There were two reasons why Chris had agreed to interview Fyodor Milichenko. The first was that, although he routinely attacked Democrats as being communists, he had never actually met a real communist, and the second was that during his speech at The Growth and Opportunities Conference that had gone viral he had said that he believed it was inevitable that Jim Balmer would be elected as the next President of the United States. Chris was curious as to the insights that a foreigner had into US politics that would lead him to be so certain as to the outcome of one of the most consequential elections in US history, and, with Fyodor being a former World Bank economist, Chris was keen to see if Dr. Milichenko would be willing to use his academic heft to help with Jim Balmer's election bid. Chris got his first look at Dr Milichenko in person when his producer led Fyodor onto the set for their interview. Fyodor was looking sharp in a three piece black pinstripe suit, and carried himself with an assuredness that Chris found just the slightest bit intimidating. Any tension that there might have been between the two of them was quickly dispelled when Fyodor extended his hand for Chris to shake.

"It is such a pleasure to meet you Mr. Dixon, thank you so much for having me on your show."

"Oh, erm, nice to meet you too, and welcome to the show."

Fyodor sat down in his seat with a big smile on his face. This was the moment that he had been waiting for his whole life, the moment that he became a star. Chris looked across his desk at the beaming Fyodor and, contrary to what he was expecting, the man did not seem like his enemy, a sentiment that he took into the interview.

"Good evening everybody, welcome to the show, tonight in the crosshairs we have Dr. Fyodor Milichenko, former World Bank economist, current professor of economics at Zaporizhzhia university and leader of the Ukrainian REJOIN campaign; Dr Milichenko, welcome to the show."

"Thank you for having me Chris, it's a pleasure to be here."

"Alright, Dr Milichenko, let's get something right out of the way here: you're a communist, and I don't like communists."

"Well Chris, when I talk about communism what I am really talking about is us doing what we have to do to protect our Eastern values, you can understand that given that you are somebody who spends all of his time fighting for the preservation of American values."

"Yes, I can understand that."

"You see Chris, we have cultural values in our society which are inextricably connected to our communist past; the same way that you don't want communism here because it is antithetical to your American values, I don't want rampant capitalism eroding our values; this isn't a matter of competition, it is simply a matter of accepting the existence of a difference of opinion and being respectful of that rather than trying to erase another society's values and replace them with your own, you wouldn't like it if somebody did that to you, would you?"

"No, no I wouldn't."

"In that case Chris, you and I have managed to achieve a mutual understanding on this which renders a confrontation between us over this unnecessary, and that is a very positive outcome, because if leaders on the world stage conducted themselves similarly then maybe the world wouldn't be in such trouble."

"You think the world is in trouble?"

"I think the world is in a world of trouble, I think that as a global society we have drifted so far off the course that we should have been on that we are now in the midst of a big realignment that is going to be very disruptive and very painful for a lot of people."

"Jim Balmer, the congressman who's currently running for president, he sees this realignment that you're talking about as a challenge that God has sent us for us to overcome; do you agree with him on that?"

"Well, Chris, I am a strong proponent of Christian values, people find that strange because I am a communist but I recognize the need for people to have spiritual orientation in their lives and in this respect I have no problem with people embracing a product of a western culture because, unlike capitalism, it doesn't represent a threat to our values, in fact I think Christianity is more compatible with communism than it is with capitalism, after all, when Jesus was giving out fish and bread to the hungry, he didn't give more fish and bread to those that were better off and less to those that were worse off, he gave everybody the exact same portions of fish and bread."

"That's a really interesting insight, I've never thought of that before. You know, I can sympathize completely with your desire to protect your values, that is what I am doing every night here on this show and my opponents, people that have no respect for American values, do nothing but call me a sexist, a racist and a homophobe, can you believe that?"

"Yes I can believe that because those same people say the same things about me, and what those people would realize if they had any brains is that the biggest threat those groups are facing is this militant political correctness nonsense that people on the left have been brainwashed into believing is the solution to everything when in fact it solves absolutely nothing."

"Why do you think that is though? Because I've been sounding the alarm over runaway political correctness for a long time and it only seems to get worse."

"The answer is simple: it's because if you are a political party and you've got no ideas and no policies that you can put forward that would actually improve people's lives then what do you do? You play identity politics!"

"Yes!"

"That is all that I see coming from parties on the left now, whether that is the Democrats here or Labor in the UK, I don't hear anything about supporting workers or supporting families or supporting the poor, all that they have to say now is that if you say something that we don't like then we are going to hunt you down and brand you and make sure that for the rest of your life everybody knows that you are a human being that is lower than filth, and all that this is doing is pitting people against each other, which is causing our society to become more and more fractured and dysfunctional."

"Dr Milichenko, I couldn't agree more with everything that you've said here, I don't agree with you on communism but I suspect that if given enough time you could bring me around even on that."

"Or maybe you will bring me around on capitalism."

"I doubt that, given what you did to David Huntsman when you were debating him on this subject."

"I wouldn't have thought that anything that happened at that conference would be important enough for you to know about it."

"Everybody knows about your exchange with David Huntsman at that conference, in the three days since it's become the most watched video on YouTube."

"I wasn't aware of that, but it's good to know that people are paying attention to what's important."

"You reacted very strongly to what David Huntsman said about making a lot of money during the financial crash; why was that?"

"Chris, I have no problem with people taking pride in the success that they have achieved as a result of hard work; what I will not stand for is some out of touch elitist whose head is up his ass bragging about how he made millions by getting lucky at a time when there were so many people that were facing complete ruination."

"I felt the same way when I heard him make that comment, I thought it was incredibly insensitive and out of touch."

"And you could tell that this was something that had never occurred to him before, that is what I am afraid of with capitalism, that the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom grows so much that those at the top become completely oblivious to the suffering of those at the bottom, which leads those at the bottom to believe that their only hope for survival is to take what they need from those at the top by force, there is a long history of civil wars being fought as a result of this."

"Well Dr Milichenko, you raise some interesting points but unfortunately we are out of time, we'll have to bring you back on the show to delve into these issues a bit deeper."

"I would love to be back Chris, anytime."

Fyodor stayed in the US for another three days and in that time he spoke at NYU and The Wharton School Of Business and did an interview with Fareed Zakaria for CNN. To those that interviewed him or sat in the audience and listened to him speak, Fyodor was an enigma that was impossible to unravel. He held so many views that were seemingly incompatible and yet when pressed on how it made sense for him to have such views he responded with an answer that was so eloquent and abstruse that the questioner had to just accept it and move on. Fyodor's instant popularity in the US was due to his inability to be put in a particular ideological box. People on the left liked what he had to say about the dangers of income equality while people on the right liked what he had to say about identity politics being a cancer.