Rise 018 - Pravda, Samizdat and the end of the American Empire

Examining the USSR and its official and underground media provides a useful framework for understanding what’s happening in the modern day West.

May 03, 2023

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a transcontinental communist Empire that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.

Officially, it was a federal union of fifteen independent national republics. In reality, the entire economic, social and political system was run from Moscow by the Communist Party.

It was, in effect, a one party state. Rigidly hierarchical and tightly controlled from the top by a Politburo of largely unaccountable party apparatchiks and dictatorial leaders like Joseph Stalin.

One of the most important tools used by Soviet leaders to project power across this vast empire was Pravda, the Communist Party’s official newspaper.

Pravda, literally meaning ‘Truth’, was founded in 1912 (secretly edited by Stalin himself) and quickly became the most influential newspaper in the USSR, with a circulation of over 10 million at its peak.

Despite its name, Pravda was frequently accused of distorting the truth and lying to the public. The Soviet government used it as a tool for propaganda, controlling publicly available information and manipulating the news to serve its own interests.

“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”
Attributed to Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Samizdat, meaning ‘self publishing’, stood in opposition to the imperial narrative being handed down by Pravda. It was a grassroots movement that emerged in the 1950s and 60s due to strict censorship laws where writers and journalists who dared criticise the government risked persecution or imprisonment.

In response, these dissident writers and intellectuals began to publish and distribute their work through underground channels, using typewriters and carbon paper to produce multiple copies of their manuscripts and sharing them person-to-person.

These underground newspapers provided a vital counterpoint to official narratives. Patiently and persistently sowing seeds of dissent which would ultimately contribute to the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

What does this tell us about what’s happening today in the West?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Whether you realise it or not, we are living through the slow-motion (but rapidly accelerating) collapse of another Empire.

A global Empire.

An American Empire.

The same Empire, in fact, that brought down the USSR.

And this, in part, is what it looks like:

Where’s the President?

Good question.

When we think of American leaders we generally think of the Kennedys, Trumps and Obamas of this world.

But, as it turns out, American Presidents don’t run the American Empire. Although immensely powerful, their role is to deliver and administer the United States on the behalf of the self-styled ‘elites’ who run a global Empire, backed with American money and military might, through three distinct but deeply connected institutions:

The Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1921 to convene government officials, global business leaders and prominent members of the intelligence and foreign-policy community to discuss international issues.
The Bilderberg Meetings, established in 1954 to ‘foster dialogue’ between Europe and North America.
The Trilateral Commission, established in 1973 by American banker David Rockefeller (a very bad man) to promote globalisation and increase economic and political interdependence between North America, Western Europe and Japan.

None of these organisations is run by elected officials. Rather they are controlled by individuals like Henry Kravis (infamous corporate raider and private equity pioneer); David Rubinstein (Co-Founder of the Carlyle Group and, therefore, one of the primary beneficiaries of the War in Iraq); and Henry Kissinger (scathingly described by Christopher Hitchens as a ‘mediocre power-worshiping academic morphed into one of the most powerful men in American history’).

Whilst presented as non-partisan, non-profit ‘think-tanks’ solely concerned with improving the state of the world, in reality these highly opaque and corrupt institutions exist to formulate and distribute policies designed to further the ends of this unaccountable global ‘elite’.

Examining their governing boards (linked in the descriptions above) reveals a who’s who of corporate executives, bankers, investors, policy makers, media commentators, soldiers, spies and ‘philanthropists’. What could reasonably be described as a globalist ‘Politburo’ of vested interests working to further each other’s ends at the expense of everyday citizens.

Take some time to go through them, it’s eye-opening stuff.

As with Pravda in the USSR, the most powerful weapon in the imperial arsenal for disseminating official doctrine is the media. Corporate mainstream media, to be more precise (or MSM as it’s frequently described), is the mouthpiece of the American Empire and its three governing councils.

As we’re supposed to live in a free society in the West, we are at least presented with the illusion of choice - from Fox to CNN to NPR, and everything in between. But senior editors, writers, publishers and owners from every corner of the media industry are directly linked into one or more of these groups in a manner that is deeply inappropriate and really inexcusable when you think about the job the media is actually supposed to be doing (i.e. holding these people to account).

I encourage you to go through all of the names on this list. Apologies for the small artwork, but the information is good (although slightly out of date).

A few of my favourite examples:

Zanny Minton Beddoes (Editor-in-Chief of the Economist) attended the Bilderberg Meeting in 2022. Alongside David Lammy and Michael Gove, no less - more on that in the next few days.
David Gergen (Political commentator at CNN) sits on the North American leadership of the Trilateral Commission
David Rubenstein (founder of the Carlyle Group and host of his own show on Bloomberg) is part of the North American leadership of the Trilateral Commission, as well as being Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations. I have a feeling I’m going to be writing quite a bit about Mr Rubenstein.
Eric Schmidt (former Executive Chairman at Google) is connected to all three groups. I’m sure he has some stories to tell. Maybe we could start with why he moved DeepMind to China?

However, without question, my absolute favourite new person to come across in the past few weeks is Richard Haass, 20-year President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Not least because of this interview with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin in front of a large group of MSM journalists in April 2022, where Haass basically lays out the playbook for how the CFR controls global public opinion:

Key things to note from this film:

MSNBC relies on Richard Haass to interpret international issues for them as a ‘resident scholar’. In my view this is a deeply inappropriate relationship, given Haass’s role in formulating policy and who he works with on the CFR.
CFR dictates global perception of American foreign policy through their own ‘educational’ content focusing on all ages and different levels of education. This includes creating content targeted at children.
Haass is a fan of The Economist and the Financial Times. As someone who was an ardent reader of both for many years, and has worked with senior executives from the FT, I now have a much better understanding of why I’ve fallen out of love with them so spectacularly over the past five years…

I was also rather entertained by this clip where Haass is accidentally honest about his views on democracy, and realises half-way through what he’s just said:

One man, one vote, one time is the definition of the democratic process Richard..! Even if you don’t like the outcome.

You can watch the full interview here and I highly recommend taking the time.

So if the MSM operates as a 21st century ‘Pravda’, disseminating official ‘Truth’ for the self-styled ‘elites’ running this Globalist American Empire, what is the counterpoint?

Where is our Samizdat?

Where are our underground newspapers?

Those dissident voices seeking to undermine and take down the status quo?

Well, they’re right in front of you.

That’s what you’re reading.

That’s what’s going on down here.

These days they call us ‘conspiracy theorists’.

‘Misinformation spreaders’.

‘Far right extremists’ (despite the fact that nothing could be further from the truth).

Although the times are different, the principle remains the same:

Self-published information, distributed through underground channels like Substack and Telegram which are (so far) impervious to outside pressure to censor and de-platform. Brought to you by concerned citizens sharing inconvenient truths that threaten the official narrative and drive us ever-closer towards accountability and justice.

The questions now are, at what point will the Empire collapse, and how do we prepare for and accelerate that process?

And that is exactly why we’re here.

Thankfully I don’t think we have that long to wait, if the desperation in this more recent interview of Richard Haass is anything to go by: