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Lenin led to Hitler, who led to Uncle Sam. Just ask this top Russian executive.

Source: Meduza
Photo: @skazal_on / twitter

Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways and one of the country’s highest paid executives, presented a lecture today to the students at Saint Petersburg State University. Titled Globalization and Capitalism, Yakunin opined on the many evils present in the world today, taking special aim at “the global oligarchy,” which he says is leading the process of globalization, “privatizing” state institutions, and “gradually expanding its dominance with the help of world wars.”

"The current political model has nothing in common with democracy (in the classic sense of government by the people). The state itself has basically been privatized by the new political class of a global oligarchy. The concept of classic capitalism takes on the semantic appearance of bourgeois entrepreneurialism: a cult of money that becomes the system’s own inherent value. As a result, today’s understanding of post-capitalist values amounts to consumer values and hedonism."

Yakunin went on to equate globalization with the “hegemony won by the United States in the Cold War” and a mass consumerism “protected by American military might,” explaining that globalization is reducing nations to mere populations, and “turning citizenship into a form of anemia.” He also took aim at the English language, saying it has no real grasp of the concept of morality.

The US dollar came in for it, too. Yakunin said American currency is backed by “nothing but a bunch of electronic record keeping,” adding that corruption is an integral part of globalization. Ivan the Terrible, Yakunin explained, understood how insidious the West can be.

"Historical projects of global empire."

At one point in his lecture, Yakunin casually mentioned the fact that his son lives in London and his granddaughter studies in an English school. “It happens,” he said with a shrug, and returned to his next point about the evils of globalization.

According to Forbes, Vladimir Yakunin is the ninth highest paid executive in Russia, earning a salary of roughly 15 million dollars in 2013.

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