{"id":2207363,"date":"2024-03-27T12:11:03","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T16:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/an-empire-of-terror-bill-whittle-on-the-rise-of-the-soviet-union\/"},"modified":"2024-03-27T12:13:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T16:13:26","slug":"an-empire-of-terror-bill-whittle-on-the-rise-of-the-soviet-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/an-empire-of-terror-bill-whittle-on-the-rise-of-the-soviet-union\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reign of Fear&#8217;: Bill Whittle Reflects on the Emergence of the Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fan-empire-of-terror-bill-whittle-on-the-rise-of-the-soviet-union%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2207363&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The piece provides insights\u2062 from Bill Whittle&#8217;s interview on his docuseries \u2062&#8221;What We Saw:\u2064 An Empire of Terror&#8221; about the\u200b Soviet Union&#8217;s rise. Whittle \u200bdiscusses the intellectual and theoretical nature of the Soviet regime, its ruthless leaders, like Lenin and Stalin, and the historical significance of understanding the Bolshevik Revolution. Additionally, \u2064he highlights the challenges\u2062 faced in \u200ddepicting the human\u2064 toll of the regime.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><i>The following is an edited transcript of a Daily Wire interview with Bill Whittle on his new, in-depth docuseries on the rise of the Soviet Union: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/apollo-11-what-we-saw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What We Saw: An Empire of Terror<\/a>.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Daily Wire: Bill, you\u2019ve now produced multiple \u201cWhat We Saw\u201d documentaries for The Daily Wire: \u201c<\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/apollo-11-what-we-saw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>Apollo 11<\/b><\/a><b>\u201d and \u201c<\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/apollo-11-what-we-saw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>The Cold War<\/b><\/a><b>.\u201d Why did you choose the rise of the Soviet Union as your next project?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine I received a call from Jeremy Boreing at The Daily Wire. I just finished covering a fair amount of Russia with \u201cThe Cold War\u201d series. Given the research for \u201cThe Cold War,\u201d and my previous readings, I\u2019ve always been kind of morbidly fascinated with the mechanisms of the Soviet Union \u2014 fascinated and disgusted and appalled and intrigued by governments that have to terrorize their people in order to remain in power, antithetical to the American system. And no matter how bad we think things get here, there\u2019s nothing that\u2019s happened or is happening now in this country that even approaches this scale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>DW: Why is it important to remember Russia\u2019s Bolshevik Revolution?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> Several years after World War I, Winston Churchill said that the Germans had transmitted a \u201cBacillus\u201d into Russia in the form of Lenin. I think he got that exactly right. It (Lenin) was a biological weapon. And it was designed to destroy Russia as a great power in World War I. That\u2019s why the Germans not only allowed Lenin to travel through Germany during the height of the war, but in fact paid his expenses for many, many years afterwards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This regime is interesting to me for two reasons: the main reason is how intellectual it was \u2014 and I have a very low opinion of intellectuals. Intellectualism is for people who think they are intelligent and are so certain of themselves and so certain of what they believe that they feel the right to enforce their theories on other people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What fascinated me about this horrific system was the theoretical aspect of everything. There was nothing about the system that was practical. There was nothing based on common sense, experience, reason, kindness, decency \u2014 nothing. It was all based on the theory of a German philosopher named Karl Marx. His writings appealed to people looking for some sort of justice, but they also appealed to people who had any sort of envy for the people in power but didn\u2019t want to do any work in order to achieve it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/apollo-11-what-we-saw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WATCH: \u201cAn Empire of Terror\u201d on DailyWire+<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The other remarkable quality about all of the Soviet leaders is just how useless they were. Prior to finding themselves in the middle of the system, none of them had jobs. Lenin\u2019s only job was as a failed attorney, very briefly. As a lawyer he lost, I think, 13 out of 14 cases and never really worked a day in his life. Prior to the revolution, he sat around for 16 years, sitting in cafes in safe places like Berlin and Munich and London and Zurich, sipping tea and discussing theory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">He developed in his massive forehead this idea of how a society should work and there was no <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/paul-driessen-billionaire-climate-elites-have-their-own-rules\/\" title=\"Paul Driessen: Billionaire Climate Elites Have Their Own Rules\">real world evidence<\/a> that would change his mind. If it turned out that there was a difference between the map he had in his head and reality, then the reality had to be well, he would then go about doing whatever he had to do with the lovers of state power to beat reality into line with the theory. And this is why the Soviet state was a terror state. They never had legitimacy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bolsheviks were a minority every single time they held a so-called \u201celection;\u201d they were a tremendous minority. And you can\u2019t even accuse the Nazis of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_714981\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-714981\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">DailyWire+<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b>DW: In \u201cAn Empire of Terror\u201d you mention the leader of Russia\u2019s provisional government, Alexander Kerensky. Why wasn\u2019t he able to mount a good defense against the growing Bolshevik threat?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> Someone once wrote that Lenin was \u201clucky with his enemies.\u201d And that was exactly the case. I have very high regard for Alexander Kerensky\u2019s principles and for what he wanted for the Russian people. But as an actor, Kerensky had two qualities that actors often bring to the world: First, he was spectacularly naive when it came to the real world. And second, he was tremendously vain. These two blind spots led him to believe he was in control when in fact, Lenin was ready to do everything up to and including murder when Kerensky was simply looking out the window at the daisies. He was a good man and history was kind to him but he was no match for Lenin\u2019s ruthlessness. This is the thing about the Soviet state \u2014 it\u2019s designed in such a way that you have to keep the population under control through terror. The people that end up running the machine, by definition, become the most ruthless and terroristic of the bunch.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_714985\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-714985\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">DailyWire+<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b>DW: What were some of the challenges you faced making this new series?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> All <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/anonymous-miles-taylor-gop-becoming-the-party-of-political-violence\/\" title=\"\u2018Anonymous\u2019 Miles Taylor: GOP 'Becoming the Party of Political Violence\u2019\">roads lead back<\/a> to Lenin. When I began to realize the magnitude of the crimes that these people committed, I began to feel a tremendous sense of historical responsibility to the people who disappeared without photographs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">800,000 people were killed in one of the gulags called Kolyma. 800,000 people. That makes it second on the leaderboard from hell: Auschwitz is first, Kolyma is second, and Treblinka is third. So, more than anything, I wanted every single episode to have as many photographs of the faces of individual people. And most importantly, we can never use the same face twice. I just wanted faces because, as Stalin said, \u201cOne death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So my biggest challenge was to find a way to try and personalize this. Make people understand that this could just as easily be you or your family, and then try to give them some idea of what the size of 20 million people looks like.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, about 100,000 people attend the Super Bowl every year. Imagine that everybody had to exit the stadium, single file, through one gate and you had to stand there and look at every single face as they left the stadium. When you were finished, hours and hours and hours later, you would have only 199 more Super Bowls to look at before you reached 20 million and saw the face of every person killed by this \u201cidea.\u201d And if it\u2019s killed that many people, maybe it\u2019s not such a good idea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>DW: Did you come across any surprises in your research?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> The most astonishing story in \u201cAn Empire of Terror\u201d is a true story. I\u2019ve worked exceedingly hard and long to make sure that not only everything I wrote was true, but that I also had the receipts for everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the most astonishing coincidence in the entire series is this: Lenin and Stalin were both known to be extremely paranoid, and very, very <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/aocs-alleged-aunt-disputes-claim-trump-at-fault-for-puerto-rico-aid-issues-we-had-the-assistance-and-it-didnt-get-to-the-people\/\" title=\"AOC\u2019s Alleged Aunt Disputes Claim Trump At Fault For Puerto Rico Aid Issues: \u2018We Had The Assistance And It Didn\u2019t Get To The People\u2019\">private people<\/a>. They kept a very tight circle and they were constantly on the lookout for assassination and betrayal. So when Lenin finally arrives in Moscow from St. Petersburg, and eventually gets himself a little mansion, he is living with his sisters, his wife, and two secretaries. He also has four bodyguards and a private cook named Comrade Spiridon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Comrade Spiridon went from being the only person that lived with Lenin, who was not related to him, to becoming the only person who lived with Stalin. And he lived with Stalin for the duration of Stalin\u2019s reign in the Soviet Union. The only person who shared the insight into the entire thing \u2014 from the rise from agrarian peasantry to nuclear superpower. Comrade Spiridon was the only man who was on the inside. He would serve dinner to people who were the heads of the secret police one night and then the next night they were gone. They\u2019d been killed and replaced. The genuinely remarkable part of this story is that Comrade Spiridon\u2019s last name was Putin. This was Vladimir Putin\u2019s grandfather.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vladimir Putin learned about the Soviet Union on his grandfather\u2019s knee. And so the perspective Vladimir Putin received of the Soviet Union was the most elevated inside perspective that was possible to obtain. No one else in the entire history of the Soviet Union, ever, got that close to both of those men. And to think that it was possible for Vladimir Putin to turn out any other way is insane.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><b>DW: In light of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sen-rand-paul-offers-dr-rachel-levine-as-example-of-radical-agenda-riding-bidens-coattails\/\" title=\"Sen. Rand Paul Offers Dr. Rachel Levine As Example Of Radical Agenda Riding Biden\u2019s Coattails\">upcoming presidential election<\/a>, do you see elements of communism at play in our politics?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Bill:<\/strong> Well, the first thing I think that stands out about the upcoming election is the lawfare that\u2019s being conducted against Donald Trump. If these people who are committing these atrocities against him genuinely believed in democracy, if they genuinely believed that their democratic values were better than Republican values, they wouldn\u2019t be trying to lock up Trump. They\u2019d be doing everything they could to get him to keep talking. If you feel like your only way to win an election is by having your opponent put in jail, you are well on your way to this kind of totalitarian empire of terror. That\u2019s number one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Number two is cancel culture. The Left is using cancel culture as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/states-take-aim-at-house-wholesalers-who-flood-poor-areas\/\" title=\"States Take Aim at House Wholesalers Who Flood Poor Areas\">strong-arm tactic<\/a> to get people to shut up. And we all know the way it works: \u201cYou\u2019re racist\u201d or \u201cwe\u2019re going to call your boss\u201d or \u201cwe\u2019re going to boycott your product\u201d or whatever. But the point is that the only people who feel they need to shut up the opposition are people who know that their opposition has a better argument. And if they don\u2019t shut them up, they\u2019re going to win. One of my favorite sayings is that liberals want conservatives to shut up and conservatives want liberals to keep talking. And that\u2019s the essence of the difference between these two parties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have seen a concerted effort in America over the last several years to silence people. This whole idea of cancel culture is as close as we\u2019ve come so far to taking people out to the Gulag and shooting them in the back of the head. But there are people who do want other people silenced. And the one thing I did realize is that there comes a tipping point when too many people are too quiet for too long. The social proof is to be quiet. The longer everybody is quiet, the harder it is to speak up. Eventually, it will lead to a situation like the Soviet Union, or the Nazi state. With \u201cAn Empire of Terror,\u201d I was determined to do my best to make sure that doesn\u2019t happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read the transcript from The Daily Wire&#8217;s recent interview with Bill Whittle about his latest docuseries, &#8220;What We Saw: An Empire of Terror,&#8221; delving into the rise of the Soviet Union. Bill has previously created acclaimed documentaries for The Daily Wire, like &#8220;Apollo 11&#8221; and &#8220;The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":2207364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/03\/EOT-Key-Art-16x9-1.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2207363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2024\/03\/EOT-Key-Art-16x9-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2207364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}