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- [00:03]
A
I've just been stunned by the beauty. I have not yet been able to run around St. Petersburg because we just got in yesterday, but I was in Moscow and Moscow was positively stunning. I've just been stunned by the beauty. I have not yet been able to run around St. Petersburg because we just got in yesterday, but I was in Moscow and Moscow was positively stunning. It defied I didn't really have any expectations, but if I had any, they would have been defied by just how clean, how safe, how beautiful, how historic the city is.
- [00:34]
B
That was hugely influential right wing pundit turned conspiracy gossip monger Candace Owens. She was being interviewed just this past week after appearing in a panel discussion at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. That's an annual conference sometimes referred to as the Russian Davos. It draws around 10,000 participants every year, including the heads of Russian international companies and top Russian government officials. It was started in 1997 as part of endeavors to let the world know that post Soviet Russia was open for business. But since 2022, business and political leaders from Western countries have largely boycotted the event due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Nonetheless, the conference does keep growing, and it's a hub for many nations, especially from the global south, who are comfortable forming economic alliances with dictatorships like Russia, Iran and North Korea, sometimes referred to by the acronym KRINK or called the Axis of Autocracy. And there are other controversial governments who attend as well, like Afghanistan's, the Taliban and the Donetsk People's Republic, which was illegally established in part of Russia, annexed Ukraine, and then of course, India, Turkey and the Gulf states. The conference is also understood in intelligence circles as being a hub for Kremlin agents forming relationships with journalists, diplomats and influencers who might be willing distributors of Russian propaganda. Americans in attendance this year included Candace, the Tate brothers in the midst of their rape and sex trafficking trial, fake martial artist and former film star Steven Seagal, and Trump's head of the Commission of Fine Arts, Rodney Mims Cook. It's almost too good to be true. Oh, and on that tip, it's worth noticing that Candace's appearance at the Spief involved speaking on a panel of influential figures with large families who produce content that focuses on family values.
- [02:45]
A
What's become increasingly more frustrating is that they don't even think they need to articulate a reason for this is why you shouldn't like Russia, or this is why you should like Ukraine. They've become, in their own minds, so powerful that it's just a dictation. Like if this is we are telling you by creed that you should believe this and you should believe that, and we don't feel like it requires any further explanation. And that's no longer working. It may have served in older generations. It's certainly not working amongst the youth. And the more that they try to constrict and to control, the more that they lose a hold of the American mindset. They don't like independent people going out to speak because they know that it can fall outside of their narratives, typically because there's a more genuine pursuit of truth and understanding and it's hard to reflect. People don't remember because there's so many lies that were told. But at the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine, when I say they didn't even bother to articulate a reason, they were saying like basically that Vladimir Putin was sick and he had gone crazy and deranged. That was it. They have to be able to create a caricature of everyone, myself included, right? So the he's supposed to be unstable, I guess, unintelligent, angry and wanting to take over the West.
- [04:01]
B
So our story today is about a world influx and a through the looking glass digital media ecosystem in which strange alliances and diagonalist contradictions are more and more the case. Some of this is surely algorithmically driven via an attention economy that incentivizes sensational contrarianism, but there is more to it than that. So join me as we explore the current downstream effects of normalized conspiracism, authoritarianism, and cultish extremism here on Conspirituality Podcast. I'm Julian Walker and you're listening to a bonus episode titled Candace Owens and Maga's Russia Kink. Now you'll just hear this as a sample or a teaser if you're not yet subscribed via Patreon or Apple subscriptions. And stay tuned then to find out how to hear the whole episode and our entire six year archive of brilliant and lovingly created bonus materials from Derek Barris, Matthew Remsy, myself, who, as it turns out, don't always agree on everything. Which makes for some textured perspectives and good discussion in the comments. You've been listening to a conspirituality bonus episode sample. To continue listening, please head over to patreon.com conspirituality where you can access all of our main feed episodes ad free, as well as four years of bonus content that we've been producing. You can can also subscribe to our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.