Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler | Lex Fridman Podcast #444

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0:00 – Introduction
3:10 – Marxism
30:55 – Anarchism
45:52 – The Communist Manifesto
54:51 – Communism in the Soviet Union
1:14:45 – Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
1:24:33 – Stalin
1:31:48 – Holodomor
1:45:38 – The Great Terror
1:58:39 – Totalitarianism
2:09:40 – Response to Darryl Cooper
2:24:49 – Nazis vs Communists in Germany
2:31:11 – Mao
2:36:19 – Great Leap Forward
2:43:20 – China after Mao
2:48:52 – North Korea
2:52:56 – Communism in US
3:00:26 – Russia after Soviet Union
3:11:57 – Advice for Lex
3:19:39 – Book recommendations
3:22:38 – Advice for young people
3:29:29 – Hope

Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/vejas-liulevicius-transcript

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EPISODE LINKS:
Vejas's Courses: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/vejas-gabriel-liulevicius
Vejas's Books: https://amzn.to/4e3R1rz
Vejas's Audible: https://adbl.co/4esRrHt

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This is an incredible interview. What a gift.

The handling of Darryl Cooper’s critique is facile and superficial

This is an emotional topic for Lex. Understandable.

To fail to explore the mishandling of diplomacy and leadership by the western powers in both world wars will surely guarantee that we find ourselves there again.

Hitler does not come to power without the decisions of Western government officials, banking and Western business interests, and other leaders of civilization.

Demonizing Hitler, while morally understandable, is a time honored abnegation of personal responsibility by people like Churchill and many of the elite.

This mindset is bringing us World War III totally predictable

History repeats itself. First as a tragedy, and then as a farce.

Verelendung (Immiseration) is quite accurate to what the majority of people seem to feel today, especially in the U.S. of all places. Enshittification of products is the clearest parallel, but the unaffordability of housing and mass layoffs due to automation are another.

So it's not like this prediction wasn't correct – it's more that it took time to reach "late-stage capitalism" and there are more solutions to it than just murdering every wealthy person.

The Dude Abides

To anyone reading..Are You Saved? Have you received what Jesus Christ did for you?

This question should receive a “Yes” or “No” answer, but it almost never does. Some of the most common responses are:
I’m doing the best I can.
I prayed the sinner’s prayer.
I’ve made Jesus the Lord of my life.
I believe in God.
I’ve been baptized.
I’m a church member.
I keep the commandments.
I am basically a good person.
I walked the aisle and prayed through.
I’ve always been a Christian.
I’ve never done anything really bad.

None of these responses properly answer the question. People give these kinds of responses because they evidently do not understand the question. The question, “Are you saved?” asks whether or not you have trusted Christ’s shed blood on the cross as payment for your sins. It is not asking about any works that you can do.

The responses listed above refer to what a person does, but salvation is only offered on the basis of what Christ has already done for us.

The gospel of our salvation (Eph. 1:13) is clearly stated by the apostle Paul:

3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (1 Cor. 15:3-4)

The blood of Christ has purchased what we could not earn ourselves.

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: (Col. 1:14)

We cannot be good enough to earn salvation because “there is none righteous” (Rom. 3:10) and “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23). The “wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Those who die lost will spend eternity in “the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15).

In order to be saved, we must stop trusting ourselves and trust the blood payment that Christ has already made on our behalf!

8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)

Jesus Christ fully accomplished our salvation through His death, burial, and resurrection. Therefore, the free gift of salvation can only be received by faith alone in His finished work. It is Christ's righteousness not ours.

"To declare, I day, at this time HIS (Christ) righteousness: that HE might be the just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" Rom 3:26

NOT by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to HIS MERCY He saved us (Titus 3:5)

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Rom. 5:1)

"IN whom we HAVE redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of HIS GRACE" Eph 1:7

If you will trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you will receive peace with God, justification, forgiveness, eternal life in the heavenly places. You can enjoy “much assurance” (1 Thess. 1:5) that you are saved and on your way to heaven because (Eph 1:13-14) In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise. Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Jesus accomplished the work involved for your salvation, by faith rest in HIS finished work.

42:10 "Even the godless end up worshipping something."

🎙️ This is an exceptional conversation.
In this episode, the guest explains how authoritarian regimes like Stalin’s, Mao’s, and the Nazis systematically weakened education, critical thinking, and social cohesion because a population that can’t question power is easier to control. It’s a powerful reminder that when a society lowers standards or discourages excellence, it risks repeating the same patterns that allowed destructive ideologies to rise in the past.

Ask yourself which places today are participating in their own decline (I left Seattle for Texas exactly for this reason. It seems In & Out Burger has moved their headquarters out of California also for this reason and thousands of other examples. Look at the unrest in the UK, look at the degradation of Frankfurt and other cities – they all have something in common politically. Look at the EU sanctioning its own people including journalists). Ask yourself where we see the push to eliminate advanced classes because they’re deemed “unfair,” where rising crime goes unchecked, where open drug use is normalized, and where basic law and order is eroding. These patterns don’t appear all at once, they build slowly, and ignoring them has consequences.

Theres a case to be made that Stalism is in Israel and used on Palestinians

Woah 3:10:30 🤡 how can they all keep say that time and time again…. when they changed border of my country by force 🤢🤮

Zionist apologist. Stop carrying water for these criminals. But with a last name like Friedman, it all makes sense now. Fascism was a response to Jewish Bolshevism, globalism. Jews believe that we, gentiles, goyim, are to be subject to their whims, enslaved, killed if insubordinate. Everything the Israelis say about Nazism (it’s brutal genocidal exceptionalism), is exactly congruent with their own foreign policy towards every other country in this world. They truly believe they are the master race and permitted by God to commit whatever atrocities they see fit in furtherance of their global pursuit of absolute incontestable power. Germans and many other Europeans witnessed what those Jews in power in the Soviet Union were doing to white Christian Slavs and Ukrainians after they took power during the “Russian revolution” (communist Jewish uprising). They knew that the only way to combat this Jewish supremacist globalist world order was to be as nationalist as possible, in order to protect the futures of their progeny and cultures. Here you sit on this bullshit podcast DEFENDING the destruction of Europe, idolizing Marx and continuing the lies you were indoctrinated in your childhood with. Look at all of the problems around us, the racism, greed, desperation, the brutal foreign wars committed by America, the poverty, sickness, censorship, degradation of our society, it’s all as a result of Zionist Supremacist elements that have held power in our country for decades if not centuries. They OWN both sides as clearly evidenced by the Epstein Files, and thats just ONE blackmail ring. The republicans, democrats, are ALL compromised and can NOT be trusted. It seems at every opportunity they take as much from us as possible. We could have a country that loves itself and respects others, has free healthcare, free college, employment, affordable housing, a proper retirement system, benefits for the young and old alike. But that is too NATIONALISTIC and SOCIALISTIC. Two things Jews absolutely revile in ANY country. You can be socialist, yes! Only if you are “globalistic”. If you want for your country what ISRAEL HAS… oohhhhh no.. YOU are a fucking NAZI and deserve death. BOYCOTT ISRAEL, AMERICA FIRST!

I find it odd that this person talks about Marx's work maneuvering away from the basic concepts of private property and the relationship between employer and employee. Even when talking about historical dialectic and materialism, it's really a disservice presenting Marx work as merely utopian, when putting a magnifying glass on the material conditions as the substrate of thought has been one of the most significant contributions to human knowledge

34:40 Wait until he hears about platformist anarchism.

German sources are only full of the usual medieval racist non-sense. Yes, they've thought of themselves as Spartans who get to rule over their neighbours the Slavs as slaves, but the Nazis didn't invent the English language, did they?

They have only been the worst, because the German Empire was so high-tech. Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and the guys at Heidelberg pretty much discovered quantum physics on their own… because of precise engineering.

Summary: outstanding work that shows a deep understanding indeed, apart from the anti German racist ramblings, that is because they were not the first Catholics that called for a witch hunt against the Jews. There is a BBC documentary on: 1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place (Vienna) that dwells on the matter, that Europe's most powerful family was about to fall. The world was about to change and Vienna knew it. Plus, we hosted great economists, mathematicians and all, when our "golden era under terrible conditions" came to an end. This city is a museum and German is being forgotten like Latin.

Just an incredible talk, almost like reading a few books, I felt a bit smarter after listening to it!

This might be my favorite guest you've ever spoken to. Thank you!

Great stuff Lex