Comments by "" (@watching99134) on "Lex Fridman" channel.

@martincapek96 Mr. Stone isn't really denying the reality of the war right now, but he (like some others) believes that the West put Russia into a corner where they somewhat legitimately perceived themselves as having no other choice (disagree with that description if you want but that is the level of debate which needs to be discussed not whether Russia is committing war crimes which it horribly is).
6
Kotkin has a way of presenting himself as very clever but if you listen to how he answers questions it is often disingenuous, for example the interviewer asks him if Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union. Kotkin says we have no idea what is in Putin's head, and then proceeds to answer the question as if an affirmative answer can be taken for granted (without providing any evidence for it). Also saying that the first Bush wanted to keep the Soviet Union together (in order to avoid a nuclear chaos) doesn't mean the West didn't want to bring down the Bolsheviks, just that they wanted to happen in an orderly way. Sending people money to remake them in your own image also doesn't mean that you don't have designs on the other, and Brits allowing Russian oligarchs to launder their money through London doesn't mean they were trying to help Russia. Don't be fooled by this man's mellifluous erudition, he is poisonous.
4
The interviewer here is good but like 99% of people he falls prey to flawed Hitler analogies...Hitler's way of addressing audiences was also extremely calm, it was usually only at the very end that he ranted and raved but that's the only thing the media will ever show him doing (in fact his speeches were deliberately constructed from start to finish that way, to go from mesmerizing the audience to a kind of almost sexualized peroration). (Stone makes the same error way when he mindlessly refers to Hitler's goal as being one of world domination, if you read what he wrote he specifically was against that [offering to let the British keep their overseas empire, limiting the German invasion of the Soviet Union to the Ural Mountains, etc.])
1