The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 28, 2018 9:56 pm

Meeting Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syria's leading intellectual dissident

Image

In your book, you describe "Syrian facism" under the Assad regime in much detail. What are the connections of this ideology with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States and Europe?

"I think it is related to the fact that the ruling political- security-financial complex - headed by the Assad family and protected by the security apparatus and serving the new bourgeoisie - represents the whole "first world" in Syria.

"They are the 'white Syrians'. Many right-wing groups in the Western world identify themselves with these white Syrians. It is important to mention that both share attitudes such as Islamophobia and a sectarian character. Especially Islamophobia is an important element of these neo-Nazis and white supremacists, like anti-Semitism in the past and present.

"The most racist groups in the Western world admire the Assad regime and its so-called 'fight against terrorism'. For them, Bashar al Assad is a 'tough guy', like Hitler, who can kill as many people as he wants. Assad is their ideal for strong leadership. But actually Bashar is mediocre, and he is such a insatiable killer just to cover his mediocrity."

How far, in your opinion, has the Syrian revolution been hijacked by foreign powers such as Russia, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others?

"I have a problem with the word 'hijacked' because it does not really describe the reality of the Syrian people and their struggle. The internal dynamics have not been the only or even the crucial factor to determine the political situation in our country and other Arab Middle Eastern countries.

"The Middle East is a system built on the supremacy of Israel as the only really sovereign power, and of denying the political rights of the population in the other states. This a system of politicide, a concept coined by the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling to represent the status of Palestinians in Israel in the days of Ariel Sharon.

"Assad's Syria is one main pillar of this system, and the Assad family rule is being rehabilitated because of its politiciding history and role in the region. The new thing is the rule of Iran and Russia in reproducing this regime, but the main actor, though from behind the curtains, is Israel which is essentially built on politiciding Palestinians.

"The effect of the Middle East's structure [on the Syrian revolution] was enhanced in the second half of 2012 when the national framework of our struggle began to collapse. After the first chemical massacres conducted by the regime, the American-Russian deal gave the regime and its allies full immunity to kill the rebellious Syrians with other weapons.

"Since that sordid deal, it is no longer about Syria, not even about the Middle East - it is about the world, a progressively Syrianised one. This 'Macro Syria' should change what we aspire to - a better future for all of us. This is the meaning of Syria, and this why it is important to be earnest about Syria."


https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/socie ... -dissident
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 01, 2018 8:28 am

Support anarchist and antifa prisoners in St.Petersburg and Penza!

ImageWe are currently fundraising to pay the lawyers working on several cases related to the police raids and arrests of anarchists and antifascists in St. Petersburg and Penza, Russia.

As of now, two people in St. Petersburg and five in Penza are under arrest, while many others have been connected to their cases as witnesses. The raids and repressions are likely to continue.

The arrestees are charged with part 2 of article 205.4 of the Russian Criminal Code, participation in a Terrorist Organisation, and the entire process has been started at the request of the court in Penza.

On January 23rd, on his way to Pulkovo Airport, Victor Filinkov was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB). In order to force a testimony out of him he was beaten, and tortured with electric shocks in the woods. Signs of torture have been confirmed by the Filinkov's lawyer and members of the Public Monitoring Commission (ONK) who have visited him in the pre-trial detention center. Filinkov is currently in pre-trial detention/remand for the next two months.

On January 25th the FSB raided Igor Shishkin's apartment. After the raid neither his lawyer, nor members of Public Monitoring Commission were able to find Igor for more than a day. On January 27th Igor was brought to a session in court with clear signs of beating. He is currently in pre-trial detention/remand for the next two months. Journalists were not allowed to attend the hearing and furthermore two of them were arrested.

Several witnesses were also tortured: Ilya Kapustin was beaten up and tortured with electric shocks while police demanded he give testimony that some of his acquantances are up to "something dangerous." Medical services later recorded numerous traces of stun gun usage.


More at: https://avtonom.org/en/news/support-ana ... petersburg
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 04, 2018 2:19 pm

Northern Syria: Massive ethnic cleansing, humanitarian catastrophe, foreign intervention and betrayal

Image
Hen-house housing Syrian IDP’s, bombed by Russian air-force on January 18


Are you aware that in East Ghouta, besieged, bombed and starved for years by Assad, the regime has slaughtered hundreds since the beginning of this year alone, both with bombs and with starvation? Or does that not matter because you think the entire population of 400,000 people there are all “head-choppers”? Are you aware that in the same period, the Assad regime, the Russian imperialist airforce, and Iranian-backed sectarian death squads have killed similar numbers in the northwest – yeh, right there next to Afrin – and driven over 200,000 people from their homes in a massive wave northwards? Or again, are these people also just all head-choppers?


Read at: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2018/01 ... -betrayal/
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:33 pm

Molly McKew explains how bots and pro-Trump trolls worked together to push #ReleaseTheMemo on social media

JACKSON: So it's both bots and it's both legit?

MCKEW: It's sort of automated content and machine aspects. It is humans. It is Russian. It is American. There's probably other mixed in there. But the way they now fuse together in this information architecture within social media is incredibly interesting. And I would just note, because I get -- it'll be a criticism, but there's also a far-left architecture that is often manipulated in this as well. So it's not just the right. There is also sort of the Bernie bot contingent which still exists on social media. But the way that these now work together, they sort of feed and fuel each other, they drive these campaigns, and that's really the more important question. It's not is it a bot or not, but it's was it an automated and amplified campaign for the purpose of manipulative content, and what was the purpose of that campaign?

JACKSON: And that is called computational propaganda, you write.

MCKEW: Exactly.

JACKSON: And that's what that is sort of defined, right?

MCKEW: Yeah, and so there is this whole new field of computational propaganda that's sort of backed by data analytics and other technologies, some of it is AI. Some of it is very basic. On Twitter, a lot of it is automated Twitter software, sort of things that allow you to repost things very quickly, but the purpose of it is to change perceptions, to change the way that people make decisions in the way that they think, and, ultimately, to change behavior, and I think that's really what's been missing in some of these conversations in the last year about sort of fake news, which I think is a terrible term. Aspects of it are not just about disinformation, that they are information warfare, they are meant to achieve specific outcomes.


https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018 ... dia/219274
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby dada » Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:13 pm

I don't get the mystique surrounding the issue. Call it 'computational propaganda backed by data analytics,' or whatever five-dollar words you like. It's still just pr and marketing. Sure, new technology means new techniques. 'the purpose of it is to change perceptions, to change the way that people make decisions in the way that they think, and, ultimately, to change behavior.' Right. What else is new?
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:46 pm

Yeah, I'm not for Uncle Sam nor for the Russian Bear, just as I'm neither pro-Pepsi or pro-Coke.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby peartreed » Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:11 pm

Ignoring the expanding techniques of mass mind manipulation as simply marketing evidences the precise mainstream mindset that makes the manipulated so malleable. Shrugging off today’s targeting techniques and technology as everyday advertising allows new innovations in insidious intrusion to influence the ignorant.

The greatest enemy of covert corruption is the kind of critical thinking that detects the motivation and mission behind both the overt and the subtle, even subliminal messages. Unless the target is attuned to the delivery system and its source, the reception is open and unfiltered, prone to any puppeteer pulling its strings.

Even knowing the origin and delivery system of the message still requires analysis of its content, unless the gullible capitulate personal control to the powers that be.

Today’s sophisticated communication technologies require equally sophisticated audiences activated to defend and protect the integrity of individual autonomy and independent thinking.

The suggestible who surrender to it end up electing evil.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby Grizzly » Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:39 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby dada » Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:45 pm

peartreed » Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:11 pm wrote:Ignoring the expanding techniques of mass mind manipulation as simply marketing evidences the precise mainstream mindset that makes the manipulated so malleable. Shrugging off today’s targeting techniques and technology as everyday advertising allows new innovations in insidious intrusion to influence the ignorant.

The greatest enemy of covert corruption is the kind of critical thinking that detects the motivation and mission behind both the overt and the subtle, even subliminal messages. Unless the target is attuned to the delivery system and its source, the reception is open and unfiltered, prone to any puppeteer pulling its strings.

Even knowing the origin and delivery system of the message still requires analysis of its content, unless the gullible capitulate personal control to the powers that be.

Today’s sophisticated communication technologies require equally sophisticated audiences activated to defend and protect the integrity of individual autonomy and independent thinking.

The suggestible who surrender to it end up electing evil.


Well, that's your opinion. My opinion is it's a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Ignoring it works just fine for me.

Some more opinions, while I'm at it. Sophisticated audiences are still audiences. Informed, critically thinking consumers are still consumers at heart. Real freedom means freedom from the authoritarian mindset of audience and consumer. The greatest enemy of corruption, overt or covert, is an anti-authoritarian mindset.

If the techniques of mass mind manipulation are so great, how is it that the public remains so stubbornly fickle? Because the fact is that for all the bucks and bluster, they have no idea what they're doing. And convincing you that they do is half the game.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Mon Feb 05, 2018 8:43 pm

I think that more than half the answer is that we do it to ourselves. Once you've formed a dogmatic opinion, and maybe located yourself within a milieu of people who agree, "Of course, this must be true, it's easy to keep brainwashing yourself. Often there are organized groups and networks to keep you well-supplied with brainwashing materials. After that, it's harder to step out of a familiar and comfortable reality tunnel...
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby peartreed » Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:14 am

dada's anti-authoritarian mindset might, in many people, be a product of disillusionment about those in authority.

Trump is the ultimate authoritarian, convinced by his own megalomania of his personal omnipotence and entitlement to rule all – and everyone – he chooses to.

He was elected to the highest office by an antiestablishment supporters conned into thinking he was the savior of the downtrodden and the ignored in sidelined society.

They were mesmerized by his reality tv celebrity image of a powerful advocate for change, a spokesman for the simple, disenfranchised victims of the establishment. He was the self-proclaimed Robin Hood of the Merry Men outlaws hiding in the forest. He had already made millions as their famous folk hero. He represented all the wealth and power and promotion life had denied them. His pitch clicked.

To the more insightful, intelligent and informed observers, Trump was exactly opposite the character his performance portrayed and promoted to the peasants. He was the epitome of corporate exploitation, greed and selfish, unearned and unethical excess - yet a master manipulator of mass media messaging to morons.

His life’s learning lesson was the benefits to be had by simply pushing peoples’ buttons, boasting and bragging and blanketing with bullshit, and belittling the opposition. The uncritical believers bowing in his base aggrandized him into office.

The “anti-authoritarians” were – and are – Trump’s bread and butter. Disconnected. In denial. Disgruntled. Dumb. Dazed by all the details they still cannot fathom on how Trump did it. Dazzled by his outrages. Identifying with his corrupt crusade.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby dada » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:33 am

I can't speak for others, nor do I want to. For me, it isn't disillusionment with those in authority. It's the very concept of authority I take issue with. The individual is not exempt. I'm no libertarian.

I don't respect pecking orders, of any kind. Social, historical, unspoken or explicit. I don't care for rules without rulers, not an anarchist. I don't 'stick apart' like a discordian. Like a marxist (of the groucho variety) I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member. If you agree with me, I'll say, "well, then I must be wrong."

All forms of authority. All forms. I'm against the authoritarian tendencies in myself. I'd say this all-encompassing, total rejection is something akin to a 'spiritual path,' but I reject the authority of the spirit. It is a method, though, a practice. One with no goal, there's nothing to do.The still, small voice inside is silent, there's no question, no answer, no inner perception of time, no being or becoming, no plans or spontaneity. There's just a wordless presence that acts. The infinite, eternal something behind the universe expresses itself in moments, infinitely new, eternally changing, and I'm receptive to it/creative with it.

While I have no respect for authority, I will play by the rules, when it suits me. I'm aware of my surroundings, I have compassion for others.

So, that was a bit of clarification, as to what I mean by an anti-authoritarian mindset. It's only a word, though.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:26 pm

Although Trump is certainly an idiosyncratic figure, he is really one of many “populist” right-wing leaders that have emerged on the global stage against the backdrop of the economic crisis, including Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India, General Al Sisi in Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Michel Temer in Brazil, Mauricio Macri in Argentina, and perhaps soon Norbert Hofer in Austria and Marine Le Pen in France.

This is a heterogeneous group, obviously — and even the label “populism” we use as shorthand here deserves greater critical scrutiny. But these right-wing figures do share several characteristics. All of them promise a combination of neoliberalism and nationalism as the solution to economic and social malaise. Most of them also manage to mobilize for the right a widespread hatred for the entire political class and contempt for the political establishment — a sentiment that at other times has been mobilized effectively by the left, for instance in 2001 in Argentina and 2011 in Spain.

Many of these right-wing leaders and political forces also add some traditional characteristics of fascism, such as the threat of the mass expulsion of migrants, racial purity as a condition of legitimate belonging to the nation, the suspension of normal legal procedures to imprison and repress political opponents, attacks on the independent press, and creating an atmosphere of terror for LGBTQ populations, people of color, women and others.


-The power of the movements facing Trump
, Michael Hardt, Sandro Mezzadra
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 08, 2018 1:53 am

Radical right-wing populism and foreign policy

Posted on 19th December 2017

Foreign policy positions of radical right-wing parties stem from their ultranationalism, or nativism, as a constituent element of their ideologies, as well as ethno-pluralism adopted from the European New Right. The approaches of radical right-wing parties to international relations are arguably best characterised by their attitudes towards globalisation, the USA, NATO and European integration.

Image
The meeting of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group in Prague, 16 December 2017. Left to right: Marine Le Pen (National Front), Tomio Okamura (Freedom and Direct Democracy), Geert Wilders (Party for Freedom). Source: N24/Kevin Knauer

The overwhelming majority of radical right parties consider globalisation, for economic, political and socio-cultural reasons, as a destructive process. First, globalisation – as a process of de-regularisation and liberalisation of goods and labour markets – is blamed for undermining the welfare state, impoverishing small and medium businesses in favour of transnational corporations, cutting wages and rising unemployment.

Second, international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank or World Trade Organisation, as well as currently proposed trade agreements like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are seen as limiting economic and political sovereignty of European nation-states.

While these positions could potentially be also articulated by (radical) left-wing parties, these critical approaches to globalisation are – in the case of the radical right – underpinned by their ultranationalism. Concerns about the survival of the welfare state in a globalised world are part of the radical right-wing ideological package that can be called “welfare state chauvinism” suggesting that welfare benefits should be restricted to the indigenous population and, thus, implicitly cementing the inequality between “Us” and “Them”. Similar ultranationalist implications can be found in the radical right narratives associating globalisation with the rise of unemployment and salary reductions: globalisation fosters immigration, and immigrants “take our jobs and drive down wages”. Moreover, describing the IMF or World Bank as instruments of “international finance” enables the radical right’s flirtation with anti-Semitism, as the term “international finance” is a coded reference to the Jews.1 The combination of “leftist” criticism of globalisation and nativist undertones allows the radical right to mobilise “losers of globalisation” more efficiently in comparison to the radical left; as Hanspeter Kriesi and others argued, “fears about national identities” are more important for the “losers of globalisation” than “the defence of their economic interests”.2 The majority of “losers of globalisation”, who vote for the far right, come from the working class – a development that Hans-Georg Betz called a “proletarization of the radical populist Right’s electoral basis”.3 He also suggested that, from the point of view of economic programmes, already in the early 1990s, “a number of radical right-wing populist parties resembled Socialist and Social Democratic parties more than any other of the established parties”.4

Finally, radical right-wing parties directly blame globalisation, which – to a certain degree – implies free movement of persons, for uncontrolled immigration and erosion of national cultures. Immigrants from Africa and Asia receive special attention of far right parties that believe that real or imaginary cultural differences between Africans and Asians, on the one hand, and Europeans, on the other, are too great to allow for a peaceful co-existence of these peoples in the European space and for a successful integration of Africans and Asians into European societies. These arguments are underpinned by different but often overlapping motives ranging from overtly racist to Islamophobic to ethno-pluralist ones.

The racist motive relates to a belief in the superiority of “white race” over any other “races”: Africans and Asians are thus seen not only as inferior to white Europeans but also a direct threat to the existence of “white race”. The Islamophobic motive alludes to the incompatibility of Islam with European societies; some far right parties would defend a concept of a Christian Europe and argue that Islam has threatened Christian Europe for many centuries, some others would insist that Europe is secular, while Islam rejects secularism. The ethno-pluralist motive, unlike the overtly racist one, does not presume superiority of Europeans over Africans and Asians, but glorifies cultural diversity of different ethnic communities – a diversity that should be maintained, and, hence, different ethnic communities should have as low influence on each other as possible.

The rejection of globalisation of the majority of radical right-wing parties is closely associated with their general scepticism towards to the USA. As Christina Schori Liang sums up,

Anti-Americanism has become one of the dominant foreign policy themes of the populist radical right since the end of the Cold War, and the United States is widely perceived as the main state adversary of Europe. […] The United States is viewed by many populist radical right parties […] as having hegemony over international institutions […] and international business. The United States is also represented as a warmonger, forcing countries to join in unwanted conflicts and instigating and forcing political, economic, and cultural integration.5


According to Lars Rensmann, “in general, anti-Americanism is now at the top of the agenda of extreme right parties all over Europe, from Lega Nord to Front National”,6 but exceptions do exist, while the attitudes of far right parties towards the US may change with time. For example, the Front National (National Front, FN) was strongly pro-American until the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-1991 and the beginning of the US-led Gulf War that the FN strongly criticised; the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria, FPÖ), under the leadership of Jörg Haider, looked at the US with favour until the beginning of the 2000s when Haider started to cooperate with Saddam Hussein; and the Belgian Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block) was “virtually the only open supporter of American foreign policy in contemporary Belgium”.7 Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of far right parties remain, in a varying degree, anti-American. The election of President Donald Trump, who has been often seen as a racist8 and American isolationist,9 and whose presidential campaign was led by one of the ideologues of the Alternative Right (or alt-right) movement Steve Bannon,10 exerted an impact on many European far right parties who embraced his election – if only in hope that Trump, as an isolationist, would limit American presence in Europe – but it is too early to say whether Trump’s election will reverse the deeply rooted anti-Americanism of the European far right.


Continues at: http://www.tango-noir.com/2017/12/19/ra ... gn-policy/
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 08, 2018 6:29 pm

The far-right influence in pro-Kremlin media and political networks

February 08, 2018
Alexander Reid Ross

In an editorial published on Monday, January 15, Russia Insider, one of the most important pro-Russia news and analysis hubs in the West, declared, “hostility to Putin’s Russia is largely a Jewish phenomenon.”

Penned by founding editor, Charles Bausman, the 5,000-word editorial drew positive responses from a number of important sources. Alt-Right.com announced “Russia Insider Decides to Go Alt-Right,” while Unz.com proclaimed that Bausman had “named the Jews” and far-right Congressional hopeful Paul Nehlen called it an “excellent article” and “a useful jumping off point for the ‘discussion’ we must have[.] The ensuing attention and compliments indicate the prevalence of far-right politics amid pro-Kremlin media and political networks.

Bausman’s antisemitic screed first lists well-worn euphemisms used by antisemites in lieu of naming Jews, including ‘Zionists', 'elites', 'global elites', 'globalists', 'neocons', 'liberal interventionists', 'the war party', 'the Israel lobby', 'the deep state', 'bankers' and 'new world order’

Indulging his theory, Bausman blames Jews for the Bolshevik terror, remarking that “much of the Bolshevik leadership was Jewish, in particular, Trotsky,” along with members of the secret police. He claims “cursory evidence” supports this theory, adding that “Henry Ford was heavily influenced by this view,” and “the German National Socialist movement became radically more antisemitic in reaction to this interpretation.”

The antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Jews used the Soviet Union to undermine the Russian “ethnos” is prominent among so-called “National Bolsheviks” — fascists who insist that an ultranationalist version of the Soviet Union would restore ethnic Russianness through a return to traditional society. Leading “National Bolshevik,” Aleksandr Dugin, has spearheaded influential initiatives to support Kremlin-centered “geopolitics” oriented toward a “Eurasian” spiritual empire stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Dugin has featured as a prominent figure among the pro-Kremlin far-right, including the alt-right, as well as news sites like Fort-Russ, RT, and Russia Insider.

Continuing in this vein, the editor of Russia Insider declares, “We follow the Alt-Right media and republish the occasional article, and they are invariably very popular on Russia Insider — largely, I think, because they are offering a fresh point of view, and talking about vitally important issues others refuse to address.” Bausman praises, in particular, racist alt-right podcasts like “Fash the Nation” and Richard Spencer’s “Alt Right Politics.”

Bausman’s editorial prompted a cautiously complimentary letter-to-the-editor from Gilbert Doctorow, a retired Brussels-based businessman who writes for for Consortium News and cofounded the revived American Committee for East-West Accord (ACEWA).

Doctorow has been featured as a writer for Russia Insider since the site’s early days in 2014, penning such articles as “Twilight of the Gods: George Soros in Brussels,” and Bausman’s antisemitic editorial clearly reflected on Doctorow’s own career. In response, Doctorow wrote to Russia Insider, “for the sake of argument I will concede to you [Bausman] the point that Jewish controlled media have been a big factor in the hate-Russia mania that sweeps America today.”

“The overriding point that I wish to make here is that the anti-Russian rant from Jewish politicians and media moguls are only one of several contributing factors to the Russia-bashing that is going on,” Doctorow continued.

Arguing that Jews abandoning the Soviet Union in the late-19th Century and again in the 1970s held a grudge against Russia for their own inability to climb the financial ladder in the U.S., Doctorow’s letter proceeds, “In the big picture, the Jews are only one of several ethnic-religious groups or nationalities who left what was the Russian Empire or the Soviet Empire, and have been making trouble for Russia ever since. Therein lies the problem.” Doctorow’s letter concludes, “I stress that the issues raised in your [Bausman’s] editorial essay are serious and demand multi-disciplinary and multi-sided examination.”

The American committee

In 2014, Doctorow agreed to help jump-start the long-dormant American Committee for East-West Accord (ACEWA) with original member, NYU and Princeton University professor emeritus and contributing editor of The Nation, Stephen F. Cohen. Originally a group of academics, leftists, politicians and business leaders supporting Nixon’s policies of détente with Russia, the ACEWA’s new manifestation currently includes on its board such prestigious figures as Chuck Hagel, former ambassadors Jack Matlock and William vanden Heuvel, and Senator Bill Bradley.

From the start, the ACEWA afforded Doctorow the pretext to bring far-right and left-wing politicians together for public gatherings. On December 2, 2014, Doctorow launched the European branch of the ACEWA at the Brussels Press Club with a Round Table that included two left-wing members of the European Parliament and far-right Front National MEP Aymeric Chauprade.

Then Marine Le Pen’s advisor on international relations, Chauprade had recently returned from Crimea where he served as an election “observer” for the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections led by Belgian fascist Luc Michel and joined by fascists Enrique Ravello and Valerio Cignetti. Far-right monitoring group Berliner Osteuropa-Experten called the ACEWA’s European launch, “a little Querfront.”

Registering as an ACEWA lobbyist in the European Union on March 1, 2015, Doctorow hosted another Brussels Round Table the next day featuring co-author of the controversial text, The Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer, as well as editor and publisher of The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and her husband Dr. Cohen.

The YouTube video of Mearsheimer’s speech appeared with a bullet-point summary on Russia Insider, which declared, “We owe a special thanks to Gilbert Doctorow, our invaluable RI [Russia Insider] contributor and moderator of this round table, for providing us with the video material.”

Two weeks later, Doctorow flew to Washington, D.C., for the U.S.-Russia Forum as a representative of the ACEWA. There, in the Central Hearing Facility (Room 216) of the Hart Senate Office Building, immediately following a speech from Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Doctorow appeared on a panel with Cohen and Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher to decry anti-Putin sentiment.

After a short coffee break, the audience returned to the illustrious room to see Katrina vanden Heuvel moderate a panel on alternative media featuring the late Robert Parry of Consortium News, which is apparently Russia Insider’s fiscal sponsor. In the next time slot, Bausman took to the podium to give a presentation boasting of Russia Insider’s three million views per month during its first six months of existence. Today, both the homepage and the speakers’ page of the Russia Forum’s website feature Basuman’s photo in the banner image.

That September, Doctorow was back in Belgium, where he chaired another ACEWA Round Table featuring contributions from EU politicians and such academics as Richard Sakawa, a participant in Russia’s elite Valdai Discussion Club, and The Israel Lobby’s other co-author Stephen Walt.

As the U.S. presidential campaign of 2016 heated up, the ACEWA argued that Trump proposed a “new détente-like relationship” with Putin’s Russia, while deriding Clinton’s platform. On July 12, Doctorow’s branch of the ACEWA screened a film against the anti-corruption Magnitsky Act at the Brussels Press Club featuring a Q&A with the film’s director, Andrei Nekrasov, as advertised on the ACEWA website.

Following Trump’s election, Doctorow’s signature appeared on a letter published in The Nation with Noam Chomsky, whom he had criticized in a 2014 Nation article for being too slow to embrace Putin’s Russia, and four prestigious members of the European political community calling for a new détente in Europe. Doctorow left the ACEWA around March, 2017 to pursue other interests. He has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Ongoing relationships

Until January 19, 2018, the ACEWA’s website carried some 66 articles by Doctorow crossposted from websites like Consortium News and the Washington Times. The most recent piece from Doctorow was posted at ACEWA less than a month before time of writing. As of January 19, 2018, however, Doctorow’s content appears to have been scrubbed. Nevertheless, the overlap between articles posted by ACEWA and Russia Insider remains significant, and Consortium News remains one of the 14 sites shortlisted under the ACEW’s “additional resources.”

In a phone conversation with Hatewatch, Cohen said that he “kept up a personal correspondence with [Doctorow] about things that interest both of us, mainly Russia,” and that Doctorow resigned from the ACEWA “because he found it constraining,” not due to any “specific policy disagreement” or “anything personal.” According to Cohen, antisemitism never arose as an issue in his experience with Doctorow or in Doctorow’s role regarding the ACEWA.

However, along with his confab with Chauprade at the ACEWA’s launch in Brussels, Doctorow’s writings while representing the ACEWA indicate that his relationship to the far-right remained relatively consistent, insofar as he supported neo-Eurasianist geopolitical strategy against the North Atlantic as a ballast of national interest against the “tyranny” of “universal values.”

Doctorow’s piece published at Consortium News on June 3, 2016, for instance, lauds a former-member of Poland’s fascist Association for Tradition and Culture “Niklot” named Mateusz Piskorski as “an outstanding spokesman of the minority view and founder of the Zmiana (or Change) party.” According to researcher of far-right networks, Anton Shekhovtsov, Zmiana is an attempt to “combine Polish right-wing and left-wing extremists,” and one of its leaders, Bartosz Bekier, also heads up Poland’s fascist Falanga.

Also a veteran of the far-right Self-Defence party, Piskorski’s European Center for Geopolitical Analysis is connected to Dugin’s Eurasian Youth Union, a relationship consummated as early as 2004 during Piskorski’s efforts to “oversee” elections throughout Eastern Europe. More recently, he joined Chauprade in Michel’s fascist-laden, Russia-funded Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections, overseeing the illegal Crimean “referendum.”

James Carden, editor of the ACEWA’s website, stated by email, “The ACEWA, its website, and Stephen F. Cohen have had no direct relationship with Russia Insider and/or with Charles Bausman.” However, Doctorow’s relationship with Russia Insider while operating as ACEWA’s European coordinator belies this denial, as exhibited by the video that appeared on Russia Insider of ACEWA’s Round Table with special thanks to Doctorow.

Far-right and pro-Putin networks

As the diagram below shows, when the site metrics search engine Alexa runs an audience overlap comparison using only Russia Insider, their apparent fiscal sponsor at Consortium News, Bausman’s friend at pro-Russia site, The Saker, and ACEWA-linked magazine, The Nation, three different audience clusters emerge: (1) a largely direct Russian propaganda cluster; (2) a mostly U.S.-based cluster of conspiracist sites and syncretic left-right geopolitics sites; (3) a more mainstream cluster of sites thought to be far more credible than the latter two.

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Doctorow’s activity as a writer and political operative indicate a capacity to triangulate a syncretic left-right movement against liberalism based on trans-national connections between media and politics. However, he, Consortium, and Russia Insider intimate the broader problem that the conduits of “geopolitical” ideology from Russian media to pro-Russian sites and the U.S. mainstream can serve as a Trojan horse for fascist tendencies and sympathies.

Pro-Putin networks like RT and Sputnik, which have played host to far-right commentators like Dugin, Richard Spencer and German neo-Eurasianist Manuel Ochsenreiter serve as vehicles for far-right ideologies laundered into US news and commentary sites under the auspices of geopolitical commentary. Unfortunately, the Left has not launched a serious effort to disconnect from collaborations with far-right groups in the context of networks that support and are often supported by Putin’s Russia. This situation has caused influential bodies like the ACEWA to facilitate the growth of transnational, far-right politics and, more specifically, the fascist neo-Eurasianist movement.


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