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Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Wed Nov 04, 2015 11:28 pm
by American Dream
http://overthrowdotcom.com/2015/09/28/t ... he-buffet/

The LOSers mean SRS BZNZ! They are Seceding with FORCE…to the Buffet!

Posted on September 28, 2015 by The Lamp


Uh OH! Look OUT! Here they come and they haz pointy things!



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League of the South attempting to look “threatening”

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:31 pm
by American Dream

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:49 am
by American Dream
http://fightback.org.nz/2015/11/05/agai ... ort-putin/

Against campism: What makes some leftists support Putin?

NOVEMBER 5, 2015
By Daphne Lawless, Fightback Tāmaki Makarau


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At the time of writing, Russian forces are intervening in the civil wars in Ukraine and Syria; supporting the rebellions in the eastern provinces in the first case, and dropping bombs in support of the government of Bashar al-Assad in the second.

While he may have been a general in the old KGB, Vladimir Putin is no socialist. While Russia is formally ‘democratic’, political rights are very limited for anyone not aligned with Putin’s United Russia party. Notoriously, queer communities are persecuted by means of a law against “homosexual propaganda”, and Putin has fought a bloody civil war to quell the independence struggle in the republic of Chechenya. Neo-liberal economics has been used to cut living standards every bit as fiercely as it has in the West.

So why would anyone on the Left support Russia intervening in Ukraine or Syria, any more than they support the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan? Because they do. Leftist magazines like Counterpunch support Russian bombs falling in Syria. Several leftists in Aotearoa/NZ are members of a Facebook group called “Vladimir Putin Fan Club NZ. Putin it right !!” (sic)
Multipolar disorder
Several arguments have been used by such people. Perhaps the most serious is that in favour of a “multipolar world”. The argument is that the current world neoliberal system hinges on the unchallenged hegemony of the “Western” bloc, under the military leadership of the biggest imperial power of the planet, the United States. Therefore, a “multipolar” world would mean more freedom for popular forces to move against the global neoliberal order.

The late President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela was a great promoter of this idea. Many Western leftists who supported his government’s struggle for the working people and poor at home were left scratching their heads as he toured the world shaking hands and doing deals with the authoritarian leaderships of Russia or China, or Libya’s Qadhafi. He even supported the Zimbabwean government of Robert Mugabe, which imprisons and tortures socialists, and counted as an ally the Belarusian president Aleksander Lukashenko, who boasts of “wringing the necks” of the political opposition.

As an isolated leader of a socialist government in a capitalist state, Chávez can’t be blamed for trying to get any help he could. But for those of us without the responsibilities of state power, making a virtue out of necessity is not the basis for a political strategy.

This kind of politics is often called “campism” – in the metaphor that the world is divided into several military “camps”, with the largest being the Western camp led by the United States. Therefore, any government which disagrees with American foreign policy – no matter how oppressive to its own people, or however wedded to neoliberal market economics – can be supported. These governments are even called “anti-imperialist” – as if there were only one imperialism, that of the Western bloc. Those who’ve been watching China’s moves to extend its military reach across East Asia, or its economic power in Africa, have good reason to question that.

When two camps go to war…
The best argument which has been made to explain this thought process is that it’s a left-over from the Cold War, when the world was (at first) divided between the Western/USA bloc under the slogan of “freedom”, and the Eastern/Soviet bloc under the slogan of “peace”. Later, China emerged as the leader of a third bloc under a slogan of “national independence”.

At the time, many Western leftists saw the Soviet Union or China as “workers’ states”, which were a better alternative to capitalism. This led to many twists and turns as local parties and movements jumped around to justify the foreign policy of their preferred foreign “socialist” country. It was an article of faith for such groups that since their preferred country was “socialist”, it could not be imperialist, based on Vladimir Lenin’s analysis that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism. Therefore, even when the Soviet Union ransacked eastern Germany’s industrial base after the Second World War, or invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan to support its puppet regimes, this could not be “imperialist” by definition.

In contrast, other socialists refused to take sides. They described themselves as supporters of a “Third Camp” – opposing both the Western/US camp, and the camp of the bureaucratic states claiming to be socialist, with the “camp” of independent working-class action. The Socialist Workers Party in Britain led with the famous slogan of “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism”. During the workers’ uprising in Poland in the 1980s, while other socialists were trying to justify a Russian-backed military crackdown on the Solidarity independent union, the SWP’s newspaper headline read: “Russian tanks, Western banks, hands off Solidarity.”

Old slogans
One way to see the love-fest for Putin or other “anti-imperialist” dictatorships is simply a leftover from the days of the Soviet Union. Of course neither Russia nor Syria claim to be any sort of socialist country. But when you’ve spent a long time in the habit of thinking that the real problem in the world is American military hegemony – rather than the global capitalist system which that hegemony really serves – then you can justify any oppressive regime which is anti-American.

The “campists” even still use the old Soviet sloganeering – for example, when they claim that the Russian-backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine are fighting “fascists” in the Ukrainian government. While there certainly are some vile fascist mobs backing the Kiev regime, the mobs who rule the “Novorossiya” zones are only different in the symbols they use. Like the USA uses “anti-terrorism” as an excuse for conquest today, so did the old Soviet Union use “anti-fascism”; the official name of the Berlin Wall was the “Anti-fascist Protection Barrier”.

One sure sign of a campist mindset is that vile behaviour which is condemned on the other side is condoned on one’s own side, or outright denied. Campists are rightly outraged at the beheadings, sex slavery and other barbaric practices of the Islamist extremist group Da’esh (also known as ISIS). But they keep their mouths shut about the Syrian government’s use of “barrel bombs” and poison gas against opposition forces – even arguing that their chemical attack on Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus was a “false flag” operation.

We are all pawns
The use of the term “false flag” brings up the close alliance of “campism” with conspiracy theory. Campism, which sees the world as something like a “game board” where various governments move their pieces, can’t accept the concept of independent action by oppressed peoples or the working masses. So, every uprising against an “anti-imperialist” government is rejected as a CIA-backed “colour revolution”. It’s no coincidence that RT, the Russian government-backed news channel, promotes American conspiracy theorists who are considered a joke in their own media.

And of course the United States have an interest in overthrowing such governments and replacing them with reliable toadies. But to believe that that nullifies the existence of real grassroots movements within such uprisings is to reject the idea that socialist revolution is possible at all, that everything is secretly manipulated by some government or secret service or other such conspiracy. As one British socialist put it: “If you can’t fight for yourself, either because you are too weak or too isolated the temptation is to look for other forces who can do it for you.”

The kind of mindset which could defend Zimbabwe or North Korea as “anti-imperialist” could end up actually supporting Da’esh, on the basis that the democratic Syrian opposition forces have accepted guns from the West – and this is indeed what at least one group calling itself “communist” has declared. It is the logic that “stability” under a dictatorship is better than a chaotic situation of uprisings – a point of view which should be associated with conservative “realists”, not revolutionary socialists.

The enemy at home?
Other times, you hear the argument that “the main enemy is at home”, and therefore we have to oppose our own governments, not foreign governments. “The main enemy is at home” is a slogan that the German socialist Karl Leibknecht used to oppose the Social Democrats’ sell-out to support the First World War, which was justified with the argument that the Tsar of Russia was a much worse tyrant than the Kaiser of Germany.

But the people using that slogan to support the Syrian or Russian governments on this issue ignore that Liebknecht was opposed to all the imperialist governments fighting in the war. He certainly didn’t support the Russian government of the time any more than he cheered on his own. And of course he supported the Russian Revolution which brought down the Tsar from below – not the German armies on the Eastern Front.

We certainly want to oppose our own government. So we have to oppose New Zealand military intervention in Syria, Ukraine or any other civil conflict, and deny any support for the United States military or any Western-backed coalition – just as we oppose the barbarism of the Russian or Syrian governments or Da’esh. But we can’t let ourselves become useful idiots for any other oppressive regime. To bring up the World War 1 example again, Lenin accepted a train ride from the German regime to get back into Russia; but he certainly never supported the Kaiser as a “lesser evil” to the Tsar.

Neither Labour nor National…
We can find campism not only in foreign politics, but domestic politics. You see this in America with the demands that the socialist Left fall in behind the Democratic candidate – even if that’s the thoroughly imperialist and pro-capitalist Hilary Clinton – because apparently a Republican victory would be worse than a zombie apocalypse.

Similarly in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we see the division of electoral politics into two “camps” – a National-led camp, and “the Left”, being defined as Labour, Greens and New Zealand First. The first two parties are enthusiastically in favour of neoliberal capitalism, and the third support traditional “national” forms of capitalism. None of them has anything to offer the struggle for tino rangatiratanga, real action against climate change or independent workers’ organization – and yet, we are confronted with aggressive demands that we support “the Left” electorally, as if a government of Andrew Little, Winston Peters and James Shaw would be a significant improvement on the John Key regime.

In fact, the over-the-top denunciation of Key – a rather bland merchant banker, interested in entrenching neoliberalism rather than extending it – paradoxically reveals that there is no real difference between the two “camps”. Because that’s the real secret of campism – someone who aggressively demands that you take a side between two evils has an interest in concealing that the two camps are really not that different. Campism is born of weakness and lack of faith in the ability of real popular forces to build their own alternative to Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Damascus, Wellington and all the others. But that is precisely what socialism is supposed to be about.

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2016 2:05 pm
by Searcher08
http://vostoklake.dreamwidth.org/374400.html

Believers, unbelievers, and rude assholes
Jul. 19th, 2015 06:09 pm
vostoklake: (pterry and neil)
It's a funny thing. I've been an evangelical Christian, a neo-Pagan Witch, some kind of half-baked Indie Scientologist, a dogmatically-correct atheist, a follower of R. A. Wilson's Crowleyism-lite and now a member of a Sufi tariqa, and believe you me I've had some religious arguments in that time. I've had Thelemites tell me I was clueless, New Agers criticizing my prickly aura, fundamentalist Christians be passively-aggressively bitchy, orthodox Muslims just "blanking" me, and my Catholic grandma yelling that she could see the Devil his own self sitting on my shoulder.

But only when arguing with those people I call missionary atheists have my opponents been downright rude and personally abusive to me. I would call them "fundamentalist atheists", but last time I did that I got dogpiled by snot-nosed punks informing me that that was an oxymoron. Nevertheless, they certainly act like dogmatic, self-righteous bigots; as do many Marxist or anarchist activists, and they don't need a god other. (Funny thing, though, they all tend to end up worshipping idols of one kind or another, dead, alive or fictitious...)

Now why is that? If you descend into the sludge that is Traditionalist Catholic ("Pope Francis is a COMMIE HERETIC") comments boxes, you will see pompous bigots snarl and sneer at women, minorities and anyone different to and hence lesser than them. But some dude will occasionally say "Hey, tone it down, fellows! Charity to our fellow man is a Catholic virtue, remember?" But where is the reflex for an atheist who sees no higher authority than their own rational mind to not be an asshole?

That's slightly unfair, I know. Most atheists that I know subscribe to a Humanist form of ethics, which I have no problem with. Those guys won't be assholes because there is an inherent moral code in human nature which deprecates assholery. But ... who was that atheist woman who was sleazed on by Richard Dawkins in an elevator? Anyway, she said that she had always seen atheism as a "social justice movement". Indeed, in places like modern Iran, the "red states" in the USA and of course Tsarist Russia, religion is a major prop of the ruling elite and deserves to be critiqued to hell and back. But, unless you're specifically a Humanist or have some other form of ethical structure in mind, there is nothing in atheism per se that will make you a nice person.

And you try telling this to those rude assholes who call me braindamaged because I use the language of God, and they don't get the point.

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2016 2:24 pm
by jakell
Ten pages and still no sign of these drawings.
I'm imagining something like those quick sketches made in courtrooms. But it remains to be seen I suppose.

ETA.. In searching for 'sketches', I came across this again. Some refreshing humour in yet another copypasta desert:


Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:15 pm
by American Dream
Putin: a model of reactionary politics

The report of Britain’s official Owen Inquiry into the 2006 murder of former Russian security service agent Alexander Litvinenko was published on 21 January. It attributed responsibility for the murder to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Putin ruled Russia as its President from 2000 to 2008. Barred by the constitution from seeking a third successive term of office, Putin was nominally Prime Minister between 2008 and 2012. In reality, he remained the ultimate source of authority in Russia. Amid widespread allegations of ballot-rigging, Putin was re-elected President for six years in 2012. (The presidential term of office had been increased from four to six years while Putin was Prime Minister). He is already on record as saying that he will seek re-election in 2018.

From the outset Putin’s rule has been based on “siloviki” (strongmen): former KGB agents and serving agents of the police and the FSB (the Russian successor to the KGB), and former and serving military commanders. According to a survey carried out by Olga Kryshtanovskaya in 2004, “siloviki” constituted around 25% of Russia’s political elite, and over 50% of Putin’s inner circle. Their influence has continued to grow since then. Putin himself is a former KGB agent. But, as Kryshtanovskaya wrote: “Putin brought ‘siloviki’ with him. But that’s not enough to understand the situation. The whole political class wished them to come. There was a need of a strong arm, capable from point of view of the elite to establish order in the country.”

One of Putin’s first acts was to incorporate Russia’s 89 regions into seven new federal districts. The districts are run by appointees personally selected by Putin as his representatives. They have control over the armed forces, the budgets and activities of the regional governors in their districts.

Five of the first seven appointees were “siloviki”. At the same time Putin weakened the powers of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament with representation from the country’s different regions. Putin also scrapped the election of regional governors (they too were to be personally appointed by Putin) and empowered local legislatures (dominated in practice by Putin’s supporters) to sack popularly elected mayors. Over the past decade and a half potential sources of opposition to Putin’s rule in civil society have been attacked, one after another. The media empires run by the oligarchs Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky were both effectively taken over by Putin and their owners forced to flee Russia. Dissident journalists have been sacked, programmes critical of Putin have been taken off the air, and attempts to create independent television channels blocked by the government. The only surviving independent channel is now run from an apartment in Moscow.

Under a law signed off by Putin in 2014, international organisations, foreigners and Russians with dual citizenship will be banned from owning mass media outlets by the end of 2016. Its main target is Vedomosti, jointly published by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. The internet in Russia is controlled by the government agency Roskomnadzor, created in 2012. Russian bloggers with 3,000 or more visitors a day have to register with Roskomnadzor, reveal their identities, and verify the accuracy of their blogs. Roskomnadzor can also block websites which “refuse to follow Russian laws”, which carry “extremist” political content, or which “encourage illegal activities and participation in public events held in violation of the established order.” Foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs), described by Putin as “jackals” and “Judases”, have been singled out for repressive legislation. They are required to register as “foreign agents”, submit quarterly reports on their funds and resources, and submit six-monthly reports on their personnel and activities. They are also subject to mandatory audits and can be fined for publishing anything not described as having been published by “a foreign agent”.

In the spring of 2013 alone, 2,000 NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were raided by government authorities. After a wave of protests at Putin’s decision to seek re-election as President in 2012, he increased fines for taking part in unauthorised protests to 300,000 rubles, and fines for organising such protests to a million rubles. In 2014 Putin ramped up the penalties yet again. Repeated participation in unauthorised protests now attracts a penalty of up to a million rubles and up to five years of forced labour or prison. A law passed in 2013 banned the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors”. Breaches of the law could result in fines or imprisonment. The following year another law banned all swearwords in films, on television and in theatre performances. And last year new rules for licencing the showing of films were introduced, banning films which “defile the national culture, pose a threat to national unity, and undermine the foundations of the constitutional order.”

Other laws have obstructed the registration of “non-indigenous religions” and prevented them from acquiring land and building permits. This has benefited the religious monopoly enjoyed by the Russian Orthodox Church, described by Putin as one of the two “pillars” of national and state security. The other “pillar” is nuclear deterrence. Reflecting Putin’s own views on Stalin (“his legacy cannot be judged in black and white”), Russia adopted Stalin’s national anthem (with different lyrics) in 2000, and Russian textbooks now explain that while the Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR was not a democracy, it was “an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society.” Putin has also regularly contrasted his authoritarian conservatism with western “decadence”, denouncing the west as “genderless and infertile” and guilty of “the destruction of traditional values from the top.”

This has provided a basis for political alliances between Putin and parties of the European far right: the French National Front, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Bulgarian Attack, the Slovak People’s Party, and various far-right parties in Germany. Putin’s endorsement of Donald Trump for US president last month was only a logical development of his support for political reaction at an international level. Putin’s record since 2000 has not been one of a failed attempt to establish a functioning democracy after the chaos and corruption of the 1990s. It is a record of success in establishing an authoritarian regime which has promoted itself as a model for far-right movements and regimes round the world. And it is a record regularly punctuated by the physical elimination of Putin’s critics and opponents: the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the anti-corruption campaigner Sergei Magnitsky, and the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, as well as Litvinenko.

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https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2 ... far-right/

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:39 pm
by American Dream
Statement of collective Anarchist Black Cross - Moscow: anti-fascist and anarchist Serebrennikov Oleg needs your help and solidarity!

Anarchical Black Cross Moscow (ABC - Moscow) urges to show solidarity and to help the anti-fascist and the anarchist Serebrennikov Oleg. On an extent more than ten years he actively participated in the anarchical and anti-fascist movements in Russia and in Izhevsk. Long time he cooperated with collective ABC - Moscow, helped detainees and the arrested anti-fascists and anarchists with Izhevsk, looked for for them lawyers, informed the public and activists on the repressions untied by police against anti-fascists in the city. He actively participated in solidarity actions in support of the imprisoned anti-fascists and social activists. Because of the serious problems with health which arose after attack of neo-Nazis on Oleg in 2004 the help is now necessary need for him.

You can extend information on Oleg's case among friends, to hold a concert or other events for solidarity with Oleg, it is simple to transfer any sum to the bank accounts provided below, it is simple to write it the letter for support him.

We publish the letter of Oleg in which he in detail describes the situation below.

«Hello, my name is Oleg Serebrennikov. I'm 33 years old and I’ve been anti-fascist and socialist over the last 15 years, so I am one of the few people who was at the origin of the anti-fascist movement in Izhevsk.

During all that time, the Nazis and the police have been preventing me from leaving a normal life; there were many attacks, threats and acts of intimidation from the neo-Nazis. Apart of that, the local police was trying to initiate criminal proceedings etc.

From 2001 to 12 years, I have actively participated in the anarchist and anti-fascist movement in Izhevsk and Russia. It consisted in the movement "Autonomous Action" (2005-12), for many years was a regional coordinator Autonomous action-Izhevsk. Participated in many libertarian and anti-fascist meetings and conferences.

I was a member of the Russian Social Forum in 2005, helped in organizing seminars on counter forum against the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, 2006. In the years 2005-09 organized and participated in the student union and the campaign against the privatization of education in Izhevsk. It is also actively involved in the meetings and social protests held in Izhevsk on the problems of housing and communal services, travel documents on public transport, point construction and other problems.

It is also actively involved in the anti-fascist struggle, carried out various anti-fascist street actions, cultural events organized and conducted screenings of anti-fascist and socialist cinema in the student autonomous Cinema Club, led the campaign, blogged on the Izhevsk and wrote articles about neo-Nazis in the local newspaper, where he worked.

I also worked with a team of Anarchist Black Cross Moscow, has been active online editor of the largest anarchist and anti-fascist site of the former USSR and avtonom.org

==============

On 23 February 2004 after a protest against the war in Chechnya, some Nazis attacked me and almost killed, there were about 20-25 people, for me it ended up in quite a sad way – I was taken to hospital and diagnosed a brain contusion with hemorrhage, craniocerebral injury and a number of other problems. Unfortunately, I have not received any adequate treatment at an early stage of the illness, so, a few years later my health condition started deteriorating dramatically.

In 10 years I started having a strong health deterioration, I almost can’t work because of constantly being treated. Twice a year I have to get treatment in various hospitals and clinics and, generally speaking, I feel myself much worse.

The treatment I need to get is very expensive (2000 euro per year) and, due to my lack of funds, I can only pay a small part of the treatment. Sometimes I’ve received financial support from Anarchist Black Cross, that was very important and helpful for me. Now I'm in need of assistance and that’s why I can’t provide myself with the essential treatment. I would be very grateful if you could help me somehow.

More details:

My name is Oleg Serebrennikov; I live in Russia, Izhevsk. I am an anti-fascist and human rights activist, also writing on social affairs. I need help because I have serious health problems because of having been engaged in human rights and anti-fascist work in my town.

I advised social activists and ordinary citizens on their rights and freedoms violated by the police, organized workshops telling how to behave themselves with the police offices. I also organized various street antifascist activities (demonstrations, public protests, rallies), as well as cultural events: an anti-fascist film club, a socialist cinema club at the University of Izhevsk, also carried out different activities related to feminism, social and environmental issues.

As a journalist, I overviewed local right-wing organizations and groups, denouncing their crimes against the citizens, I also informed people about the illegal activities of such groups.

After having started my human rights activities, I faced a problematic situation with the representatives of Ministry of Internal Affairs and neo-Nazis groups.


Continues at: http://avtonom.org/en/news/statement-co ... nikov-oleg

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:09 pm
by American Dream

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 1:43 pm
by American Dream
One of Russia's looniest far-right ideologues endorses Donald Trump

t turns out that Dugin had been dumped by the Russian establishment in 2014, just as his usefulness ran out. Putin had stopped short of overtly invading Ukraine, infuriating Dugin and other far-right leaders who wanted Russia to take part or all of Ukraine. When those far-right leaders agitated for escalation, using their newfound public influence to pressure Putin, the Kremlin put them down.

In June 2014, Putin formally rescinded an earlier order that had granted Russia legal authority to invade Ukraine — indicating he would not invade overtly. The next week, as part of a larger crackdown on far-right voices, Dugin was expelled from his prestigious job at Moscow State University.

But in spring 2015, when I traveled to Moscow, I found the once-triumphant Duginists and ultranationalists no longer saw Putin as an ally, and even considered him a traitor to the cause. Some had been pressured by security services, which they took as a sign that their views were no longer tolerated. Meanwhile, Putin had largely dropped his grand Eurasianist rhetoric.

In retrospect, it seems likely that Putin's short-lived embrace of Duginism was opportunistic and superficial. In other words, Putin decided to invade Ukraine for narrow political reasons, then reached for Eurasianism and neo-imperialism in order to justify his actions and to whip up public support.

But when Putin's Novorossiya project floundered — his actions in eastern Ukraine succeeded in destabilizing the country but not in dominating it outright — he shifted strategies, seeking to maintain a low-level conflict rather than to escalate. The neo-imperialist ideological justifications no longer fit the strategy. And far-right movements, newly empowered, were pushing Putin to go further than he wanted to. So Putin turned on them.

It turned out that Dugin's apparent importance to the Kremlin's ideology had been overstated. This is not to criticize those who considered Dugin important — it was a reasonable conclusion to draw at the time — but rather just to say that we now know Dugin's ideas were never all that important, and that today he is at the nadir of his influence.

Therefore, we should probably not conclude that Dugin's Trump endorsement tells us anything useful about the Kremlin's view of the US presidential race. It's true that Trump has praised Putin and that Putin has returned the favor, but Trump likely appeals to these two Russians on different grounds and for different reasons. (Truly a man for all seasons.)


More at: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11142048/du ... mp-endorse

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:50 pm
by tapitsbo
Whatever is true or not true about Aleksandr Dugin, the mischaracterizations of him are similar to mainstream media portrayals of a group like Hezbollah: the former is conflated with ethnic nationalists, the latter is conflated with groups like ISIS who commit genocide against religious minorities, despite a record of protecting them at times.

It's difficult to draw conclusions from a lot of this material for these reasons.

If we are to conclude that Dugin's anti-racism is faux anti-racism, then we are offered an angle of comparison with other forms of anti-racism that offer us a selective blind spot and free pass for certain flavours of ethnic nationalism.

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 4:39 pm
by American Dream
http://onepeoplesproject.com/roguesgall ... ndr-dugin/

ALEXANDR DUGIN

Image
NAME:Alexandr Gelyevich Dugin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ге́льевич Ду́гин)
HOME BASE: Moscow, Russia
DOB: January 7, 1962



In Oct 2014, the white supremacist National Policy Institute attempted to hold a conference in Budapest, Hungary in the latest effort by paleoconservatives in America to unite with fascists in other parts of the world that have seen a little more success than they ever could stateside. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t come without the usual opposition, and that meant the conference location getting raided by Hungarian police and the conference itself shut down – or at least sent away to an undisclosed location. NPI leader Dick Spencer ended up getting detained for that weekend by authorities, eventually deported and banned from entering much of Europe for the next three years. Meanwhile the Hungarian white nationalist Jobbik party and British white nationalist publisher Arktos pulled back their support before the conference, and other like-minded foreigners were either being told to stay home or were sent back to their countries if they showed up at the airport. One of those people that was denied a visa by the Hungarian government was a Russian nationalist so-called “philosopher” named Alexandr Dugin, and his “philosophy” has made room for such gems from him such as “If we want to liberate ourselves from the West, it is needed to liberate ourselves from textbooks on physics and chemistry,” and that the entire Internet needs to be banned “because it gives nobody anything good.”

This is the kind of thing you should expect from a guy who is cheerleading a “conservative revolution” in Russia that wipe out all vestiges of liberalism in that nation and return Russia to the totalitarianism the world complained about with the Soviet Union. Dugin apparently thinks however that the only problem with that was that the USSR chose the platform of Communism to work from, as opposed to Fascism, more to the point his preferred brand of Fascism called Eurasianism. And make no bones about it, that’s exactly what he is about. While saying he is against “biological racism”, he has written in the past that in his preferred make up of Eurasia that “wherever there is a single drop of Aryan (Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian, European) blood, there is a chance for racial awakening, for the rebirth of the primordial Aryan conscience.”

As Russia and the Ukraine go to war over Ukraine’s effort to become an independent nation, Dugin is right there trying to keep the Ukraine part of Russia, corresponding with the loyalists in Ukraine, building alliances in the European Union between right and left parties to influence EU policy in the region and being the author behind the annexation of the internationally recognized Ukraninan territory of Crimea by the Russian Federation. A professor in the Department of Sociology of International Relations of Moscow State University until 2014, he lost his job when the Russian government started to soften their position on the Ukraine conflict.

Born in Moscow, Dugin was an anti-communist writer in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He once embarked on a military career and enrolled in the Moscow Aviation Institute, but after authorities learned of his association with far right circles – even translating into Russian Pagan Imperialism by the neo-fascist (although he might say otherwise) philosopher Julius Evola – They arrested and eventually canned him. He worked as a street sweeper and journalist until things started to fall apart with the Soviet Union, and then he jumped into politics. He joined the anti-Semitic group Pamyat, who believed, among other things, that the so-called “Zionist Occupational Government” (ZOG) was running Russia into the ground. He left Pamyat because of he considered its low intellectual level, and eventually started a book publishing company and also went on to help found the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) in 1993. Considering them not to be as right-wing as he liked, Dugin led some other hardliners to split off and form the National Bolshevik Front (NBF). He later split from this and started to associate with other circles, including Vladamir Putin’s, and he has been encouraging him to find alternatives to a relationship with America. He particularly pushes a Eurasian alternative that would solidify the bonds of European and Asian nations and become a rival to the United States whom he believes is pushing a worldwide hegemony through its involvement in world affairs, particularly the Middle East.


Continues at: http://onepeoplesproject.com/roguesgall ... ndr-dugin/

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 9:07 am
by American Dream

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 9:28 am
by conniption
Off-Guardian
(embedded links)


Published on March 6, 2016
Comments 21

NATO Branch Chief: “The Russians are coming, my cleaner says so!”


by Kit

Image
Pictured: Janis Sarts and all the evidence cited in his report

You might think that an article that alleges that the Kremlin is masterminding unrest in Europe by supporting right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, anti-Europe sentiment, anti-refugee sentiment and conducting television interviews with Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn…with the possible end-game of invading Latvia…to be a little “out there”. You might say that unfounded, irrational arguments of this kind – backed by no evidence at all – do not belong in a “serious” newspaper.

The Guardian, however, disagrees. They published it – twice in 24 hours.


It’s all based around this report – from Jānis Sārts at the NATO Strategic Command Centre of Excellence – that found a MASSIVE 1.45% of internet comments on Latvian social media in summer 2014 MAY HAVE BEEN Russian “trolls” (the correct term is shill, or sock-puppet, but getting things right has never been a big part of the NATO game-plan). “How can you tell they are Russian trolls” you ask? They repeat content and have bad grammar. Yes, seriously.

This mighty 1.45% of Latvian internet comments, coupled with RT, Angela Merkel’s open border policy, George Galloway and pictures of girls in bikinis all make up the Russian masterplan to shatter Europe and build an Empire on its ashes. I’m not joking. I wish I was.

This may all seem very far-fetched, but don’t fall for the Russian propaganda – Lieutenant-Colonel Simon West, branch chief at the Nato centre in Riga, has got it all figured out: Putin is planning on using Eastern Europe as a bulwark against the encroachment of “liberal democracies”.

I sometimes think I’m imagining it, but when I drove into the office today, the radio switched from music to a Russian news programme”

Lt. Col. Simon West


That’s right – while he sometimes doubts his sanity (who can blame him?) he quickly changes his mind when a Russian news programme comes on the radio….in Latvia.

I wish this was satire. I wish I was joking. But this:

My cleaner is sure they are coming, as I am sure many Latvians are.” West pauses, staring at the map. “I dunno, he’s mischievous,” he adds of Putin. “I’ve got a feeling of expectation that something is going to happen.”


Is beyond parody.

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 9:46 am
by American Dream
What percentage of conniption's postings are monotone propaganda from media that are openly state-funded and/or from sketchy bloggers who paint in the same monotone schemata? I haven't counted yet, but I would daresay it is the vast majority.

That doesn't seem conducive to developing any sort of perspective that is critical of State Power and Imperialism generally. It just means choosing a different set in the power elite to cheer for.

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 10:29 am
by jakell
American Dream » Thu Mar 10, 2016 1:46 pm wrote:What percentage of conniption's postings are monotone propaganda from media that are openly state-funded and/or from sketchy bloggers who paint in the same monotone schemata? I haven't counted yet, but I would daresay it is the vast majority.

That doesn't seem conducive to developing any sort of perspective that is critical of State Power and Imperialism generally. It just means choosing a different set in the power elite to cheer for.


It will be fascinating to hear a breakdown when you do and maybe you could do this for other board members** too, including yourself.
While we're counting stuff, would it be too cheeky to ask how much you have personally donated to those causes you have been encouraging others here to donate to?

**On my last board, there was one poster who actually attempted this. Of course, it's an endless and monumental task and his criteria for classifying posts was too variable to make sense, but it was amusing to watch (at first).