Leafbox
Leafbox Podcast
Interview: Rurik Skywalker
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Interview: Rurik Skywalker

Unveiling the Zone: Exploring Rebellion, Metaphysics, and Identity with Rurik Skywalker

Rurik Skywalker (Rolo), author of The Slavland Chronicles, invites us into a labyrinth of ideas where politics, metaphysics, and culture collide. With a personal background bridging Russia and the U.S., Rurik critiques societal norms, examines cultural contrasts, and unveils his provocative "convergence theory," positing an eerie unity among global powers behind the façade of conflict. Known for his deep dives into metaphysical topics and political theory, shares insights that challenge conventional thinking and invite readers to explore the world beyond traditional paradigms.

From altered states of consciousness to the metaphysics of rebellion, Rurik intertwines mysticism and geopolitics in a way that centers resistance with art forms.

Much of the dialogue revolves around Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, a haunting meditation on human longing and transformation. Rurik likens himself to the film’s enigmatic guide, the Stalker, leading his readers and listeners into “The Zone,” a metaphysical landscape where hidden truths and forbidden insights await discovery.

Stalker is not just a film but a starting point for the conversation to delve into deeper layers of Rurik's controversial philosophies and a must-listen for anyone who seeks to understand this intriguing and controversial writer.


Excerpts from Interview:

“ The wars are fake, but the massacres are real.”

“If you say something that they don't want to hear, they will come after you. They'll come after your friends. They will they will punish you for having the wrong views. And for me, that was the final red pill about America.

“This so called civic society doesn't exist. Participative democracy doesn't exist. The power, so called power of the people's will or the media, also a hoax. That's when I realized actually everything is run by gangs of secret transnational special secret police. And that's sort of the core paradigm or the, or the core view that I operate from when I write my blog”

“Art can literally send you into an induced, altered state from which, maybe you could actually discover these hidden aspects of reality, hidden sources of power within yourself. This is what we need. We need sources of power. We need this sort of fuel, this mystical fuel.”


Time Stamp Highlights

  • 01:07 | Exploring Stalker and the Zone

    How Tarkovsky’s masterpiece shapes Rurik’s vision of resistance and discovery.

  • 06:42 | Cultural Critique of America

    The transactional superficiality of Western interactions versus the deep, enduring connections of Russian culture.

  • 19:23 | Convergence Theory and Geopolitics

    Rurik on Convergence theory: “THE WARS ARE FAKE, BUT THE MASSACRES ARE REAL.”

  • 42:24 | Russian Media and Propaganda

    Insights into navigating the disinformation labyrinth in the digital age.

  • 01:06:09 | Plato’s Dystopia

    How Platonic ideals, once heralded as blueprints for order, may serve as tools of elite control.

  • 01:16:05 | Dionysian Rites and Music as Rebellion

    The ancient roots of mysticism and its potential to ignite uprisings in the modern world.

  • 01:18:36 | The Metaphysics of Rebellion

    Tapping into altered states to reclaim individual and collective agency.

Slavland Chronicles

Note: Sound sample in interview from Edward Artemiev - Meditation (Stalker Movie Soundtrack) 1979 . Interview edited slightly - removed filler words, false starts, and repetitions to enhance audio clarity and overall flow for sound clarity and listener enjoyment.


Interview Transcript

(I recommend listening to the conversation - but for those visual learners here is a transcript - Please note: There may be minor transcription inaccuracies)

Interview Teaser

Rurik: Art can literally send you into an induced, altered state from which, maybe you could actually discover these hidden aspects of reality, hidden sources of power within yourself. This is what we need. We need sources of power. We need this sort of fuel, this mystical fuel. And you would be really surprised at the different sources if you expand your thinking past voting, if you extend your thinking past these stupid culture warriors , if you can expand past that. Start thinking in these terms, in liminal terms it's actually a really optimistic and hopeful way of approaching because you realize that the situation isn't hopeless.

It's, it's hopeless if you keep yourself confined to the parameters that you're allowed to think and function in. But if you can break free of that, allow yourself a little bit of leeway, you realize that there are alternative approaches, alternative methods, alternative sources of power...

Exploring Themes in Stalker

Leafbox: Hey, Rurik. How's it going? Good morning. Good afternoon. I don't know where you are, so I'm gonna just say them all.

Rurik: Okay. Good morning. Good morning.

Leafbox: Rurik, I well, I've digested probably like, I don't know, over the last two, three days, a lot of your content, probably 10 hours listening to podcasts and you have a very large range of conversations and topics.

So treat me like a normie. Think about your Ukrainian grandma. I'm that person. Walk me through some of your general theses and maybe, you know, the funny thing is I was just rewatching Stalker, which I saw probably 10 years ago. It seems like so many of the themes in your work actually are a reflection of that movie.

So I'm curious, my first question is, are you the Stalker, the The Writer, the The Professor, Porcupine? Who do you think you are?

Rurik: That's a good one. Thanks for having me on. Well, obviously I like the character of the stalker, but at the same time he's, he represents a kind of naivete. And I don't like that.

But I guess he's, he's, he's childlike. In fact, he talks about how you have to become childlike and how the Zone doesn't like the strong or the the rigid. And he has, it's an interesting little monologue where he explains that weakness and health are closely associated that like a plant when it's young and easy to topple, it's pliant and flexible that that's when it's the most full of life, whereas death is sort of where you become rigid.

Which is definitely something to think about, but the themes of the film and just this idea of like trying to find sacred or something spiritual that's hidden within the ruins of like, you know, secular society. Yeah, that's definitely something that resonated with me. That's something I've tried to do.

Political Views and Personal Beliefs

Rurik: And the writing is only you know, writing about politics and all that. It's at this point, it's just a way to make bread because for me, I've sort of already kind of figured it out, at least to a level that I'm comfortable with. There are still some mysteries out there about what really happened in this year.

What really happened with this hoax or this conspiracy or this false flag that I'm interested in investigating and figuring out. But for the most part, I've got the gist of it. I think It's, it's quite simple to understand who's in charge how they took over, how they maintain power what we might have to do if someone was interested in dislodging them, and everything else, I used to read, like, all these so called culture warriors who would, like, talk about how the latest scandal du jour and how, you know, Oh, you know, the, the, the, the left has gone crazy.

And, you know, they're doing this, they're doing that. And here's someone who stole money from this company or whatever. But I stopped doing that about four years ago. And I've been, I realized that it's all just nonsense and started focusing more on like the more, the deeper questions, I guess. Once you figured out that the politics is corrupt, that it's not done in your interests and that there's no way to peacefully redress within the confines of the system any of the problems with it and that it wants, and that the people in power wants you dead and that they, that they're very bad people with terrible beliefs about the world.

Where do you go from there? Well, you know, some people keep banging their head against that wall. Me, I've tried to sort of, you know, go into the Zone as it were, start looking into different, more esoteric things. So I hope that makes sense.

Leafbox: Yeah, I think your writing definitely seems to be evolving into kind of the Woo space, the metaphysical, which I think is where I am too.

I think you break through the first matrix and then you get to the second matrix, and then you realize there's probably more matrices to keep going, and there's probably this larger battle between good and evil, like you bring up. So Rurik, where do we start? How do you describe yourself to people who don't know who you are, what your work's about?

I mean, if you just met someone on the street and you're like, this is what I blog about, what do you tell them?

Rurik: I don't tell them, but I don't tell them, but online, I just refer to myself as a conspiracy theorist. So,

Leafbox: well, I think the word in front of that is also important. You often, you say you're a Russian conspiracy theorist, right?

So, I mean, I don't want to out you or dox you, but you have an American accent. You obviously speak Russian. I think you were born in Ukraine. At least I heard on a podcast. How do you frame yourself? Are you between the east and west? Where do you kind of see your perspective?

Rurik: Yeah, I've never, I've never hidden that.

I was born in Kiev. I wrote about that recently when I was saying that I was born 50 miles from the exclusion zone, 50 kilometers from the exclusion zone. So I've never been, never hidden that fact. They just don't want my family to get involved. My family are not into this stuff and you know, they have normal lives and I wouldn't want to ruin it for them.

Chances are eventually it will rebound on them because that's the world that we live in where people are collectively punished for associations with people with controversial opinions. But I do my best to shield them from any blowbacks. That's the only reason me personally, I have no desire to go and become, I don't know, a waiter or a policeman or, or any sort of job in normal society. So I don't mind if people were to know who I was, but you know, that's, that's, that's the spirit perspective. I'm coming at it from am I a Russian conspiracy theorist? Yeah I think I'm Russian. I mean, a lot of people don't know this, apparently, but if you put aside the propaganda, Kiev was populated by a bunch of, you know, people who came down from Russia in the turn of the 20th century.

My ancestors, my family, you know, is as much from Belarus as it is from the South of Russia. That's, that's the main split. So yeah. That's where I'm coming. That's my background.

Cultural Critique of America

Rurik: In terms of between East and West, my identity, yeah, I grew up in America. But I didn't really like it.

And there's not really that much good that I took out of it, I would say. And I don't want to offend any Americans because when I'm abroad people really hate Americans, you know, and if they know that you're American and they think that I'm American, they will attack me for being an American. So I've sort of learned to defend Americans, but I pretty much completely despise the culture just from top to down everything.

And this is where it gets a little confusing because I actually like American politics. Like I like the way that the founders built their government. I like their history. I like, you know, I like all that. Highfalutin stuff, you know, I like the political tradition. I like the philosophy. I like what the founding fathers wrote.

I've read all their stuff. Well, as much of it as suited me. And I liked the way that the country was, there's a lot of like about it, like the nature, you know, all this other stuff, but when it comes down to, actual, like the lived experience of the American lifestyle, how Americans interact with each other, what it's like to be in an American community, what it's like to date an American girl, all of that that I really, really dislike the way American families treat each other, the way you have, you know, soccer play dates or whatever, all of that.

I'm really glad I left that all behind. American churches, they don't like that. So just the social fabric really, really ticks me off. But as in, you know, other than that, I'm not saying Americans are bad people. I just, you see what I'm saying? I don't know. Maybe you can help me out.

Leafbox: Well, I'm between places too.

So I grew up in South America, but I have an American accent and my dad's British and my mom's Chilean, so I'm between places, right? So I, I like the U. S. and I see its problems. And when I travel abroad, I see both sides. People hate America, especially in Europe, but then they love America. They all want to come here, right?

And now I think there's kind of a new American dream of a lot of Americans wanting to leave the U. S. So in a way, all your critiques sound very American to me as well. They sound almost Californian, right? Like, Oh, this is down with the system. That's how very American kind of philosophy as well.

Rurik: I like Californians.

I don't share their politics, but you know, their personality, I jive with that much better than East coasters and Midwesterners are okay. I like Southerners, you know, in small doses, but in general, it's just This is a big thing I was going to write about in the coming year. It's the way they treat people.

I hate the way Americans treat one another and this culture, unfortunately it's an Anglo thing as well. So you definitely get it with Brits and Australians. They don't understand the concept of friendship. They're like a very superficial people and they're extremely lonely. I think that the artist that best encapsulates the American soul, the American internal identity is this Hopper guy, I think what his name is.

Edward Hopper.

Leafbox: Edward Hopper, the painter, of course. Yeah.

Rurik: Right, right. And so in all the scenes, the characters are alone or alone in a crowd. He's trying to convey a sense of intense loneliness. And that really captures the American spirit. So people say it's about freedom. I never felt free when I was there.

I felt actually choked and confined, but I did feel lonely. So, and I think a lot of people, I mean, you talk to a lot of Americans and they're extremely lonely people. They don't have friends. They're looking for something, but they're so messed up and they're so tainted and poisoned that they can't actually dig themselves out of their own hole.

So the, the main thing that I was actually going to focus on, I've, I've pretty much abandoned the section of the blog where I used to talk about populism and like stuff related to America. I figured I should stay in my own lane. I don't want to get into trouble. And you know, maybe other writers would feel more comfortable interacting with me if they felt I wasn't encroaching on their turf.

That didn't really work out. So I may as well go and get, get back at it. And the main thing I would write about is just how.

Friendship in Different Cultures

Rurik: There is no culture of friendship in the Anglosphere. The concept is completely different in the East. So, you can actually acquire a real friend. And I've talked about this with other Americans, and each of the conversations has just really proved my points.

Because, I'll be like, listen, you people don't have friends, you don't understand how to, you know, maintain a male male to male friendship. And they'll talk about how that's not true. I was on the soccer team or that's not true. I was in the frat and you know, this, this conveys the entire mentality, which is they have to be, they're actually talking about social organizations.

They conflate social organizations with friendship or membership in some sort of society as friendship. So they have no idea what like this peer to peer thing is where you could just the concept. It just doesn't occur to them where you could like meet another man and regardless of his social status and regardless of whether he's in the same club as you or whatever, you could just create this parallel relationship where you help each other out and you have each other's backs even though, you know, you're not part of some formal That's You haven't signed a formal treaty or done a pledge, or you don't have blackmail on each other, this, this concept is alien to the Anglo mind, and that's why whenever they want to do politics, they always want to do like this.

Let's create an organization, you know, let's find, let's have member lists. Let's, you know, it's, it's like I lived in new England and this, some of the spirit, like I definitely picked up on it. That's what they do. Solzhenitsyn picks up on it as well. It's like, this, this, this is what these people do. It's like their instinct, like a beaver will, will, you know, cut down trees and make a dam and a badger will burrow and a dog will bark and then, and these people will create organization lists.

Like, you know, they can't help themselves and everything has to be formal. Everything has to be ritualized. Everything, everyone has to have a hierarchy. You have to jump through hoops. You have to believe the right things. You know, these are religious fanatics. It doesn't matter what religion they're pursuing.

Liberalism, Christianity, whatever. They're always doing it with this fanaticism and you just. If you try to actually make friends with an American, it's frankly impossible. You can have a drinking buddy in an American, you can have a business partner in an American but you can't make a friend out of an American.

And if I can't have friends among these people, I don't want to be around them. I don't want to live in their society. I think it's fundamentally broken and should be completely reorganized. If we've come to the point where. They don't understand how this concept works. So I was going to explain it in greater detail, but yeah, you should jump in because I'll just monologue.

Leafbox: Yeah Rurik, I'm just thinking of what some of my Argentine friends would say, like I speak fluent Spanish and yeah, there's definitely a difference in feeling in terms of friendship between maybe someone from Argentina and myself, and then the typical American friendships seem more superficial and transactional, whereas with my, like South America,

Rurik: they have no concept of friendship.

They just can't, it's all business for them. It's, it's a horrible mentality. They're all infected with it. They don't even know that they are, that they're all like this. And even if you want it to treat an American as a friend, if you like gave them the Slavic friend treat, which is like. You know, you really put your hand over their back and, you know, you really, you're basically treat them like a brother, like this, this, this person's now surrogate family, right?

They will not honor that. They will not reciprocate in kind. They can't, they just think you're a chump. They just think that you're foolish or you're overly sentimental. So they're stunted and deformed and depraved people. I mean, I defend them all the time and I don't like it when people make fun of Americans, but I mean, between, you know, if I was speaking to an American, I'd let him have it, you know, like, so it was, you know, in that context,

Leafbox: So going to the Russian friendship, I've only been to Russia once, but you're telling me that there, Just describe the Russian friendship. What is that like?

Rurik: Well, it's basically you're, you become a brother. Like you actually, it's a huge responsibility, which is something you don't enter into lightly. You know you, you can still have the, you know, American style frivolous get togethers, you know, hookups, whatever you want. You still have that element of superficiality.

If you seek it out, it's easy to find, but you can also find that deeper layer still intact. In fact, that's the, The number one redeeming thing that I liked about Russia. I mean, I like everything. I hate, I hate the weather later. I hate the government, but you know, I hate the government everywhere. But I like the food and I really liked the social interactions.

I felt that they were more authentic. It doesn't mean that, you know, Bad things can happen, but it's it's not like a dog eat dog type thing. There is a sense of camaraderie. There is a sense of sticking together. Like you see someone who doesn't have it all together. For example, like he dresses a little bit wonky, you know, his grandpa dresses him or something.

This is a common thing in, in Soviet culture where, you know, You have this overbearing old timer who's obsessed with World War II and, you know, he's sort of telling his young nephew how to be, how to dress. You have the flip side with the grandma doing the same thing with, like, you know, the girl fattening her up saying, Oh, you don't eat, you don't eat.

They come to the village and they fatten her up. Anyway, there's like these, and you know, obviously it's not cool. Obviously it's, it's a. It's a social penalty that you incur if you have these basically like it's the equivalent of being a mama's boy or something like that, whatever. There's all these different, like someone who doesn't, he's not totally cool.

Someone who's not super fashionable. So there isn't this like relentless culture of like mockery and ostracization. Like I've seen groups, shared groups you obviously have this, these groups and you'll find in these groups, there's like the fashionable guy. And then there's a, maybe someone who needs some help. Maybe there's a skinny guy. There's the fit guy. It's so much more democratic. And you'll like, ask him, why are you hanging out with this guy?

And he's like, well, he's my friend. And, and this, this like explanation is enough. Like you can say that and people will drop the issue. Like, that's the only justification you need. In America that wouldn't fly. You know, like you can't hang out with this guy because he lowers your social credit rating and that incurs penalties and you probably will get treated the same way, like his loserness or whatever, or his, his lower status.

and you don't, you can't, but you get this thing in Russia where you just say, listen, I've known this guy. He's my friend. He's my neighbor. He's so and so's friend's neighbor. He like chill out, like let, I know, but let them be. And it's incredible. Like you it's, they don't understand that they're doing it.

It's like a fish asking a fish, what water is. That's why a lot of Americans do like Russia. They do feel like they can actually, for the first time, let down their guard. They realize that they're allowed into like groups of people that, and sort of different segments of society that they would never be allowed into, into the very socially striated Western society.

So they liked that freedom. And and yeah, they like the fact that they can make friends, I suppose. I mean, obviously, very few Americans will make a genuine Russian friend, but that's not for the Russians lack of trying. It's because the Americans are deficient and have poor character, as we've explained earlier.

Leafbox: Yeah, I mean, there's pros and cons to each side because the Americans are always so friendly at first, but they're shallow. And you're saying the Russians, I find cold at first, but obviously as you go into that relationship.

Rurik: Because it's honest, it's honest, man, because like if, if I'm a smiling doofus in front of you, right.

And I actually, I do do this. I'm as I do have that American trait. But what I'm doing, like if you do that with a Russian, they'll think that you like them. You know, they won't understand that you're trying to scam them, which is what Americans do when they do that, right? Americans are trying to scam you into social, you know, into gaining social acceptance points and to, I don't know, getting you to pay for dinner.

I mean, these people are extremely cheap as well. Anyway, but the, the thing is that. Yeah, you have to. The reason why you're cold in parentheses is because that's the normal state. You don't know this person, you keep it. But if you, and if you commit to more, you know, it's, it's honest, right? Like if you're going to commit to more, you're going to treat them better.

But then you, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a reciprocal relationship. And this is just ingrained in the culture. Like you're, you're, you're taught to be more And yeah, most Americans can't handle it. Oh, nobody smiles at me. You know, it's like, why do you need everyone to smile at you? What is wrong with you?

You have a poor character. You need to go to the Gulag and you will, you're, you will end up in the Gulag soon, your whole country, and there you. We'll learn and then you will get better. You will get healed. So that's what they have to look forward to.

Leafbox: So going back to your time in the States I think you studied, what did you study?

What did you, did you go to university? What's your educational background?

Rurik: Yeah, I was actually I was studying to be a diplomat, but that never materialized. And then I did a grad student thing in Russia.

Leafbox: In which, in philosophy in politics, what topic?

Rurik: I'd rather not say, but no, it wasn't in philosophy.

Convergence Theory and Geopolitics

Leafbox: So going back to your, well, we could talk about Russia and America and the differences and forever, but maybe we can start getting into some of your theses. And you have this model, I guess, the ant colony model. Maybe you can quickly summarize your. How you see, I guess, geopolitics, politics in general, and then your concept of convergence.

Rurik: Yeah, well, so basically the Soviet Union and the USSR and the USSA, as I call it, are basically run by the same tribe of people that took power. Well, really, I mean, they've always been around, but they really took power in the early 20th century. And in America, it lagged behind. Maybe I'm not sure they had already set up the federal reserve by the time by Woodrow Wilson's presidency.

So clearly they were quite powerful even back then. And convergence is basically these two different factions converging and realizing and coming back to their shared roots, which is actually a form of Trotskyism, the Soviet Union, was actually the sort of the deviation from the plan, as it were, and the idea was that the Soviet Union had to be brought back into the fold.

And they had to be brought back into the fold using Trotskyism as the main ideological driver. So we have this guy Andropov, real name Fleckenstein from a family of jewelers, and he becomes head of the KGB and he then. He, well, he, he then initiates these convergence reforms to bring the USSR back into the fold with the West.

This become known as perestroika, glasnost, whatever you want to call it. The implosion of the USSR was a controlled demolition. It was planned ahead of time, for many years. It was, like, there are literal plans out there, like, Operation M the Castigan reform plan, whatever. Point being, it was all planned.

There was no such thing as the collapse of the USSR. It wasn't some sort of democratic yearning to be free. No, it was literally a plan to bring them back into the fold. But then what happened was, their Western esteemed partners didn't want to share like they promised they would share. And so instead they started taking away more and more from their Eastern partners until finally, you know, we're at this point where you know, it was supposed to be an equal power sharing deal between East and West, but then it didn't work out that way.

And and so a lot of what Russia's. actions were could be seen as a form of playing hardball with the West, trying to get them to honor the original terms. So we're at this point now where you could say Putin is playing hardball and he's trying to basically get something out of the West that he was, that his predecessors were promised in the eighties and the nineties.

I hope that makes sense.

Leafbox: It does. I think we could go maybe up a layer and just, I think I read or I've heard on another podcast you frame the concept of convergence really well with the animal farm novel case of the pigs and the farmers. Maybe you could repeat that for my listeners.

Rurik: Yeah, so Animal Farm is about the split between the Trotskyite elite and the Stalinist elite.

And Orwell is a Trotskyite. That's the only reason why you were told to read them in, in school, like in American high school, they teach 1984 and I learned Animal Farm in middle school. So why would these governments want you reading these novels when you know, if it was really such a dissident novel. No, it's because it's a critique of Stalinism and it's a defense of Trotskyism.

Trotsky is Snowball the pig and he is also Emanuel Goldstein in 1984 and Orwell himself went over to Spain to fight on the side of the Trotskyites and they were betrayed by Stalin And that's why he has this, he went over to Spain to, to murder Catholics. Like he really hates Catholics. And that's why he made big brother, a big leering Irishman, you know?

And so his, his vision of the dystopia is basically, it's based on Catholicism.

So what happened is they got betrayed in Spain. So he develops a grudge against Stalin and he starts writing anti Stalinist books. And that's why, you know, that's why you know who Orwell is, and that's why you're forced to read him. So in Animal Farm, the plot is that there was this revolution of the farm animals, but towards the end of the book, after they've, you know, done a lot of heinous stuff, the pigs who are the cleverest and the leaders, they end up playing cards with the farmers secretly.

So even though they led the revolution in, in private, they were meeting with their so called enemies, the farmers, and they were all playing cards together.

Leafbox: And then, Rurik, this is the same model, then you apply that lens for the Ukraine and Russia.

Rurik: Yeah, obviously. So Ukraine is run by the former KGB people.

And in fact, there's no difference between the SBU and the FSB. And, you know, a lot of the FSB in Russia, Ukrainians, that just the other day, I think yesterday, a Ukrainian was killed in the FSB under very suspicious circumstances. So some, someone murdered an FSB officer, a Ukrainian. So, I mean, what I'm trying to say is that the FSB and the KGB, they were the same organization The SBU and FSB come from the same organization, which was the KGB.

They all know each other. They're all colleagues, even the, even the military command, the military brass of Ukraine. These are all Soviet educated people. I mean, what was it? Sirsky? He's, he's from Moscow. He's, he's literally a Muscovite. He's literally one of these Moscow, Mongolic, you know, invader or whatever.

It doesn't matter. You know, they, they somehow don't notice that about him. His mother lives in Moscow. The mother of one of the top Ukrainian generals lives in Moscow. She's like, he's a good boy, but you know, he's, he's, he's been confused about all these things. Doesn't he know about our shared Soviet history?

Yeah, I think he does know. I mean, he's not, you know, he's not a spring chicken. He's like, he was like, 60 years old when this whole thing kicked off. I think he's a, he's a Soviet creature, you know? So this, yeah, it's, it's all fake. We, I mean, I haven't written this article yet, but the KGB. We're the ones that set up this whole Bandera movement, and they, and it was supported by Moscow in its early years, and the KGB was actually shutting down and arresting pro Russians in Western Ukraine.

Why were they doing this? Well, because the KGB was anti Russian, and it was working to, detonate the USSR. That's what convergence is. They're working from the inside and I explain how they led the USSR into Afghanistan, how they destroyed the police force, how they freed hundreds of thousands of hardened criminals into the population while firing hundreds of thousands of police at the same time in the same stretch of time assassination campaigns.

Like literally hundreds of Soviet officials were killed by the KGB, drug trades, human trafficking, and setting up these secessionist movements all over the territory of the USSR. It was all the KGB. And and they did it obviously with this convergence agenda in mind, which was and, you know, my latest article was I explained how the KGB was to blame for Chernobyl as well, which is that and Afghanistan are listed as the two primary triggers of the collapse of the USSR.

So, yeah, I mean, that's, I don't know, I could go on and on and on, but is that a good thing?

Leafbox: It's an interesting, I think that's the main thesis I want people to get from your work, is that you have this model that the The farm animals and the farmers themselves are all, the elites are just in control of the farm animals.

They might show this false dichotomy, but they're the same team. And that same lens then applies to, you know, the hope of BRICs or the multipolar thing, or just any China versus the U S or any conflict. And I think that's a useful lens even for people to kind of step away their left, right. dichotomies and their team sport kind of preferences.

So I think that's a useful lens for people to look at politics or even general metaphysics.

Rurik: For sure.

Leafbox: I'm just curious how you got to that kind of awareness.

Red Pills and Personal Awakening

Leafbox: What was the first red pill? Was it moving to Russia? Was it Animal Farm, 9 11? What started your journey? I think somewhere you were talking about Free diving.

Is that what brought it to you? Kept going deeper and deeper in your free dives?

Rurik: No it was, it was the migrant crisis in Europe of 2000. Was it 14? Yeah, probably that. Well, I mean, before that I was already on like 4chan. I was on the politically incorrect board just as it was born. And you know, it was just, It was just a way to kill the time while I was in school and I was really bored.

But the main thing was

Leafbox: What were your politics before? Were you like, you, you've said that you were a socialist and then kind of a, were you a Bernie bro?

Rurik: Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, no, at that point, I mean, that's much later. No, I mean, obviously growing up I was basically doing, repeating what my parents said.

So that I was basically some sort of a, yeah, some sort of a left wing socialist. And in many ways, I still am. I mean, these, these labels don't really make much sense. But at the time America was talking about much simpler issues, like should we go invade Iraq or not? Well, probably not. That was the position of my family because it was a betrayal of the of the, so of, you know, the Soviet Union was the Soviet citizens were told that they had come to some sort of an agreement with America that they wouldn't be, you know, These warring blocks who would be funding proxy wars against each other, the whole, all over the world that a mere, like a period of peace would now be ushered in.

And the way that this would be ushered in would be with the UN and that, you know, they'd be, you know, countries would not be allowed to just do whatever they want. They'd follow these laws and everybody would basically behave. And, you know, Iraq was a huge wake up call to a lot of people because it was like, Okay.

So, you know, the Americans clearly have no intention. Why then did we dissolve our military block? If the Americans are just going to do whatever they want, you know, so that was a huge slap to the face, a huge wake up to my family who were American philes prior to that point, all of a sudden they realized, Oh my God, all that Soviet propaganda about the Americans being like bullies and never keeping their word and just starting wars all around the world, you know, that's actually true.

That's actually true.

Leafbox: So. It's funny. It just comes back to your concepts on friendship, the differences in values and friendship, right? If American versus maybe Eastern friendship models that you value,

Rurik: Well that, I mean, I only really understood that when I had left, when I was like, When I, when I was able to compare and contrast, if you're specifically talking about, and that's, that's a different kind of a red pill.

That's like a more, or, you know, red pills is usually used to apply to just like political stuff, but that's more like a personal life thing. With the, so Iraq was a big red pill for me and my family. Like we was like, Oh, that's interesting. And then to that, and then the financial crisis, actually a huge red pill.

Like we couldn't believe that they bailed out the banks. I mean, this was just sort of like. Are you kidding? I mean, and you know, we were listening to, to radio in the cars American radio on our drives and people were calling in and they were extremely upset and they were saying, don't bail them out.

You know, this let them, and of course they bailed them out. And this was like another huge shock because another. bit of Soviet propaganda was confirmed that America is run by these capitalist bankers. Yeah. That was a huge shock because when you're like, when you're a peasant and you're just like living, you know, your normal life in America, you don't see that you, you sort of realize how much better life is in the material sense, you know?

You don't live in a commie block. You can sort of live in a, in a better apartment building. You don't, you have more variety in like the stores, right? Americans used to be very civic minded. So, you know, when we moved to our first city the, the locals there were very helpful. Like this, a woman sublet the bottom floor of her house to us.

And she would just, she would just drive us around and help out. Now she wasn't American per se. She was also a daughter of immigrants, but still that kind of like sort of, and people didn't even close their doors in a lot of these neighborhoods that we lived in, in the nineties. I mean, that's, it's kind of hard to think of now, but there were neighborhoods in cities and stuff where the people didn't feel like they had to close their doors where they would like, say hello to you from the porch.

I mean, this is a huge shock. Coming from the nineties and late eighties of the Soviet Union for my parents. So that's what they really liked. You know, and they liked the Walkman's they like the rollerblading, you know, they liked Bono and they liked to sting and all that sort of thing. But the, the two thousands was when, you know, the wake up call, the party was over, people were sobering up.

So, okay, apparently these bankers can just rob the American people blind and they can't do anything about it. Apparently they can just start these wars everywhere and nobody can do anything about it. And then for me the the migrant thing was the big wake up call because I just I couldn't believe that like that was when I first learned about this massive population level migration that was going on and I I couldn't believe it I don't know why I just it really affected me personally and I realized and I and I was like How can how can I get involved?

How can I stop this? How can surely if more people heard about it surely if more people? You know, learned about this and what a scam it is and how they're not Syrians. And, and surely if people took more pride in their culture and in their heritage, this wouldn't be occurring. And so unfortunately I then spent a lot of time involved in these sort of anti immigration circles.

This completely false notion in my mind that people are just misled or that there's such a thing that like, you can affect politics if you, you know, Gather enough like minded people essentially around yourself. And that cost me a lot personally it cost me a lot financially. And it was a huge mistake to ever get involved in anything resembling populist politics and immigration restrictionism, you could say.

And Yeah. And that, that's where I really learned how the system is structured. If you say something that they don't want to hear, they will come after you. They'll come after your friends. They will they will punish you for having the wrong views. And for me, that was the final red pill about America.

This so called civic society doesn't exist. Participative democracy doesn't exist. The power, so called power of the people's will or the media, also a hoax. That's when I realized actually everything is run by gangs of secret transnational special secret police. And that's sort of the core paradigm or the, or the core view that I operate from when I write my blog now.

Leafbox: A lot to cover there. Just to go back to Iraq for a second, I think you've modeled that Saddam is kind of the model for Putin as well. Maybe you can just expand on that writing and how you see maybe the West in particular installing these leaders and then kind of using them and maybe some of the legacies there.

Saddam Hussein and American Influence

Rurik: Yeah, that one's real simple, but it's the hardest, conceptually, for people to wrap their heads around. Saddam Hussein was an American agent. This is so obvious. I mean, this is, this, I'm sure it used to even be on Wikipedia. This is, the Americans put him into power. And he's a clown, and he's a buffoon, and if you actually did a study of Saddam, it's fascinating.

Like, look at his, have you seen his artwork? Have you, have you ever,

Leafbox: yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, there's a lot of the Trumpian aesthetic as well to it, but yeah,

Rurik: just bafflingly bad taste. Like it's, he depicts himself as like a gladiator or like on a chariot or like, you know, it's like the tackiest thing you've ever seen.

You know, this is, and so he then there's other weird stuff he does. Like he models his personal guard after Darth Vader's costume, what it was a Fideakin. I think they were called basically. Yeah, yeah, look up Darth Vader Saddam Hussein troops. So he gave him these Darth Vader helmets. And they were supposed to be his elite guard.

It was just goofy. He was a goofy man. He was a buffoon. And that's exactly who the Americans like to work with. They like to pick some loud mouth megalomaniac with poor taste, hint, hint the American deep state that is, and they like to elevate them, put them into power so that they can destroy everything so that they can muck everything up so that they can obey orders from Langley or from some other underground base or something like that. And so that's the thing I said, I'm saying was put into power by the Americans and then the Americans went into invade him and topple him. How do you explain that? You know, that, that baffles the normie mind. They say, well, if that's true, why did they have, if he was an American asset, why did they invade Iraq?

They can't seem to wrap their heads around it. Well, it actually makes more sense to invade Iraq because you know, he's not going to fight back. Isn't it makes more, doesn't it make more sense to pick a fight on the playground with a kid who won't fight back than someone who will bite you and you know, cause you pain if, you know, so maybe people, there's actually a good side of people that they're so naive and they're so, and on some like basic, simple peasant level where it's like, why would I pick a fight, you know, with someone who, who's my friend or who works for me or who are hired?

That doesn't make sense. That's not honest. Yeah. Well, you need to understand how the elite operates, how they think and that type of logic makes perfect sense to them. So all over the world American, set up puppets are then toppled with American invasions or other countries invasions. So there's so many examples of this, you know, that the, I would say that the Iranian government is an example of this.

They haven't been toppled yet, but they definitely will be soon. And they're doing everything to help the Americans set this up eventually. But you can look at like Noriega, you can look at what's his name? Milosevic you can let all of these and, and Putin. Yeah.

The Role of Agents in Geopolitics

Rurik: Putin is the main guy who I cite and they behave like Saddam Hussein.

They behave like buffoons. They do things that are very bad for their country's interests, for their security interests. They don't resist the United States seriously. And when the time comes they will have so weakened their countries from within that the Americans basically can conquer it without firing a shot or without, you know, losing any, you know, Any serious casualties.

I mean, how many people died in the initial invasion of Iraq? It was like less than 300 or something. That's incredible. Giant country with I think the fourth largest military in the world at the time, thanks to Saddam Hussein, they took it. It was a cakewalk. So that's the role of these agents. And and then people say, yeah, but you know, they, they ended up killing them anyway.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, why do people work for the CIA if they know that the CIA has a, you know, A reputation for killing off the people who have worked for it. And the KGB as well. Why? I don't know. Maybe they think there'll be different. Maybe they think that they're special. Maybe they, they have no choice.

Maybe they think that they're, they're clever. All I know is that this is the observable reality and I'm not the only one who's observed it. This explanation is built on and elaborated on in depth with, by Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks book, where he explains exactly what I just did.

And then he explains the transitional phases and he gets more technical about it. But this is not, you know, unknown knowledge, it's not something new I'm bringing to the table. Maybe what's new is I'm, I'm applying it to Putin. Even though, again, Assange had already done that as well. So, even there, I'm just I'm borrowing from minds greater than my own.

Let's put it that way.

The Reality of Fake Wars

Leafbox: No, it's similar to Chomsky. There's a Chomsky and left kind of critique as well in the fake splits, right? Yeah, but I think it's interesting is that for some reason, the propaganda in the information warfare was so effective in the, at least in the West, that this Ukraine, Russia fake war that you call it, what's the term you use?

I think, is it the fake war or the, the war is real, but the, What is the term you use always? You have a great line. It's like the bodies are dead. Oh, no.

Rurik: Yeah. The wars are fake, but the massacres are real.

Leafbox: Correct. Yeah. Maybe you can expand on that. I just, it's hard for people to understand. They can see it in Iraq pretty clearly, I think.

But then applying it to Russia seems like there's a block there. And why is that?

Rurik: I don't know. I don't know why. They can see it with Afghanistan too, I think, right? I mean, most people now know about the opium fields and the fact that all these weird deals and the fact that Osama bin Laden, hey, here's another example, another American asset that they then invaded a country to depose, right?

So you're asking me, how is it fake? Why is it fake? Well, the whole time they're basically planning it out. In between themselves. And we know this because people like Shoigu have said that. So we know that they make deals about where the missiles will strike. They call ahead of time to tell them where the missiles will strike.

They called ahead of time before they launched this this new weapon, this so called Areshnik, right? This medium range nuclear capable missile. They called ahead of time. They told the Americans ahead of time that they were going to invade. They asked for permission, just like Saddam Hussein did when he invaded Kuwait.

He talked to the American ambassador who gave him permission or he interpreted it that way. And so he went into Kuwait. It turned out to be a giant trap. His military got smashed and he didn't fight back and he limps back into Iraq and he starts brutally repressing his people who are very unhappy with the way he handled Kuwait.

And that's probably what's going to happen with Russia next. They're already in these negotiations. They're already talking about surrendering some territory that they've taken. That is that Russia's taken back to Ukraine. Ukraine already has Russian territory in Kursk. They're already raining down NATO missiles and all the while where there's still, they're still yapping.

They're still making deals. They're still negotiating, you know, on the one hand, they tell us this is a battle to free the world from satanic Hitlerism or something like that. On the other hand, all their children are in the West. Their money is in the West. That's why they're so upset about sanctions.

They can't access their they can't access their what do you call them, their slush funds that they've, that they've stowed away in London or wherever. And you know, Peskov, the press secretary, his son was picked up by the police in London. He was running with some drug dealing paki gang. I mean, that's, that's pretty low.

I mean, and what's his name? Shapiro slash Solovyov, the number one propagandist on channel one who he's, his son also lives in London and he's a, he's some sort of a twink, a gay twink clothes model or something like that. Who dresses up like a woman.

Russian Media and Propaganda

Leafbox: So what are the different factions in Russian media?

I mean, in the West, you kind of have the, the normie model is Ukraine's the hero, Russia's the baddie. Then there's an alternative media that. Maybe Russia's a just battle for the multipolar order and in NATO, you know, this kind of, and then the third level is your position where, well, it's all a show, but what's the general vibe?

I don't speak Russian. What is the propaganda like in Russia? What is the different factions in Russian media?

Rurik: Well, there's, there's only two factions. There's Samizdat and there's a state owned media or, or oligarch owned. It's the two. There are a few opposition channels, but. They're not like opposition in the name of the people.

It's just a different faction. So the within power, there's traditionally two factions. There's the spook state,. They're called spook state secret police, you know, internal defense people. And then there's the oligarchs that's the traditional power split. However, obviously they cooperate.

Obviously they intermarry their kids with one another, go to the same schools, live in the same areas. So how much of that is real? I don't know, probably not much, but as in terms of the media, there are still a few independent, that means oligarch owned media channels, like oh, it's been a while.

I think it's NTV, yeah, NTV still oligarch owned, and then the rest the state seems to have a controlling share. Other than that, I don't really use these resources. I use samizdat, which means just. You know, bloggers, people who go on the internet people on telegram mostly. And all of them are extremely critical of the government.

So yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

Leafbox: How do you cut through the noise and propaganda then? Like telegram, why wouldn't the Russian propaganda state just flood those telegram channels with information or disinformation. How do you filter through it? What's the tool?

Rurik: I mean, you have, you have rebar, for example, that's a huge Z channel and the guy is a spook self confessed.

So he's an intelligence agent. You have Belarusian syllabic in the name means Belarusian spook. He's also A spook. He's also a spy. What do you call it? Internal police. And these are huge channels. We're talking rebar is, I think it's a million and a half. So yeah, obviously they, they, and that's sort of the main thing is that they've bought out portions of the so called alternative media.

And now it's what David Ike calls the mainstream alternative media. So you can go to your Joe Rogan and you can go to your Russell Brand or your Tucker Carlson in the West and you get the feeling that you're, you're dealing with an independent actor. You're not dealing with a network broadcast, but actually it's, it's these people are also controlled.

To a certain extent, they're also working with a certain faction. I mean, what is it, Russell Brand? Didn't he date a Rothschild daughter? Like he's, he used to date one of the daughters of the Rothschild family. And he's obviously some kind of a weird freak with sexual compromise hanging over his head.

So now he's, all of them are pushing this Jesus nonsense. I mean, Joe Rogan's doing these, letting all these biblical apologists, literalists onto his show. It's just been non stop with that. Tucker Carlson, who used to just say, yeah, I think it's all bullshit. Now he's doing these prayer events, group prayer events.

Russell Brand, just some sort of psychedelic nut job. Now he's constantly talking about Jesus, saving him. So, yeah. You know, whatever, I mean, kind of getting off topic here in Russia.

The Influence of Social Engineering

Leafbox: No, I think it's very important. Actually, the information landscape is the same. You're like I said, big O four, there's the matrix one.

And then this, what are the term you use? The alternative mainstream, the mainstream alternative term. Yeah. And then where would you position yourself? You're the sumizdat is that, or are you just, yeah, that's

Rurik: that's I'm by definition. Some is that some means myself and that means to create. So self created.

Leafbox: And you're one of the stalkers trying to get your readers to the zone, right?

So how do, how do I mean, how do you get readers to cut through the noise? What, what do you, how do they trust you? Why should they trust you? Why aren't you a spook?

Rurik: Well, well I've been, I mean, I was offered to be one. I was offered to be recruited and I've written about this as well. So, and there are no sides, but no, that's, that's, and so my perspective is that people think that they don't matter, which is kind of funny, but actually you would be surprised who they end up recruiting.

Like. At this point, I've known a lot of people who worked in some capacity for these people and they were all surprised that they got approached. It's like, I was nobody. I was just out of college or I was just, you know, doing an internship in high school. I just had a Twitter account with 30, 000 followers and, you know, they came to my door.

So it's very important to understand that we live in a spook state. Transnational spook state and the number one thing these people focus on is an ideological conformity. Just like you know in Christian Europe you would have the Inquisition and the church going around rooting out heretics And they were really really intent on like you would be burnt or you would be brutally murdered if you were not Catholic, right?

It was a big deal. It was total ideological conformity, just like in communism, total. And to, to, to, to maintain these systems, which are unnatural and anti nature, anti human nature, you have to have a secret police. You have to have people that will monitor the population and who will use terrorist tactics, basically, because terrorist tactics are, are the tactics of the minority that wants to take control over the majority.

And so they do it mostly with psychological weapons. So that's why they have these flashy mass killings, you know, flashy explosions, flashy false flag attacks, massacres of defenseless people at concerts and so on. This is an important element of it because they, they, this is a minority. And so they're using this.

As it's like Batman, right? He's, he's just one man, but he's able to terrorize an entire city because he's got high tech. Cause he's surveillance that can see everybody at all times. And because he, he, he uses this like psychological warfare that he learned from an organization of ninjas in the Himalayas, Right.

So he, he dresses up like a bat comes out at night. You know, he does all this spooky stuff. So it's the same concept. In fact, this Batman as a concept is a modeled after the Soviet intelligence. They had the same symbol. Do you know that you can look it up right now?

Leafbox: That's amazing. Yeah.

Rurik: The Batman symbol.

That's the symbol that was used for Soviet intelligence. It's, it's literally the Batman symbol. So a lot of, actually a lot of comics in the West were just Soviet propaganda. You can see that they were used to justify like World War II, get people into, I mean, what is Superman? If not like a retelling of Moses or something like that, or a mix of Moses and Marx, you know?

The Impact of Immigration on Identity

Leafbox: Do you think because you're multilingual and you had that kind of shock experience of moving from the USSR to America, did that kind of destabilize you to have this third position? That's one of my theses is that multilingual people are maybe possibly a little bit more immune to the propaganda than.

Rurik: Have you heard of Anatoly Karlin?

Leafbox: The name sounds familiar. Yes.

Rurik: So he was like the so called Russia guy writing for. Americans who is sort of giving the more like, not just RT and not just like, you know, like the more like people you wouldn't have heard of, like from within Russia. And he, he, he openly wrote that he, he believes he's a third culture child because he's also is from Soviet immigrants who moved to I think it was California.

And he felt, and he wrote out that like, he's always felt that he's a stranger. He doesn't fit in. So he moved back to live in Russia for a while in Moscow. And then he fled and he moved back to, I think, California and and he's mentally unstable. In fact, he's, he, he really hates me. Actually, he, he, he claims that I've I've, I've tried to kill him like that.

I've I've ordered people or like I've threatened to kill him. And basically what that was is he writes on Unz or he used to, and he's actually close friends with, or he used to be with Unz. It's all one little club in California out there. And he was writing some stuff, I don't even know what, when and people were giving him pushback in the comments section.

And this, this is, this man is a habitual drug abuser as well. And he, he came to the conclusion that I was threatening his life. Because someone in the comments he highlighted it, that, that someone had said something with something to do with a chainsaw. Anyway, it became a whole internal joke within Russia, within this scene that I was in a podcasting scene that Colin had lost his mind.

He also referred to Russians as subhumans. So he had this whole break with reality where he couldn't. Figure out who he was. He's also obviously Dagestani. He doesn't look Russian. He speaks Russian with the, with the, with an accent kind of speaks English with an accent as well. So I know a lot of basically why I'm bringing up this one case.

I know a lot of people just like that, who are these third culture kids, myself. Being one of them and pretty much all of them end up going crazy. So that's another argument against immigration and migration. You might be fine. Your parents might be fine because your parents already know who they are.

They have a set identity. And they just bring it over with them. So if your parents are from India, it's, they're just going to bring little India over with them. But the kids, they end up with this mishmash culture and yeah the culture of America is going to be extremely at odds with pretty much any.

Even slightly traditional culture from any other part in the world. And your kid is going to be under intense social pressure to adopt this new model. And you're going to be pressuring him in the other way. And he's literally going to feel like he's being pulled apart. So I'm sure you've experienced that.

Other people experienced it. Most people go insane from the. Split. And that's probably why we should stop letting parents immigrate to foreign countries and stuff. Like this is just a recipe for mental illness. And what do you call it? Dissociate what do you call it? Atomization and you know, people checking out of the culture and, and there's

Leafbox: definitely a bit, I, I, I, Yeah, I understand the disassociation where you have this kind of flexible identity that might be schizophrenic in nature, right?

There's kind of a feeling, but yeah, no, I, I totally, I'm a third, third culture kid too. So I can see both cultures, but then you're never really any of them. So that's pros and cons. You're an outsider always. So that's positive, but then you're never stable. So no, I agree. I, hopefully I don't go crazy, but my next question, Inverick, I was going to say with all your conspiracies, all your deep research, your free diving, how do you keep sane?

I mean, you can get out there and

Rurik: I'm not sane, I'm not saying I don't like participate in society. Like I don't, I'm not a part of it. Like there's no way that you can be this way. Think this way. And participate in society. You, you, you have to make a choice at some point. So I wouldn't say anybody who like knows about my lifestyle.

It's not normal. It's not saying like I travel nonstop. I have been for a very long time. I live alone and you know, I usually in the countries that I go to, I don't stay in the cities. I try to get out into the countryside. So I will end up like. Renting out cabins in like in the mountains of where the hills of like You know a country in Central Asia or I'll do the same in on some island nation.

Okay, and people are kind of You know, they find that a little bit weird. They always ask me, don't you feel lonely? And I'm like, I don't really understand that because you have the internet. Don't you? I mean, at any given time, I've got like 20 people writing me. Maybe that's because I'm a, because I'm, I'm a writer and a podcaster.

So I constantly have that form of pseudo interaction. But I don't like interacting with normies. I don't really like going out to bars and having chit chats with people. I, I think that's hell. Like, I'm so glad I have the internet. I'm so glad that we have telegram and. And all these different I'm so glad that people have blogs.

The people I like to talk to are people whose blogs I've read or whose YouTube channels I've watched, and I've reached out to them and I've been able to bond over a very niche interest, you know? And so it's people, I respect people who I want to learn something from.

The Role of Male Friendships

Rurik: And that is also gets back to our concept of friendship.

This is also an important thing about male friendship is that you have to, it has to be constructive. And for most men, that means you're working on something together. So you, you share a profession where you're in some sort of a battalion together, or you're in prison together, or you're in school together, right?

So you're cooperating together. That's what men do. We cooperate. And that's the basis of male friendship. But modern male friendship, it's, you're just supposed to sit around gossiping all the time. And so that's why I don't really like having normie friends. If you go out with these people, they, they act like women.

They just sit around gossiping and, and hopefully you'll know who they're gossiping about. But this doesn't strike me as a very masculine or very productive use of one's time. So even though, you know, I've, I've, the option is always there to try and integrate back into normie society. Do I really want to sit around talking about nonsense when I could be one on one developing a relationship with someone who I respect in their field, who I believe contributes to my knowledge of something or, or my hobby that I'm doing.

You know what I mean? So. This is this whole mentality. This approach to relationships is very not compatible with modern society, which is frivolous, which is frankly, I think it's degrading to spend time around people like that. And so I don't do it. Thankfully, I don't, I'm never, I don't work in an office, so I don't even have to, you know, put up with that aspect.

And that's a whole other can of worms. So

Leafbox: it's funny, Rurik, it's just coming, coming back to Stalker, the film, there's a scene in the early in the beginning where the writer has that girl he's trying to impress. And he's like, Oh, I think she can come to the zone. And the stalker is, I don't know if you remember this, the stalker is so pissed off and just kind of tells her to get in the car.

So it just reminds me in parallels with what you're saying.

Rurik: Yeah.

The Role of Women in Modern Society

Rurik: Women, women, that's the tough one. They're they're just I mean, one good thing about modernity and like just all these crazy social engineering experiments that they've started pulling on us in the last decade or so is that the mask on women, this veneer has really fallen. And we see them for what they really are or what they, like the Joker would say, you know people are only as good as you, as society allows them to be. So society stopped trying to enforce any goodness on women. And now we see what, what, what, what was being restrained, what was being chained up, what was being kept under wraps.

This insanely selfish, destructive completely just disgusting behavior of these women and it's in every country really it's just they'll they'll do this They will destroy to the extent that they are allowed to destroy I mean, it's like a guinea pig, you know, if you put anything in front of it, it will gnaw into it You know, if you put electrical wires, it will gnaw into the wires and electrocute itself you put poison It'll eat the poison these things just Have a death wish that's women, you know, you put carcinogenic inks that mar their otherwise beautiful skin and they will doodle all over themselves when permanent marker essentially and And you know just make themselves look disgusting.

They you give them a sharp object They'll try and jam it into their nipples or jam it into their ear lobes or something like that They will jam it up their nose. No, why does it? Does it make you look more beautiful? Does it? No, just some sort of sick, self destructive habit. You try and build a relationship with them.

They will destroy that. You plant a tree, they will cut it down. You build a house, they will burn it down. That's actually a Russian aphorism. A man is his, a man's purpose is to plant a tree, build a house, and then something, a third thing. I don't know. And then, and then the woman's purpose is to cut down the tree, burn down the house and destroy the third thing as well.

So yeah, I mean, these people, these. They're psychos, they're out of control in other countries of the world, so called third world, you see this transition happening now you see what they're becoming, and you realize, this is definitely part of the globalist agenda, this is definitely social engineering, and pretty much all of the bad stuff that they're doing to us is done almost exclusively through women, women, gays criminals.

This is the traditional coalition of the revolutionaries of the social engineers. They always rely on these three groups of people to destroy everything. That's how they took power in Russia back in the in the, in the Bolshevik years, that's how they took control of Rome when they, when Rome adopted Christianity.

You can, that's sort of a main theme in the blog. You can look at these perennial things, look at things in the perennial way. Try not to focus on whether the president's name is Obama, but try and focus on what kind of, I don't want to use the word archetype, but you know, like what perennial phenomenon is at work here.

You know, people have commented about Trump and how this is a form of Caesar ism or something. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't think the story of Caesar is real, but what it really is, is it's, it's the eternal pitting story of populism and how it gets so easily subverted and how it's so easily used against the people.

Who tried to bring it up in the first place. And you go down the list of, you know, what, what is Putin an example of? And you can find these perennial phenomenon. What is the secret police? The equivalent of, okay, that's obviously the priest class, right? You can find these things in ancient Mayan society.

Things happening now, you can find it in ancient Aztec society. Things happening now, you can find it in early medieval society. You can find it in ancient Japan. You can find these common. Structures, these common power structures, these common social engineering techniques, and that's another huge part of the blog is I focus on explaining the main social engineering technologies that have been used by the elites since Plato.

And that's as far back as I can take it. I believe Plato invented a lot of modern society as we know it now.

Leafbox: No, I think that's I think you call it the noble lie, right? The atheist tyranny. Maybe you can summarize that really quickly and then I want to go into maybe some solutions that you offer and your explorations of I don't know if you're having a religious revitalism or what your kind of spiritual progression is.

Rurik: Okay, well, so I'll just offer the solution up first. Just do the opposite of what Christianity, Plato, communism, what have you do. You have to understand, well, you can start with Plato because that's, that's important. Most people are not smart enough to do this though. So. You could always just read my blog, guys.

Or you could, I don't know, work in a mineshaft or, or homestead. A lot of people should not be talking about politics. And then they get mad when I try to, like, explain to them these things because they're, you know, they're like, They can understand the simple things and they can understand the simple so called solutions.

And when I say it's probably not going to work, they get mad because, you know, they can't do anything else. And it's like, well, you shouldn't be doing anything else. Any, any involvement that you could possibly have in politics can only make things worse. Okay. People like you were not meant to vote. People like you were meant to work in mineshafts.

That is your role in life. If you wanted to be someone who was politically minded, you should have been incarnated that way. I'm sorry, but in this lifetime you are a day laborer. Like that's the only, you're not cut out for understanding this stuff. Okay. So if you don't understand what I'm saying, it's because you are of a lesser sort and you need to know your place and you need to be in a mineshaft and you have no place whatsoever in this discussion.

That's very important to get out front comes off as like elitist or snobbish because it is, and, but it's very important, but it's also true. Like, it's very important to understand that. People, you're not going to have some idiot like farmer, who's going to be running your, like your, your movement to, to save us from the globalist menace or whatever, you know, you actually need smart people.

You need extremely smart people. You need people who are called to this sort of thing. People who think in these terms, people who can wrap their head around these concepts. I'm not a chemist. You know, if a chemist starts talking to me about chemical things, if I'm smart, I'll shut up and listen to him because.

He's got the mindset. He's got the know how he knows his field. And, but, but politics and religion, everyone thinks that they can participate, and this is an illusion. You can't, you should treat it like you would nuclear physics, nuclear physics, or something like that. Are you, do you have an opinion on nuclear physics?

No, of course not. It's not your field. Same thing here. So what is the solution? Well, you can just look at the past. And if we're talking, if we, if you, if you. Except my Gibbons that we are under the control of let's, let's let's make a parallel. Let's say that it's you're up under Catholicism and there were a lot of resistance.

There was a lot of resistance to the control of the church. How did the, how did it all end up? Like how did they end up overthrowing this hegemony of, of the, of Rome? You should probably study that because we're dealing with the similar phenomenon. It's just wider in scope. You have a transnational ideological secret police.

A spook state that is monitoring people and that is pushing forward this insane religious ideology on people hunting down heretics destroying them financially, in some cases, physically, and their goal is this universal Catholic, you could say world order, globalist world order. Plenty of parallels.

So if you're going to resist that, you're going to probably need a nativist uprising against it. So how, at that point, you're, you're asking the question of how, you know, I guess it's hard to, Even get to that point with people. Like most people are really just stuck on. Like I was having this conversation with this Canadian guy and he kept talking about how basically we just have to do what Gandhi did.

It's like, I mean, listen, man, you can, you can go on a diet tomorrow. It's not going to change anything. Gandhi was part of Fabian.

Leafbox: He's a Fabian also probably. Right. And yeah, yeah, he was, yeah. Theocracy and probably a British agent. So yeah, the red pills just never end.

Rurik: So yeah, you're not, you're not going to, you're not going to get, you're not going to, also, also these leftist methods are all feminine, and this is Kaczynski, he wrote about that, you know, like lay down in front of oncoming traffic, chain yourself to a tree get up in the face of the police that they beat you with their clubs or spray you with their whatever, hose you down starve yourself, now this is all feminine, right?

Like hurt yourself so that daddy feels bad. You know, this is, this is nonsense. It doesn't work. I mean, it's government's not actually your daddy, you know.

Leafbox:

Plato's Influence on Modern Society

Leafbox: Just to summarize from my understanding, you think Plato's the cause of all the Western, basically, problems, because he suggested a atheistic replacement of, not religious, kind of mysticism and natural soul connection, right?

You have this internal drive of soul and moral order to something larger than ourselves.

Rurik: No, no, it's simple. It's simpler than that. He designed the spook state. And he gave it a philosophical ideological grounding, sure. And he basically said, we're going to have a man made society.

Leafbox: Versus a God, a God made society.

Rurik: Yes, yes, exactly. So we're going to make up the truths as we go along. And when humans make up their truths, all human truths are just based on who has power. That's it. You know, this is, this is the great conclusion of post modernism, right? Like you can, you can take a puke on a canvas and hang it up in the museum wall, and if a celebrity endorses it, it'll sell for millions.

Post modernism is, is actually the ideology of, of Russia because that was what the ideological Tsar, the great Cardinal that is Vladimir Vladislav or Vladimir, I forget, Surkov. He was the guy who sort of engineered Putin's PR. And he, he, he, he knew, he knows all this stuff. He talks about it. He's like a, he's like an art house kid, a theater kid, a drama club kid.

And he explains, listen, you can make people believe It's just a matter of clever application of technology. So you can basically get them to believe the complete lies. And then on like a, on an occult level, if you, some of them say that like, if you believe in these lies long enough, you can make them become the truth through power of the power of basically technology, the power of power, the power of money that you can sort of will into reality and new realities.

I don't actually believe that, but that's what, this is the kind of, this is the main PR guy of Putin who says, I'm a professional liar. I, I create illusions and I create something out of nothing. I am literally a wizard and there's a film about him. It's by the famous author or based on the book of the famous author Pilevin, who was also an insider within these circles, who's kind of a Tarkovsky a modern Tarkovsky.

And he wrote a book called The Generation P. It's the Generation Putin. And the movie is out there. You can find it, I think, on YouTube and you should watch it. And it's basically about how some PR manager is hired by the Kremlin to engineer the rise and the image of the Kremlin and the Kremlin is depicted as obviously evil and decrepit and all this sort of thing, but his job is to make them seem good and patriotic.

And he succeeds to a certain extent. It's the story of. It's I wrote about it on the blog. It's very important but you can have fun with it by just watching the movie generation P. So I don't know how we got on that, but the solutions, right. Is that what you wanted to ask? Yeah. Yeah.

Leafbox: Yeah. I want to see what your model is. There seems to be a spiritual element. I don't know if you're more into the.

Rurik: Right, right. So just, just, just do that. Just figure out what Plato was trying to do. So Plato is the first original social engineer, kind of postmodernist. You could say it's funny. It's like the, the, the cycle completes the snake eats its own tail.

And he basically explains that, bro, listen, we're going to set up this secret police, the guardians, and they're just going to like kill anybody who doesn't go along with our thing. We're going to indoctrinate the youth. We're going to take the kids away from their parents. We're going to set up this intensely stratified society.

And that's it. It's going to be completely human based in the sense that like, it's going to be based on nothing other than what motivates. Humans, which is just power, right? Like it's going to be a mixture of carrots and sticks. That's how we're going to make our utopia work. This has become the template for every single social, you know, engineering experiment since then.

He's the first social engineer. And he even explains in detail how to trick people, how to use these psychological tricks on them, how to, how to get all, you know, and so what you have to understand is he's also, complaining about stuff, which he sees as an obstacle to his agenda. And so my solution was literally came about from just studying Plato and saying, let's do the opposite.

Let's figure out what he thinks is a destabilizing element. So let's, let's say that you have a utopia, Plato's utopia. You're basically in the movie by George Lucas.

Plato's Dystopia and the Role of the Elite

Rurik: I am. X or IX, THX 117 or something, you know, you know that, you know, 1137

Leafbox: I think it is, yeah, everyone's bald and eating pills.

Rurik: Yeah, that's, that's basically Plato's society and you have the centurions in that society who are the guardians and they're just these weird automatons that walk around and enforce it.

Take any dystopia. Basically, and that's Plato's utopia. And how do you, how do you get out of that situation? How do you get out of this situation where the main power of the elite is the secret police that uses ideological brainwashing and that's, that, that stratifies society and sets it against each other.

How do you basically, what I'm trying to say is that. Even getting this far is too much for, for pretty much.

Leafbox: Well, I I'm there. So I want to know what the solutions are. I want to know what you think the I follow where you are. So let's work through them.

Rurik: Well, one last, one last qualification for everybody else who doesn't.

So this means I'm not talking about voting for someone else, right?

Leafbox: Like you got to go deeper. Yeah. You're past the second matrix

Rurik: and it's not about holding a hunger strike and it's not about civil disobedience. Okay. We're going a little bit deeper here, right? And so, yeah. Okay. So we're at this great.

I've said, I've set the stage.

Historical Rebellions Against Platonic Projects

Rurik: The reason why I'm, well, I'm waffling and mumbling and trying to buy time is because it sounds kind of crazy when I'm about to propose, you can study basically these nativist rebellions. There've been plenty in history. There've been plenty of uprisings against similar platonic projects.

I believe the Catholic Church was a platonic project, and the Church itself says that we're completely compatible with Platonism. They just flipped the order. You know, they just say that Plato came later, and he just, he was, he affirmed all the truths that were in the Bible. I say that Plato wrote the Bible.

And you got the order flipped. But so look at the rebellions against, for example, Catholicism. Look at the rebellions in China against Confucianism. Because Confucianism is a form of Platonism. It's literally the Chinese version of Platonism. And, and you look at what these systems try to do.

The Role of Mysticism in Social Control

Rurik: So, they try to ban mysticism.

That's the key thing. And this is where I lose even more people. But this is a key foundational thing that these people are trying to do. They're, they're complaining a lot about the, the publics, peoples, peasants, proles, whatever, how they interact with the metaphysical world. They mean this quite literally and they mean it in like and, and they're, they're concerned about its implications for social engineering.

So for example, if you believe in the gods or whatever, this is going to be your like compass. This is going to be your orienter. So if they're going to come out and say, Hey, we're going to, we have a new society now. We just did a revolution and now we're going to have new rules in this society. We're going to have.

Okay. You know, we're going to have communal apartments. We're going to ban kitchens. We're going to have one unit gender, one unit sex, there's no gender differences or whatever, just what all these revolutionaries have done ever since Sparta, because that's the model. You're going to be like, well, no, I have a totally different orientation. Like I have a totally different set of principles. In fact, these principles are not applicable to human intervention or human change because they come from the metaphysical world. I am trying to create a society that is based on metaphysical truths that orients itself around the metaphysical as the highest.

And then everything has to be sort of reflections or already call it trickle down from that. And as on a personal level, I also model my life and my, my views and everything like that. Based on the metaphysical first and how it trickles down. So this is a problem. How do you deal with that? Well, you have to cut people off from the metaphysical.

You have to cut people off from being able to access these truths and from using that as a, as like a, as an orienter for their lives. So you have to set up an artificial religion. That's Christianity for you. Where you have these priests, basically bureaucrats that stand in the way between you and God, and they tell you what to do.

What you're, how you're allowed to interact with the, with the higher realms. And of course, you're actually not even interacting with anything metaphysical because the whole point of platonic based religions is to deny people access to the metaphysical. It's like an Indiana Jones switching out the golden idol for a bag of sand.

That's what, that's what it is. Platonic religion is about. It's about empty rituals, cargo culting. It's about going through the motions of something that used to actually work, that used to actually bring you in contact with greater metaphysical forces, which were a source of truth, which were a source of knowledge, to a source of power, and that's all been swapped out.

You're literally just drinking wine. And you're literally just munching on a cracker. You can call it whatever you want, but that's what's happening. You've been baited and switched. You're not actually imbibing the body of your God. There were rituals before that on which this one is based in which they actually did the thing in which.

The ritual actually worked and you literally did ingest a little bit of the Godhead in you, like you actually did have a metaphysical experience. You had a mystical experience and it would actually have effects on your life. So whatever, long story short, Plato is really worried about Dionysian rebellions.

He believes that that there's these evil titanic forces, the forces of chaos. And that the peasants are tapping into it with their Dionysian rites.

Dionysian Rites and Music as Rebellion

Rurik: What are Dionysian rites? They're basically ecstatic dancing. It's a certain kind of music. Polyharmonic. It means warbling. Like, you know, like peasant warble or throat singing or something polyharmonic.

Poly, many, harmonic. So, Plato wants to change the music. He bands. All the different kinds of music except simple, martial, propagandistic, jingoistic, commercial, basically music. So, you know, this, you know, the, maybe, you know, this, the famous fife and drum of the, of the British army. If you ever watched a movie about like colonial armies, you know, they're marching to their deaths, like the Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon.

They're like walk, walking into a wall of lead and they're playing on the flute. And it's the simple beat one note, pretty much repeated over and over and over again. And it gets people into this robotic, like March, March, March, March, not thinking, going to your death, going into the meat grinder. That's the kind of music Plato and Aristotle like it's very, like people don't know this aspect of Plato.

They want to ban representative art. They want to ban 3d art. They want to smash the idols, you know, very iconoclast why do they want to destroy the shrines? Why do they want to destroy these statues of gods? I did a podcast about basically statue mancy, how these statues and how these so called idols were used by people to have mystical experiences with their deity.

That's all gone under Plato, these dances, these, these Dionysian revels that has to be banned. And it gets even more in depth in neoplatonism where they explicitly explain a lot of the stuff that they're banning. And it gets even more in depth in Kabbalah where they explicitly explained that the the Gentiles the goyim have access to these things that they call the Titanic or the Nephilim powers.

And these are the powers of chaos and rebellion, and they will always. This is also the source of the whole original sin thing. Original sin is interpreted as like some sort of a inherent, this is proof of our fallen nature. Every time you jack off, basically you, you, you condemn your soul to hell.

And that's how we mostly now interpret original sin. But if you look at the ancient mystery cults, original sin actually meant that we had partial Titan blood in us. So the Orphics, for example, they believe that we were made fashioned out of Titans. And if you read the book of Enoch, which is the basis of Kabbalah, The claim is that basically white people, Caucasians are part Nephilim.

Our blood is tainted. That's our original sin.

The Metaphysics of Rebellion

Rurik: Anyway, the point is that they believe that these abilities that this mindset that Our access to the numina or the metaphysical realms, that this is a source of instability and that it could lead to rebellions. And if you study every single major peasant uprising, slave uprising, native uprising, you will find that it was Dionysian and, and.

So I recently did a post about the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England, and it was an anti Christian, anti church, that is, rebellion. They murdered priests, they burnt churches, they destroyed theological texts. It was a good time. And they were doing dancing the whole time. These revelries you can read about it.

It's recorded and this is a thing that was used against them that they were doing these, this ecstatic dancing to get people riled up and they were accused of witchcraft, of being led by witches and warlocks. It works. Okay. I mean, in Rome, you had a day a bucket. That's the same thing. You had a Dionysian rebellion and the Roman authorities at the ban all Dionysian based religions.

These are Titanic religions. That is Whatever, it gets a little bit too complicated. It's fun. I will write all about it.

Personal Practices and Beliefs

Leafbox: So, Rurik, are you practicing any of these practices or are you following these kind of paganistic religions or what's your personal belief?

Rurik: Yeah, but pagan, pagan, pagan is a strange thing.

It can mean anything. Like, do I worship Thor or Zeus? No. I don't think we should be worshiping any gods. What the claim is, is that we have a rebellion gene in us, or we have some sort of rebellic, tainted blood, or we have some sort of rebellious nature, okay? That's what the Orphics say. It's what Plato says.

It's what the Kabbalists say. It's what the Neoplatonists say. They say that there's this, this poisoned seed within us that could, that could, at any time it could come out. And how can it come out? Well, basically if we start wearing makeup like the Joker. By the way, do you know that basically like the, the makeup of the Joker and the Joker film, it's, it's literally about this.

The Joker represents what? Anarchy, rebellion, chaos, right? And Batman is, is the secret police, literally Soviet secret police using technology and terrorism to maintain order. And Joker literally his, his face paint is, is is reminiscent of the Nephilim. So the Nephilim. Or the Titans and every single native culture around the world have this sort of white face with the red, the Ronald McDonald look to them.

In fact, clowns, as we know, them came from Bali in the 19th century, a freemason came to Bali and he saw the locals worshiping a local so called demon called the upside down demon and it looks like the modern clown. And so the circus, which was a free Masonic convention is basically a mass initiation, right?

And so the clowns are actually playing. and the role of these demons and they're modeled after this Balinese demon. And there,

Leafbox: when you say Bali is in Indonesia, right? Just to,

Rurik: yeah. Okay. It was, yeah. It's a weird lore. Basically, if you look into the Nephilim, the Titans what Plato was writing about, what the Orphics were talking about, what the Masons were talking about, what the Kabbalists say, they're all anti Titan and they all believe that humanity or certain, certain portions, especially basically Caucasians are tainted, that they have this thing where they don't appreciate this amazing world order that they've built and that they're always causing troubles and they're always trying to rebel. And so they that's what you get in Plato. That's what you get. I mean, I swear to God, just, just, you can use AI, just go on AI and ask what are the significance and what are the implications of, and you will find, and it's true.

It really is true. For example, in America, the native uprisings the Sioux were already on reservations. They had surrendered without a fight. And the shamans came to them and taught them the ghost dances, which are nothing more than Dionysian ecstatic ritual dancing. And because of these dances, they spoke with the spirits of the earth and the spirits of their ancestors.

This is, this is an official retelling, right? And they immediately launched a rebellion, a successful one. They broke out of the reservations. They destroyed Custer's army. You know, these are basically Stone Age primitives and they put up a good fight. You can read about Tecumseh and how did he unite the tribes of the natives and their whole war against the encroachments of the Americans.

He was a shaman. He literally did a bunch of the typical shamanic stuff. This is all recorded. You can read about this stuff. You can read about the Yellow Turban Rebellion. In China, who were the yellow turbans? They were led by Taoist medicine. Men, the Taoists are literally the basis for the Jedi. It's these long haired kimono wearing they call themselves immortals.

And they claim that they can live forever and they have these mystical powers. And so the peasants were basically raised up into a lather. There is plenty of instances of these, you know, rights and this sort of attitude. And they launched the greatest peasant rebellion probably in history. I don't know.

It's probably huge. It's China. There's millions of them over there. And that was the Yellow Turban Rebellion. You go down, man. There's like, how was the Haitian Revolution started? I'm not saying I support the Haitian Revolution. It was a voodoo woman. A voodoo woman kicked it off. How did she do it? You can read about the ritual that she did, how she went into a frenzy and channeled some spirit.

I forget the name of the spirit. It's so interesting.

Leafbox: Rurik, not to interrupt, but do you believe these literally or do you see these as kind of I'm just curious.

Rurik: Well, me personally, yeah, I do believe it literally. I, I, I, I can cite literally example after example, after example of peasant uprisings being motivated or pushed by some sort of strange frenzy religious religious frenzy, the Protestant uprisings, for example, all of them are named after an initiation technique, right? You know, Quakers, you know, what is it's a quaking. You shake yourself into a frenzy. Okay. Shakers, same thing. You had people that would dig holes until they were exhausted and this would trigger an altered state.

You had people that would go naked into the snow to trigger hypothermia so that they have visions. People being drowned in the rivers and then resuscitated with CPR so that they would be reborn with the Holy Spirit in them. This sets off the most bloody the bloodiest war in Europe's history. I mean, I think 30 percent of the population died in these religious wars.

The Protestant uprisings, the peasant uprisings, this is serious business. These are people led by charismatic shamans, basically.

Leafbox: And they, you don't see them as different models of the social engineers.

Rurik: No, the social engineering I mean, obviously all of this ended up being subverted or ended up being brought back, brought back to some sort of normality, I guess you could say.

But in many ways they, they did succeed. They did overthrow Catholicism. You know, half of Europe is free because of that Protestantism ended up being not much better. But know, you could still, I mean, you have to, you know, what is it? The perfect is the enemy of the good. My point is that if you're going to really like, look at like root causes of things and you really like study the foundational texts, you'll find with Plato, for example, that his main thing is that he really doesn't want a society that's in touch with these metaphysical things.

So you have to create this total artificial construct. This is the birth of social engineering. A society that doesn't need social engineering is one that doesn't, isn't reliant on social engineering. On these artificial systems for finding meaning for finding structure for finding something to do with itself, right?

And the only way you can maintain artificial systems is through the use of is basically coercion and coercion is amplified through use of technology. So now we have surveillance technology, for example or, but just back then, you know, being, being Better organized or, or having a network of spies that report to you or whatever.

So if you have, if you set up an artificial system, the more artificial your system is, the more coercion it needs, the more resources it needs to spend on coercing people and the more. The chances are of the spring springing back and there being a resistance to it. I'm just trying to explain how traditionally resistances that have had been completely bottom up, completely grassroots, no oligarchic or elite support, what they look like, what power they tapped into.

You can read a lot of literature, revolutionary literature, modern literature among both the left and the far right. And all of them are wrong because they misunderstand how resistance is formed at a grassroots level. They're both secular. So the Marxist interpretation is that socioeconomic factors, you know, wages don't get paid or inflation is too much or something like that.

People get fed up and they, they riot because they basically want more money. And the right has actually adopted this worldview, and so that's why they call themselves, a lot of them, accelerationists. Where they say, the worse things are, the better, because it will wake people up from their comfortable lives, and then one day they'll all run out onto their porch with their rifles in hand, and they'll overthrow this globalist government, or whatever.

Right? This is wrong, okay? So neither side understood the actual trigger, the actual way people's minds work, the actual dimension in which we are operating here. So I'm writing a book about everything we just talked about, about, and I'm going to call it the metaphysics of rebellion. And in this, I'll explain literally, you know, what the, how Plato, how Plato conceptualized the rebellion, what was the fuel of this rebellion?

How is it, You know, because if you believe in metaphysics, if you believe that as above, so below, there is a connection between the below and the above, then you have to find a metaphysical root to everything. So everything has this form, you could say up in the metaphysical realm of which things sort of, we are just a shadow or we're just a trickle down effect of that.

Right. So. You can take any concept like truth and you would have to say, okay, there has to be a metaphysical principle of truth. And that's where we derive our ideas of the truth from. So you can do that for every concept, including rebellion. So there has to be a metaphysical basis for rebellion. And the Greeks of course, like to anthropomorphize everything.

So obviously the anthropomorphization of wisdom is Athena or, you know, of, of, of some other thing is some other God or goddess, right? And so the anthropo, anthrop. Anthropomorphization of the concept of rebellion is Prometheus, and in the Christian tradition, unfortunately, it's probably Lucifer. So that's what the, the concept of the metaphysics of something means, right?

Like what is the, what is the higher principle that is at work here? And you can, you can sort of anthropomorphize it by giving it a human name and, and sort of a myth behind it so that people understand it better.

Leafbox: But yeah, how, how deep into your book are you into this? I mean, 50 percent done or what percentage are you done?

And my second question is coming back to your own personal work. Do you, are you practicing some religious practice? Are you meditating or what, what's your Skywalker technique right now? How are you static dancing, doing psychedelics? What are you trying to get to the mystic forces? How are you getting in touch with that?

Rurik: So, the, the first thing to understand is, I believe that there is a divide. You know how some people say there's white and black magic, right? These are moralistic terms, though, and moralism is subjective. The divide that I cut is between Olympian versus Titan but the Neoplatonists cut it between Goetia and Theurgia.

Okay, so the Neoplatonists, building off of Plato, are extremely against Goetia, which they then start referring to as sorcery. And sorcery is basically New Age stuff. It's like meditation, like you said. It's like what do you call it? Yeah. Just imagine Kundalini or something like that, where you focus on your own internal energies, lucid dreaming, astral projection, that sort of thing, internal human based power.

It's considered tainted or evil because humans are tainted and evil because we have original sin, which, if you dig a little bit deeper, you'll find that the concept of original sin seems to relate to the fact that we have Titan blood. Again, in this metaphorical or metaphysical sense, okay? And so if you're going to be relying on human power, or if you're gonna be relying on the power of yourself, the power of your own mind, the power of your own body, you're drawing from an evil tainted source.

So this is bad. This is black magic. Now this is sorcery. The good kind of magic, according to these guys is when you appeal to the gods, when you do a theurgy, that's where we get the word, I guess. And what that involves sacrificing, like taking a goat and like killing it, maybe taking a human baby and killing it maybe ritually circumcising an infant's teeth infant's penis with your teeth, like some religions do.

Maybe that's a part of it. So there's definitely different.

Leafbox: Are you, I mean, are you engaged in some type of non dual meditation practice?

What, what's your general, I'm, I'm curious on your own personal practices that, what are you doing?

Rurik: I do lucid dreaming. I do astral projection. I work really hard to develop a much more simplified system of quickly getting people into altered states. So I'm basically creating a system that I hope to start teaching and but yeah, I don't do any of that.

I don't wear any robes. I don't kill anything I don't try and talk to spirits. I don't do any of that stuff I'm just focused on myself and sort of expanding human potential. I guess you could say

Leafbox: Have you explored any of the Eastern like Buddhist techniques or meditation techniques?

Rurik: Yeah, they're not, they're not that good.

Buddhism is, is one of these, some say was created by Plato as well, that there's a group of Buddhists that were in Alexandria. It's an interesting thesis, but it definitely fits. Buddhism is anti Buddhism in its original form is iconoclast. It's anti mystical. It bans 90 percent of actual techniques. In fact, what the, it's straight up anti Titanic because.

The original Buddhists, have you ever played Pokemon or have you, do you know the concept of Pokemon?

Leafbox: Yeah, the game, yes. Yeah,

Rurik: you go around the world and you capture these local spirit monsters or whatever with your Pokeballs. That's what the Buddhist monks were doing. They were going around the world, capturing local spirits and sealing them away in mandalas.

Or, or, or creating these prisons for them, which are called Shrines nowadays. So that's what they were doing. They were going, they were de-paganizing the world. They were just going around destroying pagan sites. It was a very brutal movement. Originally over time though, as I explained the original river revolutionaries mellow out and they start adopting a lot of the native traditions.

And this is a huge problem for the fundamentalist. This is what Trotsky writes about. This is what I mean by permanent revolution. Okay. So for example, with Christianity, right, they show up and they basically destroy The native European way of life, like the Bolsheviks did. But over time, you know, we have saints now we have angels now, and they've taken on the aspects of obviously pagan practices.

So even this insane Hebrew fundamentalist terroristic ideology known as Christianity ended up adopting decent native normal elements that are somewhat rooted in truth. And that's why you needed Protestantism to come along, not the, the peasant rebellion part, but like the, the theological reforms or the return to fundamentalism.

So that's the problem is that eventually you will get this assimilation process occurring and the, and this artificial, very heavily, like it's, it's hard to maintain an artificial system because it takes so much energy, so much lying, so much of this constant you know, fighting against the grain and eventually over time, natural systems reassert themselves. And this is the great problem that Trotsky is grappling with. And then that's why he writes Permanent Revolution. And he explains how do you make the revolution permanent? How do you make these social engineering changes permanent? And he explains that, you know, periodically you have to repeat the revolution.

So periodically you need to return to fundamentalism. So you needed a Protestant reformation from time to time. You need a, you know, a second communist revolution from time to time. So that's how you keep, how you keep your system pure. Right. So anyway

Leafbox: anyway, this is all very fascinating. I just curious how you're, I'm, I'm into the woo stuff and to this more metaphysical stuff, the politics kind of bores me in a way.

Once you get past that. So I'm curious, what do your readers feel about this? You said you lose them with all this or what, what do you,

Rurik: well, I mean, I mean like, listen, about 40 percent of my readers hate me. Like they, they're like, they believe in the Putin stuff, you know? And they just, they just get a kick out of like seething while they read my stuff.

I, I hope that that percentage is falling, but I mean, when I had the open comment section, it was just nonstop. You know, it's just,

Leafbox: these are the Z-anon type people who think every day Putin's one step away from winning the chess board. And then what's the other 40 percent just,

Rurik: well, I mean, I would say that there's like a dedicated core, about 10 percent of the people just based on even the amount of people that pay me who are like, Yeah.

Hardcore Stalkers like they're in for it. Like they want to hear about this metaphysical stuff.

Leafbox: They want to they want to get to the Zone. Got it.

Rurik: Yeah, they want to they want by the way The zone is about titanic powers as well because it's about the mother earth and these There's a lot of symbolism which is associated with Titanic type stuff anyway, but yeah, they want that stuff.

They want to hear about the metaphysics of rebellion. They want to learn about the Nephilim blood and they want to, they want to hack their chakra DNA, whatever, you know, they're into that, but everyone else, they're kind of just kind of hold. I mean, I have a lot of Christians that read me, man. So, I mean, the people who are into Russia are mostly Christians.

And then they come to my blog and they're like, Oh, actually only 9 percent of Russians even attend church and. And it's actually just one big FSB money laundering scam. And and it turns out that the church literally overthrew the Tsar and it turns out that, you know, they're just as almost as bad as the Protestants.

And it turns out that, yeah, there's also gay pedophiles in the Orthodox church and then blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's infiltrated by the KGB. And then, and I don't know how they think about

Leafbox: What do you think about Orthodox church. Kind of, there seems to be a revitalism in the West. There's like, I don't know if the ortho bros, I don't really understand where that.

They think it's authentic or they think it's a real, I, I, what do you think? I'm just curious.

Rurik: Well, they think it's pro white. They think it's pro masculine. They think it's you know, not Jewish and, and it's it's not any of those things, but I went through that phase as well. And most of them, it's just a fad and it'll, it'll fade.

And but yeah, that's, that's, they're looking for something authentic. They, they, they think it might give them the means by which to resist the modern world. They think that basically they can adopt it, get themselves a trad wife and then sort of hunker down on some farm or monastery somewhere. And wait until things blow over and Christ comes out of the clouds to save us or whatever.

So, now these people are not serious and they're, most of them have checked out. Like, they're not really, they're not really capable of, of being involved in meaningful, And the meaningful politics of change, you could say, they believe in this so called Benedictine option. Most of them, which is basically like check out to now hunker down, pray for Christ to save you.

So, I mean,

Leafbox: Right. My last, I could keep asking questions, but What, what you've, what's your relationship with psychedelics pro against have you done them? Is that part of it?

Rurik: I've only done Mushrooms one time and I didn't really have a psychedelic experience. I just had a conversation with them and I asked them for advice on like how to, how to better relax my body and they helped me relax my gut.

And so I've never really done these psychedelic things. I, I prefer learning how to. Just tap into that potential without relying on these crutches.

Leafbox: No, that's fine. And then going back to the Buddhist techniques, I know you're skeptical of Buddhism, but they have very advanced technologies in terms of, you know, if you do very long meditation sits, you'll get into some very esoteric stuff that aligns with what you're talking about.

You know, if you do nine months,

Rurik: Buddhism has become tainted, I guess, by the original pagan practices that they sought out to replace. So you will have these sects of Buddhism who are actually more, you know, mystical in the sense, like even in Orthodoxy, you have the hesikasts right on Mount Athos and they practice a form of deep meditation and tantric, you could say, energy manipulation.

They never call it that. And, you know, they were. They were attacked by the Orthodox Church and brutally purged in the early 20th century. But Yeah, you will have these groups, but I don't think it has anything to do with Buddhism. I think it's just

Leafbox: it's framed in those, they hide it in the book, you know, the libraries that, yeah.

Very interesting. Rurik, how can people find you? I mean, I'm going to link to the blog, but when's this book going to come out? This sounds very interesting. What else are you working on? Anything else?

Rurik: No, just the book and just the blog and you guys should read what I wrote about Chernobyl. If you like the woo, you're really going to like parts two and three.

So I met, I met, you know, I mesh it all up. I'm talking about the secret police, occult rituals you know, the film Stalker. So it's a good, it'll be a good entry point for a lot of people. So just read the blog, SlavLand Chronicles on Substack and thanks for the chat.

Leafbox: Yeah, Rurik, I really wanted to go more into the Chernobyl, but that would probably be another hour if you can do another one on that one.

I mean, that, that was a kind of mind blowing some of the writing there for me. So that was, thank you.

Rurik: Oh, you read it.

Leafbox: Yeah, that's great. And that's why I was rewatching the Stalker and that's why I was like, oh man, I remember all this. And it's. Some of the religious aspects are more apparent in the second watching. So I think it's such a perfect movie. I mean, it's just an art film, but it's really awesome.

Rurik: I mean, it actually induces altered States and people like this has been reported. I've experienced it as well.

I had a lucid dream right after I watched it. It's the way he frames the shots and the liminal spaces he creates. This actually gets into Plato as well. I don't want to get.

Art as a Vehicle for Rebellion

Rurik: You know, we're running out of time if you look into the technical side of things and that's what I'll explore in the book, like, for example, there's a group of artists in North America called the transcendentalists 19th century, I think.

And what they did was they were just painting landscapes and, but the real purpose of these paintings was to induce altered states in people, like, like they would literally get you into, like, into an out of body experience, right? Astral, spontaneous astral exit or something like that. And they did that using just techniques of framing of depth of liminal space.

And you can look at some of these examples of their art. You can look at the Renaissance masters and how they use space and created depth. This, the reason why Europeans didn't make these kinds of paintings for a thousand years or however long under the reign of Christianity is because Christianity taking from Platonism banned this kind of art, their art had to be flat, these icons that you have in orthodoxy, these flat icons.

Well, the reason why they're flat. It's because they don't want them to have any actual spiritual or mystical Projection.

Leafbox: Got it. Fascinating. Abilities.

Rurik: Yeah. So you can really get technical and it gets, and then if you get into this stuff, not only will films become more interesting to you, cause you might notice that some directors clearly know about some of the stuff and, and Tarkovsky was a big new age guy.

So he was definitely experimenting with that sort of thing. I mean, you could easily tell in this movie, like the soundtrack is called meditation, right? So it's supposed

Leafbox: was reading I, I, I checked it, I ordered a book from the library, but. I guess there's some book all about that in the zone. I think it's called about the liminal aspects of watching the movie.

I think it's a British film author, but he talks all about these effects of the film. So,

Rurik: so that's, that's how you have, and that's why he got into trouble with the Soviet authorities. I mean, this is, this is really the, this is what the real rebellion is about. Art can be a real fuel for the rebellion. I mean, what people, we know this in, you know, the Renaissance is seen as a form of rebellion against the Soviet Union.

Catholicism, right? So art has been this vehicle for, and, and what, what, what art motivated the nationalist revival in the 19th century, right? It was Romanticist art, the same school of art that was trying to get people in touch with their, you know, their pagan roots, their national roots, right? So art is an important feature of this.

Art can literally send you into an induced, into an art of, into an altered state from which, Maybe you could actually discover these hidden aspects of reality, hidden sources of power within yourself. This is what we need. We need sources of power. We need this sort of fuel, this mystical, I don't know what you call it.

Yeah. Fuel. And you would be really surprised at the different sources. If you expand your thinking past voting, if you extend your thinking past these stupid culture warriors and their nonstop essays about who can pee in what toilet, if you can expand past that. Start thinking in these terms, in liminal terms it's actually a really optimistic and hopeful way of approaching because you realize that the situation isn't hopeless.

It's, it's hopeless if you keep yourself confined to the parameters that you're allowed to think and function in. But if you can break free of that, allow yourself a little bit of leeway, you realize that there are alternative approaches, alternative methods, alternative sources of power. And that's probably a good place to end it on for me.

Leafbox: so much for taking us to the zone. That's awesome. The ending there. So I appreciate it.

Rurik: Well, it was a good talk.

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Rurik Skywalker