15 Comments

This was awesome, the maps really helped understand the concept of what was happening.

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This was a pet project. It was engaging deeply with the maps for hours that made me decide to do this

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Fantastic. I've always found Vlad III and these regional conflicts to be horrifying. The idea that he was a crusader for Christendom has always felt like a revision of history.

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Thanks. Yeah I think it overstates his intentions quite a bit.

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Reminds me of Los Zetas from Mexican drug cartel; a good source is Don Winslow's Power of the Dog, and sequel book The Cartel.

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30 Los Zetas deserted from the Mexican special forces when they were potentially going to be court martialed for actions cleansing village in crushing a peasant insurgency during a civil war; when a new government took power, they became bodyguards to the Mexican drug cartel and began to recruit and train thousands of sicarios.

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All of the Los Zetas core members were dead within a few years, and their organization later splintered, but they caused a permanent escalation in the brutality of the Mexican cartel violence.

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Yeah I remember when all that went down I was following the news. I can’t believe that hasn’t spilled over the border in a bigger way yet.

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Drug cartels are a very good modern comparison to Vlad

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I never considered until now that maybe Los Zetas expected to lose

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Anyway brilliant historical piece, thank you, best explanation of Dracula I've come across.

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I have a lot to say on this topic for obvious reason, but I have to head out for the evening, so I will live one note. It's important to keep in mind that during Romanian Communism, a communism that had a very nationalistic flavor, Vlad was a perfect subject of propaganda. Afterall he is easily painted as a ruler who fought the treacherous merchants and pimps from both sides of the Western/Turkish divide.

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One of the books I read discussed this in great detail and refuted specific communist scholars. You should definitely come on my show to talk this

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Hell yeah. We're gonna set this up .

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Let’s chat soon and plan a line of discussion

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