NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

We talk to Fergie Chambers of the Cox family — one of America’s wealthiest clans — about class traitors and the failure of individualist ideology to provide meaning.

—The Russians

A couple of notes. Bari Weiss’ media op tried to do a hit piece on Fergie a few months ago but ended up writing a balanced and fair portrait. We mention a biography of Lenin by David Shub. Check more on it here.

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In this last episode of the year we talk about our recent trip to LA and our new life out here in the Hudson Valley. One thing is clear to us: the cult of California is on the wane. That state, more than any other, represented the limitless frontier of technological progress. Lots of people still cling to it, but they’re the past. That idea is dead. What’s next, no one really knows. But lots of people are looking for something. Maybe upstate will be the new it destination and cultural frontier.

—The Russians

On the Hudson River, a pioneer on the new frontier.

We talk to Ilya Matveev, a political scientist from Moscow who is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Ilya has been a long-time critic of Putin and had to leave his university job and Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He and I went to the same high school in Moscow a few years apart and seem to stand out among our predominantly liberal peers by being left-wing.

We talk about why the Russian opposition to Putin is mostly pro-Israel and pro-war while being ardently anti-war in the case of Ukraine. We also talk about the love that Israel and Zionism get from the political establishments in both Russia and Ukraine. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, nationalism has become the default political ideology. There’s not much else there now. And everyone wants to become a successful nationalist state like Israel.

—Evgenia

Note: Ilya mentioned Dissidents among Dissidents, a book by Ilya Budraitskis. We also talked about The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi.

Want to know more? Check out our other episodes:

* Antisemitism über alles with Noah Kulwin

* Antisemitism über alles (Part One)

* Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Crisis of Zionism

* The dialectics of terrorism

* The Rejewification of Soviet Jews

* …and others.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com

We talk to Noah Kulwin of the Blowback pod about growing up among liberal American Zionists, his time in Israel, and why he didn’t do aliah or join the IDF — but instead got radicalized and joined the Jewish resistance. The central question we try to get at is: Why do some Jews get lured into Zionism and others not.

Listen to the first installment of Antisemitism über alles. And check out more of Noah’s work.

—The Russians

Want to know more? Listen to our other eps about Palestine/Israel:

* Palestine and Soviet Jews

* Crisis of Zionism

* The dialectics of terrorism

* The Rejewification of Soviet Jews

We start off by talking about how Adam Curtis often says that the era of individualism is coming to an end and wonder whether nationalism will be one of the ideas that takes over more and more. We then move on to Israel and Jewish nationalism and discuss the growth of Zionism both here in America and Russia.

The growth of Jewish nationalism among American Jews can definitely be seen as response to individualism. As soon as Jews became integrated into America’s professional class in the 1970s and lost their strong old world Jewish identity and the socialist politics of their parents, they gravitated to Jewish nationalism: Zionism became their core ethnic identity because as deracinated individuals in America they no longer had one. Interestingly enough, the rise of Jewish nationalism in the Soviet Union followed the same kind of logic but from a different direction: Zionism was a response to a crisis of socialism.

We end the episode by talking about the meltdown that Jews in America — who live safe, comfortable lives in a multicultural society that totally supports Israel — are having right now about antisemitism and the supposed danger that we’re in, even as Israel flattens Gaza and carries out mass murder in their name.

To be continued next week…

—The Russians

Want to know more? Listen to…

* Crisis of Zionism

* The dialectics of terrorism

* The Rejewification of Soviet Jews

* Negative Revolution with Artemy Magun

…and check out The Soviet Jew.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com

We have filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov back on the show to talk about his experience being Andrei Tarkovsky’s assistant on the set of Sacrifice, Tarkovsky’s last film.

We discuss the dismal state of culture in Russia after the fall of the USSR, the provincial state of mind of today’s Russian intelligentsia, and the much scarier ultranationalist opposition to Putin that might follow his rule. We also find out that Tarkovsky was upset that he wasn’t a novelist, wonder where he’d stand politically if he was alive today, and talk about Solzhenitsyn as the Ayn Rand of Soviet dissidents.

Listen to our previous interview with Andrei about the war in Ukraine and Russian liberals. And check out his great documentaries, including Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case and The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes.

—The Russians

Want to know more? Check out our archive.

We talk about the media reaction to Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and the zionist victim complex that allows people to rationalize any violence as self-defense. We wonder if what we are witnessing is the crisis of zionism or the solidification of zionist fervor — or maybe both happening at once. We also talk about how the term “zionism” obscures more than it explains. Zionism isn’t something special. It’s just nationalism, Jewish nationalism.

—The Russians

A couple of notes.

We mention several books: Primo Levi’s Surviving Auschwitz, a biography of Jabotinsky by Hillel Halkin, Ilan Pape’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and a book about fascism whose title we couldn’t remember on air: The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton.

Want to know more? Listen to our previous episode on the topic: The dialectics of terrorism.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

We didn’t want to add to the noise of emergency broadcasting after the October 7th Hamas attack. But we've been doomscrolling the news and have been shocked by the rhetoric that has surfaced in the aftermath, so we’re pitching in. We talk about the context of what happened, the genocidal response of Russian liberals, the absurdity of equating Israel with Ukraine as victims of savage aggression…and more.

—The Russians

Want to know more? Listen to us to talk about our 2019 trip to the West Bank: Palestine and Soviet Jews.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

We talk to Katie Halper about the re-release of Commie Camp, her 2013 documentary about a Jewish socialist children’s camp in upstate New York that multiple generations of her family went to: her, her mother, her mother’s mother… In its early decades it was basically part of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party.

Aside from the doc, we chat about our own Soviet/post-Soviet summer camp experiences, get sentimental about the working class socialist Jews that used to inhabit New York, and discuss Bernie Sanders as one of the last political remnants of that old world.

An updated version of Commie Camp is being screened on October 4th at the Firehouse Cinema in Manhattan — in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the camp. Get your tickets before they sell out.

—The Russians

Want to know more? Read’s Yasha’s “The old Jewish world: from leftists to neocons to...Bernie Sanders” and listen to our other episodes.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

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We are finally back and we talk about my film scouting trip to Estonia, Russian Estonians, the inherited Soviet conflict that have never been resolved… we also chat about the most successful Russian Jewish immigrant to America — Ayn Rand.