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The Real History of Communism The Russian Revolution · The Matt Walsh Show

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Imagine a country where a small group of resentful, unpopular
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: left-wing radicals seize power and then use their power to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: deliberately destroy the family. Crush the church. Unleash criminals in
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the streets. Legalize abortion. Implement no-fault divorce. Enact insane economic policies.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Institute affirmative action. Persecute their political enemies. And sow chaos
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to expand their controls. Sounds familiar, but I'm not describing America.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'm describing Russia in 1917. You've probably never been to Russia,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and you probably weren't alive during the Bolshevik Revolution, but
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: let me assure you, you'll recognize it. And that's because
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the totalitarian left has not changed its playbook in a century.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Their tactics, motives, and goals don't change over time. In
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: this episode, we'll break down the eight rules of a
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  Speaker 1: communist takeover one by one and survey how those rules
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: overlap what's happening in America today. We'll do so by
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: surveying the history of Russia from 1899 to 1918, a
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  Speaker 1: period rarely taught in great detail in American schools, despite,
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  Speaker 1: or perhaps because of, its obvious relevance to today. To
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the extent communism is covered in schools at all, it's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: either in the context of World War II, in which
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Communists are presented as the good guys. Or in rare
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  Speaker 1: cases of honesty, it's about the horrors of communist regimes, gulags, famines,
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  Speaker 1: death camps. Now those things matter, but they miss the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: more important point, which is how did communist lunatics take
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: over a massive empire in the first place? That question
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: is the central question of our times because those same
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: tactics are being run again right now. As the Spanish-American
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: philosopher George Santayana warned, Those who cannot remember the past
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: are condemned to repeat it. And that's the point of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: this episode. So we don't repeat it. That's why we're
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: doing this. This is the real history of communism. The
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Russian Revolution. We're obligated to start this episode by acknowledging
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: that the Russian Revolution, the subsequent Civil War, and the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: rise of Soviet communism are some of the most complex
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and intricate subjects in history. The shocking levels of betrayal
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and intrigue, the complicated Russian names and improbable events illustrate
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: how a country like Russia produces literary geniuses like Dostoevsky
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: or Tolstoy. The country's history really is like a complicated
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Russian novel. And to make this episode accessible to a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: large audience, we can't possibly provide every single detail and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: every single aspect of these major world-changing events. What we
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: can do is describe in broad terms what happened and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: feature specific events that directly relate to our own situation today.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And that's what we're going to do. The lessons you'll
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: learn hold enduring truths about humanity that are relevant far
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: beyond politics. If you follow the citations throughout the episode,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you'll find books and essays that are good starting points
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: for a more in-depth understanding of what happened, and I
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: highly recommend you do that. Now, like a lot of history,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: this story begins with a bad idea. The idea that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: history is a dialectic centered on a class conflict between
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: oppressors and the oppressed. In the words of Karl Marx's
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Communist Manifesto, Solving the class conflict could be done only
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. This
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: meant the abolition of money, of eternal truths, of nations,
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  Speaker 1: of the bourgeois family, which Marx said would vanish as
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a matter of course, and of private property. Under Marxism,
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  Speaker 1: you would own nothing and be happy. Marx's ideological pronouncements
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: were radically at odds with how he actually lived, a
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  Speaker 1: pattern you'll recognize from leftists today. For example, Marx actually
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: hated industrial workers. According to Sean McMeekin's book, To Overthrow
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the World, when Marx visited factory workers in the summer
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of 1845, he was not impressed with the workers' intellectual acumen.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: And when a tailor explained to Marx that they were
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: organizing workers into collectives to negotiate better conditions with their employers,
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  Speaker 1: And angry Marx was seen pounding on the table with
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: his fist before shouting that ignorance has never yet helped anyone.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Marx sustained his lifestyle by taking handouts from his friend
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Friedrich Engels and collecting inheritance money from family members and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: wealthy supporters. He called for the abolition of inheritance, of course,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: for everybody else. Marx employed servants to help his wife
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  Speaker 1: with housework, lived in a spacious and comfortable dwelling in
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the Modena Villas in Maitland Park in London. and threw
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a formal ball complete with gold-rimmed invitations, liveried servants, and
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: a dance band, just as he was seizing the reins
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: of the International Working Men's Association. Marx was a prolific
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: writer and a major public intellectual, known for his journalism
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: and political organizing. His books, like Das Kapital, were published
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  Speaker 1: in multiple languages and printed throughout Europe. By the 1880s,
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  Speaker 1: Marx realized that it was in Russia, home of the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: strongest autocracy ever, in Europe, and also the most Baroque
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and violent political radicalism, that his book was more read
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  Speaker 1: and appreciated than anywhere else. Tsarist censors let Russian translations
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of his book slip through the cracks because they thought
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  Speaker 1: it was basically unreadable. Turns out that was a bad call.
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  Speaker 1: The book sold very well. On February 8th, 1899, St.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Petersburg University students, mostly upper-middle-class children of the Russian intelligentsia,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: planned to celebrate Tatiana Day, the traditional anniversary of the
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  Speaker 1: university's founding. According to the historian Richard Pipes, the university's
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  Speaker 1: rector banned those celebrations by decree. Students booed the rector
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  Speaker 1: for 20 minutes straight and then started to riot. The
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  Speaker 1: students pelted the police with snowballs and the officers hit
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  Speaker 1: the students with whips. Things spiraled out of control and
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  Speaker 1: the students announced a strike. St. Petersburg University socialist groups
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  Speaker 1: ignored the situation at first, but quickly realized what an
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  Speaker 1: opportunity it was. They could co-opt the riots for their
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  Speaker 1: own purposes. And so they did. Radical left-wing strike leaders
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  Speaker 1: brought in the aims of the unrest, moving it from
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  Speaker 1: a protest against university administration to opposition against the entire
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  Speaker 1: political system. They convinced many students that the entire system
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  Speaker 1: of government had to be burned to the ground. Within days,
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  Speaker 1: all major institutions of higher learning in the empire were
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: shut down. 25,000 students boycotted class. The government arrested the
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  Speaker 1: strike leaders, but university officials started making concessions for the
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  Speaker 1: students And this led to a tit for tat cycle
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  Speaker 1: of protest, repression and concession. For decades, Russian universities had
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  Speaker 1: been incubators of extremism and radical ideology. This period was
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  Speaker 1: defined by radically escalating political violence, often committed by students.
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  Speaker 1: One former student who had been expelled from various universities
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  Speaker 1: decided to exact vengeance on behalf of his comrades. His
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  Speaker 1: name was P.V. Karpovich. On February 14th, 1901, Karpovich entered
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  Speaker 1: the reception area of the Ministry of Education, where the
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  Speaker 1: education minister was addressing the public. Karpovich shot the minister
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  Speaker 1: in the neck with a revolver, mortally wounding him. The
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  Speaker 1: next year, in April 1902, a former student turned socialist
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: revolutionary named Stepan Balmashev assassinated the minister of the interior,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: triggering a drastic expansion of police powers. As a contemporary
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: academic named Prince E.N. Trebetskoye Put it, the student strikes
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: of 1899 marked the beginning of the general crisis of
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the state. Russians didn't realize it at the time, but
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the old order was coming to an end. This was
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the start of the Russian Revolution. And its immediate cause
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't an uprising of starving peasants and industrial workers, but
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: of radicalized, privileged young students driven by political ideology and
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: resentment of the system that created them. Now, the lesson
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: is obvious. By failing to take the student protests seriously,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: university administrators and the czarist government allowed them to spiral
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  Speaker 1: out of control and into something different. This is the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: first rule in a communist takeover. Any revolution can become
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: your revolution. You should never allow the government to choose
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: your vegetables. There are other lessons, obviously, to take from
• 9:01
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• 9:41
  Speaker 1: When the student protests first broke out, one Russian radical
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: was reading about them from afar in Siberia, having been
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: exiled for revolutionary activities.