This seems odd.

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union who witnessed its downfall probably closer than anyone, said in an interview last week that "the assault on the [U.S.] Capitol was evidently planned in advance, and it is clear by whom." He also said it will "take some time, but we will understand why this was really done."

Presumably, according to Russia Today, Gorbachev is referring to Trump's administration as the planners of the attack. But that's all they say, "presumably."

Let us not forget something here, and I'm just going to blab for a while: Gorbachev's Soviet Union fell on December 26, 1991. But it was four months earlier, on August 19th when a group of hard line communists showed up at Parliament with tanks in what would become a failed coup attempt. It is widely believed that this coup attempt marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was held captive for three days following the attempt.

This made Gorbachev look soft, especially since his rival Boris Yeltsin—who the G7 preferred due to his openness to corporatism—got up on a tank during the attempt and told the commies off in a well-prepared speech. Yeltsin looked like a hero, and he would replace Gorbachev as the country's leader in the last days of 1991.

Yeltsin would even replace Parliament as a whole since he cut a deal with them to basically become dictator for a year. As a dictator, Yeltsin did exactly what the World Bank, the IMF, and corporate America wanted him to do. He quickly privatized 225,000 state-owned companies, lifted price controls, cut subsidies, and liberalized the currency, all of which shocked the Russian people and forced them into lives of even worse poverty. Remember, this was a giant communist nation, and the people had grown completely reliant on the system. It should be noted that Gorbachev had been working on similar reforms, and the West even praised him for it, but he was making the reforms slowly to avoid shock, and wanted some of the state-owned businesses to stay under state control for more of a Scandinavian model.

The Russian people disagreed immensely with Yeltsin's decision making, and these fast-acting reforms would have never made it anywhere if they'd been attempted democratically.

When Parliament tried to take away Yeltsin's power in 1993, the New York Times referred to them as, "mostly middle-aged men with a Soviet mentality — suspicious of reform, ignorant of democracy, disdainful of intellectuals."

The New York Times actually said that in 1993!

The Washington Post called the Russian Parliament "antigovernment," as if that makes any sense at all.

So to get back to 2021, possibly we should be a little worried that Gorbachev thinks the attack on the U.S. Capitol has "called into question the future fate of the United States as a state." That should sort of scare anyone, because, again, this man was president of the Soviet Union and watched it fall first hand.

You can read about this period of Russian history in chapter 11 of Naomi Klein's fine book The Shock Doctrine. And yes, you are allowed to read this book if you are a conservative. In fact, you should.