In this episode of “On the Barricades,” host Boyan Stanislavski is joined by philosopher Gabriel Rockhill, editor of Domenico Losurdo’s posthumous book "Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn." Published by Monthly Review Press, this landmark work critically examines #WesternMarxism, highlighting both its historical trajectory and present-day relevance. Alongside Rockhill is Arto Artinian, a Bulgarian-American philosopher and longtime friend of the show. Together, they dissect how Losurdo’s insights shed light on the ideological blind spots and contradictions prevalent on the Western Left, especially around the critical issue of imperialism.

This discussion, recorded on November 2, explores how Western Marxist thought aligns with or diverges from the materialist roots of #Marxism, making it a timely and essential examination for today’s leftist discourse.

0:00 - 6:30 Introduction to Western Marxism Gabriel Rockhill contextualizes the relevance of Losurdo’s critique, especially in today’s #leftist climate, framing it as a necessary examination of the intellectual roots and imperial alignments in Western Marxist thought.

7:36 - 13:43 #Imperialism Misunderstood by the Western Left Discussion centers on the conceptual confusion surrounding imperialism within Western leftist circles, emphasizing the system’s socio-economic and cultural dimensions, often ignored or misunderstood by prominent Marxist voices.

17:58 - 24:08 Critique of the Western Left’s Theoretical Framework Rockhill elaborates on how key figures in Western Marxism, from #Horkheimer to #Badiou, are entrenched in an “imperial superstructure,” leading to a lack of genuine critical engagement with the realities of imperialism and class struggle.

36:11 - 39:08 Dialectics of #Liberal #Democracy and #Authoritarianism A nuanced discussion on liberal democracy’s role within imperialism, illustrating how even self-proclaimed democracies can foster authoritarian control, especially in the global political landscape.

1:16:43 - 1:19:07 Cultural #Fascism and Media Control Rockhill examines the extensive media apparatus of the U.S., underscoring how cultural fascism is embedded within capitalist democracies, wielding #control over public narratives to reinforce imperialist interests.

1:28:23 - 1:31:25 Closing Thoughts and the Role of Critical Theory Workshop ‪@criticaltheoryworkshop5299‬ The conversation concludes with Rockhill discussing the goals of the #CriticalTheoryWorkshop, aiming to challenge Western #academic #hegemony and foster a global perspective that genuinely critiques and resists imperialist ideology.

💰 You can support us at patreon.com/thebarricade

🌟 Thanks so much!

In this episode of "On the Barricades," Boyan Stanislavski and his guest, Arto Artinian, discuss the implications of the recent #NATO Parliamentary Summit held in Sofia, #Bulgaria Boyan expresses concern over the summit's declaration supporting Ukraine's use of NATO weaponry against #Russia and the potential dangers it poses to Bulgaria, a historically NATO-skeptical nation. He highlights the strategic risks mentioned by #Putin regarding small NATO countries becoming targets and contemplates the existential threat to Bulgarian statehood.

The conversation shifts to historical and #geopolitical analysis, where Arto draws parallels between current NATO actions and historical events, such as Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. They discuss the ideological and strategic motivations behind NATO's stance, including the potential for nuclear escalation and the irrationality of such policies. The discussion concludes with reflections on the nature of political elites in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries, their alignment with Western interests, and the ideological underpinnings of Western policies towards these nations.

Thematic segments

1. Introduction and overview of the NATO Summit in Sofia * 0:16 - 3:37 - Discussion of the NATO Parliamentary Summit in Sofia and its declarations. - Boyan's concerns about the implications of these declarations for Bulgaria.

2. Putin's reaction and strategic risks * 3:38 - 5:39 - Analysis of Putin's comments potentially targeting small NATO countries. - Discussion on the strategic risks for Bulgaria and potential Russian reactions.

3. Historical parallels and NATO's strategy * 5:40 - 13:45 - Arto draws historical parallels between current NATO actions and Nazi Germany's strategies. - Discussion on NATO's military strategy and its implications for Ukraine and Russia. - Examination of the ideological motivations behind NATO's stance.

4. Nuclear escalation and NATO's irrationality * 13:46 - 23:38 - Arto and Boyan discuss the potential for nuclear escalation and the irrationality of NATO's actions. - Concerns over the strategic and ideological mindset of NATO leadership. - Analysis of historical attitudes and contemporary political dynamics within NATO.

5. Western Contempt for Eastern European Nations * 23:39 - 34:00 - Discussion on Western attitudes towards Eastern European countries, particularly Bulgaria. - Examination of historical and contemporary contempt by Western political elites. - The role of NATO and EU policies in shaping these attitudes.

6. Political Elites and National Interests * 34:01 - 43:10 - Analysis of Bulgarian political elites and their alignment with Western interests. - Discussion on the motivations and actions of political elites in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries. - Reflection on the ideological and humanistic factors driving these elites' policies.

Transcript of the discussion

Boyan Stanislavski

Hello and welcome  "On the Barricades". My name is Boyan Stanislavski and today with me is Arto Artyanian, one of our favorite guests. Favorite guests not only of mine, but also of our viewers.

Hello Arto, thanks for coming on.

Arto Artinian

Hello Boyan, thanks for inviting me as always.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right, so we're gonna talk about Bulgaria today and about what happened over the weekend. Because what we've had is a kind of Euro-Atlanticist extravaganza, and a dangerous one, not just spectacular. Because we've had this thing called the NATO Parliamentary Summit, which was held in Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria.

And we've had some pretty stunning declarations that were made or adopted during that summit. And, you know, to see that kind of statement being adopted in Bulgaria by NATO, in Bulgaria of all places, one of the most NATO-skeptical, or the most NATO-skeptical nation within this Northern Treaty Alliance. So during this Parliamentary Summit in Sofia, there was this declaration adopted to support Ukraine until victory over Russia.

But also the change of policy that follows this declaration, which means free usage of NATO weaponry supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces, and the allowance to use them deep inside Russian territory to strike, like, you know, the radar stations, we've seen that over the past week or 10 days. And it's happening, or it's being declared in Bulgaria. And why I find it extremely dangerous is the fact that the president of the Russian Federation was on a trip to Uzbekistan.

And during that trip, there was a press conference organized, and he alluded, in my opinion, to Bulgaria, and to this statement or change of policy adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, where he pointed out that it's surprising that small NATO countries, I think he even said small NATO countries of Europe, are subscribing to this idea because they are densely populated, small territories, and this should be considered as a major strategic factor in their deliberations, instead of just, you know, subscribing thoughtlessly to whatever is happening, which to me is, first of all, a clear allusion to Bulgaria.

Second, it's as open declaration as you can possibly hear from a Russian diplomat or president or high-ranking politician that we are going to attack you if you only dare to actually realize or materialize from your own territory some kind of attack on Russian territory deep into the heartland, using NATO weaponry or using NATO territory and so on. And, you know, I have the feeling that we are actually looking, if it happens, you know, God forbid, of course, but if it happens, we are looking at the end, at the final stage of Bulgarian statehood. What's your take?

Arto Artinian

Well, Boyan, I think I'm less worried about Bulgaria being the intended target of those words by Putin. I think, personally, I think he was referring more to the three Baltic states, which openly seem to be eager to fight a war against Russia for some reason, which I don't understand, because three Baltic states themselves combined, their population doesn't come up to half of the population of Moscow. And furthermore, roughly 50% or very close thereabouts of the population of those three Baltic states consists of ethnic Russians.

So, clearly, these politicians in the three Baltic republics do not speak for themselves. They're simply repeating what they're being told by their more powerful NATO allies. So, I think he was much more addressing this to both the Baltic states than to Bulgaria, because I still think it's difficult to imagine Bulgaria being threatened by the Russian military in some kind of an escalation against NATO, except possibly NATO military bases in Bulgaria, which would be a horrible escalation, of course, if the war reached that stage.

But I think any intended targets would probably be American military bases in Bulgaria or whatnot. But I don't think that's likely at this stage, although I don't know, of course.

Boyan Stanislavski

But I think- Yeah, let me just interject here. Let me just interject that before the summit began, I'm talking about this parliamentary NATO summit in Bulgaria, and before all those declarations were adopted until victory, and yes, please strike deep into the Russian heartland and so on and so forth, Bulgarian government has offered itself or has offered the Bulgarian territory in order to establish a special kind of military decision-taking body there, which would manage, which would be called the East, the East, like whatever it is, but would be called the East. And, you know, I understand military bases would also be there, but there would be this command center in Bulgaria.

So I suppose it's like inviting Russian missiles.

Arto Artinian

I think this follows very much in the sense, for example, when United Europe under Adolf Hitler's leadership invaded Poland and then the Soviet Union, when the war reached the Soviet Union, the United Europe, and I use this term deliberately because we're witnessing United Europe again, using essentially the same language. In my mind, these are neo-Nazis. But anyways, I'm referring to the European Union senior leadership.

As we've spoken before, a lot of the German chancellor, the foreign minister, the finance minister, they literally come from very, very prominent, unreformed, unpunished Nazis from the World War II period. So there must be, it's not just the family continuity, but there's also historians have shown continuities in the legal structure and the legal language and theory of the European Union and Third Reich SS legal scholars' imagination about what United Europe would be. I'm referring here to the famous French historian, Chateau-Po, currently teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris, who's written a number of books on this continuity of Nazi legal theory in the contemporary European Union.

But anyways, when the United Europe led by the Nazis was invading the Soviet Union, they created a headquarters in the east for Hitler in Poland. So this very much, but just to add here, Boyan, I think since Bulgaria is a member of NATO, it is automatically assumed that NATO senior leadership can do whatever it wants with the military infrastructure of Bulgaria and any other member state. So it is automatically assumed that any military base in Bulgaria can at any time be placed under the full command of NATO military high command.

And I think that's what's happening right now, which is essentially causing these problems that you're referring to. But I think just to go back, I think there are a couple of issues that are preparing this conference in Sofia, I think, in my view, in addition to trying to push the Bulgarian political leadership into sliding more into more active participation in the war, the suicidal step, as you said, potentially, hopefully it'll never happen. But the first thing is that in the NATO-Russia war, NATO is losing through its proxy state Ukraine.

Ukraine is currently NATO's most capable army in Europe and the Ukrainian army as essentially a de facto member of NATO fighting the Russian Federation. The British newspaper, The Telegraph, published an article yesterday, I believe, on its web, at least on its website, which had the title, Ukraine has lost. And this title was subsequently changed three times.

And I believe the last version of the title is Ukraine has only a few months left, right? So clearly NATO is losing the war in Ukraine militarily. It's losing it in a very unexpected way.

Instead of the Russian army mobilizing 10 million soldiers and using some kind of a brute force to overwhelm the heroic NATO defenders, it's doing it in a way through very small, deliberately small scale kind of actions, which are horrific because Ukrainians and Russians are dying in this completely unnecessary war. But the Russians are prevailing very clearly to the point that even the British mass media is saying it. So the second factor, I think, is the relatively massive increase relative to NATO's military capabilities of the Russian military.

And yesterday, again, senior officials of the Ukrainian government indicated that in their view, Russia has half a million troops in Ukraine now in the Ukrainian battle area with another 300,000 in reserves. This is in addition to their regular army of conscripts who do not participate in the military operation. So the second point, I think, that served as a backdrop to the conference in Sofia is that the Russians have succeeded in essentially enlarging the size of their military far more than NATO has because beyond the forced conscriptions of Ukrainians, which is not going well at all, because increasingly, obviously more and more Ukrainian people do not wanna fight in this war because they understand what's happening and where it's coming from. NATO is simply in a position where they don't have enough soldiers to keep this war going as horrible as it is for the Ukrainians and the Russians. They just don't have the soldiers.

And the third point is the very premise that NATO is now going to allow or to make the decision to use long range NATO weapons into Russia, it's a lie. Long range NATO weapons are already being used on Russian territory. The two attacks against the long range radars that you referenced that were attacked in Russia.

So NATO, i.e. Ukraine, so NATO attacked two of Russia's strategic long range radars that are supposed to essentially watch the sky for signs of a nuclear missile attack.

Boyan Stanislavski

These are not - So we're talking about the most strategic, most important infrastructure, like from the… Yes, it's part of it.

Arto Artinian

It's not the only part, but… Yeah, of course. Attack against such strategic radar sites can automatically trigger a nuclear missile launch by the Russians. So this is, again, extremely irresponsible.

One of the radar sites was damaged. The other one was undamaged, according to public reports. So this happened with Portuguese drones, okay?

Because some of the drones that were shot down were subsequently analyzed. So Portugal is a member of NATO. So NATO weapons are being used to attack targets deep in Russia.

So in addition, shorter range anti-radar missiles called the HARM, H-A-R-M, are regularly fired deep inside Russia, at least 50 or 70 miles inside Russia. So Russian military targets in Russia, and civilian targets, are regularly attacked by NATO. So this is not a real change.

The second thing is NATO doesn't really have any other weapons other than those ATACMS that have a 300-kilometer range. They really don't have any other missiles other than nuclear missiles or- Well, they have some Storm Shadows and that kind of stuff.

Boyan Stanislavski

Or those cruise missiles like the Storm Shadows, yeah.

Arto Artinian

Yeah, those cruise missiles. But again, they reach 300 to 500 kilometers, right? So those missiles...

So NATO is already doing this. This is not something that happened. Yes, they can use additional new...

They can send Storm Shadow cruise missiles or whatever, but this is not new, right? So in a way, this is kind of like a false argument from their side of view. So I think that if we draw the line, I think what's happening is NATO is losing the war, militarily and economically.

And I think they're trying to find ways to slow down the rate of loss, if you will. But I think the really scary question for me here is, and I've mentioned this before, to this day, I don't understand this logic. NATO leadership seems to be okay with the idea of openly militarily attacking a nuclear superpower.

And to me, this is the most dangerous question. How are they rationalizing this? How are they rationalizing escalation to nuclear war?

In other words, do they have some kind of a special weapon like Star Wars, like the Death Star will come and will shield Europe from Russian nuclear missiles? What is the game plan? And it's not clear from these public statements in Sofia that these people are in reality.

These are irrational people who have lost their reading, or maybe they never really understood the reality of nuclear war. They're out of their league, they're incompetent, and thus they're placing all of our lives in danger. I think this is probably for me the biggest question and the biggest fear.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, you're right. So, I mean, I agree, I want to say. But I think that we should not underestimate the fact that they decided to do it in Bulgaria.

And perhaps I'm over-focusing on that. Perhaps I'm reading a little too much into that. But I really feel that there's so much hatred on the part of the Western chauvinists with regards to Bulgarians, most of all, because they don't really have any feelings towards the country.

And I think they love the political elite that does everything that they want. But they hate the nation for its stance, for its attitude towards Russia. And it's not only Bulgarians that they hate.

They hate the Serbs. Of course, they hate the Hungarians. There are many people of the former Eastern Bloc that they hate.

Perhaps they hate all of them. But this Bulgarian example, so to say, I think it's really irritating for them. And I've heard many politicians in the European Parliament, in various NATO meetings, referring to Bulgaria and the Bulgarian public as a place where Russian propaganda obviously works.

This is the only way they are able to explain it to themselves. It's not like someone can genuinely be on this side. It's just that someone has to be propagandized into something.

Arto Artinian

It is very interesting, Boyan, because it exposes at least two ways, it seems like, we can try to make and understand what's going on with this war. The first way, and I'm following your logic, is, and I agree with, I think the first explanation could be the kind of frivolous, stupid way through which the NATO political, EU elites are talking about the possibility of nuclear war or fighting directly a nuclear superpower, is maybe they're just short-term thinkers. They only worry about what the big brother, the superpower of the United States, is going to do, and what's going to happen in the November elections.

Let's just keep the war going until November. Let's see who wins the presidential elections in the United States. And let's see if the United States changes course.

So this is just talk. Let's just escalate in words, but we're not really prepared to fight a nuclear war against Russia, et cetera. That would be the more benign scenario.

And that would be a scenario where the war might end relatively soon through some kind of a negotiation where NATO is going to have to lose or withdraw from its initial positions before the war. And then everything will be better because we would have avoided a nuclear war. But the second possibility, which is kind of your worry about the extreme measures through which Bulgarians are trying to be kind of brought against Russia or to try to force Bulgaria into some kind of a war that most Bulgarians are completely against and it makes no sense to them.

This leads us to another way of explaining the conflict, which is that this is really a conflict from the point of view of the strategist on the NATO side. So, and we have hints about, and the Russian government announced this week that they have started, they've completed late tests and accelerated development and possibly production of intermediate range nuclear ballistic missiles. And now during the Cold War, it was decided between the Soviet Union and the United States that intermediate nuclear ballistic missiles will be eliminated as a category of weapons in order to reduce the danger of nuclear war between the two superpowers.

So both the Soviets and the United States destroyed those weapons. The United States doesn't have intermediate range nuclear ballistic missiles, neither does Russia. But now what the Russians are saying, because the US is developing such missiles, the Russians are also developing them now and their weapons that would be targeting Europe, Western Europe, for example, because they would have the range to easily reach every European capital, including London and especially London from the Russian point of view, leaving the really big missiles, the intercontinental ballistic missiles for the United States and vice versa. So this is a real escalation and the Russians are sending a signal that European Union targets are going to be within minutes of reach once the decision is made.

So this is another escalation that shows that things are getting worse on the question of nuclear war. Now, so I think the second interpretation of what you pointed our attention to by focusing on why Bulgaria is being highlighted with this conference and forcing Bulgarian elites to say, we're going to fight the Russians. And we have to remember here that there has been a geostrategic political rivalry, specifically an attempt by the British government to essentially defeat Russia politically for its own geopolitical interests for at least 300 years.

So British ambassadors arrived in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Great, okay? And since then, there's a well-documented history of British imperial attempts to destabilize Russia in order to gain control of the landmass between the European and Asian continental landmass, which is the largest landmass, the largest economic space and the richest space of natural resources in the world. And this is an old battle when the old British empire, having controlled the oceans and the trade routes, still lacked control of the land routes, right?

Of the most important economically, most important part of the world. So it's an old dream of a kind of British imperial structure to control what is now known as the Eurasian landmass, which is populated by the state of Russia. So if we look at it from some kind of a geo-strategic kind of long-term game, the British empire doesn't exist anymore as an empire, but it exists as a financial empire essentially, right?

The city of London being the second most important capitalist center of accumulated capital wealth and thus influence and power. So I think it's not surprising that the British government is the number one force behind the NATO-Russia war. I would argue even more than the United States.

Boyan Stanislavski

And I think we can also throw in, sorry to interrupt you, but I wanna make that point. Have also always held Bulgaria in deepest possible contempt. I mean, we've got documents.

I mean, this is again, a well-documented sort of attitude, historically speaking. And I think even during the second world war, one of the politicians, I can't remember which one at the moment, even famously stated that Bulgaria should not only not exist, but it should be turned into a potato field.

Arto Artinian

It was Winston Churchill.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, it could be.

Arto Artinian

Who also said, it's kind of amusing for a country to declare war on us that doesn't bathe for more than once a month. So this is what they thought of the Bulgarians. The attitude was no different than the Nazi attitude towards Slavic people. You know, Polish people or Belorussians or Ukraine.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, and also the British king during the second world war, he was a big fan of Adolf Hitler.

Arto Artinian

Yes. And by the way, we should add here for fans of World War II history, which is still not publicly well described, the flight by Hitler's number two, Rudolf Hess in 1940, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And Rudolf Hess, the number two in command of the Nazi German government, flew allegedly secretly to Britain.

And then he jumped with a parachute and there are speculations as to his, he was maybe going to, this was part of some kind of secret negotiations between the Nazi government and parts of the British elites in order to maybe become allies and et cetera. That part of the history is still clouded in secrecy because a lot of the materials are classified. Anyways, but these are important subjects.

So I think if we look at this irrational ignorance of the nuclear danger through the viewpoint that maybe some part of European, Western European or British elites or whatever have decided that it is time to attempt to dismantle the Russian state and thus preside over some kind of a neocolonial takeover over that part of the world geography through any means necessary, then it makes much more sense.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, about this irrationality, complete lack of logic, and I think it's ideological obsession and also a psychological kind of derangement because they are just not able to comprehend, to rub their head around that now, after 500 years of the domination of the West and the white man and so on and so forth, now the Chinese are gonna rule the world or the Chinese and the Russians or the Chinese and the Russians and the Indians or the Chinese and the Russians and the Indians and the Brazilians and so on, right? So I think there are all those factors, but a conglomeration of delusions that the ruling classes, the political classes of Western Europe live in and their inability to control their own emotions and their hatred and their disdain and their contempt for Russia and for other Eastern European nations. And I think this is what triggers the lack of logic, the kind of desperate moves, the sudden shifts and turns, the kind of, as I interpreted, the kind of trying to break the backbone of the Bulgarians and just expose them to some direct military attack from Russia to show them, ah, you see, you see, we were right.

We've always known, unlike you stupid Bulgarians, we've always known that the Russians are right and now they're shooting at you and you still don't believe it, you still don't get it. So I want you to talk a little bit about that, like the ideological obsessions and the increase of their intensity as things go from bad to worse.

Arto Artinian

Yeah, I mean, it's a big question and maybe we could also revisit this in a separate conversation for more full, but I think the first thing that we must confront and ask ourselves without knowing the answers fully is that it is definitely true, it seems to me, that we live in a time of transition, global systemic transition. Capitalism is being dismantled, but it is not being dismantled necessarily or primarily by communist or Marxist-based or informed revolutionary forces because the Soviet Union doesn't exist. There is no oppositional systemic alternative today to the capitalists.

Boyan Stanislavski

Well, there's China.

Arto Artinian

Well, to China, but China only recently has started more aggressively a language of revolutionary socialism or communism, right? So China is always there, but in terms of the West, within the Western political space, the absence of the Soviet Union, so I think it's the capitalists themselves that are dismantling slowly capitalism over the last 30 years. And I think the question is, the old ways of doing politics from the capitalist point of view are giving way to something new, but that new thing hasn't really been established yet.

Now, the Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis has recently written a book about techno-feudalism. He makes the argument, I haven't read the book fully yet, I'm reading it now, that some kind of a post-capitalist world is emerging that's replacing capitalism as some kind of a, for lack of a better term, techno-feudal lords and their large transnational multinational corporations are starting to dominate or are dominating everyday life. It's definitely in the West, there are no markets, they're just monopolies, right?

Like we shop on Amazon or we buy stuff from et cetera. I agree to an extent, but I also would add here that in order to understand what's going on now from a Marxist-infused point of view, but not only, capitalism was never about free markets. And this is sort of what the typical anti-communist liberal would say, that in Bulgaria too, that capitalism, we wanted capitalism in Bulgaria because it's going to bring us into a market economy.

Capitalism is not about market economy. Capitalism's biggest...

Boyan Stanislavski

And it's also BS, sorry, it's also BS that in Bulgaria, anyone has actually, that they're kind of genuine pro-capitalist tendencies ever in Bulgaria during the socialist era.

Arto Artinian

With the exception of the brief functioning of such markets, capitalist bourgeois markets in the 19th century, it is not in the internal logic of the capitalist way of life to make their money and wealth through some kind of competitive, mostly free markets. The opposite is true. Capitalism, capitalists are always interested in leaning towards monopolies.

And monopolies can only be formed if they are on a global scale, because if you're not a monopoly in a global scale, that means you still face competition and that's a direct threat to your capital accumulation, et cetera, from other competing networks or conglomerates. So capitalist economics always produces or lean drives towards monopolies. And that also means that the state must always be subverted or under the control or bypassed by the capitalist, because the state, by its very definition, if it functions as a state, would be potentially subject to other social classes, influence, right?

Or elites. So in other words, capitalism is about monopoly formation. It's not about markets.

So in that sense, the ongoing transformations are, you can read it as the ongoing battle for the global monopolies. So the United States had, American capitalists had global monopolies over the energy market, over the automobile market, over the consumer goods market and over the financial markets, because the dollar was the monopoly currency since World War II. And now this is being challenged, maybe with a counter monopoly, if you will, like the BRICS or a counter, not a monopoly, but by a challenger like the BRICS, potentially currency, economic area and et cetera.

And this is causing the capitalists that previously had monopoly, the Anglo-Saxon capitalist class to wage a war that might even resort to global nuclear war in order to try to keep their monopoly. So I think that would be one kind of way of looking at things by centering the economy and the creation of wealth and the distribution of wealth as the reason why this ideology is emerging of global nuclear war being okay, potentially. The other thing is, in terms of ideology, Anglo-Saxon imperial politics are defined through the ideology of racism.

And we have to remember and never forget that racism emerged as a state ideology in the British empire. During the period of its expansion, it was based on Protestant kind of reading of Protestant religious faith, predestination. We are born the way we are, created by the, there's difference between different groups of people.

Let's call them racist, just the way there are differences between horse breeds of horses. People are born with unchangeable, this is the fundamental racist assumption of British racism and subsequently American racism and any kind of Anglo-Saxon Nazism. The fundamental belief is there's different categories of people.

There's different breeds of people, just the way there are different breeds of horses. The first analogy used horses, just the way there are different breeds of dogs. They're still dogs, but they're different intelligence levels, different predispositions, different talents.

The racists believe that there are different groups of people who are born with different genetic predispositions. And the most fundamental differentiating factor is intellectual capacity. So the inferior, and then they have gradations from inferior to superior.

The difference is in innate, genetically based differences in intellectual capacity that are assumed to be true. That's the fundamental racist belief. So why genetic?

Because you can't change them through education, through socialization. So racist politics defines the targeted enemy as subhuman. And this is kind of in the language of philosophy when the Nazi party in Germany used the language from the great 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, you know, the untermenschen and the übermenschen, right?

So the übermensch was in the kind of racist dialogue and ideology. The übermensch was the racially superior, genetically superior human being who should rule because they are inherently intellectually superior. They understand the world better.

They are smarter. They can invent ways of living in relation to nature that's going to be better rather than worse and et cetera. They can understand democracy and what it means.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, and everything you're saying now just applies directly, I would say.

Arto Artinian

100% you can see these parallels. And the untermenschen are the, you know, yeah, Nietzsche, of course, didn't mean it this way. For Nietzsche, who hated German racial nationalism, he despised it as kind of a provincial liberal kind of English deviation, right?

For him, the übermensch was the fully developed human being. He called it the aristocratic soul, not aristocratic because you were born in a castle, but because you are meritocratic. You're fully developed as a human being and you understand how to think, how to suffer.

You have an appreciation of beauty. You have the ability to risk yourself in the pursuit of something that is worthwhile to you. You have this kind of fully functional in the best sense human being, which kind of mirrored, in the history of philosophy, Aristotle's notion of what it means to be human.

And of course, the Marxist notion of where we want to be as human beings, right? And in Bulgaria, Boyan, you would remember during the socialist period, the ideology of education was the fully developed human being. That was the goal, right? So we were supposed to be übermenschen, but in a way that's the opposite.

Boyan Stanislavski

And we were encouraged all the time because you would get letters from the leaders of the state. You know, they would be read in a very ceremonial way, you know, every Friday or I don't know, every last Friday of the month. But you would really be, would really be encouraged.

I just want to make sure that people could be appreciated for everything that they've accomplished during their educational process. And that would be on a state level. I mean, you know, that's right.

Arto Artinian

And you would become an übermensch in the process of living in society and socializing in it and growing up in it to be that way. Whereas the racist argument would be by birth you already have in you the inherent superiority that just needs to be allowed to play a leadership role, right? And it's complete, and then you must terminate the opposition, the inferior races because they are always a problem.

You know, W. E. B. Du Bois, the great black American philosopher, writer, social activist, who was also a Marxist communist. Du Bois in his autobiography describes how he encountered racism for the first time as a black child in a schoolyard. He said, I was playing with my friends who are white and black and they were totally OK because we were kids.

Until one new kid came and she didn't want to play with me. And when my friend said, asked her, why don't you want to play with him? Why shouldn't we play with him?

She said, because people, kids like him are a problem. Why are they a problem? Because they're flawed in some way is the assumption.

They're violent. They're prone to too much sex. They're lazy.

They are primitive, right? This is the sickness of Western European imperial legacy, which is present in today's NATO leadership.

Boyan Stanislavski

And ideology.

Arto Artinian

As a deeply embedded ideology, which sees the Russians as subhumans, as Unter mentioned in that sense and the racist sense, because, you know, it sees the Ukrainians that way as well. They're just expanding.

Boyan Stanislavski

And it sees the Polish and the Bulgarians that way as well. It's just using the Bulgarian and the Polish right now.

Arto Artinian

And this must be understood because it has been a true fact in politics in Europe for over a hundred years. And it's not an accident that when Poland was encouraged to confront Nazi Germany in the late 30s by the British government, most actively, as we know from our study of history, when the Germans attacked Poland, there was no military response by the British except the phony war.

Boyan Stanislavski

You know, on the contrary, I mean, they've actually guaranteed Poland before the second war. They made guarantees that, you know, we have your back. We have your back.

Arto Artinian

You know, just, you know, you would not do that considered to be of the same race, but you would do that to people that you consider to be no different than dogs.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, which exactly what they actually, they even admitted that by saying, you know, publicly making statements like we're not going to send our soldiers to die for Gdansk or so. This is precisely what, you know, the statements that they were making. And, you know, just to sort of conclude that and you said it yourself, we definitely need to pick up, revisit this topic in a separate discussion.

But let's try and conclude by having you comment on the people in those respective countries that are looked down on by the West, like Bulgaria could be Poland, could be Russia. But there are those politicians, parts of the political elite, parts of the economic elite, parts of the political class that are willing, some of them knowing, some of them out of naivety, probably some of them without thinking much, but are willing to actually carry out the policies of self-destruction. And, you know, in Bulgaria, you can see that very clearly because up until a few years ago, when this, you know, crisis, perpetual and permanent, almost political parliamentary crisis has started in Bulgaria, we have like elections every year, every second year, sometimes twice a year.

You know, we've had this government that was firmly in the hands of one mafia boss, which is Boyko Borisov. People might know that, especially our viewers. We've discussed Bulgaria and this person many times before.

And, you know, they were at least aware of the fact that outside the borders of Bulgaria, they are nobody. So they had to have some kind of territory and some kind of, you know, barely viable economy that they can use in order to exploit it for their own benefits and to function somewhere as those exploiters, right? Whereas now we seem to have people who are even worse than that.

They don't even want this. They just want to chop it all up and basically throw it into the bin of history and just extract whatever is left, get paid and then live their life somewhere on Aruba Island, for example. So I wonder, I mean, is this pure cynicism?

Is this treason maybe? Is this stupidity and naivety? Or is this just simple political, philosophical and humanistic demoralization? How do you interpret that?

Arto Artinian

Well, I think there are two types of political elites in Bulgaria who are in the first type that you mentioned, which was like the long, long running kind of power figure in Bulgarian politics in the last 20 years. And the elites are political elites around him. You can call them national elites.

In other words, they see themselves as Bulgarians. They live in Bulgaria, but who understand that in order for them to maintain their position of power comfortably and reliably, they need to serve. They need to follow the orders of the bigger brothers and sisters from London and the United States and Brussels, right?

So there are basically local elites who, when necessary, would fully and automatically follow at crucial moments like this. They would fully follow the orders of the senior capitalist brothers and sisters and their political elites. They're national kind of elites who serve first, their first serve the wishes of the larger imperial forces.

The second group of elites, which is the new political party, the continuing the change and whatever democratic Bulgaria, they are part of the national elite because there are two types of capitalist elites, right? First is the older, because they've existed longer in history, called national elites who see and think of themselves through the language of ethnicity, nationality, they still have a global monopoly seeking orientation, but they think of themselves as Americans, right? In the sense that I'm an American, I have a vision of what America is.

Yes, I'm a member of the ruling class and thus the elites, but the basic starts from I'm an American or Bojko Borisov, I'm a Bulgarian prime minister. The other category of capitalist elites, which are today more powerful, I would argue, and they are the part of the capitalist elites that are presiding over the dismantling of capitalism and this post-capitalist new world, whatever it's going to become, some type of new feudalism or some other new word we would have to invent.

Boyan Stanislavski

Some call it even cyber fascism.

Arto Artinian

Cyber or whatever, right? They are transnational elites, as they're known. They have no allegiance to ethnicity or nationality.

They think of categories like the country, the nation as obsolete categories that are no longer true and they're part of the 20th century in the 19th century. They must be removed. So continuing change and democratic Bulgaria, I would say are traitors in the sense that they have no allegiance to Bulgaria, to Bulgarian society, culture, history and politics and Bulgarian future as Bulgarians because they're transnational in their minds.

Tomorrow they could be just as comfortable as serving as prime ministers of Estonia or they could be living in Aruba perfectly fine without feeling any sense of longing or nostalgia or guilt. Saakashvili, the Georgian former prime minister is an example of such a transnational elite. He was a prime minister or president of Georgia.

Afterwards he became a senior member of the Ukrainian government. He received Ukrainian citizenship and became the governor of Odessa province without ever being a Ukrainian. But he was kind of appointed by the transnational NATO elites in that capacity in Ukraine after 2014.

And then the other point is in Bulgaria or political organizations in Bulgaria that have been, I think, increasing in number and they will increase more who are taking an anti-NATO position and they're critical of NATO's policies vis-à-vis Russia and Europe and et cetera. They're making a big mistake when they cover their critique. They express their critique through the language of we are authoritarianism, we are against the dictates of Brussels.

Yes, those things are true. This is not about democratic politics. The EU does not function as a democratic entity.

But I think they should be using the language of racism first. That is the idea that underpins these authoritarian politics. We should be- Brussels makes decisions and forces it down.

The way in Slovakia with the attempted political assassination of the prime minister and this was publicly, there were signals being said by European senior officials, be careful, the Georgian prime minister was told last week what you're doing because something like what happened to the prime minister of Slovakia might happen to you. These are authoritarian kind of gangster methods of doing politics. But before that, we should say these are racist ways of doing politics.

You would not do such politics against political forces that you seem to be your equal. The methods would be different. So I think we have to critique if we are critical against European Union bureaucratization, authoritarianism, anti-democracy kind of measures, use of political violence or the threat of political violence, we should begin our critique with the most powerful accusation possible and be like, we do not agree with your racism.

Because that's a very difficult thing to defend against because everybody, people in general around the world are disgusted by racists.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, same as they are disgusted by genocide, which is exactly ongoing in different parts of the world. And I think, you know, we've grown to the point where certain things are so abhorrent. We just have to start using those words again.

Yeah, exactly. We have to start using those words. And on that note, I want to end the program today.

We're going to revisit this topic because there are some fascinating points that we could really develop our analysis further on. So we're, I hope we're going to see you again soon. Of course.

In our program. And to our viewers and listeners, I want to wish you all the best. Stay healthy, keep fighting and keep your eye out because we are going to be more regularly available now on YouTube, Substack and on all other platforms where you can find us. Don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to support us financially. See you in the next segment.

Bye.

In this episode of "On the Barricades," we delve into the intricate tapestry of Slovakia's political. Boyan Stanislavski is joined by the distinguished Slovak journalist and author, Silvia Ruppeldtová, whose recent work, "The other face of modernity," sheds light on the unseen facets of international politics.

This episode promises an unprecedented exploration of Robert Fico's tenure as Slovakia's Prime Minister, a figure who commands both respect and controversy in equal measure. Fico's political odyssey, often marred by polarized media portrayals and contentious policies, is dissected to reveal a man whose actions and ideology are far more nuanced than the public persona crafted by headlines.

Through this in-depth discussion Stanislavski and Ruppeldtova navigate the complex landscape of Slovak politics, illuminating the forces that have shaped Fico's career and the nation's policy direction. From the roots of Fico's political ideology to the significant yet controversial reforms he has championed, this episode is an invitation to look beyond the surface and grasp the multifaceted nature of political leadership in Slovakia.

➨ Introduction to Robert Fico and his public image (00:00:00 - 00:05:00) ↠ The video opens with an introduction to Robert Fico, Slovakia's Prime Minister, addressing his controversial image in the media as a Kremlin-aligned figure and his opposition to pandemic measures.

➨ Fico's political journey and ideological stance (00:05:00 - 00:10:00) ↠ A deep dive into Fico's evolution from a Social Democrat to being accused of various ideological stances, highlighting his longstanding role in Slovak politics.

➨ Media portrayal vs. public perception (00:10:00 - 00:15:00) ↠ Discussion on the exaggerated negative portrayal of Fico in the media, especially regarding his stance on Russia and Ukraine, versus the actual public opinion and electoral support.

➨ Controversial policies and achievements (00:15:00 - 00:20:00) ↠ Examination of Fico's notable policies on healthcare and education, their societal impacts, and the public debate surrounding their perceived populism.

➨ Slovak national identity and political landscape (00:20:00 - 00:25:00) ↠ Insights into the broader context of Slovak national identity, the rural-urban divide, and how Fico taps into the national sentiment to maintain political support.

➨ European Union and NATO relations (00:25:00 - 00:30:00) ↠ Analysis of Fico's critical yet pragmatic stance towards the EU and NATO, and the implications for Slovakia's international relations.

➨ Public response to Fico's leadership (00:30:00 - 00:35:00) ↠ Discussion on the public's response to Fico's leadership, focusing on his re-election and the significant support despite widespread media criticism.

➨ Cultural and historical influences on politics in Slovakia (00:35:00 - 00:40:00) ↠ Exploration of how historical narratives and cultural factors influence Slovakia's political dynamics and Fico's political strategy.

➨ Conclusion and reflections on Fico's impact (00:40:00 - 00:48:02) ↠ Concluding remarks on Fico's impact on Slovakia's political scene, reflecting on the themes discussed and the complex interplay between leadership, identity, and governance.

Transcript of the interview

Boyan Stanislavski: Hello and welcome "On the Barricades". My name is Boyan Stanislavski. I'm going to be your host today. And I invited Silvia Ruppeldtová. Hello, and welcome to the show.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Hi.

Boyan Stanislavski: All right, so Silvia is a journalist and a writer from Slovakia, author of books and nerous articles. And I invited her because I'd like to discuss this new demonic figure that is now your prime minister in the Republic of Slovakia. One, Robert Fico. And we've heard so many things about him that, you know, he's being groomed by the Kremlin that, you know, he supports Russia in this war with Ukraine, that he is against any kind of measures or he used to be against any kind of measures during the years of the pandemic and so on and so forth. Anyway, he is evil walking evil. That's the kind of thing that you get when you read the mainstream press, including in our region, the former Eastern Bloc. So I'd like you to begin, perhaps, before we reply, whether it's these smears make any sense, I'd like you to perhaps begin, , by describing a little bit like who Robert Fico actually is and what he stands for.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, okay. Well, you mentioned that he's a new evil or a new demon. No no no no, no, he's being an evil or a demon for ages.

Boyan Stanislavski: In Slovakia,

Silvia Ruppeldtová: In Slovakia, in Slovakia. Well, yeah, probably he was not so much known abroad. He became actually a prime minister for the first time in 2006, I think, or seven. And, so he's absolutely not a new figure. He started as a Social Democrat, and he still represents himself and his party as a Social Democratic party. Then he was from the very beginning, he started to be accused of all those things that are unacceptable. First, he was a Bolshevik, then he was a communist. Then as the time passed, he became, russophile and nationalist and racist and etc. and so on and so forth. But that was especially during his first and second second government. And there were many things to criticize, of course. The problem is that now when he was reelected, very clearly reelected in the last elections, there was a huge mess. The half of the country wanted to emigrate because in the press you could you could only read that he supported Putin and not Ukraine, which is not true, actually that he will destroy Slovakia's international reputation.

Boyan Stanislavski: Because Slovakia of course has a fantastic international reputation.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. And that the Slovakia has no future. And so everything was very, very, very much exaggerated of course. Even if you want to be critical to Robert Fico, this was something really. Absolutely not appropriate. And it happened in very specific situation. You know, when Robert Fico stopped being prime minister four years ago or so because there was this upheaval after the murder of Ján Kuciak, the journalist.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah. Let's talk about it a little bit because you said, because that's that's an important part of the past of Robert Fico's past, or at least past attached to him, because there was this horrendous murder in 2018, if I remember correctly.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, the beginning of the year.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah. Of a journalist and his wife or fiancée.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah.

Boyan Stanislavski: Right. And then Robert Fico well, the only thing that apparently he had to do with it, quote unquote, was that it happened under his reign. But there was there is no evidence, from what I gather. Correct me if I'm wrong connecting him or his administration to anyone even remotely close to this criminal act.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Right? Yeah, as I notice that the foreign media now and he's reelected again, not for the first time, that they write that he is directly connected somehow with the murder, which poses Slovakia then in a very strange light, because that would say that the Slovaks now voted for him in spite that he is a murderer. But of course, he was never accused officially of having killed someone. The only thing is really that it happened when he was a he was a prime minister and there was this massive hill, really, that people were protesting in the street, the movement, so-called Slušné Slovensko and the media, especially the media, represented it as the murder as an act as a consequence of the regime of Robert Fico as the corruption and which he was accused of and of course, in his government, there were cases of corruption, but there were absolutely. No clues to connect him.

Boyan Stanislavski: I'd like to focus on for a little while are the achievements, because I think that if there's anything that prompted people to actually vote for Fico again, despite this campaign that's been launched and relaunched pretty much every step of the way during his career. Then it's precisely because, I mean that's the kind of intuition that I have, it's precisely because people remember the achievements and please add to the list. But off the top of my head he removed the initial payment that you had to make every time you go to see a doctor. He made the train rides free for students, for elderly people, and, yeah, what else?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Well, these things, they were considered rather to be cosmetic, but they already were like signs of Bolshevism or communism that was perceived by the media as something very problematic. And so then you can then you can imagine that, that if you have the tendency to privatize completely those color and health care system, then of course it is a problem. And already in that time, many big institutions were already privatized. So what he did in those times, he prevented the health care system to be privatised. And also there were tendency for the universities to be paid and so on. And so this didn't happen and this was much of his achievement. But again, it was very bad perceived very bad, perceived in the media. And so especially the young people, they somehow tend to criticize it or to, to see it as something problematic.

Boyan Stanislavski: So they criticized the fact that they have university education free.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: I mean, not generally, but yeah, they were tendencies to criticize it because they say that then you will have average education, for instance, or average, health care system if you do not pay. And especially, of course, if the old people do not pay because they go there every five minutes and then you have to wait and, you know, all these kind of things. So, yeah, I mean, the massive propaganda there, it was always okay.

Boyan Stanislavski: Well, so, you know he was demonized pretty much from, well, ever since, right? But then the the campaigns against him are nothing new. But again, he was reelected, well, on the basis of the fact that people remember those achievements, right?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: I think partly.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: I think of course, partly, but the other reasons are especially connected. It was also an act, I would say, of revolt. I don't think that the majority of people who voted for him were, like, extremely satisfied with him. But you know, we have to remember that he stopped being a prime minister after the murder of Ján Kuciak of the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, and he was shortly replaced by Peter Pellegrini, and then the people quite massively voted for Igor Matovič as a really adventurous party. And it was really adventurous government, who said that they were struggling, that they were fighting against the corruption established by Fico. And people really voted for this because somehow they believed in a corruption. But what happened was that the pandemia came and the new government was resulted to be absolutely incapable of managing anything because there were no experts, no politicians, no people with any sort of specialized education. And so after the four year of complete chaos and just the vengeance that was against Fico and his people, but not only against those politicians. But, you know, what happened is that the society is completely devised, and you have those who who now voted for Fico, all of them are labeled as someone who is degenerated retrograded.

Boyan Stanislavski: But that's the majority of the electorate, so...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And that's the majority of the electorate. So actually this...

Boyan Stanislavski: So there's a small group of Slovaks who consider themselves to be very exclusionary. And then the rest are basically useless.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. And this exclusive Slovaks or this elites or elitists, I would say they say, of course, that the former government was a catastrophe, but it still was better than Fico because now with Fico we are going to be a new colony of Russia.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, okay.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: I mean, many of them believe so because Fico said that he is against delivery of guns to Ukraine. Continuing delivering guns to Ukraine.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, okay. So let's talk a little bit about the the demonization that's going on now. So first of all, he does not want to support Ukraine endlessly until the last Ukrainian, as the saying goes. And, I wonder, is this the only thing that they spin this around right now? Because that's a very fashionable thing, you know, or that used to be at least until a couple of months ago. Now things are changing a little bit, but, that's something that, you know, in Poland, for example, saying that you're against supplying Ukraine with weapons that basically a couple of months ago would end your career, you know, and yet, despite similar atmosphere, I'm sure developing in Slovakia at the time, he was able to not only not end his career but become a prime minister, partially thanks to saying that. So how do you how do you explain this?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Well, the first to say the elites explain it with a new theory that it somehow in the Slovak DNA and somehow retrograde DNA. Because we are..

Boyan Stanislavski: So now it's genetics.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, genetics, yeah. It's rather genetics and that there are many people who somehow. And that is also, for instance, an influence of Russia mentality, some Russian traditions in the Slovak national development and that this russophilia is something in our genes even though we belong to the Western society, somehow we are influenced by the Byzantines and the orthodoxy which is retrograde, you know, sort of really conspiracy nonsense.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, and where are they getting this from? I'm very curious.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And so nobody is really, really reflecting the reality. And the reality is that the majority of the population of Slovakia really voted for Fico, and not because they like them. Or so, but because they saw it as the only one solution to the complete chaos. And I would say also an attack on the human dignity. I really would say so because, for instance, I myself, if I can say so, I never thought about voting for Fico, but as I was really during a weeks or really observing the situation, how the people who wanted to vote for him or were thinking just somehow differently, that they were immediately labeled or pro-Putin, pro-Fico. So that's the one group, of course, because if we're voting for Fico, that means that we are pro-Putin, that you are somehow who is old and who has no education, doesn't speak any languages, who has actually no right to vote. And all those peasants from the countryside, who need to be taught how to vote and what to think and how to be remade in a way. So I think this was also very, very essential attack of the human dignity. And maybe for some people, also the national dignity, I would say, yeah, well.

Boyan Stanislavski: I think this question of dignity is pretty important, in our region, you know, in Eastern Europe, the former Eastern Bloc, because that's, what you just said reminds me a lot about the situation in Poland, because for the last almost ten years now, almost nine years, really, we've had this government led by law and justice and you know, the chairman of Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński, who, you know, used to be really a kind of petty dictator of the internal political process here. And everybody that were against law and justice would be saying exactly this. Oh, dictatorial mentality, Byzantine, whatever, Russian influence eastern, anti-Western and so on and so forth, which made no sense, I mean, on its face, it's just ridiculous. I can't think of any of a single person that would go and vote for Kaczyński or his party going like, oh, I'm against the West. You know, I really want to, you know, I want to have Kaczyński. I'm against the West or I don't know, I really want Russia to come or something like that. Of course. Kaczyński, unlike Fico or unlike Orbán, he's very hawkish against Russia and that's one of the major differences. But then, you know, the way he was actually flirting with the people and flirting with the electorate was that, look, I'm going to give you something and I'm going to give it to you, not because I want to throw money at the society or at a problem, at a social problem, but because you deserve it. And that was the narrative, and because you deserve it, because you're Polish, because it doesn't matter whether you speak foreign languages, it doesn't matter whether you don't live in more. So it doesn't matter whether you're vegan or eco vegan or whatever or you know what? Like your identity is very traditional and so on and so forth. You go to church. That's very good. You know. So he was playing this dignity card all the time. And finally it just became a war between those who were empowered by Kaczyński and those who were basically waiting to rearrange the things again in a way that the plebeian part of the society is subordinate to the rule and to the diktat of the enlightened part of society. So is it is it something similar?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, it's very similar, actually. It's more or less more or less the same. Again, the problematic thing with Fico from my point of view, well, it's it's not so much connected with the war in Ukraine because Fico said immediately after being reelected that he was not going to stop the aid to to to Ukraine. He was just not going to.

Boyan Stanislavski: Send arms.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Send arms, which is not the same thing. But of course it was interpreted like that very easily and immediately, but there was like Orbán, which is true, this very strong anti-migration rhetoric, which is of course, very easy in Slovakia. And, and he or his party members, especially, were using it regularly, even before, in a way, in an aggressive way, in a, in a way of resisting way.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay. But this was this was not so much, I suppose, because he really is a genuine racist, but probably because he wanted to be more populist. That's the kind of and this works in our, our, you know, geographical the area here.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, definitely, definitely. That was not his racism or his fascism or anything like that. In my opinion. It should have been done in a different way. But I don't think that it was especially racist or so that was just a political and it still is a political calculation.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay, but let's talk a little bit about the political culture that actually allows this combination, because for Western viewers and, you know, you can see it even on the, you know, in the comment section, , of our videos, you will see that people are asking questions about like, how is it possible that you have, you know, this kind of party that represents this sort of political tradition and then it would incorporate something from other political traditions? I personally think that this happens, that now the political compass is completely broken anyway. And, you know, the left does things that the right wing used to do and the other way around. So I don't really think it's so important, but I think it is. What is essential is to describe the kind of political culture that is characteristic for our region. And I think it is important to say that people like this combination. I mean, our people like this combination of, like a traditionalist elements with social democratic basis. And this is just this is just something that, you know, to many appears strange, weird, maybe dangerous, but this is what we are. This is the way we function. This is the way our societies are kind of motivated politically to, you know, participate in in the political process, you know, to the extent that, you know, it is of course, possible structurally, but that's that's what we are. That's why I think that many parties traditionally, well, not traditionally, but new right wing parties like those who model themselves on the American libertarians, like, you know, they want they want everything to be very conservative and very liberal at the same time, in terms of economy, those parties never take root in our countries because this is so alien to the DNA, to the political DNA of our societies. And I feel that Fico is just, you know, he is representing a trend which is massive, not only in Slovakia but pretty much everywhere. And I wonder to what extent those people who are attacking him are aware of this, that he's a typical product of typical political understanding, perception?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: You know, this is maybe more typical for the East European society like ours. But there are other tendencies also also in the West Europe, maybe in France or in Spain, you can see it also with the rise of nationalism or these right wing parties like Marine Le Pen, etc. and Fico also was accused of being such a nationalist like in that way of Marine Le Pen and Orbán and whatever. And there is, there is this strange moment, well, which is not so strange, I think that it again, it has to do with the dignity and especially with the dignity of the so-called common people from the countryside, who politically might be more manipulative or manipulated, maybe. But those, those people are somehow those who lost in the transformation process, who somehow stayed in the periphery and about whom nobody takes care. And so, again, I would say that this is more about the blessed dignity of the societies and the gap between the so-called elites from the cities or the educated people who are not so educated at all, but they consider themselves so. And the countryside, which is somehow.

Boyan Stanislavski: The province.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: The province. The province which tend to be more traditional, of course, more religious. More. Well, they they have different they have different values and perceive things and changes in the society differently. And they feel they really feel they are frustrated and they feel that they are abandoned. So..

Boyan Stanislavski: And they are, they are...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And in fact they are about that. So I think that Robert Fico and many others can feel somehow that in this way is also blessed, something that should not be blessed. And this is the dignity of the ordinary people.

Boyan Stanislavski: Exactly.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And this is also something which sounds very archaic, but it's something like the national identity. And in Slovakia specifically, it has to do with some, in my opinion, it has to do with some cultural specialty that that we have that we still somehow aren't there is there is no such self-confidence as you have in Poland, for instance or, I don't know, in Bulgaria, and it's something very un-modern in the 21st century, but it's something also that we've taken from the 19th century that we consider ourselves someone who is very young and who has no traditions, no rulers, no historical elites. And so really, we have to prove to the world that we are as good as the others, even without the the elites, which in my opinion is nonsense completely. But this lack of cultural continuity somehow in the 21st century or in the modern age creates this specific situation that we have generally in Eastern Europe. But I mean, not not only.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah. Yeah.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: So, so yeah. So, Fico, he tries somehow to connect the traditions of the ordinary people and the dignity of the ordinary people.

Boyan Stanislavski: So social democratic measures.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So somehow to be traditionalist somehow to respect the tradition, who respects the religion, who respects the ordinary tea and ordinary people and to be modern also in a social democratic way.

Boyan Stanislavski: Do you think it has to do also I mean, the question of dignity and the question of respecting the ordinary person, the average person, you know, the average citizen. Do you think it also has to do with the fact and perhaps the question of patriotism or however you want to refer to it, the set of ideas that you just explained. Do you think that this has to do also with some kind of that this is a response to this self-hatred that is offered by the liberal people or liberally, you know, people who like to present themselves as liberals in Eastern Europe. It's not like they necessarily are actually liberal, but this is how they think about themselves. And there is a lot of, you know, in Poland, in Bulgaria, in many other countries, I'm sure there's a lot of hatred towards their own nation, you know, and this is something that the right wing. Yeah. like, so can you can you speak a little bit about this phenomenon in Slovakia and how it developed and how, you know, Fico is reacting against that?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. It's very complex issue. Of course, the fact is that somehow we identified ourselves as a nation 200 years ago or so. Well, before it was not a question because there were no national states, in we were a part of a greater Hungary. And so and then as a part of First Czechoslovak Republic. So it's only something more than 100 years ago and as an independent state, it's only 30 years. And we always thought during the 20th century, we would be thought that we are the peasant nations. We had no elites, we had no kings, we had no whatever. During the communism, many intellectuals were just calm down and just erased from the history, which was which is a pity. And so many people really think that we have no history and we have to do our own history. During the 20th century, there were very there were a lot of problematic chapters because, as you know, during the Second World War, the so-called independent Slovakia was a satellite of fascist Germany. And they were deliberate deportations of 60,000 Jews from Slovakia. So and the president was a Catholic priest. So someone who represented the ordinary people, the common or..

Boyan Stanislavski: The cultural...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, yeah. And then in Slovakia, it's very, very, very important somehow it's still inherently it leaves someone in the heads. You cannot be surprised if someone asks you and are you Lutheran? Or are you Catholic? This is not a nonsensical question in Slovakia, because usually those who were connected with Lutheranism were those enlightened.

Boyan Stanislavski: So even has that aspect. Yeah.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, yeah. Very, very, very, very much. The members of the national movements and literary movements in 1970 were all almost all Lutherans. Ordinary people with no education were almost all Catholics. So there is really this aspect city and the elite.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, but.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And the ordinary people and it leaves. And then you had. And then you had the Second World War and the Catholic priest as a fascist president of the state. And this traa, of course, never disappeared completely. It's not so many years ago.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah. Okay. But that's something that you obviously want to discuss, right? I mean, it happened not so many years ago. This is something that can be disputed. And but I believe that it can easily be discussed without demonization of people who are present in today's politics. Like...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: It should be possible.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, it should be possible. You're right. But then you know, the question of mathematics, it's not it's not a question that I often pose in our programs, but, look, people, ordinary, so-called ordinary people, okay? Let's, quote unquote, ordinary people. There is more ordinary people than extraordinary people. So how. Yeah, it's just the extraordinary people. Do they even sometimes think about it like there is more of the other. So they will they can vote us out every once in a while. And also, you know, the hegemony of the extra ordinary citizens is very fragile because it can always be undermined even in this quantitative terms like, you know, just people can go and vote...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. Like now, like like like it happened now actually. And. Yeah, exactly. And they are so surprised. But they...

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah exactly. They are surprised. But they are surprised at an obvious fact. I mean this is just there is more villages and more small towns than big cities. Right. So why are they surprised? Because they hope, like in Poland, for example. They hope that you know, those people will be will stay there in their homes. They're going to stay. They're going to stay there, go to church, I don't know, maybe go somewhere, well, hang around their village, but they would not, they should be kept in a state where they don't vote, where they don't take part in the public life.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. Actually...

Boyan Stanislavski: And that's what the Polish extraordinary citizens would be hoping for.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Our extraordinary, our extraordinary people, they didn't have the tendency to completely forbid voting, but they had the tendency somehow to re-educate and to say that the younger members of the family should somehow re-educate their grandparents, even though it can be really very complicated and nerve breaking.

Boyan Stanislavski: But I like it, because that's at least, you know, they are trying to prompt someone to have a discussion. So that's good because here, for example, we had this sort of call, steal your grandma's identity card so that she cannot vote.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: You know, you could say on Facebook, young, quite young people were were posting the photographs of their grandmothers and grandfathers. You know, this is my grandmother. She is 85 years old, and she voted for Progressive Slovensko, for Progresívne Slovensko. Be like my grandmother because she..

Boyan Stanislavski: That's much better than the Polish kind of idea.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: That's not maybe so aggressive than in Poland. But I found it really really ridiculous. And they were trying to convince the grandparents to do something for the future because they are already old, but the grandchildren are young and they, they need to have some future, so that they can stay in Slovakia. This was the very, very slogan, before the election, we want to stay in Slovakia. And if you want to stay in Slovakia, you cannot vote for Fico. And I will emigrate to, I don't know if it Fico,

Boyan Stanislavski: But that's blackmail, like blackmail, right? I mean, I'm going to emigrate if you vote Fico in...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: That was really quite massive.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: This was quite massive. That was like everywhere. And people were like, no, it won't be possible to stay in the fascist dictatorship. And it will be like in Hungary under Orbán.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay. But of course, I, you know, just for the record, there is no evidence that there is any attempt of establishing any sort of, even remotely any sort of regime even remotely close to dictatorship, let alone fascist dictatorship.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: So even though the journalists really tried to they try to do their best. When Fico had his first press conferences in, , in Brussels and in Bratislava, I think that he was doing very well. I think that he was quite calm. And he knows how to speak and he's convincing. He's not stupid at all.

Boyan Stanislavski: And he's a seasoned politician.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And he's exactly, exactly, probably the only one I don't know if there is in Slovakia. In Slovakia. Well, maybe not the only one, but I cannot think of anybody else in the moment. And, you know, the journalists who were there were people around 25 years old or 20 from, I don't know, French medid on that media and that media, and they only repeated what they had learned. Exactly.

Boyan Stanislavski: Phrases I've heard. But that's all.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Right. Yeah. And and Fico was quite okay. But when he heard that Mr. Fiko, Mr. Fiko, you are very much connected with the case of the murder of the journalist in Slovakia. Well, he lost his nerve,

Boyan Stanislavski: He exploded.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And he explained, like, how come that. What are you telling to me? What do you know about it? And of course, she knew nothing. And of course.. So this enrages many people. Well, how dare Fico say something like this to the French journalist.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, because French journalist is more important than your prime minister.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Something more.

Boyan Stanislavski: I know. I mean, this is part of the self-hatred. Like, this is amazing. Yeah.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, exactly. And then it was the same with the help or not help to Ukraine. I saw the press conference. It was in Brussels, and there were a lot of Slovak journalists, some of them I know. And they were really just to try him, to provoke, to say something that they could really accuse him.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, so this was not a genuine press conference on his part, but this was not a genuine participation of journalists on, well, on the part of the media, in a sense that they were not trying to figure out what he stands for or he's going to do whatever his actions, whatever his plans are for, you know, the upcoming period. No, it was just an attempt to basically provoke him to say something that they can spin around their propaganda afterwards right now. But tell me a little bit, because I understand why he's a Putinist, because he doesn't want to arm Ukraine. And, you know, he doesn't want to have this war until the last Ukrainian or whatever. But why when they speak about him as a fascist or something like that, how what what arguments quote unquote, are they using?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. Okay. Well, he's not being spoken as a fascist usually. Or maybe some, maybe some..

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay. But what about this? But dictatorship.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah. The dictatorship or some tendencies that he's aligned with the fascists and well that and well, if he's anti-immigration, then he's a racist, etc.. , well, that's also has to do with the self-confidence of the Slovaks. The the better Slovaks and the worse Slovaks, of course, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Because it was Fico who in 2006 or 2007, when he for the first time became a prime minister, and his party SMER they really tried to reestablish the celebration of International Day of Women or the end.. No, not the end of the Second World War. Not that that was always okay, but the celebration of the Slovak National Uprising, which during communism, during the period of communism was very popular, of course, because it was interpreted as a fight of communists against fascists, which, of course, that was not so simple, because they were not only communists who were fighting fascism, but we were thought so during socialism. So somehow it kept the minds of the people that somehow who would like to celebrate Slovak national uprising..

Boyan Stanislavski: Is a dictator.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Is a dictator, is a communist.

Boyan Stanislavski: All right, so I understand how they position him as a Putinist or something just because he doesn't want to arm Ukraine until the last Ukrainian and so on and so forth. But what about fascism? Dictatorship? Why would he be like, what kind of argents, quote unquote, are used to promote this kind of smear?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, yeah. Then don't say that he is a fascist. That would be really too much even for them, for the extraordinary, but that he is aligned with fascists and well, that's, that's something that sometimes he's accused of.. Well, so when he started as a social democrat in 2006 or 2007, he really immediately wanted to celebrate the Slovak National uprising, for instance, which was a which is a National day and it always was. And during communism, it was one of the one of the biggest memorial days. And somehow it sticked in the heads of people that were only communists who fought against fascism. So it was just some communist celebration. And everybody who wants to celebrate Slovak National uprising must be a communist and.

Boyan Stanislavski: Must be a dictator.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And and must subsequently must be a dictator. And of course, that was really ridiculous those times that's just very interesting. The liberal media in those times are writing about national Slovak National Uprising as something that helped to open the road to Gulag.

Boyan Stanislavski: Oh my God.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Really, these people, these pro-Western, pro-Democratic people were writing about this as someone as something that it helped to open the way to Gulag.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And so Fico celebrating this opening to Gulag, of course, must have been a Bolshevik.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And they augmented with something which is partly true that during communism, we were taught that Slovak National Uprising was something completely communist to fight against the fascism, which was not true. But somehow this stayed in the minds even of the very well so-called very well educated people. And I think that they should have been happy that Fico wanted to celebrate it. But no, at that time they were not. But as the time, as the time passed. And then in 2016, I think for the first time, a real nationalist party or a real fascist party became a part of Parliament, the Kotleba Party. Well, suddenly everybody was shocked. How come that we have real fascists in the Parliament? And suddenly everybody started to celebrate the Slovak National uprising because it was really something, some movement that fought fascism during the Second World War. And since then, every good citizen, every extraordinary citizen is celebrating the Slovak national uprising as a symbol of a fight against fascism. And somehow Fico now, because he sometimes collaborates.

Boyan Stanislavski: Just confusing everyone.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, yeah. It's so, so now Fico has nothing to do with the fight, fight with with the celebration of Slovak National Uprising. And this year we had two commemoration which.. one official. Well, it was not official. One big, in Banská Bystrica led by Fico who spoke there, and the second one for the exclusive part of society led by our president, Zuzana Čaputová.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay, you know, one more thing that popped up in my mind while you were discussing that, you know, he would be accused of, like, Fico would be accused of being a Bolshevik because he wanted to reestablish the tradition of celebrating certain uprising and so on and so forth. You know, that makes me think of how convoluted is the anti-communism in Eastern Europe, because it's so ideologically, so heavy, so thick, you know, so dense, it's almost part of the identity of the political classes, like throughout the former Eastern Bloc. And I'm just thinking that it's so ridiculous because, you know, you can't celebrate an anti-fascist uprising because that would be communism. You can't have free health care because that would be communism. You can't have properly functioning public transit available or cheap or for free, because that would be communism. You know, I mean, this this obsession with like, oh, we have to be very careful. We we have to make sure that life is not so easy because that would be communism. I mean, that's just so ridiculous. And I wonder, does it really play out this way in Slovakia too? And is Fico somehow, you know, part of a victim sort of of this mechanism..

Silvia Ruppeldtová: From the beginning as I told you, everything what he did was communism. And still is.. Now it may be replaced by the russophilia for a time, then I don't know what will come.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, yeah. Okay. But what are you trying to say, I understand, is that those people are creative. So we will see what comes next as a kind of campaign.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Definitely. Definitely, definitely. But I think that it's also a part of some bigger movement that it's not only typical for Slovakia or Eastern Europe, but actually that that something that really has to do with this expanding neoliberal capitalism we live in and with the tendencies and the pressures that really the people are victim of, even the exclusive ones.

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, for the end, I just want to ask this, do you think that the opposition of the extraordinary citizens and their parties, do you think that this opposition is strong enough to maybe sabotage some you know, the functioning of Fico's government? Do you think they could they could really make trouble?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Well, they will try probably to do really everything possible to provoke Fico's government.

Boyan Stanislavski: But to provoke to do what?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: I don't know, maybe some some...

Boyan Stanislavski: Riots or?

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Some strong messages or some inappropriate vocabulary, but. Well, but but but who knows. You know, speaking about the murder of Ján Kuciak in 2018, for instance..

Boyan Stanislavski: Which again, Fico had nothing to do with.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Fico had nothing to do, and everybody, even in Slovakia, as I heard probably that some people really believed that he personally somehow is involved in it, you know, nobody was then the people just stopped asking if it really was him or not. They just took it for they somehow they took it for granted. So and they never ask what would it have been good for? So but because it was just a problem for him, he was complete zero at that time. Nobody I mean, he really was seen as someone as a symbol of a corruption. And he completely lost. So he was seen as someone who politically is forever gone. And now he is victoriously here, victoriously. He was never so strong, I would say. And and even people who didn't vote for, who didn't want to vote for him, voted for him because there was no other option, because they they saw him as the only one.

Boyan Stanislavski: The adult in the room.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: The adult in the room, only one responsible politician. That was my case, actually. I was not. Not especially happy, but, yeah.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay, and do you do you are you anticipating that the people who are part of the political opposition in the parliament or in the institutions, are they going to try and mobilize, I don't know, the European Union, for example, to support them in order to remove Fico, because this is what we've had, the kind of conflict between the Polish government and the European Union's institution and the European Union's institutions was precisely because the European Union was favoring Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition. And that was so clear and so obvious to everyone. You know, it had the contrary effect because it actually mobilized the support for "Law and justice" even more, because they thought, like, people would think that this is an unjust competition. Like, why would you have the European Union behind you against the government that's been voted in by the people democratically? Okay, that's..

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, maybe they will try to do or something like that. But, you know, Robert Fico, he is, sometimes he's nervous and sometimes he says something..

Boyan Stanislavski: So they will be counting on that.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah, they will be counting on that. But, you know, he he criticizes the European Union. He criticizes then and that sometimes he's very anti-American rhetoric. But in the same time he never forgets to reply. Well, it's not a question for me to change the status of a member of European Union. We are members of European Union. We are going to stay. So he will actually be a good member of European Union. And he will also stay a good member of NATO because even though he says many things against NATO, he..

Boyan Stanislavski: Yeah, but you know, I understand that, but I also think that this is part of this is something that I probably perceive as a good thing about him, because that's, you know, the point that a large part of the society is trying to make. I mean, I have the feeling that this is the situation is not so much that we want to be out of the European Union or we want to be out of NATO, or we want to be, you know somewhere else, maybe in BRICs or whatever. The point that they're trying to make is that you don't have to follow blindly every step of the way. I mean, the people in Brussels can sometimes hear the word no.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Yeah.

Boyan Stanislavski: And this is what they're and look at Orbán. I mean, Orbán, you can have all kinds of ideas about his, you know, policies, okay? You can be critical or you can be you can be cheerful about it. But the point is that he's a flexible politician. He's not leaving the European Union. He's not leaving NATO. He's just playing the card of what he refers to as national interest and the way that he perceives it. And I suppose that it's likely, judging by what I've seen so far from Fico, is that he's going to follow you know, the same..

Silvia Ruppeldtová: Actually, Viktor Orbán was very happy seeing Fico again where he is, and that's why also why Fico is labeled as someone as terrible as Orbán. But it's like you like you describe it. And yes, it should be good even for the European Union to be sometimes criticized. But that's not how is it seen in European Union, as we know, and it's not so seen in the extraordinary or extraordinary society. Because really the mentality, eh the mentality. I don't like to talk about these things like.

Boyan Stanislavski: Ideology maybe.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: But, yeah, but the ideology, the official ideology that it's very it's very childish in a way, because it's either pro or against either you are for or against and so act if you are against, if you were against NATO, now you have to be pro-nato, for instance, because there is a war. And if you are, if you vote for veto, it means that you love him especially. So you have really..

Boyan Stanislavski: No nuance.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: No, no, no nuance. So if you criticize the European Union, it means that you are against the European Union. And I'm often asked, how are you? So so are you happy that we are in European Union? And I always say, like Gandhi, Gandhi used to say, it would be a good idea because I would like to be. I mean, we are members of European Union, but the European Union acts like it acts.

Boyan Stanislavski: And yeah, that's the that's one of the problems actually, which I think is going to pop up and maybe we can discuss that sometime later. We will see how things unfold in Slovakia. But you know, what is what I think is the important point to make is that indeed European Union is not the same thing that I'm not the same thing that it used to be, in a sense, that I voted during the referend in Poland in favor of joining the European Union. But if I were to actually vote in the same referend today, I would vote against it because the European Union is a completely different animal right now. So there is a lot to talk about and I think that there's going to be some interesting events. Absolutely, in Eastern Europe.

Silvia Ruppeldtová: But you know there will be those who are talking about possible Maidanization of the Slovak politics that the opposition would try to do everything so that there would be something like Maidan. Well, I actually do not think so that so in such things in Slovakia there are the tendencies. But I...

Boyan Stanislavski: Well but they did attempt something like, you know, something along the lines of Colored Revolution in 2018 when they actually took down the Fico. So I don't feel that Slovakia is perhaps so important for the West now to sort of invest there a lot of effort in order to overthrow the government. I think Fico is not really endangering anything. He's not a good example, maybe, but he's not really endangering any kind of processes that are, you know, still ongoing and...

Silvia Ruppeldtová: And, you know, and the foreign media only speak about Slovakia when there is such problem like Fico, so actually everybody should be very happy that we are spoken about.

Boyan Stanislavski: Okay. All right. So on this note, a very optimistic one although a bit paradoxical, we're going to end this program. Thank you very much. Thank you, Silvia, for taking the time to be with us. And to our viewers and listeners and readers, please, you know, take a while to subscribe to our channel, to hit the like button and perhaps to leave a comment and to share our productions with your friends, family, acquaintances and so on and so forth. And to the extent that you feel you can afford it, you can support us financially, either by monthly subscriptions or one off donations. The links to support us are in the description section of each of our videos. Thank you very much and see you in the next segments.

On the Barricades ― s06e24

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade 🌟 Thanks so much!

Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat provide an overview of news from Eastern Europe in this episode. They begin by discussing how Polish and Baltic ministers decided to issue an ultimatum to Belarus, demanding that its authorities immediately remove Wagner PMC members from Belarusian territory. Then they discuss the ultimate threat to public order in Moldova: popular Serbian singer Goran Bregovich. He was not permitted to cross the Moldovan border or perform a concert there. You see, he's far too ‘pro-Russian.’ There are also other stories, such as a Polish activist who declared that if elected as an MP, he will establish an official registry of gay people.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades ― s06e23

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade🌟 Thanks so much!

In this episode, one of the show's hosts, Dr. Maria Cernat, explains how the recent tragic events in Romania involving exploding gas stations were not unexpected. That is how a broken nation operates. Nobody cares about the infrastructure, nobody cares about enforcing the law, nobody cares about truly assisting those in need, nobody cares about the structural reasons that such dangerous and deadly incidents occur every now and then. Some are aggressive, and hunting is the only thing most media outlets can offer. The real question is how this affects the political process in that country.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades ― s06e22

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade🌟 Thanks so much!

Boyan Stanislavski talks with two Bulgarian political commentators, Arto Artinian and Bozhin Traykov, in this episode. The topic is a rather strange (even by Eastern European standards) bill that is being discussed in a rather shady manner in some kind of "working group" where the suggestion is that in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian language could be downgraded to foreign language for some groups of pupils and students. We became aware of this outrage after the "working group" in question decided to take it up with the Bulgarian Teachers Union, and its leader Yanka Takyeva informed the media that such a bill was being considered. It's worth noting that the leader of one of Bulgaria's largest Roma NGOs, who was also invited to discuss this project, was as outraged as Takyeva that such an abhorrent idea could even be seriously considered, let alone unofficially discussed. Of course, this is just one of the many ways US imperialism is destroying Bulgaria from within.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades ― s06e21

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade🌟 Thanks so much!

There is a small segment of Bulgarian society that is mostly made up of clients of American and other Western NGOs in Bulgaria, who continue to openly support the country's most notorious Euro-Atlanticist forces. They, of course, publicly support concepts such as "democracy," "freedom," and "human rights," and one of their leaders once famously described them as "smart and beautiful," in contrast to the rest of society. This fall, the "unintelligent" and "unattractive" will compete in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital and a bastion of pro-imperialist reactionaries. They will have the opportunity to support Vanya Grigorova, a well-known public figure in Bulgaria, a chief-adviser to one of the country's largest labor confederations, and an honest class fighter. Boyan Stanislavski discusses what this means for Bulgaria's political process with two Bulgarian political analysts, Bozhin Traykov and Arto Artinian.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades ― s06e20

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade

🌟 Thanks so much!

Dr. Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski discuss the political situation in Poland, which is set to hold parliamentary elections on October 15. Boyan explains the larger context of recent campaign events, as well as some rather amusing government and opposition failures.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades ― s06e19

💰 You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade

🌟 Thanks so much! In this episode of On the Barricades, Dr. Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski discuss how the Romanian media has suddenly discovered people who can speak assertively, rationally, and, most importantly, truthfully about Ukraine's much-hyped "counteroffensive" which is now going on for the third month in a row. Boyan explains the social and political context of the recent uproar over the Red Army monument in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital city, in the second half of the show.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨 Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada

On the Barricades - s06e18

💰You can support us at https://www.patreon.com/thebarricade

🌟Thanks so much!

In this episode, Dr. Maria Cernat discusses a recent scandal in Romania involving private care home owners who provide peace of mind and necessary medical and social assistance to elderly people who have no relatives. The reality is that those institutions, which were privatized, are more akin to descriptions of people barely surviving in WWII-era concentration camps and a place to rest, let alone being cared for. Horrible stories have emerged of elderly people being tortured and even forced to work. Of course, there is a class component to this pathology, but it also speaks volumes about the profound demoralization that Romanian society has experienced over the last three decades to allow such barbarism to occur on a large scale.

🚨 Twitter: https://twitter.com/_the_barricade_

🚨Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/thebarricade

🚨 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheBarricade:3

🚨 Spotify: http://bit.ly/Barricade_SF

🚨 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/baricada