911 - Red Dawn feat. Radio War Nerd (2/24/25)

3

Hi, long time / last time listener here. Just going to say that your overall perspectives on the Ukraine conflict, and this episode in particular, is what caused me to pull the plug on my subscription to chapo. "Europe must be suicidal [for wanting to support Ukraine]" and other shallow statements in this episode just really got me to understand that you guys don't really have anything but sarcasm at the expense of others to offer anymore. We need more than that in Europe right now, as do you in America. Thanks for the laughs over the years, but this is where I get off!

We have all kinds of equipment ready to go in Afghanistan.

We live in a world where Victor Orban is the voice of reason. How the hell did we let this happen

I wuz surprised to hear Will remark on the benefit for Russia to test their weapons against Best Western's tech. Pretty cool to have the hospitality sector moving into the military contractor space. "We'll turn your lights off for ya."

I'm Russian, and self I'm not self loathing obviously biased. However very intresting to hear this perspective but I do disagree with some stuff

Like a year and a half ago, I was sitting next to Sen. Mark Warner (Dem chair of Intelligence Committee) at a restaurant, and he was talking to some British asshole. The guy asks Warner where he gets his best information from, and Warner says Bellingcat is the main news site he checks every day. So good to know high level Dems are constantly cooking their brains in that slop

I subbed and then quickly unsubbed to this “radio war nred” . I dropped him because of his uncritical conversations with anti Palestinian commentators. Let’s just say the past few months of news have vindicated my choice to purge my feed of this stupid mother fucker

I'm sorry if I sound very dumb but I've tried to sub to RWN on patreon before but I don't think you can? Do I just need to be on the 'puter instead of my phone? I've found their episodes online, do people just listen there for free? I enjoy their delivery of information, this ep was very good bc its so hard to keep up on this conflict. Although if Ukraine has a right to defend itself, let's see them defend themselves then! lolz

Hey do you remember when Zelensky backed Israel after October 7th and compared Palestinians to Russians? Now the Hamas government looks like it's going to outlive the Zelensky government. (Small Violin Plays)

New genre of podcast about Ukraine Russian war where one guy only wants to talk about the American civil war

The bg. Oh bvb b yo yhthotyx b

Hunter should've worked for the coking coal company instead.

The Ghost of Kiev is the friends we made along the way

Comments full of people with Halo 3 Geopolitics

We love our war nerds, don't we folks?

Whoa. Episode 911. Terrorist.

Radio War nerd is OG as helllll

Sounds like Russian BS

War Nerds are the best! Love these episodes

Got ukraine sounding like south vietnam

I loved Gary's performance in A Mighty Wind

So I forget, who are the good guys we like again?

drop the oscar episode right now

I don't think I agree with the framing that "Russia tried to take Kyiv and couldn't so they are clearly not a strong enough enemy to worry about" like they were roundly beaten. If you really examined the events of that first month of the invasion, it becomes clear that they were able to punch through to Kyiv basically expecting Ukraine to immediately back down and negotiate some sort of settlement-- or barring that there being some sort of popular uprising. Instead Ukraine mobilized their volkstrum, and Russia found themselves looking down the barrel of an urban siege against civilian militia. I don't think they expected Ukraine to be willing to do that, so they cut their losses and refocused on long-term strategic goals in Donbas over a sort of blitzkrieg that would level Ukraine's capital... They also put a weird amount of effort into trying to capture the An-225 Mriya as a part of that blitz, before Ukraine blew up their own plane in an artillery strike then blamed Russia for intentionally destroying it. Russia pulled back almost immediately after it was destroyed. Which I think is kind of poetic and indictive of Russians incursion into Kyiv and why they withdrew. To be very clear, I'm not saying that Russia even did this on some moral basis. I think when this war started they might have felt some naïve sense of post-soviet brotherhood-- that even though this invasion has kicked off, Ukrainians are still our close cousins so when we roll up to their city we'll be able to somehow work all this out. They seemed to underestimate the extent that Ukrainian ultranationalists had completely replaced that with thinly veiled race science and contempt for "muscovite orks." Or y'know, if you are being generous than even just how much of a unifying force an invasion can be.

on Corner spati they pointed out Biden pushed the SPDs vote share lower last week than the SA Goon squads did in 1933.

There are NOT a ton of Nazis in Russia! Just Ukraine… Let them fight.

oh u being sarcastic

Russia-Ukraine war? BORING Let’s discuss Felix’s fighter jet fixation First mentioned a MiG-31 ‘Foxhound’ at like 7:50 or something

No one. Not a signle person. Should EVER be forced to fight & die in a fucking war.

Regardless of one's opinion on the war, I think we can all agree that the loss of human life on both sides has been appalling. War is criminal

This is a really wonderful episode on many levels but I think there was way too much dismissal of this outcome as being really quite bad for Russia. Their self-reported economic data is quite dire, and if you transition your thought on sanctions from "We will force their immediate collapse" to "they will lose multiple years of economic growth" then the sanctions were quite successful. If you thought Biden's "wartime Kenyesianism" without the war (Arsenal of Democracy, etc) had bad outcomes, just wait until you have to do wartime Kenyesianism with an actual war consuming your youngest generation. That Russia will get most of strategic objectives is true, but I wish there was more analysis in the media generally about these objectives being quite bad for them. Being a junior partner to China over the long term isn't good, mauling your young men is bad, and making guns over butter won't make your people prosper.

Do these Ukrainian Nazi units espouse the ideology, or do they just wear the paraphernalia like a Tokyo host club?

what is that fun music at ~34:10 it's driving me crazy

Do we have any proof that a dude was crucified? Or is this kinda just more owning the libs by believing different propaganda than them? Like when Finkelstein basically burst into tears reciting his fanfiction about Putin's troubled youth. To be clear, make whatever case you want for who you wanna root for on the world stage. I just find this contrarian shit pathetic. Probably the most pathetic thing about MAGAts and Libs has been how fucking gullible they are. I wanna believe people outside that at least try.

AVENGE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AVENGE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The fact that Mark Ames of all people was ever called a NATO shill just shows how ridiculous the discourse has become on this war.

Will you said “like” a lot this episode

Ricken Hale from Severance on the pod

It’s a good thing Matt wasn’t there, he’s in no state to hear McClellan’s name rn

Can anyone make out what "coridor" are they talking about regarding liberal dc war hawks? Sounds like "michellan coridor" or something? They say it twice toward thr end... Haven't heard that expression.

IDK, call me a liberal or whatever, but I think your read on Ukraine-Russia is bad and excuses Russian imperialism just because it stings the nose of the American empire. Seems a more consistent approach would be that imperialism writ-large is wrong, not just American imperialism.

Been waiting for episode 9/11 for years. We’re finally there! I dedicate this episode to 9/11, on behalf of chapo fuck my balls houso, never forget. 9/11 forever… where were you?

Mr chapo please do more Ukraine episodes these comments are fucking gold

Great episode. I don’t know if I buy everything the war nerds are selling but it was breath of fresh air because the establishment media hasn’t updated the party line on Ukraine since the first days of the war.

Ukraine technically has a "right" to defend itself in a zero context environment, but the massive barrage they dropped on the DPR and LPR caused them to panic and beg Russia for protection, and Russia obliged them, citing Kosovo as a precedent. Never mind that Ukraines entire purpose for existing at the moment is to be Festung Europa for subjugating Russia, and Russia has spent 30 years saying that that political situation is casual belli. It's like warning a cat not to knock a glass off the table and then watching them do it while they stare you dead in the eyes.

Going to the chapo comments to fight for Ukraine is really indicative of your desperation

I think as a general rule you're not going to see an army fighting at it's full potential or skill in the first months of the war, assuming no other variables are in play. Also, blitzkrieg doesnt exist because no blitzkrieg concept ever took fuel into account.

I love watching people pedantically scream at each other in comment sections about Ukraine debating which army plastered in SS imagery is marginally worse than the other

“X country has the right to defend itself” ok what doesn’t have the right to defend itself? It’s such an no-nothing statement.

Such poor analysis on this conflict from your guests, it's rather shocking. They haven't bothered to understand this war from sources other than the western media. If you understood what this war is actually about, seizing the Donbas and creating a buffer, and preventing nuclear encroachment, then you'd never keep repeating that Russia was 'not predicted' to win. Ukraine never had a chance to win and Russia was never actually bogged down. They simply were, and are, trying to minimize deployments, using the bare minimum in order to achieve mission goals while minimizing casualties. Russia has no interest in seizing all of Ukraine, or even Kiev. So then you have to ask, "why were military detachments barreling toward Kiev early on in 2022?" This is the stage which gave the west, and these guests, the impression Russia was bogged down right? It was a feint. It allowed them to understand where to better setup the actual front line while it stabilized over the summer. Russia is not "using ukraine" to send a message for the west. What does that even mean? Russia is defending itself from nuclear-tipped missiles encroaching further and further east, making flight times so short, that first strike scenarios become a viable option for the west. This is all within the context of our withdrawal from the INF treaty. Get Jeffrey Sachs on the podcast for someone who actually knows what this conflict is about.

i could feel Matts genki through the either as the civil war came 15 minutes in

Trump probably learned about McKinley after his ear took some shrapnel. he wanted to know which presidents he’s better at surviving.

McClellan calling himself “the young napoleon” after winning one battle is one of the funniest “he thinks he’s Him” moments. You gotta at least win a war to be napoleon, buddy.

You have to be totally propagandized to believe this was some kind of US style powergrab or imperial ambition bullshit. You can’t understand this event if you haven’t fully metabolized what nato really is, what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine for 20 years, and how everything that happened before and after this terrible war was predicated on raw U.S. power and the Freudian neocon death cult that has held court and determined policy in the last 4 administrations. If you think that the same admin that facilitated and is responsible for a genocide in Palestine was at the same time virtuous and on the right side of history in Ukraine, you are just internet brained and not grasping reality.

Wow that second guest sounds like a grand portly fellow, love it!!

You vultures have felt our might, now it is time to reap the whirlwind. We warned you that you would face a storm of steel of a scale not seen since the last world war! There will be no concessions and you will hand over what you owed us at Istanbul and more.

No body puts baby in a corner

So many NAFOs in the comments -_-

This is an important episode. Never forget

Yeah skipping this one.

Dogshit episode

Probably not gonna listen to this episode does anyone have any examples of “problematic” stuff they say about Russia or Ukraine? Like quotes?

"Nobody thought Russia would turn it around?" What are you talking about? Every single respectable analyst made it clear Ukraine could not possibly win this war from the outset.

WAR NERD LEGION REPRESENT

Yes and thank you for shitting on the OS-int dork and their powerful google skills

I miss Prigozhin

What song is that at 34:05?

That Ukrainian general is a staunch believer in the Zapp Brannigan approach to warfare

I was just thinking about that during the 51st State drama, at that point I don't know what I'd prefer between having Vleep van Vlorp from Brussels hand me an Exocet and a FN FAL and tell me I need to die for the European Coal and Steel Council and that after a string of flashy successes I should not accept any deal short of a collapse of the Washington system, versus just become like Maine Deux

I’m all for McClellan bashing

I get we’re mostly involved in this war for cynical reasons but how is there not a more defined leftist position that includes standing up to Putin for Russia’s working class? Maybe this comes off as gibberish but I have zero desire to align w trump’s ghouls on this conflict.

For Americans war is a place you go, it’s different when it shows up at your door

Front lines have barely moved in 3 years “Russia is dominating guys I swear, Putin had a glass of wine and was smiling”

Does ‘Red Dawn’ just play like an over earnest comedy to Russians? Like it was ‘Police Squad: Teenage Insurgency’?

The Radio War Nerd boys didn't fail to impress once again. The whole episode had me immediately thinking of "inevitable" comparisons with the PRC/ROC and a possible Fourth Strait Crisis, for the obvious comparison of disparate power blocs, the possibility of a proxy war over any number of outside motives, the less obvious (though it should be) reality that, unlike liberal Atlanticists or most conservative and reaction Atlanticists, the American left really has no good proposal for "the Taiwan problem" beyond "preventing a repeat of the 1945 Retrocession is not worth causing a Third World War," which should be self-evident but does not actually offer a good foundation for a leftwing program beyond sitting on one's hand. Since Spring 2022, the Taiwanese media has reported the ruling party studying the Russian attempt at a strategic knock-out blow as a curriculum as to "what China, in a war where neither side has any sort of useful combat experience because they can't do the American thing and be at war nonstop for decades, might do wrong, and how they might be tricked into greater mistakes." I guess the example of America against Iraq, or America against Libya, or America against Afghanistan were all a little too depressing to take lessons from. Then in October 2023, we got a new headline: now MOD planners were looking at "Russia's war in Ukraine AND Israel's war in Gaza," for examples of how to come out in the asymmetry of "the enemy next door is sixty times larger than you." What was conspicuously left unsaid was what lessons Taipei was taking from Gaza; given the DPP's conspicuously dogmatic military and political support of Israel, they had to stop just short of, "We're studying what to do after the PRC loses 99% of its population in a nuclear holocaust, then is completely surrounded by a Taiwanese military blockade, and also we get at least fifty billion dollars in war materiel in the first year." Real Donald Rumsfeld "the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns," type shit. But it can pass, because the opposition (with the KMT and its allies controlling the legislature) can only have the same answer to "What to do about Israel" as the DPP, and as noted, the broader left can't offer anything more persuasive as to this open wound left by the Chinese Civil War eighty years ago. On a topic less close to me, it does seem like V. Zelenskyy has committed quite a few unforced errors when it came to the Biden-Trump Showdown Part II. After all, he managed to avoid the most immediate threat: that his, like literally every other government in Kiev since independence from the USSR, would catastrophically fail within 4 to 6 years and their direct opposition voted into their place. Even if Russia failed to pose an existential threat, or the massive economic loss of Crimea and much of the industrialized eastern provinces fell out of memory, banning enough opposition parties would resolve that finally; forget the Russian Federation, elections would be basically as competitive as Singapore's. Why didn't he just hedge his bets vis a vis the United States? To use the example close to my heart, the Tsai and Lai DPP Governments did exactly that: especially in the legislature, the DPP rank and file went straight up MAGA hats and Trump-branded breathing masks, but they were prepared for a big, smiling Biden victory (even if the KMT would probably have preferred Biden substantially, at least before he went full China-hawk, after which it stopped really mattering). How hard is it just to lie to bunch of foreign rubes who can't even find your country on a map, much less coherently analyze said country's opinion on another forced contest between two geriatrics who have to be reminded not to get into arguments about who the original China-hater was? It seems plainly stupid to take such an ideological risk like that, unless in fact, even a sympathetic Donald Trump would be such a political liability that it was better to make that stand for...who? The Atlanticists? John and Jane Q. Democratic Voter? The "oil revenue" question was a nostalgic trigger. Oil reserves, in Ukraine, as far as I know are basically nonexistent; oil transit, per the Soviet Union's export infrastructure, was the question I tink. Remember that more innocent age when a major point of contention between Kiev and Moscow (and Washington hovering over them like a gargoyle) was what share of revenue Ukraine would receive as an in-between for Russian oil and LNG exports into Europe? How Obama, Trump and Biden all had to make the same stupid pitch of "We need to end our use of Russian oil! Except for the 100% that will be exported through Ukraine's share of Soviet pipelines." I know the Chapo boys love to talk about Nordrestream. Nostalgia. Anyway, good episode boys.

9 1 1

Just stop doing Ukraine episodes. Yall show your whole ass every time. We get the picture by now: you're only against ethnic cleansing when it's Jews doing it

Only slightly disappointed that this isn’t a review of the movie…where is my analysis into the Roadhouse vs Superfly war dammit.

Ukraine war episode, be prepared for the absolute most annoying people in the comment section lol

“A major rival, Russia” is quite divorced from reality.

hey where's the hare christner pres ganging vid, I can't find it.

John needs to talk more my loves. My loves, John needs to talk more.

Gotta love Mark Ames not recalling that he too said invasion was never going to happen right up to the moment it happened

McClellan was on the Epstein list

"trump's credibility doesn't hang on the war in Ukraine" sure but Trump said he'd fix it. The dude's credibility is entirely untouchable to the cult.

Do an episode on China you cowards I'm Chinapilled

Radio Gay Nerd

RWN again showing its ass. I recall their last visit was rife with falsehoods and bad data.

Russia is Luka. Gotta play itself into shape.

Episode 911 and it wasn’t a 9/11 episode??? How do you mess this up this bad

Mark Ames is such Putin dickrider. Recall that the week before the war, he categorically stated on Truanon that Russia wouldn't invade and that it's all propaganda, which is really testament to his credibility as an "expert" on Russia.

YASSS 911 NEVER FORGET

Just like Trump, the Chapo boys can't be bothered to talk to a Ukrainian about the war.

Does anyone have a link to the crucifixion story?

McClellan's grand equestrian statue in DC actually has his back facing where the Confederate lines were so he could be forever mocked for his sympathies and futilities in life.

Great ep

Anyone have the Hare Krishna video?

Ah both of them! Thank you!

Felix begins speaking at 6 minutes and 53 seconds

Viva Brecher

So now is a good time for me to go to Ukraine and join the foreign legion right?

Yess

Kinda disappointed this isn't a movie episode with RWN talking about Red Dawn ngl. Still probably gonna be a banger regardless.

The slopification of our souls continues. Bring it on!

NERDS!!!!!

I'm gay!

FIRST MOTHA FUCKAS

Ok I'm first