Transcript
Julian Walker (0:03)
Lately, a word that has long been associated with Russian politics is Lately, a word that has long been associated with Russian politics is everywhere in the American media. Oligarchs. Now, this term has been applied to other times and places as far back as ancient Greece, usually designating wealthy individuals with outsized political influence. But when the USSR collapsed 1990s, Russia became emblematic of the rise of oligarchy. And then in the early 2000s, their new leader, Vladimir Putin, would bring the oligarchs to heel like a true mob boss. For today's episode, we'll dig into the history of post Soviet Russia to see if there are indeed significant parallels with America today, as well as to unpack how Russian influence underpins the polarization of post truth America today. Stay tuned to learn how Vladimir Putin's longtime right hand man, who has a background in theater and public relations, shaped Russian propaganda and helped establish Putin's now almost 25 years of supreme power while using those same measures to support the rise of Donald Trump and deploy a toxic ecosystem of fake news and disinformation so as to destabilize and polarize America. There is much talk these days about the dangers of MAGA as a potentially fascist movement, but behind that very real threat may lie the darker and more immediate still European danger of an emboldened Putin hungry to expand his glorious empire and make Russia great again, while the most powerful country in the world endorses and enables his lies by swallowing his propaganda. I'm Julian Walker. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. Now more than ever, we appreciate your support so much. If you're not already a Patreon or Apple subscriber, please join us if you value independent media in these disorienting and repressive times. During the chaotic transition into Trump 2.0, Elon Musk has emerged as a key player, often portrayed as really being the one in charge, with the president playing second fiddle. But before this, footage from the inauguration showed America's three wealthiest men, Musk, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Alphabet. Google CEO Sundar Pichai sitting behind Trump alongside Mark Zuckerberg. Meanwhile, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chu was nearby, in the chair beside our new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. These images tell a thousand words about how in the run up to the election, big business and especially big tech trended hard toward maga, with Mark Zuckerberg publicly announcing shifts away from content moderation and fact checking, and then paying Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit over having suspended his accounts after the capitol insurrection. The TikTok CEO also pulled off a fawning PR coup by himself, briefly suspending US access to the app with a pop up message that Trump would help them get reinstated and thanking him for that in adv. Of course, we know that under Elon's rule, Twitter welcomed back white supremacists and conspiracy theorists and aggressively supported Trump algorithmically, while Elon donated $288 million, likely paving the way for the reckless and disastrous meddling he's doing now in the name of Doge, rooting out fraud, corruption and abuse, while actually further positioning himself to benefit from the now profoundly porous wall between government regulation and his own ambitions. Fellow billionaire Musk's PayPal Co founder Peter Thiel was a bit of a professional mentor to JD Vance when he was in Silicon Valley and gave him $25 million for his original Senate campaign, the largest ever donation of its kind. As far as we know. Thiel is not directly involved in Doge, but the three computer whiz kids you remember hearing about being given keys to the kingdom by Musk when he raided the Treasury Department. They're part of the Thiel Fellowship, a program that gives select students age 22 or younger $100,000 over two years to drop out of school and pursue other work in the startup or research fields. Meanwhile, Thiel was one of the primary investors in Facebook and owns the scariest surveillance tech company on the planet, Palantir.