Javier Milei is destroying Argentina’s economy, turning it into a resource colony for foreign oligarchs. – Gary Stevenson on Surviving the Broken Economy (and distorted ideas of Marx/atomised soci

The first video I posted in this thread discusses neoliberal economics and its real effects. I do not live in Argentina, so it’s difficult for me to judge firsthand, but what is said in this video aligns with what I would expect from neoliberal economic policies and Western neo imperialism.

The most important point, in my view, is that Argentina’s economic problems were largely created by a previous neoliberal government that made deals with the IMF. And we all know how IMF deals end. So, the current economic crisis is not primarily caused by so-called socialism in Argentina but rather by the past neoliberal government, which entered into agreements with the IMF.

That being said, I do not fully agree with the author of this video, Ben Norton. I know his work well and agree with much of what he says. He even co-hosted a program with Max Blumenthal. However, he has essentially become a mouthpiece for China. While I agree with many of his economic arguments, he ignores China’s lack of freedom. As I have written many times, I see China as simply another part of the global capitalist system. While China’s economic policies may be slightly better than those of the West, its level of freedom is significantly lower.

I would like to see better economic policies similar to those in China, but I would not trade away the last remnants of freedom we have for them. I am not supportive of China or the West. Instead, I want the West to preserve its remaining freedoms and expand them — especially since freedoms in the West are currently shrinking — while also adopting better economic policies. That is why I will not ignore China’s problems or wrongdoings and become a mouthpiece for the Chinese government like Ben Norton.

Similarly, I acknowledge some of the positive things the Soviets did, for which I am often criticized. However, I will not whitewash the horrific things they did either, nor will I become their propagandist. The same applies to the West — I will criticize it when it deserves criticism. My goal is to be as objective as possible. I will admire and praise when warranted and criticize when necessary.

For example, while Ben Norton rightly points out the stock and asset bubbles in the West, such a huge overvaluation of stock and assets — a view I share — but he remains silent about China’s problems with credit, private banks, and corporate debt. This is why I see him as a mouthpiece for China. While I acknowledge both the stock and asset bubbles in the West and China’s banking and credit issues, we must criticize both sides when necessary.

Anyway, here is a video featuring Gary Stevenson, whose work I have previously shared, discussing the economy. I want to share this video because I agree with much of what he says. Later, I will also write about the misuse of Marxist ideas, such as the destruction of culture and the atomization of society.

15:26

“The super rich are getting richer because of inequality, but people don’t connect these things. Over the last five years, there has been a massive increase in government debt and poverty, coupled with an enormous increase in the wealth of the super rich. People don’t really make the connection, and you can’t blame them.

Things like stock markets being at all-time highs and the massive increase in wealth among the rich don’t get reported much in newspapers. Also, the average person doesn’t know any of the super rich, so they don’t see their wealth exploding. There’s a lack of visibility on it.

But if people understood two things—first, that the rich are getting much, much richer at the expense of their growing poverty, and second, that if this is left untreated, it will continue to grow and get worse—they would demand change. The public only needs to grasp these two points.

That’s why Elon Musk and Donald Trump are spending so much money pointing their fingers at foreigners—because foreigners serve as a distraction, keeping people from understanding the real issue.

We’ve been here before. I often talk about Charles Dickens—I’m a big fan.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the average British person lived in abject poverty. That wasn’t just true for the British—it was the same for the average Spanish, American, French, Italian, German, or Japanese person. But we got out of it.

We got out of it because, after World War II, people came together and said:

“We’ve just spent the last six years devoting our entire economy to killing each other. And during that time, we were still able to provide people with education, healthcare, housing, and food. We’re not letting go of that. We demand education, housing, healthcare, and food.”

So, what did governments do? They raised the top rate of income tax to 95%. They raised inheritance tax to 90%.

And what happened? Suddenly, ordinary people had access to good quality housing, education, and healthcare. People like my dad could work for the Post Office and support a family.

We’ve done it before, so it’s not impossible—but it requires working together.”

19:34

“Because they believe a thing, they say it. They go into these situations wanting to get something, thinking: “What do I need to say to get the thing that I want?” The line I use in my book is: there’s no dishonest moves in chess. If you’re playing a game of Monopoly and you lie, is that a real lie? People lie to win games.

For these guys, life is a game.

Donald Trump, in my opinion, is someone whose rhetoric is calculated to deepen the divisions in society. You see it in his support for reform, for Tommy Robinson, for Nigel Farage. And it’s not just in the UK—he’s supporting anti-immigrant political parties all over the world.

Why is he doing that?

In my opinion, it’s because he’s smart. For the last 20 years, the economy has been getting worse. But for the first 10 or 15 of those years, people believed things would turn around. Now it’s becoming increasingly clear that things won’t turn around—they’ll just keep getting worse.

If you’re someone like Donald Trump or Elon Musk, you need to tell the public a story. Because if things keep getting worse, eventually the pitchforks come out. That’s happened throughout history.

There are people like me saying, “Tax the rich.” And people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump? They are rich. They obviously don’t want my message to win.

So they need to push an alternative story.

And what’s the most popular alternative story? That the problem isn’t billionaires—it’s migrants and foreigners.

Hatred of migrants and foreigners is great for Elon Musk and Donald Trump because it distracts people from the real issue: that without that scapegoat, people would be looking at billionaires and demanding higher taxes.

There’s an old quote from the now-deceased American economist Milton Friedman: “At times of crisis, the change will be chosen from the ideas lying around at the time.”

Right now, the two biggest ideas lying around are:

The problem is foreigners.

The problem is the ultra-rich hoarding wealth.

If you’re Elon Musk or Donald Trump, you’re going to put a lot of money behind the “hate the foreigners” message. Because if that message doesn’t win, the “tax the rich” message might—and that’s the last thing they want.

Is taxing the rich the answer?

I think it has to be. And I should clarify what I mean by that.

When people hear “tax the rich,” they often think of income tax, and some will say, “Oh my God, is he coming after me? I earn 60, 70, 80, 100 grand a year.”

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I come from a poor background. I made a lot of money working in the city—I paid 50% income tax when I was working. Meanwhile, the Duke of Westminster inherits £10 billion and pays nothing.

When I say “tax the rich,” I’m not talking about your uncle who’s a doctor making £70,000 a year. I’m talking about ultra-wealthy families with hundreds of millions or billions of pounds, who do not work for it. They get it simply because their dads had it.

If we don’t tax these people, they will buy up the houses your kids need.

Look at Rishi Sunak—he wasn’t even on The Times’ Rich List. Then he became Prime Minister, and suddenly he’s worth £700 million. Where was he before that?

If you have £700 million, and you make just 5% in passive income (which is conservative), that’s £35 million a year. That’s half a million pounds a week—for doing nothing. And his father-in-law is even richer.

These guys—Rishi Sunak, Elon Musk, Donald Trump—can only live in five or six houses, but they can own a thousand. And they are competing for the same housing and resources that your kids need.

If you let them get richer and richer, they will take a bigger and bigger share—until your kids have nothing. That’s why young people today can’t afford property.

This isn’t new. If you go back 150 years, working people couldn’t afford property. That’s still true in many parts of the world today.

Think housing in London is unaffordable? Try Mumbai. Try Shanghai. Try Hong Kong. Try Johannesburg. In highly unequal societies, good quality housing is completely out of reach for ordinary people.

Could it get that bad in Western society?

I think it will.

There’s no economic fail-safe. The richer they get, the more they own, and the less you own. That means you spend more time renting, and when you get a mortgage, it’s bigger—you pay more interest. The fewer assets you have, the more you have to pay them just to live in a house, to get energy, to eat food.

The cash flow is accelerating.

They get richer, you pay more interest, which means they get even richer.

My parents’ generation—my dad worked for the Post Office for 35 years, never earned the average income, but owned a home and had a pension. My generation? That’s gone.

When families lose their homes, generation after generation, they don’t get them back. If they couldn’t protect their homes when they owned them, they definitely can’t when they don’t.

So yes, economically, it will get worse.

But politically, we still have power. And that’s where we need to act.”

28:37

“You see all these hustle culture Instagram accounts, hustle culture podcasts—work harder than everyone else, take bigger risks than everybody else. I feel sad because I know what that does to the mental health of young men.

We live in a society and a culture that very often tells young men: You are what you make—that is your value. If you don’t make money, you are worthless. And if you don’t make money, it’s because you didn’t hustle hard enough—you need to work harder. We send that message to young men in a society that makes it increasingly difficult, bordering on impossible, to make money.

What is that going to do to the mental health of young men? To simultaneously tell them: “You’re worthless if you don’t make money,” and “The amount of money you make is based on how hard you work,” while making it impossible for them to make money.

Then how can we be surprised when we see the rise of figures like Andrew Tate or Donald Trump? These people are angry because we lied to them. Tell them the truth. Tell them the truth, which is: We, your elder generation, gave you almost no chance, and you need to work super, super hard just to feed your kids. And if you do that—if you work hard, feed your kids, and put a roof over their heads—be proud, because we made it hard for you. Tell them the truth. They should be proud of themselves, because it’s hard nowadays to have a family.

People ask me why I don’t have a Rolex or a fancy car. I don’t want to be waving these shiny baubles in front of young men who will never be able to afford them, because I was that young man once, and I know how it feels.

I’ve got nothing against people who work hard to make money—I did it myself. But don’t lie to the kids.

I’ve been to LSE, I worked in the City. You know where Canary Wharf is, right? I worked on a trading floor. I’m from Ilford, East London. Someone asked me, “That’s an interesting accent, where are you from?” There’s nobody there from East London. If success was purely about hard work and intelligence, then are we saying every single person in East London is stupid and lazy? Where are they? I grew up with them. They’re smart kids. There are smart kids everywhere.

The story we’ve told ourselves about what makes a society great, what makes a society wealthy, has changed over time. We had this big shift in the ’80s towards individualism—“There’s no such thing as society.” And I want to be clear, I’m not against individualism. I’m not against one person going out and making money for themselves and their family.

But if you take the big sweep of history, these last 70–80 years since World War II are not normal. It’s not normal for ordinary people, like my dad and, I presume, your parents as well, to work regular jobs and be able to live in a nice house, take their families on holidays, and have retirements. Most of history is a tiny super-wealthy elite and a bunch of impoverished peasants.

To protect your middle class, you need to stop the rich from endlessly growing their wealth, because eventually, they consume everyone else’s wealth. These things are connected.

But the current story about what makes a rich economy is based on individualism, entrepreneurism, and every man for himself. There were good sides to this, but the only power the poor and ordinary working people have ever had to protect themselves from the rich is power in numbers. When you make ordinary people extremely individualistic, they lose that.

I have a YouTube channel that makes it clear: Your kids and grandkids are going to live in poverty unless we fight together to tax the rich. I’ve been saying that for years. And the number one comment I get, by a mile, is: “How do I make more money?”

The most powerful thing the rich can do to protect themselves and keep ordinary people poor is to make people selfish. Sell them the dream that they can be like the rich. Because if poor people stick together, they win.

Ever watch a Bruce Lee kung fu movie? He walks into a room and fights 100 guys—one at a time. If the poor fight the rich one-on-one, they will lose every time. If your kids try to outbid Rishi Sunak’s half-a-million-pound-a-week passive income kids on a house, his kids will get the house.

The only power the poor have ever had is power in numbers. But if the poor are selfish, running at Bruce Lee one at a time, they’ll get taken out one at a time. They need to work together.

We, as a country—and not just us, but Americans and Europeans too—need to remember how hard our grandparents fought to get rid of the poverty that our great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents lived in. They recognized that they had to fight together.

It’s hard in an individualistic society. The job I do is hard. But I think people still have it in them. People want to work together. But we have to rediscover that.

It’s going to be very hard to change. If you turned around tomorrow and said “90% tax, 90% inheritance tax,” a lot of the wealthy would leave the country, and we’d have no super-rich. But I want to be clear—I’m not campaigning for higher income tax. For me, it’s about taxing wealth.

This is hard for some people to understand because, for most people, income is what matters. But rich families are sitting on enormous amounts of wealth—assets, property, buildings, mortgages, government debt.

Say I was a banker. I worked hard, made a lot of money. You tax my income at 90%, I can move to Dubai. But if I own £100 million of British assets—British mortgages, British property—and you tax the assets, I can leave the country, but my properties are still here.

Who pays passive income? You do—when you pay rent, when you pay your mortgage, when you buy groceries. A lot of your taxes go to paying government debt interest. If I own £100 million of British mortgages and I move to the Cayman Islands, where does my money come from? British people paying their mortgages.

We can choose to tax that. The Chinese government wouldn’t allow me to own £100 million of Chinese assets, live in the Cayman Islands, and pay no tax. Why does the British government allow it? Because the politicians are super-rich?

Not all politicians are super-rich. I don’t want to spread the idea that all politicians are evil, because if we want change, we have to work with politicians.

Right now, we have Keir Starmer in power. He comes from a working-class background. He’s sat in this chair, he listens to High Performance. If he were to listen to this episode, what would I want him to hear?

I want Keir to understand: If he does not deal with rapidly growing wealth inequality, there is no way he can prevent living standards from falling. I’ve said this on TV, on Politics Live, and they say, “No, that won’t happen.” And I say: Remember today. Because unfortunately, I don’t think Starmer’s Labour government will do anything to stop inequality from growing. And that means living standards will fall.

He might not believe that. But mark your calendar—come back in two, three years and see what happens.

I’m not just saying this—I’m betting on it. I’ve been betting on this for 14 years, and I’ve got a pretty good track record. Inequality will grow if you don’t stop it. Living standards will fall.

It’s unbelievably naïve to think you can let a tiny minority take all the wealth—wealth that used to belong to our parents, grandparents, and governments—and not expect the rest of society to be impoverished.”

This individualism is created by distorted and reversed Marxist ideas about culture. Marx observed that throughout history, cultural factors such as race, gender, and religion were used by wealthy oligarchs to divide society. This topic was discussed in another video I previously posted by Christian Parenti, the son of Michael Parenti.

13:12

“I mean, if you really want to trace this logic back, you can go all the way to Federalist 10 by James Madison. It’s not a “woke” document, but in that document, James Madison addresses elite concerns at the time. They were thinking, “Wait a minute, if you allow anyone to vote, what’s to stop them from taking all of our money?” Madison acknowledges that this is a risk, but it’s only a risk if the vast majority of people who don’t have property come together. However, there are naturally occurring divisions—factions—such as regions, religions, and other societal divisions that afflict people. This is a kind of natural condition in people, which Simon later calls “othering.” It’s that natural tendency to identify “us” and then “them.”

Madison argues that the key to avoiding the dangers of political democracy turning into economic democracy is to lean into the existence of factions, to encourage as much division in society as possible. By doing so, the primary faction—the one between those who own property and those who do not—becomes less of a threat. The risk is that the working class could unite as a single group and use political democracy in ways that would be dangerous for the economic elites.

Madison’s message in Federalist 10 suggests that the chances of this happening are not zero, but it’s pretty difficult to achieve because there are plenty of sources of faction. The trick to elite class rule within a democracy is to continually amplify faction—to keep it developing. The goal is to create as much faction as possible, and this can even be invigorating, a form of rule that can lead to innovations. Who knows what might happen? That’s where social discontent should be channeled.

This logic, the idea of “divide and rule,” is very old. It was picked up in the post-war era and morphed into what we now call “wokeness.” I think the role of foundations and intelligence services is important because they are the ones dealing with the fact that this starts in Europe but eventually spreads throughout the global South. You realize that you’re never going to rid yourself of opposition in a class society. You’re never going to have workers who are exploited, working very hard but not making enough to survive, and have them be happy with that. There will always be resentment, and you just have to live with it. You have to find ways to manage it and channel it into irrelevant, safe distractions.

That’s what “woke” comes out of. It’s not like these components of woke were preconceived, like, “Oh, we’re engineering woke.” It’s not like in the late 40s or early 50s, people were engineering this thing to be understood as woke by the year 2000. No, they were intervening and responding to the conditions as they developed. The turn to foundations, though it’s old and begins in earnest after World War II, really takes off after the late 70s when there were all these exposés, like the Church Committee and the Pike Committee. These revelations exposed things like Operation Chaos, which was essentially illegal CIA involvement in American politics. The CIA isn’t chartered to get involved in domestic affairs; they’re supposed to focus abroad.

In response to this, a bit of a crisis ensues, and more political influence operations go off-book. This is when the National Endowment for Democracy is created, allowing the CIA to carry out its dirty work under the guise of democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy openly states its purpose: it funds opposition groups all over the world, and there’s little question about it. What are you going to do about it?”

The same thing was also described by John Perkins, who was an economic hitman for the West.

31:34

“Corporate aquasphere—and we really blew it there. From that standpoint, the destabilization is no longer happening. These diverse groups have come together because they’ve realized it’s in their self-interest to stick together and fight the common enemy, which is the corporate aquasphere, which is us. Africa is an amazing example because who’s ever heard of Africa? I mean, we hear the name Africa, but who knows anything about it? What do we know about coltan in the Congo? What do we really know about diamonds and some of these countries? What do we really know about oil in Sudan? We hear these things, but we don’t really know much.

The American people like to say, the American press likes to say, “Oh, those corrupt leaders.” We don’t ask who corrupted them. Leaders are not inherently corrupt; they are corrupted. Somebody does it. And when we say, “Oh, you know, tribal warfare,” well, who’s creating the tribal warfare? It’s been to the advantage of the British, the French, the Dutch, the Germans, or whoever happened to be there—and now us—to foster this kind of antagonism. The antagonism between Muslims, Christians, and Jews goes on and on.”

Both of these videos discuss how oligarchs foster division in society through factors like race, gender, and religion. This is exactly what Marx observed and sought to challenge. Marx argued that as long as people remained divided by these classifications, it would be difficult for them to unite. Essentially, he recognized the same issue that Christian Parenti discusses regarding Madison, which Madison wanted to use.

However, what Marx did not foresee or fully understand is that while these divisions can be used to prevent unity, they can also serve as a means of bringing people together, a concept that was later realized by our current oligarch. To illustrate this, consider a workplace with 200 employees who are divided by gender. While this separation can be exploited to maintain division, it also creates two identifiable groups — 100 women and 100 men. While dividing people can be used against them, it can also help foster unite people. In this sense, it is often easier to unite two connected groups of 100 than to unite 200 isolated individuals who have no sense of connection to one another.

Marx advocated for the destruction of cultural divisions to promote unity. However, today’s oligarchs have manipulated and distorted Marx’s ideas, not to eliminate divisions for unity, but rather to create an atomized society. In this atomized society, the 200 workers in our example do not form any groups or connections but instead exist as isolated individuals who see no common bond with one another. This is an ideal scenario for oligarchs because isolated individuals are much harder to organize or unite.

Thus, while modern oligarchs use Marxist principles, they do so for purposes completely opposite to Marx’s intentions. While Marx sought to eliminate cultural divisions to bring people together, today’s oligarchs use his ideas to deepen divisions and foster an atomized society where no one feels connected to anyone else. This concept is also discussed by Gary Stevenson in a video I posted earlier in this thread.

Lastly, I want to apologize to The Duran community for the foul language in my last post comments. However, I will fight against injustice in any way I can, and sometimes, conventional language is ineffective for certain people.

I previously mentioned that my best friend has been showing signs of Islamophobia, and I am trying to dissuade him from such views. I have told him that I do not have an issue with Ukrainians—I have an issue with the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian Nazis. I do not have a problem with Jewish people—I have a problem with the Israeli state and Zionists. I do not have an issue with Arabs, Muslims, or Islam—I have a problem with fundamentalist Islamic states and believers in extremist radical Islam.

We must distinguish between subgroups within larger groups rather than attributing the beliefs of certain subgroups to an entire group. Even when these subgroups are large, generalization is dangerous. For example, while fundamentalist Christian groups are small, we do not attribute their radical ideas—such as bombing abortion clinics—to all Christians. So why should we assign the beliefs of radical Islamists to all Muslims or the beliefs of Zionists to all Jews? Such generalizations put innocent and good people at risk, and I refuse to stand by and do nothing when such ideas are spread.

There are good Ukrainians, good Christians, good Muslims, and good Jewish people. When you generalize and say that “Ukrainians,” “Christians,” “Muslims,” or “Jews” are evil, you put a target on innocent people’s backs. If you argue that you personally see distinctions within these groups, the real question is: Will the average person hearing your words understand those distinctions as well?

If you promote this kind of generalization, I will fight you on it.

Here is a short video of Gary Stevenson showing the economic issues we have.

I want your viewers to pay less tax

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

I saw a recent tweet on X with video that really scared me. Of course, it was deleted because it criticised Elon Musk, who allegedly supports freedom of speech—which, in my opinion, is a lie. The post contained a short video similar to the one I will share here, which really frightened me because it was too true which made it terrifying. The caption of the video was: “Deleted scene from Idiocracy.”

Elon Musk wields chainsaw at CPAC

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

“Knowledge will make you be free.”

― Socrates

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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

― Richard P. Feynman

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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”

― Grzegorz Ochman

Please pay attention, and may God bless you all.