In a novel about political radicalism you might expect the ideas to take center stage, but here they’re treated as pure comic relief (if you’ve read The Man Who Was Thursday, the vibe is very similar). The guy who wants to kill all of humanity and the guy who wants to enslave all of humanity have some seriously conflicting objectives (and don’t forget the guy who just wants to kill himself and the guy who refuses to say what his goal is), yet they all belong to the same revolutionary society. The leader of their society takes it to an extreme, he has no specific ideas at all. His political objectives and philosophical premises are literally never mentioned, by him or by others. What he has is boundless energy, an annoying wheedling voice,1 and an infinite capacity for psychological cruelty. But all these impressive capacities are directed at nothing in particular, just at crushing others for the sheer joy of it,2 at destruction without purpose and without meaning.
Does that seem unrealistic? That ringleader was actually based on a real life student revolutionary named Sergey Nechayev, whose trial Dostoevsky eagerly followed. Nechayev wrote a manifesto called The Catechism of a Revolutionary, here’s an excerpt from that charming document:
The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution … The revolutionary despises all doctrines and refuses to accept the mundane sciences, leaving them for future generations. He knows only one science: the science of destruction … The object is perpetually the same: the surest and quickest way of destroying the whole filthy order … For him, there exists only one pleasure, one consolation, one reward, one satisfaction – the success of the revolution. Night and day he must have but one thought, one aim – merciless destruction.
The ideas don’t matter, because at the end of the day they’re pretexts for desires — the desire to dominate, the desire to obliterate the world, the desire to obliterate the self, the desire to negate.3 Just as in their parents’ generation the desire for status came first and wrapped itself in liberal politics in order to reproduce and advance itself, so in their children the desire for blood and death reigns supreme, and the radical politics serve only as a mechanism of self-justification and a lever to pull. This is not a novel about people, and it’s also not a novel about ideas. It’s a novel about desires, motives, urges, and the ways in which we construct stories to make sense of them.
John Psmith, “REVIEW: Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-07-17.
- To Dostoevsky’s own surprise, when he wrote the main bad guy of the story, he turned out a very funny, almost buffoonish figure. He may be the most evil person in literature who’s also almost totally comic.
- Dostoevsky is notorious for dropping hints via the names of his characters — applied nominative determinism — and this one’s name means something like “supremacy”.
- Or as another famous book about demons once put it:
I am the spirit that negates
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent —
That is my proper element.
January 25, 2026
QotD: Dostoevsky’s views on revolutionaries in Demons
January 7, 2026
Red Star: The Dawn of Soviet Sci-Fi
Feral Historian
Published 15 Aug 2025Soviet science fiction is a long winding road and it starts with Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star. Let’s start down that road.
00:00 Intro
03:15 Introducing Martian Socialism
06:35 Tektology
10:03 Crafting Communism
15:08 Mars Has Problems
19:06 Old Man of the Mountain
20:32 The Engineer Menni
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January 4, 2026
The Nazis Win Big at the Polls! – Rise of Hitler 25, July-September 1932
World War Two
Published 3 Jan 2026July starts with ever more violence in the streets of Germany, which Chancellor von Papen uses as an excuse to take state control of Prussia, the largest German state. All this comes ahead of the July elections, in which the Nazi Party is the big winner, now the largest party in Germany and Party Leader Adolf Hitler someone that no one in politics can any longer ignore, including President Hindenburg. This summer really is a summer of drama and intrigue.
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January 2, 2026
QotD: From Rousseau to Marx, Hegel to Gramsci
The fundamentals are clear enough. The New Left in America, which is the conveyor belt for everything from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal to Black Lives Matter, can trace its genetic roots back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who almost single-handedly upturned centuries of Western philosophical and theological wisdom.
Instead of believing that man is fallen, fatally flawed, and prone to selfishness and evil, Rousseau denied the reality of thousands of years of human history and posited that man is inherently good. Further, this goodness could be maximized by engineering society away from individual rights and liberties, prioritizing communal good, communal needs, and the communal will.
Thus civilization built according to how man actually behaves in real life fell out of favor; and eventually, Karl Marx’s collectivist ideology predicated on the subversion of individual human souls to the common interest (as defined by political leaders) gained steam.
Like an ideological scrapbooker, Marx picked and purloined the ideas of others to build his theory. Socialism is but a temporary stepping stone towards the eventual and inevitable end-state of all mankind, the utopian “Worker’s Paradise.” Marx stole the “inevitability” factor from Hegel and his eponymous “dialectic.”
Hegel, a profoundly religious man, unlike the rabidly and militantly atheist Marx, saw the history of man as a perpetual progression, a series of qualitative improvements in our collective lot as one new idea (antithesis) impacted upon an existing idea (thesis) and resulted in an improved conceptualization (synthesis) that has more truth value than the previous two ideas combined. This progression, so Hegel believed, would increase our enlightenment, until we perceived the ultimate synthesis, the purest version of truth’s expression, which is God himself.
Marx took Hegel’s key inevitability dynamic and removed the metaphysical elements. For Marx the intangible was irrelevant. His “dialectic materialism” posits that thesis and antithesis are instead expressions of the inherent conflict within society — the clash between the have and have nots, the oppressor and the oppressed, the capitalist and the exploited workers — which will result in a final revolution permanently removing class distinction and conflict from society.
This garbage is what Karl Marx sold the world with his books Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. And incredibly, some people believed this rubbish. So much so that they used it as a blueprint to sabotage and subvert multiple nations around the world, starting with czarist Russia and stretching all the way to Cuba and China. But then there was a problem. In all their attempts to effect a Communist revolution west of the Russian Empire, Marx’s followers would fail. America was an especially tough nut for Marxists to crack, because of how our nation was born.
America’s Founders, knowing full well that man is fallen and tends toward the selfish and the bad, built America with a system of separation of powers and also bequeathed us a written Constitution founded not on some absurd utopian collectivist vision of society, but built upon the recognition of the liberty of the individual and the unalienable God-given rights we each possess. Despite the advent of Progressive presidents, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, America remained staunch in its resistance to socialism. Marx’s disciples, however, were not ready to surrender.
This is where the influence of a hunchback Italian cripple comes in.
Antonio Francesco Gramsci is the ideational grandfather to all that threatens modern America and our freedoms today, from AOC’s Green New Deal to the violence of Antifa. His writings, penned in an Italian prison cell, would be leveraged by the Hungarian Jewish writer and politician, Gyӧrgy Lukacs, each sharing the same conviction: Communism had failed in established Western democracies — as opposed to the backward and mostly peasant society of czarist Russia — because these societies are too resilient and too developed. For Marxism to flourish in the rest of Europe and America, these “bourgeois” societies must be dismantled piece by piece. From the inside.
The conceptual progeny of that realization leads straight to the panoply of Democratic Party articles of belief today — from Obamacare’s unprecedented intrusion into private healthcare choices to the anti-scientific insanity of transgenderism and beyond. This isn’t a random accusation, devoid of context. It’s not some accusation floating in space. The path from Gramsci and Lukacs to Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is a path that may be mapped historically, geographically, and institutionally.
Sebastian Gorka, “From Alinsky to AOC: Will Communism Finally Win in America?”, American Greatness, 2020-07-29.
Update, 3 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
December 7, 2025
Can Hitler Be Tamed? – Rise of Hitler 22, October-December 1931
World War Two
Published 6 Dec 2025The so-called “Boxheim Papers” are leaked to the public this fall. These outline what the Nazi Party would do should there be a Communist coup; it involves a lot of people being shot or starved, and paints a rather haunting picture of what Nazi rule may be like in general. The Nazi Party, though, continues to grow in popularity, and President Hindenburg even meets with Adolf Hitler for the first time, indicating to the country and the army that Hitler is no longer an upstart, but a legitimate political force.
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December 1, 2025
Why Uncle Sam entered the Vietnam War – W2W 055
TimeGhost History
Published 30 Nov 2025The Vietnam War didn’t begin with American boots on the ground. It began with a promise — and a break. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Geneva Accords split Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led the North. In the South, Ngo Dinh Diem struggled to hold a fragile new state together while armed sects, crime syndicates, and political rivals challenged his rule. Washington saw Vietnam as the next battleground of the Cold War, and threw its support behind Diem — believing he could stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
But as elections for reunification approached, tensions rose. Diem refused the vote. The North rebuilt. The South descended into repression, unrest, and quiet rebellion. Former Viet Minh fighters slipped into the shadows. Secret networks formed. Targeted killings began. By 1958, the storm clouds of a new war gathered — one the United States could no longer afford to ignore.
This episode explores how the U.S. found itself pulled into Vietnam, how Diem rose to power, why the reunification election collapsed, how American aid reshaped the South, and how the first sparks of insurgency ignited a conflict that would define a generation.
Join us as we trace the origins of a war long before the Marines landed at Da Nang — to understand why Uncle Sam entered the Vietnam War in the first place.
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October 16, 2025
The hereditary aristocrats of the People’s Republic of China
To many western liberals, an aristocratic system is a disparaged and vestigial remnant of the distant past. An echo of the “bad old days” of anti-meritocratic wealth and privilege enjoyed by the lucky descendants of ancient conquerors and oppressors. Yet among the most well-connected and powerful people in China can only be described as “princelings”, as they are literally the children and grandchildren of the leaders of the Communist Party, especially those who took part in the “Long March”:
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the great school of Mao Zedong Thought”, 1969.
A poster from the Cultural Revolution, featuring an image of Chairman Mao, published by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1926, five years after becoming one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mao Zedong listed China’s enemies as “the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class [businessmen dealing with foreign interests] and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them”. It is ironic that Mao would eventually create a new aristocracy, often referred to as the “princelings” (taizidang), every bit as hierarchical as that against which he had previously railed.
Perversely, when Mao Zedong came to power in China in 1949, there were not many structures of authority left to destroy. In the period of warlordism that succeeded the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by Sun Yat-sen in 2011 and ended with the consolidation of nationalist (Kuomintang) power by Chiang Kai-shek in 1936, the aristocracy of imperial China had been swept away. So too the Mandarin class, the Chinese bureaucrats selected by civil service examination, a system that started with the Sui dynasty in AD 581. As for the Chinese aristocracy, its last vestiges ended with the abolition in 1935 of the Dukedom of Yansheng which belonged to the descendants of Confucius.
So, in terms of social hierarchies, Mao inherited a clean sheet when he established the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. The CCP leadership soon proved that, in the immortal words of George Orwell in his novel Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. In Beijing, Mao and China’s CCP leaders took residence in the palatial compounds located in Zhongnanhai, a waterside park established by the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century.
There is not even equality within the “red aristocracy”. Gradations are as clear-cut as if there were princes, dukes or marquises. The highest rank is accredited to the offspring of those CCP leaders who participated in the Long March. This iconic fighting retreat to a remote plateau in Shaanxi province followed the defeat of the Red Army in October 1934.
It is perhaps difficult for people in the West to understand the scale of Chinese veneration for the individuals who completed the Long March. With the possible exception of the migratory treks along the Oregon Trail, there is no comparable event in American or European history. Throughout their lives, leaders of the Long March enjoyed unparalleled prestige; it was a prestige that passed down to their children – hence the princelings.
The creation of the red aristocracy started with Mao himself. Within a few years of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Mao became a de facto emperor. On occasions he even referred to himself as such. He certainly lived the life of an emperor. At his commodious palace in Zhongnanhai, Mao surrounded himself with a harem of dancing girls who would occupy his bed and his swimming pool. In time-honoured fashion, China’s head of security and intelligence, Kang Sheng, procured girls for Mao as well as thousands of volumes of pornography.
[…]
My own experience of the princeling world confirmed that in China, despite its vast population a very small group of families form a governing nexus that has power far beyond its numbers. It is a group that seem to be getting stronger. The princeling proportion of the CCP central committee rose from 6 per cent in 1982 to 9 per cent in 2012. When I spoke to a princeling friend about the politburo standing committee that was elected in 2012, she told me that she personally knew five of its seven members; to her great delight three of them were princelings. It was through her that I met Deng Xiaoping’s daughters and spent a “country house” weekend with them and her princeling pals.
Here it became clear that, while most of the princelings I met were reformists in the Deng mode, there are also factions that are hard-line Maoists, like the one led by Xi Jinping. At the moment it appears that the reformist princelings have gained the upper hand. More light on Xi Jinping’s future and the outcome of this princeling tug of war may be shed at the Fourth Plenum of the 20th CCP Congress starting on October 20.
October 14, 2025
White Hoods, Bloody Hands: The Klan as America’s First Terrorists – W2W 048
TimeGhost History
Published 12 Oct 2025From Pulaski to Stone Mountain to Brown v. Board, the Ku Klux Klan evolves from Reconstruction terror to a decentralized, Cold War–era movement that bombed churches, lynched citizens, and hid behind “anti-communism”. We trace the First, Second, and Third Klans — rituals, networks, and the brutal campaign against desegregation and civil rights.
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October 13, 2025
October 7, 2025
QotD: “That wasn’t real communism …”
All Karl Marx did was bring that down to the material level — it’s not the world spirit having a debate with itself, it’s the world, the material object. Both the debate and its conclusion are made manifest in History, capital-H, which is why Marx was one of a long line of gurus who claimed to make History into a hard science. That “wrong side of History” stuff the Left is always going on about? That’s why they use that phrase so much, and why it has such emotional resonance for them. If you’re a Dialectical Materialist, being against Socialism is like being against gravity. What could possibly be the point? You’re just being perverse, comrade, and on some level you must know that …
Alas, History isn’t a hard science. There are patterns, of course, any fool can see that, but those patterns are the intersection of human nature and emergent behavior. The proof is in the writings of Karl Marx himself — every prediction the man ever made was not just wrong, but ludicrously so, and after getting burned a few times he admitted in his letters to writing in such a way that he could never be “proven” wrong. See also: The complete history of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991, and as a side note, you can tell the intellectual caliber of Socialism’s defenders by the fact that they trot out the excuse “That wasn’t real Communism; real Communism has never been tried.” Ah, so Lenin — he of Marxism-Leninism — wasn’t a true Communist. They’ll shoot you for saying that in, say, China, but do please go on …
Severian, “Power”, Founding Questions, 2022-02-02.
Update, 8 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
October 3, 2025
QotD: The role of the True Believer
Anon @Greynxgga69
Abolish The Family.
Abolish Religion.
Abolish Wage Labour.
Abolish Money.
Abolish Work.
Abolish Commodity Production.
Abolish the State.
Abolish Class.
Abolish Private Property.
Abolish the Nation.
Abolish Patriarchy.
Abolish Gender.
Abolish Town and Country.The True Believers imagine they will live in Utopia after the Revolution.
They will instead be sent to the gulag, or lined up against the wall and shot.
Why?
Because the function of the True Believer is to make the Revolution. And the purpose of the Revolution is to replace The Regime.
Once the Revolution is made, and The Regime has been replaced, no further Revolutions are wanted. Therefore the True Believer serves no purpose.
He is a liability, because he has been promised Utopia, and Utopia is hard, even perhaps impossible, to deliver. If he does not receive the promised Utopia, he is apt to make Revolution again.
The Regime does not want this. It does not wish to be replaced in the same fashion that it replaced The Regime. So the True Believer must be disposed of. He must be replaced with the Opportunist.
The Opportunist can be relied upon, because he does not want Utopia. He wants to have more than his comrades. So long as he receives more than his comrades, he will serve The Regime.
As above, so below.
As before, so after.
Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.
Devon Eriksen, The social media site formerly known as Twitter , 2025-07-01.
September 30, 2025
How Tyrants Rise — and How to Stop Them – W2W 46
TimeGhost History
Published 28 Sept 2025Tyrants don’t just appear overnight — they rise through propaganda, fear, and control. In this episode of War 2 War, we explore how authoritarian leaders consolidated power in the 20th century, from the ruins of World War Two to the opening battles of the Cold War. How do tyrants gain control, how can you recognize the warning signs, and what can societies do to resist them? Drawing on lessons from Hitler, Stalin, and beyond, we break down the patterns of dictatorship and what history can teach us about confronting them.
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September 27, 2025
QotD: Utopian revolution
This illustrates a point that Professor Chirot makes clear in his discussion as to why the Vietnamese communist regime, though often brutal, never descended to anything like the level of horror of neighbouring Cambodia. Among the factors must surely have been the character and personality of the leaders as well as of the countries themselves. In other words, the fate of countries cannot be reduced, either in prospect or in retrospect, to an invariable formula. Human affairs will, to an extent, always be incalculable.
Still, some degree of regularity is possible. I was rather surprised that Professor Chirot overlooked one such. He writes the following of the corruption endemic under communist regimes: “a function of a deliberately exploitative, thieving elite that staved the general economy by its dishonesty than it was the essence of the system itself. Avoiding corruption was impossible because without it the society could not function.”
What is surprising here is that he does not mention why it could not function, but the answer seems to me perfectly obvious: it was because the communist system abolished the price system and substituted political decision-making in its place. This explanation is sufficient, for where there are no prices, and the economy is thereby largely demonetarised, goods and services can be distributed only by corruption. This is not to say that where there is a price system there will automatically be no corruption, obviously this is not the case; but such corruption will be limited by the very need for money to retain its value where such a price system exists. To that extent, it imposes at least a degree of honesty. The mystery of the Soviet Union or any other communist country is not why it produced so little, but why it produced anything at all: and here Professor Chirot is quite right. The answer is because of corruption: an “honest” communist state would produce nothing. It could not survive.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Longing for Revolution”, New English Review, 2020-05-13.
September 15, 2025
The Cold War in Latin America Begins: Coups, Communists, and Castro – W2W 44
TimeGhost History
Published 14 Sept 2025Spy rings, covert operations, coups, street violence, and sudden regime changes. This is the turmoil that awaits Latin America after the Second World War. As new ideas from the East gain momentum, the United States tries to hold on to its role as the region’s self-appointed guardian. Which side will ultimately shape the future of this rich and populous region?
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