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Radio War Nerd EP #160 — Xinjiang Surveillance State + WWI Poetry (Patreon)

Published:
2018-12-10 01:23:39
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: December 6, 2018

Guest: Vadim Mikhailov

It's very hard these days to sort the propaganda from the truth about China's surveillance state & re-education camp crackdown in the western province of Xinjiang, targeting the Uyghur people of southern Xinjiang. In episode 149, guest Carl Zha offered up a deep forensic analysis that both confirmed reports of large-scale re-education camps and repression, and also debunked the more hyperbolic and hysterical propaganda exploiting an already dire enough situation. This episode, the War Nerd talks to a recent visitor to Xinjiang, "Vadim Mikhailov" (a pseudonym to protect the author), who reported his personal experiences in a recent article, "A Week in Xinjiang's Absolute Surveillance State". 

At 1:18:00 after the break, the War Nerd breaks down World War One poetry, nation by nation. We discuss Kipling, Hardy, Apollinaire, Stevens, Seeger, Cendrars, Lissauer, Yeats, Bontempelli, Akhmatova...

Read Vadim Mikhail's article, "A Week in Xinjiang's Absolute Surveillance State" published in Palladium magazine.

Total time: 2:44:08

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Paul Vd

You guys mentioned Peter Hitchens a few shows ago. He's kept up with the Syria and Ukraine wars. He's be a good interview for this show.

Elias Brander

Paul I doubt they like a guy like Peter Hitchens. On topic what a funny strange interview. Very interesting topic but you trying to coax answers from this pretty much normal guy was pretty funny. Nice change of pace. His article is very good btw

Paul Vd

They were lukewarm on Hitchens a couple episodes ago. Plus Peter likes doing interviews w/ ppl on his left & underdog outfits. He likes ppl like Ames who keep a low profile. Peter is a serious geopol commentator too. See his talk "Is the EU just Germany by other means ?" on YouTube.

grey

Not buying the vadim=former soviet union when his accent is dead give away latin american/spanish. I get that vadim is a pseudonym but i just found it funny that he didnt say something like western european instead.

Jason Thompson

The Seleucids were of course (one of) the inheritors of the empire of Alexander the Great!

Eirik Haabet

Vadim's sound quality was horrible. I couldn't make out what he was saying half of the time with all the compression artifacts. Completely wasted interview for my part.

eh

George Mosse quotes some pre-WWI British war poetry using the sporting metaphor in his Fallen Soldiers. "For example, in a favorite public school poem written by Sir Henry Newbolt in 1898 a cricketer exhorts his colonial regiment, hard pressed by the natives, to make a desperate stand: 'The Gatling's jammed and the colonel's dead,/ and the regiment blind with dust and smoke;/ The river of death has brimmed his banks,/ and England's far, and Honour a name;/ But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:/ Play up! play up! and play the game!'"

Wyrd

Regarding German (pro)-war poetry I know a few songs like "Die Wacht am Rhein" One of the Stanzas I have seen (slightly modified) on a WWI Postcard "Solang ein Tropfen Blut noch glüht, noch eine Faust den Degen zieht, und noch ein Arm die Büchse spannt, bezwingt kein Feind dich, Vaterland!" "As long as there glows a drop of blood and a fist still draws the sword and an Arm still holds the rifle no enemy can defeat you, fatherland" There surely was enough upper class motivation to go to war, but it was more under the banner of nation. You must not forget that Germany had only been a nation from 1871 on onward. Must enthusiasm was thus for the nation (which was born in war) and most songs and poetry that is pro war is from either 1871 or it is about needing to defend the Volk (nation/people) or it's land (example would again be Die Wacht am Rhein)

Ryan DiMaria

Hate to agree with Elrik about the sound quality, but it did sound like an interview from inside a .zip archive. Shame too, because his article was a great read.

JoR

Great interview. Some complained about audio quality. Personally I don't Want to admit it but I had a little trouble understanding vadim's accent more then it being audio problem (as he said his manderin was better then his English, but he spoke well, just the uni-lingual brain hindering me). In regard to kiplin's poem, as someone who knows nothing about poetry, I got the impression that Kipling intentionally messed up the flow of the line discussed because he was talking about South-Asian soldiers for the empire. Again I know nothing about poetry, but John and Mark both said that Kipling was a great, simple post, so I feel like he intentionally wrote a confusing and jumbled line as a "shot" to Indians who served in the empire or something

xnfec

A.E. Housemans "A Shropshire Lad" was apparently very popular with the troops in WW1 and with Etonian youth afterwards according to George Orwell. Houseman self-published it in time for the second Boer war. I re-read bits of it recently because a verse from the last but one section of it ends Philip Matyzaks (very good) book on Mithradates the Great. I couldn't get into most of it but that last but one section (LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff) was very good (and mentions Mithradates).

Paul Vd

Gary. Just nuke yourself with Valium to sleep on the plane .i can't sleep on planes either. But usually 2 10 mg vals later, I'm time traveling. The most i took was 6.

YovGallant

I just wanted to mention that the Canadian Poet John McCrae had previously fought as an artilleryman in the Boer War. The reason the British called the Germans Huns was because the Kaiser told the German force sent to end the Boxer Rebellion to act like Huns

Jim Vail

Boris Pasternak 's Doctor Zhivago is not just a story about the revolution but the First World war . Those novels often use the war as a background or prelude to the war but they don't belittle the importance. I read Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 but it was terrible. It is even more preachy than Tolstoy and that is saying something. His novel is so unstructured. I recommend you read his work Lenin in Zurich as at least it is a good read and is much better. -Stephen

Parsifal

Hitchens would be a good interviewee. Mark and John seemed to be lukewarm about him most because they didn't know much about him yet. Outside of the UK he is the shadow of his late brother, Christopher. Locally, people pigeon-hole him as a reflexive conservative but, whether you like his opinions or not, he is more interesting than that. He's certainly no neocon and as pointed out above has as lot of counter London/DC consensus things to say about Russia, Ukraine, Syria, etc. He's spiky though and doesn't suffer fools especially gladly. I'm sure John and Mark could handle him well enough however.

radiowarnerd

I know he's more idiosyncratic than people realize, but is he an expert on Xinjiang?

radiowarnerd

Thanks. The sad thing about August 1914 is that, though what you say is true, it's much better than his follow-up novels.

radiowarnerd

Lenin in Zurich is just about the only Solzhenitsyn novel I haven't read. There were rumors that it was anti-Semitic, something about a 'wandering Jew'. I have no idea whether that is true or not but I stayed away.

Parsifal

Sorry, maybe my comment was on the wrong thread. I’m not aware of his having any particular expertise on Xinjiang. On China, Hitchens is more in tune with most of the UK/US media than he is on some other subjects. He criticised the UK government for its desperate ‘fawning’ to Xi when he visited a few years back in the hope of Chinese investment for infrastructure projects, accusing it of sucking up to a tyranny. I mentioned him as an interesting possible guest for RWN more generally. He’s good on Russia for example and like you two guys is an ex-resident there. He had years as a war correspondent as well. Perhaps his recent revisionist history of Britain’s involvement in WWI, The Phony Victory, could be the hook.

Parsifal

*WWII. On phone :-(

Jim Vail

You are right. The work may well be implicitly racist concerning depicting the role of Parvus. But basically Solzhenitsyn disliked Jews and even wrote a book that rants against the Jews explicitly. They are not rumors, but facts. This writer supported Putin, was very intolerant and even condoned the war in Chechnya. To be honest there are more interesting writers to read such as Andrei Platonov who wrote an excellent short story called The Return. Platonov is a lot more original, and even a thousands times more humane than Solzhenitsyn. The latter has no soul. Best regards, Stephen