Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known
Speaker 1: things go. A corridor of the mind stalked with evidence,
Speaker 1: packed with proof. I've got this one box in here
Speaker 1: was stuff from my childhood, old report cards, softball team photographs,
Speaker 1: girl Scout badges. In this Russia in Review magazine I
Speaker 1: made out of magic markers and construction paper in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, when I was twelve in seventh grade for
Speaker 1: social studies. It's got an article on the space race,
Speaker 1: A little history that starts with Sputnik. There's a story
Speaker 1: about Samovars, a little biography. Joseph Stalin, a Russian dictator,
Speaker 1: was a man who instilled terror in people his early life.
Speaker 1: Made been the cause of this, plus fake ads, Apski Coolska,
Speaker 1: the communist at Kola. I made up one article called
Speaker 1: on tour in Moscow, where I meet people on the
Speaker 1: street and I say things like hello miss Where American
Speaker 1: reporters would you mind a short interview? I loved imagining
Speaker 1: myself as a foreign correspondent. All expenses were paid. I
Speaker 1: was all packed in money from my trip to Russia.
Speaker 1: What I didn't know when I was twelve was at
Speaker 1: the same time as I was imagining flying to Moscow
Speaker 1: to interview Russians about communism. A guy named Valentine Zorin,
Speaker 1: the Walter Cronkite of the Soviet Union, was flying to
Speaker 1: the United States from Moscow to interview Americans about capitalism
Speaker 1: for Soviet television. So step back across the passage of
Speaker 1: time to follow in the footsteps of a Soviet reporter
Speaker 1: by historian of sorts. Valentin Zarin, known as the Walter
Speaker 1: Cronkite of the Soviet Union, is filming a documentary on
Speaker 1: the United States. In nineteen seventy eight, Valentin Zorin went
Speaker 1: to southern California. He went to Disneyland. A local public
Speaker 1: TV station sent a reporter out to Anaheim to cover
Speaker 1: his visit. The sinister gentleman in the Navy blue jacket
Speaker 1: might have bought his way into Disneyland, as thousands of
Speaker 1: Russians have, but Valentin zorn wanted to bring a film crew.
Speaker 1: The Soviet newsman had been forbidden to film Universal Studios
Speaker 1: and the Hollywood Sign and he said the influence of
Speaker 1: right wing conservative forces in Los Angeles were beginning to
Speaker 1: hedge him in. Zorin had been complaining about conservatives who'd
Speaker 1: been decrying his visit, but at Disneyland, Zorn said he
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk politics. Mister Zen, are you still
Speaker 1: sensing the right wing and conservative influences you spoke of
Speaker 1: a day or two ago. I think that Disneyland not
Speaker 1: good place for such discussion. Right, Welcome to the last archive.
Speaker 1: The show about how we know what we know and
Speaker 1: why it seems lately is if we don't know anything
Speaker 1: at all. I'm Joe Lapoor. This season, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: trace the history of doubt. I've been arguing that the
Speaker 1: rise and spread of new kinds of doubt over the
Speaker 1: course of the twentieth century was accelerated by changing technologies
Speaker 1: of communication, beginning with the radio, by the increasing sophistication
Speaker 1: and complexity of scientific research, and most of all, by
Speaker 1: the lies told in wartime, the First World War, the
Speaker 1: Second World War, and the Cold War. This episode, I
Speaker 1: wanted to think about something a little different, not lies exactly,
Speaker 1: but mutual misunderstanding, misperception and misinformation. This episode sewing doubt
Speaker 1: as foreign policy. Look right at the top here, let
Speaker 1: me put a few cards on the table. Here's a
Speaker 1: really good reason to look at Soviet propaganda. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like Trump propaganda, the stuff Donald Trump said, the
Speaker 1: whole of his campaign, the whole of his administration, the
Speaker 1: whole of his post presidency. In Soviet propaganda, as in
Speaker 1: Trump's America, nothing is what it seems. All the news
Speaker 1: is fake and there are conspiracies everywhere. This has been
Speaker 1: happening for a long time. In twenty sixteen, right after
Speaker 1: the US election, a certain sort of Russian misinformation operation
Speaker 1: made headlines and brought reporters to a nondescript building in
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg. What's allegedly happening here the manufacture of fake news.
Speaker 1: This is a so called troll factory. Troll factories are
Speaker 1: only the latest weapons in a very very old propaganda war.
Speaker 1: But that's why I want to take a close look
Speaker 1: at the ideological weapons valentin's or In helped build and
Speaker 1: the hazardous waste left behind. But I've got to confess
Speaker 1: I had never heard of him until Julia Barton, the
Speaker 1: last Archives brilliant editor, told me about him. I'm just
Speaker 1: a big USSR nerd and I was doing a bunch
Speaker 1: of research, and as one does, I ran across some
Speaker 1: of Zorin's stuff while doing that, and it just fell
Speaker 1: into this rabbit hole of Zorin. Julia found a bunch
Speaker 1: of Zorn's documentaries on routube that's Russian YouTube, and watched
Speaker 1: his work over and over. It's so well made, and
Speaker 1: a lot of Soviet TVs not that watchable, and this
Speaker 1: is very Differentia. Julia showed me one of his films,
Speaker 1: a little number called America Autumn nineteen seventy one. When
Speaker 1: this film opens, Zorin is sitting on a rock in
Speaker 1: the woods. He's holding a small book in his hands,
Speaker 1: maybe a book of poetry. He's looking directly into the camera. Yeah. Boys,
Speaker 1: what's on the mind of Americans as they find themselves
Speaker 1: near the end of the year nineteen seventy one? What's
Speaker 1: on the minds of Americans? We will try to answer
Speaker 1: this question by visiting bureaucrats in DC on the streets
Speaker 1: of New York. Like, the footage is just so fun.
Speaker 1: It has this kind of mix of you know, James
Speaker 1: Bond and David Attenborough in which we are the monkeys,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, not a normal position
Speaker 1: for Americans to feel themselves in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: they love that about it. That there's also kind of
Speaker 1: I was thinking about you know, nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes and sort of like looking on
Speaker 1: a kind of fallen version of what America is through
Speaker 1: the eyes of some different people. Yeah, Julia got interested
Speaker 1: in Russia as a kid at the same age as
Speaker 1: I did. In eighth grade, I did a paper about
Speaker 1: the Russians and how the Russians were people, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, I get it now, I understand this
Speaker 1: country that we're not supposed to understand. You know, it's weird,
Speaker 1: this thing. Julia and I share Americans, our age share
Speaker 1: as if it's a generational marker. But unlike me, Julia
Speaker 1: got hooked, studied Russian, traveled to the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 1: then later when she was older, she got obsessed with Zorin.
Speaker 1: The americanist who studied us. Valentine Jorn was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five, joined the Communist Party when he was
Speaker 1: a student in Moscow. He got the best education, but
Speaker 1: mixed in with mass and history was a steady diet
Speaker 1: of Soviet conspiracy propaganda. Like in nineteen forty five, when
Speaker 1: after FDR died, one of Zorn's professors claimed to prove
Speaker 1: beyond a doubt that Roosevelt had been poisoned on orders
Speaker 1: of Harry as Truman. Okay, so that's bonkers, but it
Speaker 1: tells you about the education Zorn got, and it says
Speaker 1: a lot that he believed this. Apparently all his life.
Speaker 1: In Zorn's America, nothing was what had seemed. All the
Speaker 1: news was fake, and there were conspiracies everywhere. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, Zorn trained to become a diplomat, but his
Speaker 1: mother was Jewish and the Soviets didn't trust Jews to
Speaker 1: serve as diplomats, so instead he became a radio commentator
Speaker 1: and continued his studies, earning a doctorate in history, Doctor Zorn,
Speaker 1: Professor Zorn. In nineteen sixty three, a few days after
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy, Zorn
Speaker 1: says he made his way to Dallas to investigate. He
Speaker 1: began a quest to unmask America. He worked as a
Speaker 1: reporter or documentary filmmaker and a television news commentator for years.
Speaker 1: He hosted a show that was the Russian version of
Speaker 1: Meet the Press. He was everywhere. He loved this joke.
Speaker 1: I turned on the radio, Zorn turned on the TV.
Speaker 1: Also's am I needed to turn on the iron but thought, Betra,
Speaker 1: I don't really get that joke, but I still love it.
Speaker 1: The point is he really was everywhere. He was the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union's best known americanist and quite a serious journalist.
Speaker 1: His take on the world was so persuasive that it
Speaker 1: became the take on America. And he also got to
Speaker 1: go to places that a lot of americanists in the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union never even got to go to America. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he's also you know, this kind of sexy,
Speaker 1: devonair guy with a cigarette holder and his quoft hair
Speaker 1: and right cool croppy glasses, like, you know, he's very
Speaker 1: alluring and so like the combination of like the physically
Speaker 1: alluring sort of intellectual, which is an unusual let me
Speaker 1: just say it's an unusual mix. Yeah, and he's funny.
Speaker 1: He's funny. Yeah, but then he's also reductive, right, but
Speaker 1: which is also appealing. Right, But I am we will
Speaker 1: sit in the powerful Senate chambers and sit with the unemployed.
Speaker 1: We'll see things through the eyes of wolf Street trade
Speaker 1: there and the eyes of the protesters against war and poverty.
Speaker 1: That's America Fall of nineteen seventy one. There's a rule
Speaker 1: about propaganda. It's going to have some basis. In fact,
Speaker 1: the whole point of Soviet anti American propaganda at just
Speaker 1: this moment was to unmask the myth of American greatness.
Speaker 1: As the historian Dina Feinberg has pointed out, Zorin made
Speaker 1: most of his documentaries about America during Day tat warming
Speaker 1: period in US Soviet relations, during Americans were trying to
Speaker 1: understand Soviets, and Soviets were trying to understand Americans on
Speaker 1: the theory that mutual understanding was the only way the
Speaker 1: Cold War could end. There are all sorts of Russianists
Speaker 1: in the United States and all sorts of Americanists in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, everyone calling for understanding, including American President
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. Each of us has only one nation. We
Speaker 1: both share the same world. Believing that Americans and Soviets
Speaker 1: share the same world. That was Day Tante. Zorin, like
Speaker 1: all Soviet journalists, followed directives from the State. His film
Speaker 1: America Autumn nineteen seventy one came out at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of Day Tante, so it's a softer take on
Speaker 1: the United States. But if you go back just one
Speaker 1: year to nineteen seventy just before Day tante. You see
Speaker 1: a very different Zorin, more adversarial, more die capitalist pigs.
Speaker 1: I want to understand this transition better. The problem is
Speaker 1: I don't speak a word of Russian. So I called
Speaker 1: it my Harvard colleague, Sir he Pokey, a professor of
Speaker 1: Ukrainian history. He's the author of a terrific new book,
Speaker 1: Nuclear Folly, a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Surrey
Speaker 1: and I we'd taught history classes together, but I'd actually
Speaker 1: never known much about his own history. He was born
Speaker 1: in Russia and grew up in Ukraine. I was fascinated
Speaker 1: to see that you were born in the year of
Speaker 1: spot Nick. Yeah, I am a Spotney generation yesterday sister
Speaker 1: child here. So and you said you grew up watching
Speaker 1: Zorin as a kid, well as a teenager. Certainly my
Speaker 1: father was watching him, and actually I watched him as well.
Speaker 1: And again that was the window on them on the American,
Speaker 1: on the United States. For a generation of Soviets, Zorn's
Speaker 1: films were pretty much their only window on the United States.
Speaker 1: Sir Hay born in nineteen fifty seven had watched Zorin
Speaker 1: on TV as a teenager, but he had not seen
Speaker 1: any of those films since, so we watched them together,
Speaker 1: starting with an early series called Masters Without Masks. It
Speaker 1: was a lot more over the top than Sir Hay remembered.
Speaker 1: It begins with a pretty hair raising video montage of
Speaker 1: scenes from all over the US, set over blaring James
Speaker 1: Bond music, Americans as decadent capitalists with really nice cars
Speaker 1: and exciting clothes. Yeah, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So it's nineteen seventy, he's just starting and it's just
Speaker 1: the deepest Cold War and the most I don't know,
Speaker 1: I almost don't believe my eyes. So we're looking at
Speaker 1: it is such an like a massively captivating assembly of stereotypes.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like sex and money and it's a mess.
Speaker 1: They're crazy over there. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely absolutely, and
Speaker 1: and of course it's runsome money. It's controlled by money,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's awful, it's decadent, Sarah. They'll explain
Speaker 1: to me. The the Zorn expose is look one way,
Speaker 1: but people in the Soviet Union south differently. You go
Speaker 1: for something that actually you want to see it, okay,
Speaker 1: And there are people dancing right Okay, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: This is school, okay, and there is Cassine. Ah, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have casina. It would be interesting to see
Speaker 1: what does care You know, like it's an indictment of
Speaker 1: this excess, but it's also like, ooh, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I would like to see that. That's Sarah and I
Speaker 1: both ended up being historians. Kind of knocks me out.
Speaker 1: The parallelism and also the inversion. Teenage sarahy in Ukraine
Speaker 1: watching Zorin and becoming fascinated by the United States. Me
Speaker 1: in the United States making my magazine about Russia. I
Speaker 1: had magic markers. The USSR had television. Ask Julia Barton
Speaker 1: how Soviet TV worked. Keep in mind, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: is the biggest country in the world by far. It
Speaker 1: has eleven time zones, and like, what can link all
Speaker 1: those people together? It's television. So everything that gets made
Speaker 1: something special like this is broadcast to millions of people
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. And the thing that
Speaker 1: Soviets are the most curious about and really want to
Speaker 1: see is news from abroad, much more so than Americans
Speaker 1: ever have been. Americans and Soviets we were looking at
Speaker 1: one another, peering through holes in the iron curtain. Zorn
Speaker 1: was looking through that curtain too, but he wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: looking for the truth about the United States. Destant was
Speaker 1: a nice idea, but there was still a war on
Speaker 1: and even though his films appeared softer now, Zorn was
Speaker 1: looking for evidence of America's corruption, It's inner evil, evidence
Speaker 1: of its darkest secrets. Cold War Soviet propagandists wanted to
Speaker 1: unmask America. One way they did that was to focus
Speaker 1: on the brutality of Jim Crow. That led to an
Speaker 1: American response. In nineteen fifty two, the US Attorney General
Speaker 1: argued for an end segregation on the ground that did
Speaker 1: a crippled American foreign policy. He wrote, racial discrimination furnishes
Speaker 1: grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts,
Speaker 1: even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our
Speaker 1: devotion to the democratic faith. Exposing American hypocrisy worked really
Speaker 1: well for Soviets, depicting the US as the land of
Speaker 1: the free, but really the home of the oppressed. But
Speaker 1: there's also, you know, the belief that communism is at
Speaker 1: this vanguard of social change, and so they're looking for
Speaker 1: signs that this vanguard is advancing in places like the
Speaker 1: United States. It's about um, you know, capitalism falling apart,
Speaker 1: falling on its own sword. Usually Alabama, which you know,
Speaker 1: WILLISAO one in American Autumn. Zorn goes to an office
Speaker 1: building to visit the National Socialist White People's Party, American
Speaker 1: neo Nazis. Soren's smoking a cigarette, He's super casual. He
Speaker 1: rings the doorbell and then amazingly, these Nazis let the
Speaker 1: Soviet film crew inside party of our party. Who can
Speaker 1: be summed up two words, white target. We believe that city.
Speaker 1: Zarren's argument in this film is that there's a direct
Speaker 1: connection between neo Nazis and the US government, a direct
Speaker 1: connection between neo Nazis and the two major American political parties.
Speaker 1: Soren's documentary takes us from the offices of the White
Speaker 1: People's Play to a rally for George Wallace, the segregationist
Speaker 1: one time governor of Alabama who ran for president in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight and again in nineteen seventy two. I
Speaker 1: had my friends are he walked me through this point
Speaker 1: in film. Okay, so basically he goes, he interviews this
Speaker 1: white supremacist and then he says that in Washington, they
Speaker 1: told us, okay, how many of those crazies are out there?
Speaker 1: And he says, well, there is a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Wallace is one of their leaders, and he got ten
Speaker 1: million goals, said the last elections. So the connection between
Speaker 1: between white supremacists and mainstream American politics. After going to
Speaker 1: the George Wallace rally, he's off to Alabama's cotton fields
Speaker 1: and shanties with poor black families. Soran says, it's one
Speaker 1: of the centers of American racism. Stems at agenas of Shiprison.
Speaker 1: If you pressing a cross burning footage of a cross
Speaker 1: burning in the clan. He was very proud of taking
Speaker 1: an interview from from I don't know the leader or
Speaker 1: one of the leaders of Kuklux Klan. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's Robert Shelton, okay, right, because he said that that
Speaker 1: footage was actually bought by a lot of TV companies
Speaker 1: all over the world, and he was the one who
Speaker 1: got it. The footage was such a scoop that Zorn
Speaker 1: sold it to foreign broadcasters to get it out in
Speaker 1: front of even more of yours. In this incredible scene,
Speaker 1: Zorn sits down with an Imperial Wizard of the KKK
Speaker 1: in a little fancy parlor with a framed picture of
Speaker 1: Hitler on the wall behind them. You don't often get
Speaker 1: to meet a grand wizard, Zorn says in voice over.
Speaker 1: And yet here we are talking with mister Shelton. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me? Can you tell me about basically the
Speaker 1: organization advocates Christianity. Here in the Imperial Wizard's parlor, Zorin
Speaker 1: found what he was looking for, the evil secret, the
Speaker 1: ugly face behind the mask of American democracy, white supremacy.
Speaker 1: But actually Zorin wasn't all that interested in social issues
Speaker 1: or in how politics worked in the United States. He
Speaker 1: was interested in stories that reduced power struggles to moral struggles,
Speaker 1: struggles between good and evil. For his biggest story, Zorn
Speaker 1: needed a different supervillain, not a clansman, but a capitalist.
Speaker 1: A capitalist too, Zorin would claim, had conspired to kill Kennedy.
Speaker 1: Valentine Zorin, one of their respected as far as the
Speaker 1: Soviet goes mouthpieces of the Kremlin, is trying to counter
Speaker 1: charges on Moscow Radio that President Kennedy was a victim
Speaker 1: of a leftist fanatic. That's CBS newsman Walter Cronkite. After
Speaker 1: the Kennedy assassination, Cronkite's reporting on Valentine Zorn's claim that
Speaker 1: Kennedy could not have been killed in Dallas by Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald acting alone or God forbid, on orders from Moscow.
Speaker 1: He has said, those who know how the security of
Speaker 1: President Kennedy is organized know that it is not possible
Speaker 1: for a fanatic to commit such an assassination. Valentine Zorin says,
Speaker 1: and this terribly inflammatory statement by one of the king
Speaker 1: fins of Soviet propaganda in Moscow. He went on to say, quote,
Speaker 1: it is not accidental that it took place in the
Speaker 1: Southern States, which are well known as a stronghold of
Speaker 1: racist and other fascist scum. Lee Harvey Oswald looked to
Speaker 1: be a leftist fanatic. He'd taught himself Russian and in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine had traveled to the Soviet Union. But
Speaker 1: Zorn claimed that Kennedy had been killed not by a
Speaker 1: loane leftist but by a conservative conspiracy, a capitalist conspiracy.
Speaker 1: We repeat, in case anybody could mistake the import of
Speaker 1: these words, that this is Soviet propaganda broadcast by Moscow
Speaker 1: radio commentator Valentine Zorn. This was Soviet propaganda, sure, but
Speaker 1: of course a whole lot of Americans also suspected that
Speaker 1: Oswald hadn't acted alone. Even after the government published its
Speaker 1: official report, American conspiracy theorists poured over the evidence, especially
Speaker 1: footage of the assassination. At the same time, agencies like
Speaker 1: the KGB only added fuel to that fire. Zorn meant
Speaker 1: to go further than spreading rumors he would conduct an investigation.
Speaker 1: He went to search for the answers to Kennedy's assassination
Speaker 1: in the place where it happened, Dallas, Texas, and there
Speaker 1: Zorn got obsessed with a Texas oil tycoon named H. L. Hunt.
Speaker 1: Zorin talks a lot about Hunt in a film called
Speaker 1: called The Puzzles of Dallas. H L. Hunt's mansion fronts
Speaker 1: a lake in Dallas, and as it turns out, our
Speaker 1: editor Julia Barton, grew up just a few blocks away
Speaker 1: in the less glamorous back end of the neighborhood. Julie
Speaker 1: and I watched The Puzzles of Dallas together. I was
Speaker 1: a kid there, and a lot of the shots are
Speaker 1: like kid angle shots, like they're in the back of
Speaker 1: a car that's just like endlessly driving. They even drive
Speaker 1: past the freeway exit that we always got off at
Speaker 1: on I thirty, you know, to go home. So I
Speaker 1: was like when I saw that sign, I was like,
Speaker 1: that's my exit, you know, like get off, go to
Speaker 1: my house. Julie didn't know about hl Hunt when she
Speaker 1: was a kid, but later on she too got fascinated.
Speaker 1: You know. Hunt was a gambler. He won his oil
Speaker 1: rights through through a poker game. He was awesome Jeeves Bond, Yes,
Speaker 1: and he was coming. And he was an ardent, outspoken
Speaker 1: anti communist who at his own you know, propaganda outfit,
Speaker 1: which he financed through a money losing grocery operation HLH Foods.
Speaker 1: And he lived in a in a mansion that looked
Speaker 1: like a plantation, and he raised the flag every morning
Speaker 1: with his wife. And it's just like a he had
Speaker 1: a naked cat. Hl Hunt is basically a Bond villain
Speaker 1: or better doctor Evil. He wasn't just an oil tycoon.
Speaker 1: He was an American propagandist. He was really the anti
Speaker 1: zorin mister Hunt. It's often been said that that you
Speaker 1: have what is called a conspiratorial view of history. In
Speaker 1: other words, if you see reds under every couch and
Speaker 1: cover and where they're not really there, do you think
Speaker 1: you're over alarmed about the way things are going. However
Speaker 1: alarmed I am. I don't think I'm alarmed enough. I'm
Speaker 1: playing the United States. The Communist Party today is a
Speaker 1: weak read. Indeed, I don't think that Jedger Hoover would
Speaker 1: agree with your conclusion. Hunt financed his own radio show, Lifeline.
Speaker 1: He's very proto Rush Limbaugh, where his announcers spouted anti communism.
Speaker 1: If the vast majority of Americans suddenly were to cease
Speaker 1: believing in the individual dignity of man, we would all
Speaker 1: begin looking to the government for everything, and freedom would
Speaker 1: be lost to a paternalistic statism. Hunt's radio show attack
Speaker 1: not only statism and communism, but also socialism and well
Speaker 1: just plain taxation, whether we like it or not. This
Speaker 1: is an extreme time in the history of our nation.
Speaker 1: In the communist schedule, the time is now, the target
Speaker 1: is you. Ah Hunt was the anti Zorin he had
Speaker 1: that radio show, wrote a column called Hunt for Truth,
Speaker 1: and he had a publishing outfit called Facts Forum. But
Speaker 1: Zorn did Hunt one better. He peddled a conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: in which Hunt and the Texas Oil Block, led by
Speaker 1: Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Remember Johnson was also from Texas,
Speaker 1: had wanted Kennedy dead and had gone so far as
Speaker 1: to arrange for Kennedy to be killed because Kennedy was
Speaker 1: about to regulate the oil industry. Kennedy. Because of Zorn,
Speaker 1: Hunt was possibly better known in the USSR then in
Speaker 1: the United States. I hadn't known much about him, but
Speaker 1: Hunt still seemed weirdly familiar to me from an old movie.
Speaker 1: Sure this is because everything reminds me of an old movie,
Speaker 1: but apparently everything reminded Zorn of an old movie too.
Speaker 1: Soviet propaganda is laced through with plots straight out of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and so are most modern conspiracies, including those about fake
Speaker 1: pandemics and stolen elections. Every conspiracy theory feels like a
Speaker 1: remake of an old movie, because for something to work
Speaker 1: as a conspiracy, it has to work as a story. Specifically,
Speaker 1: hl Hunt reminded me of a character from one of
Speaker 1: my favorite Cold War thrillers, Billion Dollar Brain, from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. If you haven't seen it, one easy way
Speaker 1: to picture it is to know that it inspired the
Speaker 1: Austin Powers movies. It's that campy. My love for Billion
Speaker 1: Dollar Brain has nothing to do with Valentine Zorn and
Speaker 1: a whole lot to do with Michael Caine, who plays
Speaker 1: a sort of lazy, half asked spy working his way
Speaker 1: into the center of a vast conspiracy run by a
Speaker 1: wealthy oil tycoon who lives in Texas. He's named General Midwinter. Boy.
Speaker 1: I tell you and I know the Texas is the
Speaker 1: only truly hopes a man this world. General Midwinter is
Speaker 1: hl Hunt. This isn't just me in my overdeveloped sense
Speaker 1: of coincidence. The writer act based the character on Hunt.
Speaker 1: Hunt Ran the Facts form. The fictional Midwinter runs a
Speaker 1: propaganda outfit called Facts for Freedom. Midwinter also is prone
Speaker 1: to see conspiracies everywhere, maybe because he's up to some
Speaker 1: pretty conspiratorial hijienks himself. I'm leaving a flusha a world
Speaker 1: of shape for freedom. You don't understand the kind of
Speaker 1: love I have for this great country of ours. Love
Speaker 1: not built that way, my way anymore. I love my
Speaker 1: count baby. I might dreamy to make the thing I
Speaker 1: love strong. Do you understand me? Yes? Strong? Strong, strong strong.
Speaker 1: It's all here in Billion Dollar Brain, produced by the
Speaker 1: same man who made the James Bond films, films that
Speaker 1: Zorn constantly ripped off for his own documentaries. I'm always
Speaker 1: struck by how in the late sixties and early seventies
Speaker 1: and everything from spy thrillers to Soviet propaganda, everyone has
Speaker 1: an ulterior motive and shady supervillains hold the fate of
Speaker 1: the world in their hands. Midwinter Hunt, Julie and I
Speaker 1: were both amazed by this Cold War central casting. But
Speaker 1: there's something about Hunt that must have lent itself to
Speaker 1: I guess you know the kind of the comic book
Speaker 1: character treatment, right, because he was I mean, just as
Speaker 1: you say listing off. He lived in a house that
Speaker 1: was designed after Mount Vernon, so it was a southern plantation,
Speaker 1: like the guy is a parody of a certain sort
Speaker 1: of American magnet with the ten gallon hat and the
Speaker 1: anti communist brochures. Yeah, and Soviet TV. I mean they
Speaker 1: loved all these guys, Howard Hughes, you know, all of
Speaker 1: these any any eccentric capitalists who's over the top is
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just built for the caricature that worked
Speaker 1: really well with Soviet propaganda. Midwinter was fun. He was
Speaker 1: a fantastic supervillain. When Billion Dollar Brain came out, though
Speaker 1: critics accused it of being anti American because by indicting
Speaker 1: Midwinter for being an oil tycoon like Hunt, it played
Speaker 1: right into Soviet propaganda. Especially Zorin's His specialty was state monopoly.
Speaker 1: So there was this kind of Leninist worldview that the
Speaker 1: United States was not controlled or did not work according
Speaker 1: to the structures that it claimed to work. It didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter about the separation of powers, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter about institutions like Congress and the White House and
Speaker 1: the courts. That the real power centers in America were
Speaker 1: state monopolies were control of resources. So you had the
Speaker 1: steel monopoly groups, you had the oil monopoly groups, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing under this sort of like rubric of
Speaker 1: how things work in the United States, democratic elections are
Speaker 1: a joke and we're just all chumps. So in American
Speaker 1: politics today there are lots of conspiracy theorists on the
Speaker 1: left and especially on the right. All of them require
Speaker 1: a lot of cynicism about America, exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: cynicism Soviet propagandists loved, and Russian propagandists still love. Zorin.
Speaker 1: Though he didn't have to choose between left and right
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists, he just advanced both of them, Samuel, even
Speaker 1: the abolition colleges run Dallas Kant sam Beasts. In the
Speaker 1: film The Puzzles of Dallas, Zorin talks a lot about
Speaker 1: how big everything is, biggest airport in the world and
Speaker 1: best rodeo, and then he talks about how awful everything is,
Speaker 1: the biggest crimes, the highest rate of suicide. Meanwhile, there
Speaker 1: are puppet masters like hl Hunt lurking in their mansions.
Speaker 1: But all the films in Zorin's nineteen seventies series work
Speaker 1: this way. You see incredible footage of these big cities,
Speaker 1: while Zorin rates explaining that capitalism brings all sorts of
Speaker 1: glitz and goods to the rich and unbearable misery to
Speaker 1: the poor. Julia, though, found it strangely moving watching our
Speaker 1: hometown Dallas. But there's this other element to it, which
Speaker 1: is true that he's a guest, and he's a stranger
Speaker 1: in a strange land, and he's trying to explain it,
Speaker 1: and it's impenetrable in some ways, you know, And I
Speaker 1: just felt like, you know, that's actually true of a
Speaker 1: lot of us. That we often in America especially, we
Speaker 1: move around a lot, We go to places where we've
Speaker 1: never been before. We think we know a thing, it's familiar,
Speaker 1: and there's like McDonald's and like gas stations, and then
Speaker 1: we start talking to people we feel foreign and that
Speaker 1: this feeling of being an uncomfortable guest is kind of
Speaker 1: everywhere now. Zorn's film about where I grew up in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, it's called Boston contrasts it with dazzling footage,
Speaker 1: bird's eye footage, a flyover tour of the city, the Harbor,
Speaker 1: the Financial District, the Charles River, Beacon Hill, Stero drive,
Speaker 1: all over music ripped off from Paul McCartney's band Wings.
Speaker 1: This too, is just more James Bond because that song
Speaker 1: was the theme song for Live and Let Die. I
Speaker 1: had a similar response to watching the Boston Contrast film,
Speaker 1: a lot of which were shot in seventy four, which
Speaker 1: are the Boston bussing riots, right when white families in
Speaker 1: Boston were you blocking buses that were bringing black children
Speaker 1: to their neighborhoods. It's brutal, horrible moment in the history
Speaker 1: of Boston. But then there's also all this footage of
Speaker 1: the tea party ship, because nineteen seventy three was the
Speaker 1: two hundredth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, and this
Speaker 1: goofy ship was brought over across the Atlantic and became
Speaker 1: a museum. Julie and I had the same unsettling reaction
Speaker 1: to watching Zorn visiting the America of our nineteen seventies childhoods.
Speaker 1: It was weirdly comforting, even when he was pointing out horrible,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable truths like the deep and violent racism of Boston.
Speaker 1: I came to think that his weird appeal to us
Speaker 1: was because he was a foreign reporter, a stranger in
Speaker 1: a strange land, instead of the way I sometimes felt
Speaker 1: in Trump's America, a stranger in my own country. When
Speaker 1: I pointed in Moscow, I was not a word that
Speaker 1: I was expected. There was a many procession of two
Speaker 1: black automobiles awaiting my arrival. Two dark haired men in
Speaker 1: black three piece suits appeared from the cards and walked
Speaker 1: towards me. That's twelve year old me or a young
Speaker 1: friend of mine, pretending to be reading an investigative report
Speaker 1: called Communism in Russia that I made up for my
Speaker 1: seventh grade social studies project in nineteen seventy nine. I,
Speaker 1: realizing they are Russian police, picked up my Loga janned
Speaker 1: with a deep sigh, started off to meet them. With
Speaker 1: insincere grins upon their slightly aged faces. They explained in
Speaker 1: slightly broken English that they would guide me during my day.
Speaker 1: My report ends with me leaving Moscow disappointed. I considering
Speaker 1: the remains of my trip Triviual. It was the same
Speaker 1: over and over. I loved it. Everyone told me it
Speaker 1: sounded like some of them were brainwashed, but some of
Speaker 1: them were sincere. A few years after I wrote that,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union began to open up under the new
Speaker 1: Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and after Gorbachev began to hold
Speaker 1: talks with the US President Ronald Reagan, Americans and Soviets
Speaker 1: began to look at one another a little differently. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, Valentine Zorin interviewed President yi Are in
Speaker 1: the White House in Washington. This was just before Reagan's
Speaker 1: first visit to the USSR. I'm looking forward to seeing
Speaker 1: your country and well as much as possible with the
Speaker 1: meetings that will be going on. The next year, the
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall fell, and then in nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. I was
Speaker 1: in graduate school. Then in the nineteen nineties, you'd meet
Speaker 1: all these Americans who were fluent in Russian training to
Speaker 1: become Russianists, Sovietologists, Kremlinologists, and then suddenly there were no jobs.
Speaker 1: The field of sovietology vanished, almost overnight. Instead you'd meet
Speaker 1: those guys former Sovietologists driving taxis. Americans stopped looking at Russians,
Speaker 1: but Russians kept on looking in Americans. I asked Sarah
Speaker 1: he about Zorn's legacy down to today, and he talked
Speaker 1: about how all propaganda is a cocktail, a mix of
Speaker 1: truth and lies. Still, that the basic racity is the same,
Speaker 1: except that it's now turned turned outward. So whatever creates confusion,
Speaker 1: whatever creates conflict is good enough. And again, you can't
Speaker 1: you can't just sell a cocktail which is completely untrue,
Speaker 1: which which is completely completely fake news. It's not just
Speaker 1: a cocktail lately, not just one drink. Instead, it's a
Speaker 1: whole cocktail party. In the United States, Americans told the
Speaker 1: story of the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one has a story about the failure of communism
Speaker 1: in Moscow. The Hammer and Sickle is lord for the
Speaker 1: last time, and an era comes to an end. But
Speaker 1: in certain quarters of Russia, in the mind, say of
Speaker 1: someone like Vladimir Putin, the story of that collapse wasn't
Speaker 1: a story about the end of communism. It was a
Speaker 1: story about foreign meddling and Western interference and a failure
Speaker 1: of the Soviet leadership to defend against it. Russians told
Speaker 1: the story of a coup conducted by the United States
Speaker 1: and its allies by way of misinformation campaigns and propaganda.
Speaker 1: That's what brought down the uss Are, they said. Zorn
Speaker 1: admired Putin, and the feeling was mutual. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, Zorn sent Putin a copy of his latest book.
Speaker 1: President Putin dictated a thank you note to Professor Zorin,
Speaker 1: dated September twelfth, two thousand and one, the day after
Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks on the US, and then Putin added
Speaker 1: a handwritten PostScript. I have always followed your work with
Speaker 1: great interest and pleasure. Almost everything has been brilliant and
Speaker 1: shown remarkable talent. Wishing you all success. Americans, though, challenged
Speaker 1: Putin's authority and his legitimacy, especially after parliamentary elections held
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, which involved blatant fraud. Some
Speaker 1: of it caught on camera by Russians and shared on
Speaker 1: social media. The US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Speaker 1: had words, we do have serious concerns about the conduct
Speaker 1: of the election. Anti Putin protesters marched in Moscow, chanting
Speaker 1: Putin is a thief. Putin, furious, blamed Clinton for inciting
Speaker 1: the protests. They've been organized on Twitter and Facebook, and
Speaker 1: so to thwart them, Putin charged one of his cronies
Speaker 1: with taking control of social media, and that guy financed
Speaker 1: an outfit called the Internet Research Agency. Its purpose was
Speaker 1: to conduct misinformation campaigns within Russia to silence Putin's critics
Speaker 1: and stop the protests. Ludmilla Savchuk first became a troll
Speaker 1: slayer back in twenty fourteen. That's from a story about
Speaker 1: a Russian Ludmilla Savchuk who infiltrated the Internet Research Agency.
Speaker 1: We think of that place now as a troll factory,
Speaker 1: but really it was an office building in Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 1: It employed hundreds of Russians. Their job was to create
Speaker 1: fake social media accounts and post fake stuff. Later, save
Speaker 1: Check spoke to Charles Mains for PRIs the World. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get them there to see how it works so,
Speaker 1: of course, but the most important thing was to see
Speaker 1: if there was some way to stop it. Sav Check's
Speaker 1: reporting showed the people who worked at this Internet Research
Speaker 1: Agency were attacking Putin's critics in Russia. Soon after, the
Speaker 1: IRA would expand its efforts by attacking the United States,
Speaker 1: amplifying American political divisions and discontent by posing as fake Americans. OMG,
Speaker 1: this new anti Hillary ad is brilliant. It's fantastic. Spread
Speaker 1: it far and wide. White boyfriend shows true colors on
Speaker 1: his black girlfriend over Trump hashtag black Lives Matter. When
Speaker 1: Valentine Zorin went to interview the Imperial Wizard of the
Speaker 1: KKK in nine seventy one, he didn't invent the clan.
Speaker 1: But at the Internet Research Agency they created fake Facebook
Speaker 1: pages right and left, like back the Badge or Black Matters, Blacktivist,
Speaker 1: Heart of Texas United, Muslims of America being Patriotic, Secured Boarders,
Speaker 1: and LGBT United. Their Facebook posts were shared millions of times.
Speaker 1: They also bought more than three thousand ads on Facebook
Speaker 1: around the time of the twenty sixteen election. More than
Speaker 1: half the ads purchased by the Internet Research Agency had
Speaker 1: to do with race. A quarter were about crime and policing.
Speaker 1: These ads weren't advancing an agenda. They took all sides.
Speaker 1: They were just trying to get people riled up. But
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, when he took office in twenty seventeen, defended Putin.
Speaker 1: I say it's better to get along with Russia than not.
Speaker 1: Will I get along with them? I have no ideas.
Speaker 1: Putin's a killer. A lot of killers, get a lot
Speaker 1: of killers. You think our country is so innocent? Critics
Speaker 1: said Trump was Putin's puppet, But maybe it's more accurate
Speaker 1: to say Trump was Zorin's vindication. A deeply, profoundly cynical
Speaker 1: blend of money, sex, and viciousness now at the center
Speaker 1: of American political life. Zorn died in twenty sixteen at
Speaker 1: the age of ninety one, just a few months before
Speaker 1: Trump was elected. Still, Trump would have made the perfect
Speaker 1: subject for a Zorn documentary, a kind of capitalist supervillain,
Speaker 1: the sort of person who, for his own purposes, would
Speaker 1: incite a mob to attack peaceful protesters. I love the
Speaker 1: old days. You know what they used to do to
Speaker 1: guys like that when they were in a place like this.
Speaker 1: They'd be carried out of a stretcher folks. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Zorin needed Soviet television to make and distribute
Speaker 1: his propaganda, But in twenty sixteen it was American companies
Speaker 1: that provided the distribution network for all kinds of propaganda.
Speaker 1: They made an awful lot of money off of it,
Speaker 1: to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. After Trump's election, a special council
Speaker 1: investigated allegations that Russia had meddled in the election. The
Speaker 1: Senate Health hearings in twenty eighteen, Main Senator Susan Collins,
Speaker 1: a Republican, questioned Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, about
Speaker 1: the nearly four thousand Twitter accounts created by the Internet
Speaker 1: Research Agency, accounts that, by Twitter's own estimate, reached about
Speaker 1: a million and a half people. My question to you is,
Speaker 1: once you have taken down accounts that are linked to Russia,
Speaker 1: what do you do to notify the followers that they
Speaker 1: have been following or engaged in accounts that are not
Speaker 1: what they appear to be. We simply haven't done enough.
Speaker 1: I listen to that exchange and I had to wonder,
Speaker 1: how would Congress have reacted in the nineteen seventies if
Speaker 1: American television networks were broadcasting Zorn's documentaries four hours a day.
Speaker 1: I think they would have stopped them. But today the
Speaker 1: trolls are still trolling, and no one's managed to stop them.
Speaker 1: Very few Americans remember Valentine's Oran. The closest thing to
Speaker 1: Zorin that most Americans know. That's borat Aya Shamash my name,
Speaker 1: a borat I generalist for Kazakhstan. That's Sasha Baron Cohen
Speaker 1: playing a reporter from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan,
Speaker 1: allegedly making Razoran style documentary film about the United States.
Speaker 1: Although Kazakhstan and glorious country it have a problem too.
Speaker 1: This is why Ministry of Information have decided to send
Speaker 1: me to US and greatest country in the world to
Speaker 1: learn a lessons for Kazakhstan. Borat provincial ignorant, fascinated by
Speaker 1: the United States, and through sheer idiocy and clumsiness, able
Speaker 1: to cast light into its darkest corners. Barrett is part
Speaker 1: of the weird after life of Zorin, the long afterlife
Speaker 1: of Soviet and Trumpian propaganda about the United States at
Speaker 1: strange cocktail of truthtelling and bullshitting. After the end of
Speaker 1: the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Zorin's Americanism was replaced with the Americanism of places like
Speaker 1: the Internet Research Agency study Americans just enough to know
Speaker 1: how to create fake accounts. It doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: successfully interfere in an election. You just need to make
Speaker 1: Americans worried that you might be interfering in an election.
Speaker 1: Between the first Borat film and a sequel released just
Speaker 1: before the twenty twenty election, Boortt recapitulates that history, the
Speaker 1: history I've been trying to reconstruct this episode and the
Speaker 1: first film Borat is a cartoons or in put. In
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty sequel, Borett ends up running a troll factory.
Speaker 1: Now we are part of the global community, influencing elections
Speaker 1: are all the world. The Cold War was a battle
Speaker 1: of ideas, of propaganda, and of espionage, spy versus spy. Trolls.
Speaker 1: Russian or American are the last Cold Warriors left standing,
Speaker 1: A ragged and almost accidental army of ponds and fools
Speaker 1: and puppets, endlessly commenting, tweeting, retweeting, making so much noise
Speaker 1: that hardly anyone could even tell any more what it
Speaker 1: is they're actually arguing about. They're fighting bewildered war that
Speaker 1: should be over on a barren battlefield, trying to convince
Speaker 1: you to trust no one and believe nothing. This season
Speaker 1: on The Last Archive, it sometimes feels as though I'm
Speaker 1: a genealogist, piecing together a family history, the ancestry of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Somehow We're all the children of Zorin Now. The Last
Speaker 1: Archive is written and hosted by me Jill Lapour. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Sophie Crane, mckibbon and Ben Natt of Hafrey.
Speaker 1: Our editors for this episode were Julia Barton and Karen
Speaker 1: Shakerji Martin Gonzalez is our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines.
Speaker 1: Original music by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Simfinett.
Speaker 1: Our research assistants are Kamani Panthier and Lilly Richmond. Our
Speaker 1: full proof players are Yoshia Mau, Raymond Blankenhorne, Matthias Bossi,
Speaker 1: Dan Epstein, Ethan Herschenfeld, Becca A. Lewis, Andrew Parella, Robert
Speaker 1: Riccotta and Nick Saxton. The Last Archive is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. At Pushkin thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fain,
Speaker 1: John Schnarz Carl mcgliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and Daniella Lacan. Many of our
Speaker 1: sound effects are from Harry Janette Junior and the Star
Speaker 1: Jenette Foundation. Special thanks to Paula Bossi, Dina Fainberg, Alec Sandrad,
Speaker 1: Justinis and Charles Mains, and particular thanks to be Korcentino
Speaker 1: for playing a twelve year old me. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to rate, share, and review. To
Speaker 1: find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jill Lapoor.