you have to do. I don't endorse any of the ads that are inserted, but it is another way for me to generate income.

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Skip by them. Do what you need to do. I appreciate all of you. head on over to pkinjona show.com you can get the show early and add free over there if not here's a show i want to welcome everyone back to our reading of is it ivan or is it ivan and it's elene right uh yeah i usually say uh ivan ilin yeah be you could say i'm sure that there's more than one acceptable pronunciation of the last name okay iven aline's on resistance to evil by Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today?

Before we went on the air, we were talking about cats and mice literally. And it's, I'm becoming an involuntary expert on feline sociology. And the kittens that I have, you know, they just want to play with the thing. Every spring we get a, we get a few mice in here. You know, this is a really, six cats. It's a really bad place for a mouse to be. and they just play with it and end up torturing it, not realizing,

or they just don't care, then one of the older cats either just walks away or just has to come in and intervene and kill it or I have to grab it and throw it out. But then out of nowhere, my tortoiseshell cat, Stacey, who I've never mentioned in public before,

just lost her temper with all the kittens and grabbed it, broke its neck, said, screw you guys, you have no idea what you're doing and that's it went went downstairs to the to the kitchen with it now i don't know where that cat came from i knew she might be a psycho she doesn't get along with the other cats all that well she's very affectionate with us though um and now with marcel gone you know there's a there's a spot second to stanley that's missing i don't know she may end up taking it um she's four now it's uh it's really amazing uh the sociocel

of felines, the hierarchy. And, you know, if you fail with a mouse and you're a cat, I mean, that's the one thing cats are known for. You know, they lose it. It goes under the, they lose it. They don't know where it is, even though it's right behind them. It outmaneuvers them. Oh.

So I've been dealing with that on a professional level for, for a few days now. How are you doing? Doing good. Please remind me when we're not recording. I just put something together in my head when you were when you were talking there. But I don't want that for public consumptions, though. After this, I'll tell you something.

I shall remind you. All right. All right. We're back to it. We're only two hours ago did we release the first episode publicly for this. So we haven't gotten any real feedback yet. I've gotten some feedback from supporters who got it early. And it's basically what a lot, what a few people have said is, I've tried to read this on my own and I've read it on my own.

And it was a difficult read. And they're very, they're very happy that you're, that we're doing this because hopefully that you can, you'll be able to bring some things out that they couldn't understand. Well, it takes a humble mind to be able to admit that. And I like, I appreciate it. I said that in the beginning. last time. He is both a philosopher and a historian. And he's much more difficult than the Schultzhen-Etsin.

But this is a treatise of his. This is a big deal in his life. So it doesn't surprise me. So I have to do some basic breaking down. And I'm really happy to hear that. But again, to have someone admit that they read it and don't understand it, that suggests a great degree of human. humility that I don't see very often.

Truly. All right, here we go. Part two on the surrender to evil. At the very threshold of the problem must be clearly established that no honest person even considers non-resistance to evil in the literal sense of the word. A mere inclination towards such non-resistance transforms a person from a moral physician and spiritual subject into a moral patient and an object of spiritual education. This means that it will be, it will not be the latter who will discuss the problem of non-resistance,

but rather the debate about what exactly to do with it and how exactly to resist it or whatever it contains. Well, this has something to do with why Gandhi was so, something to do with why Gandhi was so taken with Tolstoy. You have to know, you know, Tolstoy's non-resistance. is relatively well known. Gandhi, of course, a little bit better known. But it's not like, you know,

they know that something is evil. We don't necessarily disagree. Their resistance is just a little different. So I suppose that's, you know, there are two different ways. It's a resistance, but it's a passive resistance. And he actually says this here,

transforms a person from a moral physician and spiritual subject to a moral patient. Well, patient and passive are, you know, come from the same root. Being a subject is being an actor. Being a patient, that's something that is worked on, something that needs to be educated. So now today, in 2026, we don't agree on what's evil and what's good. Tolstoy, although I have to say, was pretty radical in that regard too, not so much as the Bolsheviks.

Of course, he didn't live to see them take over. He knew of their existence, but he didn't live to see them take over. I would have loved to have known what he would have said in 1917 about nonviolent resistance. That was Gandhi's thing. It's so resistance. We have the same conception of what's evil. It's just our ways of dealing with it and trying to fight it are very different. But the bigger question is we don't have, and I think it's the case with Solstoy as well.

This was a time in Russian society where you had a resurgence of the church, a resurgence of Russian literature, was really an extraordinary time, but it was also a falling away of the nobility. We've spoken about that many times. and greater and greater schisms developed in Russian society. It never, you know, nothing is as bad as 2026 America where there's no agreement at all on what's evil and what's good. And hence, our reaction to it is irrelevant when we don't even agree what it is. You know, in all my ethics courses in grad school, you know, the professor always used the example of someone being murdered. You know, because anything else other than murder, we would not agree was evil.

They'd be factions. So he had to go that far to make a point. Alistair McIntyre, the center of his research, too, was that. It's not a unified society. It's barely a society at all. Russia wasn't that bad at the time. But being a patient is to be passive, something that's worked on. It's almost he's certainly not a citizen, certainly not a man.

You know, and had Tolstoy been alive in 1918, 1919, maybe he would have had a different point of view. Because given his political theory, there's no way he would have supported the Bolsheviks who were heavily armed. And I've read Tolstoy's response to my critics on these issues, and he really doesn't, he, he, he, He passes over these questions and redirects rather than takes them on. Basically, what he says is that, well, the violence internally is just as bad as the violence that any external enemy would give us. So what difference does it make? Which, of course, in the Russian case, is certainly not true. He thought it was true, but it's not true.

So, you know, but for Tolstoy to connect that with Christianity is the worst form of heresy. He had to have, and you know, I sent you, and that, I don't know if you posted that link to what Tolstoy thought of the Jews. They were divine people or sacred people. Their resistance is probably different. But, you know, he was very much into cabotting at the end of his life. And, you know, he got more radical as his time went on. He certainly didn't free his, you know, he didn't give his land away. He didn't do anything like that.

So, but whether that's inconsistent or honest is a different matter. but had he been alive in 1918, I have the feeling he would have radically modified this because there was no way there was something that radical, that radical evil, no, I really knows all about it. Tulsaoy didn't. How can you possibly be passive when you're dealing with the Bolsheviks? This is something that no one had expected. No one had, say a handful, you know, churchmen especially saw it coming.

that radical evil, you saw it in medieval Kazadia, many saints in Europe, especially in Georgia, I thought it was, you know, Gog and Magog had been found in the violence and the evil. But being passive, you know, Gandhi made it work against the British because, again, this is near the end of the British Empire. They were strained as it was, but this is a totally different story. Tolstoy would have had to either become a Bolshevik or change his point of view or change the definitions of the words he means. Tolstoy would have been, especially given Lenin's words about him, would have been in a gulag or it's been murdered right away anyway.

So maybe he would have changed his point of view. I'm not entirely sure. But Lenin, once Lenin took power, he claimed he loved them before. But once Lenin took power, he just. saw him as a reactionary landowner weirdo. And so he would have ended up at best in a gulag. So, and again, the world prior to the Bolshevik Revolution and prior to that World War I, the world prior to that, they didn't know.

They had no idea what was coming. the mass slaughter of European men in that four years and the collapse of all existing political systems this is not something that anyone expected it was really easy to be optimistic it's really easy to talk about passivity when you're in what most people saw as a stable system other people can take care of the violence for you

so we could be free to have to be as passive as we want I have in my writing is on the Byzantine Empire I have something on Montenegro which I did about six seven years ago Montenegrin saints were especially violent I mean brutally so because Montenegro is a tiny little place

their warfare against the Turks now these are the saints these are the bishop leaders because it was often run by a bishop bishop prince um who very existence was at stake and they revel in the slaughter of of the turks and the jews that were were backing them they had nowhere to go and they're going to talk like that because it's just there was just a handful of them and they were vulnerable that's different when you're in the Byzantine empire and you say well soldiers coming back from warfare, perhaps a fast, you know, because they've killed humans. That wasn't the case in Montenegro. That wasn't the case, you know, but old Russia, too. They had it too good.

And it started to breed people like, it's all story. But you have Orthodox saints in Montenegro that absolutely reveled in the blood of their enemies. And there's very good reason for that. And I talk about these guys all the time when anyone talks about passivity or or peace or anything like that. It's because their whole their whole world was at stake. So this has to do with the social system you live in too. The hippies were supposed to be passive too, right? They're supposed to be resistors in that sense. But yeah, they still torched ROTC centers.

They got violent whenever they needed to. And the other thing I think it's, you know, Lynn, it's also, it's saying if we agree on what evil is, now we're just disagreeing on how to deal with it. So like I said last week, I don't know how anyone seriously rejects free will. People reject it because it's part of a broader system and they have to, to be consistent. But I can't see how any intelligent person can reject free will. I don't see how any intelligent person can reject a violent defense of your people and yourself. Again, we're not talking about personal enemies here. I'm not talking about personal opponents.

We're talking about those wicked ones from the inside or the outside that want to hurt us. So that's what he's starting off here. And the argument he's going to build is that passivity, when you're dealing with people like the Bolshevix, this was written in 1925, it is ultimately the surrender to evil, and then you become evil yourself. Notice a change in your hearing? Well, then, get a hearing check from Specksavers. Oh, not sure where to start. Well, we're very flexible. Book one online, on the phone, on your lunch break on Saturdays, on the same day if you're lucky. Oh, you only miss the odd word. But what if the odd words are missing? or nice ones like Love You or important ones like Doc!

Oh, too expensive is it? Hmm. All right, we like you. We'll do it for nothing. For free hearing checks should have gone to Spec Savers. With over 700 everyday savers to choose from, there's always a delicious way to save

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Dunn stores, always better value. Terms and conditions of lie vouchers can be used on next grocery shop. So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take a left and then you go past Murphy's house. Do you know the Murphy's their young lad, Sean? I think he's over in London now. Oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions.

The BD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to 75% off new van policies. FBD insurance. Support. It's what we do. Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase you. And once he gives up, you should be there. 75% off based on five years no claims discount. Terms and conditions apply.

FBD Insurance, PLC, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I included the link to that article on Tolstoy on the Jews in the show notes, and I will copy it over on every episode we do on this one, so people go read that. Oh, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. All right, moving on.

Indeed, what would non-resistance mean in the sense of the absence of any resistance? It would mean accepting evil, allowing it into oneself and granting it freedom, scope, and power. If under such conditions, the rebellion of evil were to occur and non-resistance continued, then this would mean subordination to it, surrender to it, participation in it, and finally, turning oneself into its instrument, its organ, its breeding ground, enjoying it and being absorbed by it. This would be, at first, voluntary self-corruption and self-infection would ultimately be the active spread of the infection among others and their involvement in their own destruction.

He who does not resist evil at all also refrains from condemning it. for condemnation, even if entirely internal and silent, if such were possible, is already internal resistance, fraught with practical conclusions, intentions, struggle, and resistance. Now, for our purposes, he is talking about resistance, meaning violent resistance. And the argument has been made a thousand times. What he's saying here? Someone breaks into your house, and you refuse to resist, because Christ told me to turn the other cheek, and he does horrible things to your family, this is as much on you as it is on the people breaking in. And it's the same thing for, you know, the mass migration or an invasion from the outside

or a tiny revolutionary clique like the Bolsheviks. It's the same argument. And after a while, you end up identifying with it. this is what evil evil wants this evil wants people who are so alienated that they'll refuse to resist you so it doesn't matter whether we agree on what evil is if you if you don't want to resist or violently we're talking about violent people we're not talking about a neighbor we don't like you know christ you know was talking about personal enemies here not enemies of your nation not enemies of the of the of the family of the nation um and that's the that what many of these Christian passivists completely get wrong. If your passivity leads to evil

in a real concrete sense doing awful things, and it might not have happened had you resisted violently, it's on you, as much as it is on the evil people who are doing it. Moreover, as long as disapproval or even a vague aversion lingers in the soul, a person still resists. He may not rebel wholeheartedly, but he is still divided. He struggles within himself. and as a result, the very acceptance of evil fails him. Even when completely passive externally, he resists evil internally, condemns it, becomes indignant, exposes it to himself,

does not succumb to its fears and temptations, and even when partially succumbing, reproaches himself for it, gathers his courage, becomes indignant with himself, turns away from it, and purifies himself in repentance. Even when choking, he resists and does not drown.

It is precisely for this reason that the complete absence of any resistance, both external and internal, demands that condemnation cease, that censure, subside, and that approval of evil prevail. Therefore, one who does not resist evil, sooner or later comes to the need to convince himself that evil is not entirely bad and not evil, that it has some positive traits, that they are not insignificant and that they may even predominate. and very conveniently they don't have to do anything they don't have to put themselves in harm's way you know citizenship i don't care what kind of political system you have citizenship is quite demanding and when you talk about passivity you know this is great i don't have to do a damn thing um and and other people of course are putting themselves in harm's way and i suppose he would be condemning them uh the fact that toll story was a landowner in 19th century Russia, late 19th century Russia comes from the fact that Russia

had to be carved out by violence. You know, it grew up in a very rough neighborhood. And he's for the most part talking about physical violence. Again, given year, he's writing this in Berlin in 1925. Again, he's talking about two separate events, the Bolsheviks and Tolstoy. The concept being that Tolstoy is one of the things that harmed the resistance against the Reds. But once you say, I'm not going to resist, you know, you didn't think this stuff was evil in the first place. And how do you rationalize it? You rationalize it by saying, oh, it's not really evil. And this is the argument so far.

This isn't really a position someone holds. This is a rationalization that comes after evil has prevailed or has done something awful. You could have stopped it. You call yourself a passive resistor. And in addition, you don't have to do anything. Notice a change in your hearing? Well then, get a hearing check from Specsavers.

Oh, not sure where to start. Well, we're very flexible. Book one online, on the phone, on your lunch break on Saturdays, on the same day if you're lucky. Oh, you only miss the odd word. But what if the odd words you're missing are nice ones like Love You or important ones like, Doc? Oh, too expensive is it?

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better value. Terms and conditions apply vouchers can be used to next grocery shop, DORS applies. So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take it left and then you go past Murphy's house. You know to Murphy's their young lad, Sean. I think he's over in London now. Oh, yeah.

FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland with up to 75% off new van policies. FBD insurance. Support. It's what we do. I can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier will start to chase you.

And once he gives up, you should be there. 75% off based on five years no claims discount. Terms and conditions apply. FBD Insurance, PLC, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Only as he succeeds in persuading himself, speaking out his healthy aversion and assuring himself of the whiteness of blackness, do the remnants of resistance fade and a full surrender is realized. When the aversion to evil subsides and evil is no longer experienced as evil, then acceptance imperceptibly becomes complete. The soul begins to believe that black is white, adapts and assimilates, becomes black at sea. and finally approves and enjoys and naturally praises that which gives it pleasure.

This is a spiritual law. He who does not resist evil will be consumed by it and will become possessed. For evil is not an empty word, not an abstract concept, not a logical assumption, and not the result of a subjective assessment. He's not talking about just any society, healthy societies. It's not just any society that ever existed. If you resist an invader in your society's unhealthy, you're part of the problem. The Old Testament prophets reveled in the fact that the Babylonians were going to Gerr, Jeremiah in particular, sought the Babylonian invasion and said you deserve it for being as corrupt as you are.

So there's an underlying and very objective moral concept here. The assumption is, and I think he's right, that Russia is for the most part, a moral and just society, and therefore to want to harm it is evil. And if you refuse to stop that, then over time you become associated with that evil. It's a form, is a lack of, lack of gratitude. There's so many inconsistencies. And again, in Tolstoy's work in responses to his critics, he doesn't even talk about this either.

And I read that. I hadn't read it in ages until very recently. And it's disappointing. It was very, you know, as a great writer, though he was. And keep in mind, this has nothing to do with his fiction. It's still beautiful. We're not talking about that at all. You know, Anna Karenina is a first-class critique of what today we call the sexual revolution

at a very, very early date. I have an article that Anna Karenina and Wynaronski, etc. This was a very early statement of the red pill. And I'm reading this, and I'm saying, my God, this could have been written a week ago. So it had nothing to do with that. But this political point of view, do you remember after in 2020 they wanted to get rid of the police departments? I remember, yeah, they were claiming that they wanted psychiatrists and psychologists to be dispatched to gangland, you know, to deal with these people. But how long have right-winger's been saying that they don't think this stuff is evil in the first place?

Every revolutionary group that has ever taken over, the first thing they do is release everyone in prison. They don't think what they're doing is evil. In fact, they tend to support what they're doing. I have article after article where a country defeats that wins their drug war. Drugs are eliminated in the society. And U.S. government and all the NGOs condemn and condemn and condemn. to the point of sanctions when the Biden presidency existed. I'm talking about El Salvador in that particular case.

But there's a war on drugs in the U.S. They condemn any actual victory of the drug war. Then you question, do they think this is all really all that evil? And you have every reason to say, I don't think they think that. They'll say it in public, but not in private. They're hypocrites in the true sense of the word. evil is first and foremost a human inclination inherent in each of us like a passionate urge within us to unleash a beast an urge that always strives to expand its power and achieve complete control encountering refusals and prohibitions encountering persistent obstacles that support the spiritual and moral boundaries of personal and social existence it strives to penetrate these barriers lull the vigilance of conscience of conscience and legal conscience consciousness, weaken the power of shame and disgust, assume an acceptable guise, and, if possible,

undermine and disintegrate these living boundaries, these building blocks of the personal spirit, as if toppling and crumbling the walls of the individual's Kremlin. Spiritual education consists of constructing these walls and, more importantly, in imparting to man the need and ability to independently build, maintain, and defend these walls. Now, of course, by wall, he's being metaphorical. We have our, now he's talking about internal battles. Hence, he's not necessarily talking about violence necessarily. This, this is, you know, the sexual revolution.

Breaking down barriers. That's considered a good thing for the most part in a rotten society. And it's, they break down barriers not because they have this great moral cause. it's because it's a personal insult to them. They want to do whatever they want to do, and they don't care, and they hate the fact that there's someone who tells them otherwise. I think a huge number of atheists have this problem. That they hate the fact that there's this moral, objective law,

that they can't do anything about. And if they have a bad habit, then it's much easier just to deny it. than to try to reform yourself. But your internal Kremlin, it's very difficult. We all know how difficult it is. You know fasting and everything else. And when we fall, and of course we all do

and get condemned by people who have no standards at all, you know, at least it leads to anger. When you have no standards, at least outwardly, your life is easy. But the life of the citizen, the man, if he's truly integral, is difficult. Virtue is not easy. It's so easy to, if we break down the wall, then all society goes down. Because then, because following passion, it's a lot easier than listening to the moral law and the voice of reason. if something is immoral and you know it's not reasonable

which is something we differ with the positivists and others by saying things like that um yeah and weakening the power of shame and disgust um you know this is and and he and he was dealing with it in the soviet union in in nineteen twenty five uh the sexual revolution was at its end but colentai Alexander Colentai had engaged in it, making divorce easy. Most revolutionary movements, though, in Northern Europe, the radical Protestants and people like that had the so-called community of wives, which is just fornication.

That was always a part of the revolutionary idea. It harmed the economy so much. People just weren't showing up to work. And so eventually it had to be, that had to be changed. And this is why Stalin gets the false appellation of being someone who was virtuous and internationalist, which, of course, he was not. It was simply a matter of self-interest. The sexual revolution that began in the early part of the Soviet Union's existence was destroying everything. And it had to be stopped.

It wasn't because they believed in some moral law that God was going to punish them otherwise. It was just because society was falling apart. And society, you know, if you're a Bolshevik, society falling apart before you take power. It's wonderful. Falling apart after you take power, that's a different story. At Specsavers, our two-for-one glasses offer gives you amazing value and choice. Buy one pair for seeing everyday things like doors, other people, trousers, that sort of thing. And you can also get another snazzy pair for seeing things like the crack.

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A sense of shame, a sense of duty, living impulses of conscience, a need for beauty and spiritual joy in the living, love for God and country, all these sources of living spirituality, working together, create in man those spiritual necessities and impossibilities to which consciousness gives the form of convictions, and the subconscious gives it the form of a noble character. These spiritual necessities to act correctly and the impossibilities to act otherwise impart unity and certainty to personal existence. They constitute a certain spiritual structure, a living backbone, as it were, of the personal spirit, supporting its structure, its formed being, imparting to it its power and dominion. The softening of the spiritual back,

backbone, the disintegration of the spiritual structure would mean the spiritual end of the personality, turning it into a victim of evil passions and external influences, returning it to that chaotically resolved state where there are no spiritual needs, and the spiritual possibilities are innumerable. This is an extraordinary statement. Again, he's talking about passionate impulses in the individual. Now, of course, like Plato, he's going to connect it to the broader society later on. But the impulses of conscience.

He was the philosopher, and this comes straight out of Aristotle. This has to do with your education, which is not just going to school. It's how you're raised. Edmund Burke called them prejudices, not in the same sense. We use the term. But where it becomes inconceivable to act otherwise for the good, that these walls are imparted almost from birth. That's what a solid society needs.

The communists realized they needed that too, or else their society was going to fall to pieces. They couldn't base it on the same things that the monarchy did. But this has a lot to do with Aristotle's conception of virtue and his view of political science. And the best way to keep that fall, into the passions from happening. When I say passions, I'm talking about, you know, the drive for power, the desire to get what you want, no matter what. I'm not talking about enthusiasm. People say,

oh, it's my passion to do this. That's not what I mean. Passion in here is a very negative thing. It's anti-human because it's not reasonable. It has nothing to do with reason. Passion and patient are pretty much the same thing. It's where your drives work on you and rule. on you and once they do, claiming to reject, claim it saying their free will doesn't exist, well, that's very convenient at that point. This has a lot to do with education. And it took a while for the, say, in the U.S., for the sexual revolution to break down some of these internal barriers.

They had to destroy the family first. And a strong family, especially with a strong father figure, is necessary. to create the subconscious understanding of the moral law. And trauma, things like, say, the Vietnam War or World War I, are very convenient for revolutionary groups, because sometimes trauma is necessary to break those down. And since this is all just about power, you know, the will to power here, of a very unprincipled and immoral party or movement,

And ended up, of course, the totalitarian USSR. But even they realized that they needed their own walls. You know, and I don't know if you recall when the so-called Russiagate nonsense, I still, if anyone actually believes that, I don't know if anyone really did. Did people actually believe that? The stupidity, you had to have been incredibly stupid. I'm sure there were people that believed that. because, I mean, there are some people that are just absolutely, they really shouldn't be allowed to go out in public.

I agree. Yeah, they certainly, or at a minimum, shouldn't be allowed to vote if you believe in something so stupid as Russia came. You had these people talking about patriotism all of a sudden. They would never talk like that under normal circumstances. But because their agenda was being harmed, all of a sudden, you know, they talk about patriotism and the need for the U.S. to be for Americans.

They wouldn't say this in any other way. And, of course, it's hypocritical. It shows you that they have no principles whatsoever. So these last two paragraphs have been very, very important. It is clear that the more spineless and unprincipled the person is, the closer he is to this state, and the more natural it is for him to not resist evil at all. And conversely, the lesser person resists evil, the more he approaches this state by trampling on his own convictions

and undermining his own character. The one who does not resist breaks down the walls of his spiritual Kremlin, accepts the poison that softens the bones of the body. Yeah, those with very low self-esteem, those with very low self-esteem end up being people-pleasures. Anybody with power, whatever the time, trend is, they want to go along with it. They don't want to seem like they're, they're troublemakers. And that leads, of course, these are spineless and unprincipled people, regardless of the

origin of this total lack of integrity. And let's make sure we define what integrity is. You know, integrity is when essentially having the same principles all the time, being the same person in all situations. The opposite of integrity would be hypocrisy. Hypocracy doesn't mean that you're inconsistent. We're all inconsistent. No, hypocrisy is when you preach something that you, in fact, don't believe for the sake of some good. You know, politicians do it all the time. So, you know, I don't know if those phrases were used at the time, probably not. But breaking down the self-esteem, for example, self-esteem of white people in U.S., which certainly has been the case, the less they are to resist pretty much anything because they don't think they're worth it. Naturally, from non-resistance to evil, evil passion expands its dominance to its fullest extent.

Fragments of passion already ennobled strip off the vestments of their nobility and join the general rebellion. They no longer maintain boundaries and limits, but surrender themselves. to the former enemy and boil over with evil. Evil obsession becomes integral and draws this soul along its paths according to its own laws. The non-resisting person possessed by evil passion rages because he has rejected everything that restrains, directs, and shapes. All resisting force has become the force of the most storm-bearing evil, and the breath of destruction is fed by the bitterness of the perishing one himself. This is why the end of his frenzy

is the end of his mental and physical existence, madness or death. Yeah, this is a psychological matter here. You know, Orthodoxy, the ancient church fathers were masters of human psychology. I love it when I read a book on psychology and they come up with something. They think that they're discovering something and I smile and say you realize this concept existed in the monasteries of Palestine the Orthodox monasteries in Palestine almost 2,000 years ago and that's what's happening here this is we're talking about inside of the person's soul that non-resistance very quickly in fact it rips open the concept you're Conscience is exposed to everybody. Yet you never thought this stuff was evil in the first place.

You go from non-resistance and then when evil takes over, well, what are your choices? You either have to say, well, this is, you know, I help them or it's not evil. And one of the worst things to have in your life is cognitive dissonance. Sociopaths don't have to, sociopaths do not experience cognitive dissonance, but normal people do. having to hold two completely opposite points of view at the same time. And that's what he's getting at here. Non-resistance to evil and evil taking over. Evil, hence its victory being your fault, that's very difficult for a person to carry for the rest of his life. And cowards have this, are always going to have this problem.

so they will, just for their own psychological peace, side with evil, side with the enemy. I want to make so many comments right now, but I'm going to save it. We need to get through this. Such a decomposition of spirituality in the soul can occur in a weak person in adulthood, but it can also originate in childhood, and either the original seat of spirituality, potentially present in every person, was not at all stimulated. into living activity, or it turned out, as a result of internal weakness and external temptations, to be creatively non-viable and sterile. In all cases, a picture of internal malaise emerges that has

extraordinary psychopathological significance and interest. His personality can be mistaken for character, and his particular views are mistaken for convictions. In reality, however, unprincipled and spineless remain a slave to his evil passion, a captive of the developmental mechanisms that possess him and are all powerful in his life, devoid of a spiritual dimension and composing the curve of his disgusting behavior. One example that immediately came to mind when I was going through all this, translating parts of it, was the anti-war movement in Viedom. It's amazing that when the draft was eliminated,

I think that was in 72 or somewhere around there. When the draft was stopped, the anti-war movement just completely fell off. It had nothing to do with them, either supporting Marxism or being against warfare or thinking that war is evil or that we have no right to be. No, it had to do. They didn't want to go over there. They didn't want to be drafted. They tell themselves a story. And it's amazing.

at this early date talking about you know the the the um the role that childhood has to play you know um having a strong father figure is absolutely essential thank god i had one uh it's not just having a father it's having a strong father figure um and uh that's very important of course you know Freud was was writing um this was just starting and he's ahead of the curve here talking about this. Now, as we all know, people completely exaggerate the role of childhood these days. It seems to be an excuse for every damn thing that people do. It may be a partial explanation for what people do, but it certainly isn't an excuse for it.

And as I said, you're mistaken for character. These aren't about principles. It's about the fact that they don't want to have to do anything. They don't want the responsibilities of citizenship, which is really ultimately what passivity is all about. What we're doing here right now, this is what citizens are supposed to do, especially in Aristotle's work.

Citizens are supposed to be talking about things like this and taking the time and educating themselves and the rest of it. It's a lot of work. But we also know that we come across people who know just enough of the slogans. It sounds like they know something, but in fact they don't. They want the reputation without doing any of the work. I could spot that a mile away. And those people tend to fall apart really very, very quickly.

You know, the unprincipled and spineless slave to evil passions, whatever the cause, this is that's the opposite of what we do here the life of the spirit you know life of the spirit being non-mechanical it's not part of the you know it's not part of the scientific universe

that is cause and effect it's the basis of both reason and freedom reason and freedom are two sides of the same coin that gives a tremendous responsibility to somebody. You know, we're living in a dying empire. We're living in a time, an extraordinary time.

It's often the case that political theory explodes in times of, you know, as an empire starts to die or is, you know, declining because people are looking for a way out. And they're looking at Americans, certainly, those that care enough, those aren't infected with a bulia. They are looking for answers. Edmund Burke said that the people, meaning the population of citizens of any given country, they are usually correct when they know something is wrong. They know something's wrong, but as far as the details as to what it is, they don't know.

And citizens are supposed to be searching for these answers. And talking about someone like Ivan Elyan, who lived after the most violent revolution, and the totalitarian USSR where he escaped it. And how could this possibly happen in a society that was healthy just a few generations ago? This is extremely important. This is what citizenship is. It's a lot of work. It's similar to the situation that someone who refuses to help you in a fight, when you win, they'll come and say, I was with you the whole time.

This is the mentality of that he's dealing with. this is the opposite of integrity. This is the opposite of being integral. You end up being a slave to passions or whatever is fashionable at the time. You want to please anybody with power. The licksbittles. The worst possible thing.

You could be politically speaking. Dragging himself along in anti-spiritual passions, he expresses his nature in a corresponding anti-spiritual ideology, in which radical and comprehensive atheism merges with a mental illness that is inexorable for him and complete moral idiocy. Naturally, spiritually healthy people only cause irritation and anger in such a person and kindle in him a sick lust for power in the manifestations of which outbursts of megalomania inevitably alternate with outbursts of persecution mania. After the spiritual troubles that befell the world

in the first quarter of the 20th century, it is not difficult to imagine what could create such a group of people possessed by malice and aggressively fanatical. He's talking about what happens when one of these totally people without integrity come across people or groups of people that are integral. They go through a host of emotions. They know that they're second rate or third rate. and you notice he's saying here he's making the argument that it kindles in them the lusts for power these people can't exist anymore i want power to to destroy them manifestations of megalomania it's a concept of believing you have power over someone and you don't but remember it's the belief that you actually possess power over somebody

And of course, we all know about persecution, meaning. All of these are just means of trying to destroy a healthy group of people, including a healthy society, that makes you feel second rate because you are second rate, because you are a coward. And he mentions atheism here, and hence we would have to talk about, you can't be an atheist without being a materialist. Because otherwise, you'd have to explain where spirit comes from. And then, again, mentioning mental illness. Now, I, this is fairly new in the Russian language. And when you're talking about resistance to evil, you know, not just talking about a society, but the people who make it up.

And what sort of a person, he has, actually I have, I've been through a few papers by Ilin on what sort of person becomes a communist? And maybe at some point we could talk about it. It's actually kind of funny that the mental illness, mental illness. Now, the Jews, that's one thing. That's just an engine for their seeking power. But no, he's talking about Gentiles, the ordinary person, who ends up backing the communists, and actually takes action, you know, as a terrorist or something like that to support them. And there's a little bit of that here. He has an entire paper on it. And so he, Ilin has always been interested in psychology. What makes someone act like this? Remember, the word, you know, idiocy, I think he, you think he means that quite literally. We get the word idiosyncratic for it. People who

have such a low intelligence that they couldn't function in society. They exist on the fringes of society because there's nowhere else for them to be. And that's what it's, like if you have a healthy society you are unhealthy the first thing you want to do is destroy those that make you feel second rate and I go through this in my book on the Soviet in the Soviet experiment you would think if the Soviets really gave a damn about labor or you know communalism and stuff like that why were the first thing they do would be to destroy the monasteries to destroy the communes to destroy all of the labor artels. Actual spiritual socialism had existed in old Russia for quite some time,

but on a completely different foundation than what they wanted. Two very different things. One was social, the other one was anti-social. No, they spent time and money to destroy that. You would think they would want to support it if they truly were socialist in the literal sense of the word. But no, they weren't. This is what he means here. In contrast, every mature religion not only reveals the nature of the good, but also teaches the struggle against evil. All pre-Christian Eastern forms of asceticism has two slants, a negative, combative one, and a positive uplifting one. This is a very warfare not in the flesh that the Apostle Paul explains to the Corinthians. However, nowhere, it seems, is this inner resistance

to evil developed with such depth and wisdom as among the ascetic teachers of the Eastern orthodoxy. Objectifying the origin of evil in the form of immaterial demons, Anthony the great Macarius, the great Mark the ascetic, Ephraim, the Syrian, John Clemachus, and others teach tireless internal warfare against the unnoticeable and nonviolent attacks of evil thoughts, while John Cassian directly points out that, quote, no one can be seduced by the devil except the one who wishes to give him consent to his will, end quote. Yeah, and now he's laying out specifically what I've been saying since we started here. There is a connection between being a true citizen of a Christian state and being an aesthetic.

I've always made this statement the church always has too, that there's not much difference between a soldier and a monk. Much is demanded of them. But if you're a coward and a fraud and you have no self-rength. and you don't even think anything is worth fighting for, which is really what a bullia means, it's not just passivity, but passivity because you don't think anything matters. This is, this is what we're talking about. This is, you know, and the more of those people that exist, the more society decays.

There's got to be a critical mass there somewhere where society can't function after a while. and we know about this far more than Tolstoy or Ilind did. I don't think the church fathers could have even have a language to describe what we deal with every day. They predicted that at the end times, the sufferings of the church at the end are going to be beyond the ancient sufferings, but they never explicitly said what it would be, and there's a good reason for that. Imagine taking Ephraim the Syrian and putting him in a at the University of Penn State, you know, or the University of Delaware. You know, they wouldn't, they would run away screw. They'd say everyone's possessed.

At least. They'd go bonkers. And they wouldn't even know how to explain it. This is what happens when the coward, the spineless, forms, finds each other and is actually able to impose their will on, on society. And not to mention, it's true. When he's talking about the pagan, and I'm glad he uses pre-Christian, asceticism is universal. The conception of the war against the flesh is, this is part of natural law. It's not merely a theological thing. It finds its completion in the prophets and in Christ, of course. But this has always been a part of human nature.

So the leftist is fighting against everything, including the very human nature itself. And this is why they're, that's why they exist in the realm of deceit and fraud. Everything they do is based on an agenda that they never admit to themselves or anyone else. And I've been writing about this my whole career and with certain people, you know, especially professors, and you pointed out to them, you better watch out. out. It's like waking up a sleepwalker. The bursting of bubble is, can lead to extreme reactions. Human spiritual experience testifies that those who do not resist evil do so precisely because they themselves are already evil, because they have internally accepted it and become it. Therefore, the suggestion that sometimes arises during periods of acute temptation, quote,

to surrender to evil in order to outlive it and be renewed by it, end quote, always comes from those layers of the soul or, accordingly, from those people who have already surrendered and thirst for further decline. It is the hidden voice of evil itself. Why don't we just go along? Why don't we just watch TV, worry about celebrities, buy the things they tell us to buy? Wouldn't our life be so much easier if we just accepted the regime as it is?

and not be these, you know, crazy people who are at war with it and are suffering as a result. Why don't we do that? There's a reason we don't do that because we are, we are integral people. And integral people couldn't possibly do that. You could try it. But, like, your conscience would destroy you after a while. You simply couldn't do it. people ask me what would I do if society were healthy I said I don't know I'd be a funeral

director I guess like my father um you know so um but the first sentence here those who do not resist evil are evil they're already evil that the the non-resistance is just an excuse they won't admit it to themselves they won't admit it to you but they are on the side of evil and there's not just things, you know, by force, these are also things internally. It's so much easier just to give in. If you don't have a conscience, if you weren't properly raised, if you don't understand virtues and you're not an integral person, if you're a con man and a fraud, your life is a lot easier.

Because you don't have standards. They can go along to get along. We can't. And if it leads to a gulag cell, well, we have no other option. I don't know. That's really what he's saying in here. Not resistance, come on. If you think something's evil and you refuse to resist it or you resist it by the most weak,

in the weakest way possible, you know, there's a disconnect here. It makes no sense. You must be evil yourself or at least heading in that direction. There is no doubt that Count Tolstoy and the moralists who had, adhere to him do not at all call for such complete non-resistance that would be equivalent to voluntary moral self-corruption. Anyone who tried to understand them in this sense would be wrong. On the contrary, their idea is precisely that the struggle against evil is necessary, but that it should be transferred entirely to the inner world of man, and moreover,

precisely to the man who is waging the struggle within himself. Such a fighter against evil can even find in their writings a whole series of useful advice. The non-resistance of which they write and speak does not mean inner surrender and joining in with evil. On the contrary, it is a special kind of resistance, i.e. non-acceptance, condemnation, rejection, and opposition. Their non-resistance means resistance and struggle, however, only by certain means. They accept the goal, overcoming evil, but they make their figurative choice of ways and means. Their skill is a teaching not so much about evil as about how precisely not to overcome it.

Yeah, precisely not to overcome it. You know, reading Tolstoy for the first time, you realize that he's very much open to interpretation. And how rare it is to find such a complementary, such a charitable explanation of your opponent as with Ivan Eileen. Now, of course, today it wouldn't matter because we don't agree on what's what's good and what's evil. You know, we could read Anna Karinna and realize, yeah, the sexual revolution was evil, even though it only existed in the upper classes at the time in Russia, thanks to the Freemasons and groups like that.

Because it is irrational, and it leads to the situation between Anna and, and Voronski. So many people get hurt, and you don't really think that way. But back then, it's a different story. Yes, I've been reading Tolstoy for a long time. And there's so much good in there. But when you read other things, it kind of destroys that. And he's not just talking about Tolstoy. He's talking about to those communities,

his communities grew up all over the world for a while. And he's saying, I refuse to believe that all these people. people are inherently evil, or they just don't want to do anything. They do want this fight to be internal. But ultimately, it opens the door to the victory of evil, both psychologically and politically and socially. It goes without saying that only the struggling nature of their non-resistance provides grounds for philosophical discussion of their assertions. However, such a discussion can cannot accept either the formulation of the question they put forward or even less the answer they

provide. When I was a professor, I taught three-hour classes once a week. I did it almost every semester. How the heck did I do that? Because of course, I lectured constantly. I mean, there were breaks and everything, but I lectured nonstop, just like my radio show. I mean, you know, I've just taken the classroom and I just put a microphone in front of myself. But this is deadly serious stuff. I'm just very happy that he brought up the church fathers because none of them accepted the idea of, none of them believed that force was inherently evil. Force can be a very good thing. It's sort of like when you could mentally torture someone their whole lives.

And because you can't see it. It doesn't leave a bruise. you get away with it. But the minute that part, you slap them, all of a sudden now you're in trouble. But violence gets, because you could see it because you could quantify it. It ends up being privileged above everything else.

So, you know, there would be honest Tolstoyans out there. But I can't imagine an honest Tolstoyan in 1917. And he's hinting at that very much here. it really explains why the overwhelming majority of evangelical leaders that if you were to bring up Franco to them Franco is basically the same as Hitler they would rather the Spanish would have laid down been murdered the Catholic Church would have been slaughtered in Spain than Franco did what he did somebody who went to mass every day and took you know and took the every day.

These people are absolutely fucking insane and I don't know how to share a country with them. Yeah, and that's exactly what I what I've been trying to get across and what Elyn's trying to get across here. We don't even use language in the same way.

We don't believe, how can you talk about, you know, abortion is murder and see, and accept the Israelis destroying maternity wars and hospitals. You want to talk about cognitive dissonance. But I mean, but come on. Come on, Dr. Johnson. The Hamas is hiding under all of those incubators and the children's nursery.

They hide behind every murder, every murder by a Christian in the West Bank. There's a Hamas fighter hiding behind them. And in many cases, I've had people say that, you know, all of the Catholics that are left in Gaza and the West Bank are all on the side of Hamas? I like the Franco example, and it makes not studying him, not learning about him. There's a great incentive not to study or learn about him. Ignorance is always bliss in these cases. God forbid they study about him and they realize something.

They realize his point. So just connecting him with the third Reich, or that, I don't have to talk anymore. It's a short circuit in the brain. But we don't share a country. The U.S. is not a nation by any sense of the term, not even civically. And what holds it together essentially is the economy, and that's not lasting very long. All right. I'm going to encourage everybody to go over to the show notes.

this is out on the podcatchers and all of the ways that you can donate to Dr. Johnson's work, all the ways you can donate to my work are there. And we appreciate it when you do that. And we appreciate getting comments about the work we're doing here and the work we've done now for pretty much 17 months in a row. So, yeah. But you notice this is a very different kind of a project. You have to approach it with a very different kind of a mind. And damn, it's exhausting.

And what we said in the beginning of the people that this is very difficult for me to grasp, therefore, you know, often when I was in college and I started to study a philosopher, I'd often start with the secondary sources. That's when you're dealing with someone like Spinoza or Hegel. You know, Hegel's especially Hegel or Heidegger. Yeah, yeah, Heidegger, yeah. They're unreadable. But starting with secondary sources, at least gives me something to some firm ground to stand on.

You know, so I'm hoping to be that secondary source here. Because this work is very important. If you look up, just put Ivaniel into Google, not our search engines, but Google. Most of the results will have something to do with him being a fascist and he controls Putin, or mentally controls Putin. So clearly there's something about him that the regime is upset with or upset by and is still on their minds today. That means he said something very well. He was a brilliant man, put in an awful situation in exile.

No one wants to go into exile. Seeing their country torn to pieces by civil war and by totalitarianism. And he went from country to country. it is a very specific form of suffering, which helped his brilliance along. All right, Dr. Johnson. Talk to you in a couple days. Thank you very much. All right, my friend.

Bye-bye.