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

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

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:49 pm

http://thediplomat.com/2016/10/beyond-t ... -policies/

Beyond Trump and Putin: The American Alt-Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

ImageThe Kremlin has various links with leading far-right figures undergirding Trump’s candidacy.

By Casey Michel
October 13, 2016



In late August, in a speech delineating white nationalist support for Donald Trump, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton unveiled a new title for Russian President Vladimir Putin: “The Grand Godfather of Extreme Nationalism.” With the sinecure, Clinton sought to directly link the odious policies of her Republican counterpart — namely, mainstreaming a racialized, white supremacist discourse the United States had not seen at such levels in a generation — to those brought to bear under Putin’s third term.

The epithet built upon one of the pillars of Clinton’s campaign which, in turn, built upon the primary campaign of former GOP contender, and current Ohio governor, John Kasich. That is, in addition to Trump’s outright praise for Putin’s leadership, as well as his murky, secretive financial ties to those close to the Kremlin, Clinton tied Trump to the Kremlin’s campaign of stoking hyper-nationalistic movements throughout the West.

As a rhetorical device, the title remains a flurry of brilliance. Not only does the terminology help highlight the Kremlin’s kleptocratic coterie — with Putin as don, as mafioso — but it also further emphasized Clinton’s grasp of Moscow’s policies, and the motivations therein. As seen with Hungary’s Jobbik, with France’s National Front, with Greece’s Golden Dawn, those far-right movements sprouting throughout Europe have found a counterpart in Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And much as Trump has aped the rotted, regressive policies of Putin-friendly leaders throughout Europe — see: Hungary’s Viktor Orban — so, too, has he helped give a national platform to the groups and movements that have not only fueled a resurgence of white nationalism in the United States, but who have gone out of their way to praise, of all international leaders, Putin. These groups, as noted in Clinton’s speech, include the “alt-right,” a gathering of fascists and white nationalists who would Balkanize the United States or who would return the country to a bygone era of white supremacy, but also extend to the secessionists and Christian fundamentalists further propping Trump’s campaign.

Of course, certain critics of Clinton, ranging from Trumpian outlets like Breitbart to lefty journalists with little grasp on post-Soviet developments, tabbed her speech as conspiratorial, or as baseless fear-mongering. But those voices overlook the breadth of evidence linking American far-right groups to Kremlin-friendly policies, and in certain cases directly to Kremlin financing. While the phenomena of fascistic, hard-right support for Moscow within Europe has been well-documented elsewhere, most especially by Anton Shekhovtsov and Alina Polyakova, among others, the parallel networks and linkages within the United States have seen depressingly little coverage. Indeed, while “praise of Putin by [Europe’s] far-right leaders” becomes “commonplace,” as Polyakova wrote, so, too, has the pro-Kremlin fealty from far-right leaders in America, almost all of whom uniformly back Trump.

It doesn’t take much work to follow a trendline threading the Kremlin, most especially under Putin’s third term, directly to the leading far-right figures undergirding Trump’s candidacy. Take, for instance, Matthew Heimbach, tabbed by ThinkProgress as the “most important white supremacist of 2016.” The founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party and an unabashed anti-Semite, Heimbach espouses views not even Trump has deigned to offer, including the removal of birthright citizenship and the creation of white ethno-states. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Heimbach as “The Little Fuhrer.”) Heimbach has become one of the leading voices behind the expansion of the “alt-right” Clinton detailed. In a recent rundown of the “alt-right’s” main proponents, Yahoo! offered Heimbach top billing.

While Heimbach has offered vocal support for Trump this year — he was cited in a violence-related lawsuit, stemming from his actions at a Trump rally in Kentucky — there’s one leader he appears to admire more than the rest. As Heimbach, who has expressed support for the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya” project in Ukraine, recently told me, “Putin is the leader, really, of the anti-globalist forces around the world,” adding that Putin’s Russia has become “kind of the axis for nationalists.” Citing the creation of a “Traditionalist International,” a far-right counterpart to the Soviet-era “Communist International,” Heimbach also noted that Alexander Dugin, the neo-fascist ideologue behind the Kremlin’s push toward “Eurasianism,” gave a (recorded) speech at the 2015 unveiling of Heimbach’s party. And as Heimbach told Al Jazeera, “Russia’s our most powerful ally.”

Heimbach, who has cultivated links with hard-right nationalists internationally, originally intended on visiting Russia earlier this fall to attend the World National Conservative Movement conference. But that conference, organized by the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), has been postponed until next spring. (One of the far-right groups who will refrain from visiting the conference is the John Birch Society, who told me that the United States “should not be partnering with countries [like Russia] that are enemies to American liberty.”)

However, other leading members of the “alt-right” have already visited Russia, at the behest of organizations linked with the Kremlin. To wit, Jared Taylor, one of the foremost proponents of “race realism” in the United States and someone who has already recorded robocalls on behalf of Trump, arrived at a conference in St. Petersburg in 2015 to rail against American policy. Taylor was joined by Sam Dickson, another prominent face within the American’s white supremacist base, who praised Putin’s geopolitical policies. The conference, like the one recently postponed, was organized by RIM, which itself was an outgrowth of efforts from groups like Rodina, a Russian political party founded by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

Meanwhile, David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and perhaps America’s most well-known white supremacist, has likewise visited Russia and has not been shy of his praise for Moscow’s policies under Putin. As the Anti-Defamation League found, Duke has noted that he believes that Russia holds “the key to white survival.” Added the ADL: “In Duke’s eyes, Russia presents an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race.” (Like Heimbach, Duke also has noted ties with Dugin.) For good measure, Richard Spencer, one of the foundational actors within the United States’s “alt-right” movement, recently and strangely lauded Russia as the “sole white power in the world.”

But it’s not only the primary proponents of white nationalism, or white supremacy, in the United States who have constructed links with Kremlin-tied groups, or who have heaped praise upon Putin’s Kremlin. Moscow has also continued its financing of movements that would sever American unity. To wit, in September, the Kremlin helped finance the second-annual “Dialog of Nations” conference, in Moscow. Much like 2015’s iteration, this year’s conference hosted a gathering of Western organizations that would secede from their respective countries. And the plurality of these groups came, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the United States. (One prominent secessionist who didn’t attend the conference nonetheless announced he preferred Putin to Clinton.)

The conference was hosted by the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which names Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “honorable members.” Like last year, the conference hosted a representative from Puerto Rico and a Hawaiian separatist offered his testimonial via video. However, this year saw a further expansion of American representation, including a representative for California secession, about whom Kremlin-backed outlets ran multiple stories, as well as Nate Smith, the executive director of the Texas Nationalist Movement. (For good measure, Pravda followed Smith’s visit with an article claiming Texas was set to begin formulating its own currency.) This was at least Smith’s second trip to Russia in as many years, following a 2015 excursion in which he claimed that every Texan in the U.S. Army supported secession.

But the mutual support between the Kremlin and the American“alt-right,” as well as Moscow’s support for U.S. secessionist movements, present only two areas of linkage. As the Kremlin has spearheaded anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, and as Putin has made moves to formalize the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, so, too, have myriad members of far-right social conservative movements in the United States praised Putinist policy. Thankfully, such linkages have seen further coverage than the relations between the “alt-right” and secessionists — see, for instance, research from the University of South Florida’s Christopher Stroop — but it remains worth noting a few highlights of this relationship. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, one of the most well-known faces of American Christian fundamentalism, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Paleoconservative politician Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, has alluded that God may be on Putin’s side. And Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and perhaps America’s foremost remaining televangelist, recently visited Russia to praise Putin for remaining “steadfastly against the rising homosexual agenda” in Russia.

This tripartite blend, of white nationalists, of secessionists, of social conservatives, have all formed some of the primary bulwarks of the Trump campaign over the past few months, and there is little reason to believe they’ll refrain from supporting Trumpian policies moving forward. Moreover, all three have seen their leading proponents — those within the “alt-right,” most especially — construct rhetorical, organizational, and financial links with the Kremlin and Kremlin-financed groups over the past two years.

Even if Trump loses next month, those ties will remain. Even if Clinton takes the presidency, and the current administration’s policies, including sanctions support and non-recognition of Russia’s Crimean occupation, remain in place, the ties between members of the American far-right and Kremlin-linked groups will push forward. A “Traditionalist International” may not rise within the immediate future, but the mutual support between the Kremlin and the American far-right will outlive this campaign and, if current trends hold, will only expand over the foreseeable future.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby Searcher08 » Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:44 am

Please, why not just add this to the existing Far Right threads?

Our R.I. General Discussion is turning into a growing plethora of threads about fewer and fewer subjects :(
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:55 am

Searcher08 wrote:Our R.I. General Discussion is turning into a growing plethora of threads about fewer and fewer subjects

I'm pretty sure that's the general idea - for the last x years. The desperation of the system is directly commensurate with AD's increasing domination of GD with thinly-disguised pro-system blurb.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby Harvey » Fri Oct 14, 2016 10:50 am

Say it enough times and, in a very specialised way, it becomes the truth.

To AD with love: Social Proof:

Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation.

The effects of social influence can be seen in the tendency of large groups to conform to choices which may be either correct or mistaken, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as herd behavior. Although social proof reflects a rational motive to take into account the information possessed by others, formal analysis shows that it can cause people to converge too quickly upon a single choice, so that decisions of even large groups of individuals may be grounded in very little information (see information cascades).

Social proof is a type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for cues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action,"[1] it is informational social influence. This is contrasted with normative social influence wherein a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others.

Social proof often leads not only to public compliance (conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct) but also private acceptance (conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct).[2] Social proof is more powerful when being accurate is more important and when others are perceived as especially knowledgeable.

Mechanisms

Multiple source effect

The multiple source effect occurs when people give more credence to ideas that are stated by multiple sources. This effect can be clearly seen when social proof occurs. For instance, one study observed that people who hear five positive reviews on a book as read by five different synthesized voices perceive that book more favourably than if they hear the same five reviews as read by one synthesized voice.[3]
Uncertainty about the correct conclusion

Uncertainty is a major factor that encourages the use of social proof. One study found that when evaluating a product, consumers were more likely to incorporate the opinions of others through the use of social proof when their own experiences with the product were ambiguous, leaving uncertainty as to the correct conclusion that they should make.[4]
Similarity to the surrounding group

Similarity also motivates the use of social proof; when a person perceives themselves as similar to the people around them, they are more likely to adopt and perceive as correct the observed behavior of these people. This has been noted in areas such as the use of laugh tracks, where participants will laugh longer and harder when they perceive the people laughing to be similar to themselves.[5]

Social proof is also one of Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion, (along with reciprocity, commitment/consistency, authority, liking, and scarcity) which maintains that people are especially likely to perform certain actions if they can relate to the people who performed the same actions before them.[6] One experiment which exemplifies this claim was conducted by researchers who joined a door-to-door charity campaign, who found that if a list of prior donators was longer, the next person solicited was more likely to donate as well. This trend was even more pronounced when the names on the donor list were people that the prospective donor knew, such as friends and neighbors.[6] Cialdini's principle also asserts that peer power is effective because people are more likely respond to influence tactics applied horizontally rather than vertically, so people are more likely to be persuaded by a colleague than a superior.[6]

Research

Early research

The most famous study of social proof is Muzafer Sherif's 1935 experiment.[7] In this experiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15 feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving. In reality it was not moving at all, but due to the autokinetic effect it appeared to move. How much the light appears to move varies from person to person but is generally consistent over time for each individual. A few days later a second part of the experiment was conducted. Each subject was paired with two other subjects and asked to give their estimate of how much the light was moving out loud. Even though the subjects had previously given different estimates, the groups would come to a common estimate. To rule out the possibility that the subjects were simply giving the group answer to avoid looking foolish while still believing their original estimate was correct, Sherif had the subjects judge the lights again by themselves after doing so in the group. They maintained the group's judgment. Because the movement of the light is ambiguous the participants were relying on each other to define reality.

Another study looked at informational social influence in eyewitness identification. Subjects were shown a slide of the "perpetrator". They were then shown a slide of a line-up of four men, one of whom was the perpetrator they had seen, and were asked to pick him out. The task was made difficult to the point of ambiguity by presenting the slides very quickly. The task was done in a group that consisted of one actual subject and three confederates (a person acting as a subject but actually working for the experimenter). The confederates answered first and all three gave the same wrong answer. In a high-importance condition of the experiment subjects were told that they were participating in a real test of eyewitness identification ability that would be used by police departments and courts, and their scores would establish the norm for performance. In a low-importance condition subjects were told that the slide task was still being developed and that the experimenters had no idea what the norm for performance was—they were just looking for useful hints to improve the task. It was found that when subjects thought the task was of high importance they were more likely to conform, giving the confederate's wrong answer 51% of the time as opposed to 35% of the time in the low-importance condition.[8]
Cultural effects on social proof

The strength of social proof also varies across different cultures. For instance, studies have shown that subjects in collectivist cultures conform to others' social proof more often than those in individualist cultures.[9] Although this trend seems reoccurring, there is evidence which suggests that these results are a simplification, and that an independent subject's personal individualistic-collectivist tendency also makes an impact upon their decisions.[10] Additional variables, such as the subject's sense of social responsibility, need to be taken into account to better understand the mechanisms of social proof across cultures; for example, more collectivist individuals will often have an increased compulsion to help others because of their prominent awareness of social responsibility, and this in turn will increase the likelihood they will comply to requests, regardless of their peers' previous decisions.[10]


The article goes on. Obviously this isn't the last word, research continues apace and I suspect the mechanisms are much more complex. A lot of people utilise this effect in order to persuade because it works. At least until enough people are aware of it. I'd need a book length discussion with you to unpack my thoughts and experiences on the subject but you get the idea.

So:

Why should I identify Russia, a country as diverse as America with just one man in the form of Vladimir Putin? Just as America is far more than it's 'leaders.'

Why should I view these events in terms of the limited discourse available through MSM? MSM has many specialised audiences hearing different, localised, demographically apportioned slices of the same bull shit.

Why should I feel that debunking the lies which can be ascertained about Russian involvement in this or that imply 'support' for Russia or Putin? Isn't truth more important than all of this bull shit allegiance pledging? Russians get the same mauling, don't we have more in common with the Russian people than our own leaders?

Why shouldn't evidence based foreign policy be a reasonable demand?

Why should I believe arguments broadly in line with the last fifteen years of narrative?

Why should anyone give their assent to war based upon accounts which are demonstrably false? Would you buy a used car on that basis?

Is nuclear war an acceptable stake in this ongoing catastrophic sales drive?

Is the death of the Great Barrier Reef any less a casualty? A staggering loss, an entire ecosystem just died. It's the same war that you're talking about. Far as I see it, the real opponents are all of those resisting alternative energy production on one side against everything else which lives on the other. Syria is one aspect of that war if we want to call it a war. The cause in both cases is exactly one and the same, whether in Russia, China, Australia, the US, Europe, anywhere.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 14, 2016 11:00 am

I love the America of John Coltrane but would never line up as a sycophant for Trump or any other supposed "leader". I reject the State and all it's exploitive, deceptive murderous machinations.

If you were even somewhat "enlightened", you would understand such a basic principle.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 14, 2016 1:34 pm

http://thediplomat.com/2016/09/black-wi ... g-eurasia/

Black Wind, White Snow: Imagining Eurasia

Image“Eurasia was a ‘dog whistle,’ a cipher, a deniable but clear goal: to remake the Russian Empire in all but name.”


By Casey Michel
September 15, 2016



According to Charles Clover, the Financial Times’ former Moscow bureau chief, “Eurasia was therapy for three generations of men who were buffeted by wars and repressions[.]” A geopolitical concoction, a fantastical fabrication in need of governmental reification, Eurasia, per Clover, served as an underpinning, as a yearning, for generations of Russian exiles, dissidents, inhabitants of the Gulag. Now, nearly a century after Eurasia first came to life in Paris salons and among intra-exile communications, the notion of a great inland continent — of a separate space, carved and hemmed between Europe and Asia — has glommed onto the rhetoric of a revanchist Kremlin, which remains bent of translating Eurasia from decades-old books to modern reality.

But how did this idea of Eurasia become one of the main theoretical girders of the current Kremlin? As Clover outlines in Black Wind, White Snow, Eurasia’s path from imagined community to attempted reality under Russian President Vladimir Putin comes coated in just that: imagination. Layered with remarkable fraudulence and outright fabrication, the notion of Eurasia now serves as a fallback for a Kremlin with little else to offer — and which now threatens the post-Cold War order.

Clover’s masterful tracing of the history of Eurasia begins in the 1920s, with a handful of post-Bolshevik exiles attempting to come to terms with the new Russia — the new Soviet Union — replacing tsarist-era rule. Nikolai Trubetskoy, Roman Jakobson, Petr Savitsky — all, in their nostalgia, detailing the “hermetically sealed totalities” of Eurasia, the “gigantic basin” gathering millions in a unified identity across the then-Soviet space. Outlining the space from the steppes of western China to Murmansk and eastern Romania, Eurasia, noted Trubetskoy, was “historically destined to be a single state entity.”

Soon, the dream of Eurasia would be passed to, and would be further cataloged by, Lev Gumilev, the cantankerous son of a pair of Russia’s most well-known 20th-century poets. Gumilev piled further theory atop the Eurasian idea, layering psychological traits upon the geographical breadth his predecessors had detailed. Claiming that the myriad nationalities of the Russian (and Soviet) empire were but voluntary subjects of the tsar’s wishes, Gumilev evolved Eurasia into an apologia for Moscow’s empire.

Gumilev, feted though he eventually was, never caught the ear of the country’s political scions. Indeed, Eurasia may have faded, may have remained little more than ink and paper, had it not been for a scraggle-beard philosopher named Alexander Dugin. A neo-fascist by day and movement organizer by night, Dugin wrested Eurasia from its Soviet-era birth and updated it for a Russia reeling from an imploded economy, a flailing Kremlin, and colonies — those remaining segments of Eurasia — suddenly independent.

Since meeting Putin in 2000, Dugin has seen his musings on the necessity and inevitability of Eurasia — gathered in his Foundations of Geopolitics, written in 1997 –– taught widely at Russia’s General Staff Academy and other military universities. Dugin eventually becoming a professor himself at Moscow State University. Among the other “imperative[s]” detailed in Dugin’s writings are the “total and unfettered control of Moscow over the entire length of the Black Sea coast stretching from Ukrainian … territory” to central Georgia. As one researcher on the Russian right said about Foundations, “There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites.”

Despite the disparate histories, Clover manages to deftly thread the narrative of a Eurasia rising from scattered notebooks to actual policy. Moreover, he pairs the theoretical claims behind Eurasia with the massive scholarly deceptions bolstering Gumilev’s and Dugin’s works. “As serious scholarship, Eurasianists’ scholarly arguments are barely credible and are best understood as a sort of metaphor,” Clover writes. Gumilev, for instance, concocts neologisms to describe Eurasia’s psychosomatic identity, built around something called passionarnost, or “passionarity.” Later cited by Putin, “passionarity” can be best understood as a mutative patriotism — a sense of selflessness in pursuit of the success of a people, of a state. (“Like all the brilliant ideas … it came to my mind in a loo, of course,” Gumilev would later claim.)

While the notion, in the abstract, remains anodyne, Gumilev claimed an ability to tabulate such “passionarity” via mathematical formulas measured by the variable “Pik.” He further augmented his theories with further, fantastical notions of “ethnoi” and “bioenergy.” Slipping into parody, Gumilev — who would refer to himself as a “master of science” — would later stake that “passionarity” arose from cosmic rays. “The biogenic migration of atoms of chemical elements in the biosphere always tends to its maximum manifestation,” Gumilev wrote, apparently with a straight face.

Dugin, meanwhile, would not only occasionally slip into an alter ego named after the director of the Nazis’ department on the study of the paranormal, but would introduce myriad conspiracies — on the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations — to post-Soviet Russia. Dugin’s conspiracy-mongering remains beyond compare; while Russia remains a font of conspiracy, few have gone so far as to claim the KGB was a Western front, as Dugin believed.

The sheer magnitude of fraudulence carrying Gumilev and Dugin doesn’t lessen the developments, centered on the pursuit of Eurasia, seen since Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012. While Clover’s book could have lingered more on the Eurasian Economic Union — or on the nationalistic pushback seen in member states like Kazakhstan — Black Wind, White Snow doesn’t shirk the implications of Eurasianism trickling upward into the Kremlin. When the Russian president cited Gumilev, “Putin was extolling chest-thumping nationalism, the martial virtues of sacrifice, discipline, loyalty, and valor.” To Moscow, Eurasianism came to be seen as “something that promised to provide the mobilizational benefits of nationalism without provoking ethnic hostility and leading to separatism.” Given Russia’s sputtering economy, political ossification, and myriad rights rollbacks, Eurasia presented a fallback for a Kremlin in search of legitimacy: a subtler appeal to imperialism, to the restoration of the “single state entity” Trubetskoy had pledged nearly a century prior. “Eurasia,” writes Clover, “was a ‘dog whistle,’ a cipher, a deniable but clear goal: to remake the Russian Empire in all but name.”

In Foundations, Dugin claimed, “Outside of empire, Russians lose their identity and disappear as a nation.” As Clover makes clear, Eurasianism — the (re)construction of a geopolitical inevitability — has become the route toward such empire. Eurasia may have provided an outlet for generations of men wracked by war and repression, but as seen in the Kremlin’s post-Soviet policies since 2012, the notion of a Eurasia inexorable has also helped provide that much more war, and that much more repression, alongside.

“Eurasianism broke me, it did not allow me to be who I should have and could have been,” Trubetskoy once wrote. Given the spiraling frustrations, stumbling economy, and exhausted policies seen since 2014, Putin may be sharing the same sentiment soon enough.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:54 pm

5 European Leaders Who Are Kindred Spirits With Donald Trump

The Donald has already professed his admiration for Vladimir Putin. He'd get along famously with Marine Le Pen.

By Paul Ames / Global Post January 4, 2016


LISBON, Portugal — For many Europeans, Donald Trump is a figure of fun: the bling, the wacko comments, the name — which is British children’s slang for “fart” — and of course, the hair.

Yet Europe has its own breed of right-wing populists, and their seemingly inexorable rise toward the continent’s corridors of power, like Trump’s toward the US Republican presidential nomination, is no joke.

From nationalists wooing mainstream voters in France to barely disguised neo-Nazis scoring votes in recession-racked Greece, the radical right is on the march in a Europe where terrorism and the unprecedented refugee influx have added to the destabilizing effects of a long economic crisis.

The rightists don’t form a united movement, though, and many issues divide them.

In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party is hawkishly pro-Israel, while members of Hungary’s second-largest party Jobbik are openly anti-Semitic.

While many on Europe’s radical right share Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin’s leadership qualities, Poland’s new ultra-conservative government is deeply suspicious of the Russian president and pushes NATO to strengthen defenses against Moscow.

Still, the new rightists have much in common: simplistic solutions to economic problems; loathing for the European Union; hostility toward migrants and minorities; and promises of muscular security measures to allay voters’ fears over terrorism.

Here’s a look at five of the most prominent Trump-ettes making noise in today’s European politics:

MARINE LE PEN

From the wine towns of Burgundy to resorts along the Riviera, more than 6 million French voters gave Le Pen’s National Front (FN) their vote in the first round of regional elections held Dec. 6, less than a month after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.

The FN was France’s biggest winner in those polls, coming first in seven of the 13 regions. “The people have spoken, and France is again holding its head high,” Le Pen told supporters as the results came in.

Spooked by the scale of the FN’s success, moderate voters turned out in force to ensure the far-right was defeated in the second round. It worked: the FN ended up winning nowhere, a setback that denies Le Pen any regional power base from which to launch an assault on presidential elections scheduled for 2017.

Yet Le Pen won’t go away. Her supporters denounced a stitch-up between the traditional parties. “They have sabotaged democracy, but we will redouble our efforts,” declared Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the leader’s niece and a youthful candidate who came close to winning the Riviera region in the south.

Marine Le Pen is famously anti-immigration, but even she thinks Trump went a bit too far with his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. “Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” she told a TV interviewer earlier in December. Not that she’s afraid of making controversial statements on migrants: Her campaign team last month put out a statement calling for the “eradication of bacterial immigration,” claiming that migration was causing an “alarming presence of contagious diseases.”


VIKTOR ORBAN

Hungary’s prime minister doesn’t line up with radicals like Le Pen. His Fidesz party sits in the European Parliament with mainstream center-right parties like those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

But when it comes to whipping up alarmist language over Muslim migrants, Orban can teach Trump a thing or two. “If you allow thousands or millions of unidentified persons into your house, the risk of … terrorism will significantly increase,” he said in a recent interview with Politico, adding that “all the terrorists are migrants.”

Orban says refugees represent a threat to Christian Europe and he built a massive fence along Hungary’s border to keep them out. He denounces liberal democracy, praises Putin, and accused Merkel of “moral imperialism” for seeking a more welcoming European response to refugees.


Continues at: http://www.alternet.org/world/5-europea ... nald-trump
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:10 pm

AD said:
If you were even somewhat "enlightened", you would understand such a basic principle.

This just doesn't work any more, mate. Belittling the intellectual capacity of a rival point of view is starting to make you look silly. Which, actually, is a good thing. Keep it up.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby DrEvil » Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:28 pm

American Dream » Fri Oct 14, 2016 5:00 pm wrote:I love the America of John Coltrane but would never line up as a sycophant for Trump or any other supposed "leader". I reject the State and all it's exploitive, deceptive murderous machinations.

If you were even somewhat "enlightened", you would understand such a basic principle.


Hate to burst your bubble but your personal beliefs aren't a basic principle.

Also: what searcher08 said. This really doesn't need a thread of its own since half the frickin' front page is taken up by threads on the same topic, all started by you. You're spamming the forum, which is rude as fuck to everyone else here.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Oct 14, 2016 9:10 pm

I shall probably, (but not, hopefully,) be banished for suggesting such heresy but I wonder if Jeff (the absentee landlord) had termed this a non-fascist board as opposed to an anti-fascist board, we might have seen a little less of the overwhelming volume of tedious crud issuing forth from the extremists at the opposing end of fascism. Oh well, no point crying over spilled milk.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Fri Oct 14, 2016 11:48 pm

Unquestioning alignment with the murderous power structures of Russia and Syria, up to and including the fetishization of Putin and Assad are artifacts of the far Right which are highly fucked up in a moral sense, an intellectual one and a political one. It is beyond belief that an "enlightened master" would go anywhere near such doctrines. The association with extreme reactionaries, as described above, is factual.
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 15, 2016 9:21 pm

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How Vladimir Putin Feeds Europe’s Rabid Right

The Kremlin, which accepts no separatism in the Russian Federation, is encouraging it all over Europe.

ANNA NEMTSOVA


VIENNA — Victor Orban, the right-wing leader of Hungary, offered his people a simple formula: Come and vote in a referendum against allowing in more asylum-seekers and you will be safe from terrorism in your country.

Prime Minister Orban also promised that if people did not show up for the migration referendum on Sunday, Hungary would have wasted more than $36 million, which is what the authorities were spending to organize the vote to reject the European Union quota of 1,229 refugees. That was the price to stop terrorism, according to Orban. (According to critics, that was $30,000 per head of anti-humanitarian spending.)

As often happens in Europe these days, the results were confusing, and unsettling.

Orban had compared migrants to “poison.” Hungary would “give Europe the finger,” he said, vowing to change Hungary’s constitution so the European Union would have no right to impose any rules on the country without its parliament’s approval.

This is the same country, remember, that just a dozen years ago celebrated its membership in the EU. Now it wants to restructure the whole thing.
In the event, voters did not turn out en masse to support Orban. Only 43.3 percent or 3.58 million participated in the referendum on Sunday, which means the vote is not binding. But 98 percent of those who did vote said “no” to accepting more migrants.

Hungary, as we know, is not the only country where far-right leaders—who are inspired by, and inspiring growing xenophobia—have pushed for more autonomy from Europe.

In neighboring Austria up to 52 percent of the electorate supports the far-right Freedom Party. Here in this country of graceful architecture, beautiful landscapes, and the world’s best music, right-wing nationalism is on the rise.

Last week in Vienna, European leaders met for an emotional talk about the fate of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Germany has grown tired of its role as a lonely humanitarian hero dealing with the largest wave of immigration in Europe since World War II. It has done its duty by opening its doors to 2 million people and now, “other EU countries will have to jump in,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the gathering of EU prime ministers and heads of state.

Merkel, whose party has suffered scathing losses at the polls in regional elections, seemed defeated by criticism for her generous migration policy. She suggested the EU cut deals with developing nations—Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—to send those rejected from European asylum back home.
None of her fellow leaders were inclined to take up the relay. The key EU decision makers complained that their countries’ economies were suffering, that the immigration crisis made people think more about their private property and national identity.

The politicians agreed that this would be a good time to close the western Balkan route “for good,” as European Council President Donald Tusk demanded the participants in the talks looked for somebody to blame, and Hungary’s Orban criticized Greece for failing to protect its borders. Austria continued to pressure its neighbors to close their borders to asylum seekers.

The elephant in the room, the rising far-right behemoth, was dancing in triumph in Vienna.

Young Austrian editors, journalists, publishers, and entrepreneurs worry about the future of their democracy. Indiana Leibovici, a publisher, said he no longer trusts any television news: “The TV propaganda is full of political manipulations. I do not watch local television. I do not watch Russia Today, either,” he added when we talked. “My main concern is the rise of the Nazism-inspired far-right wing,” Leibovici said.

The refugee haters are united in one anti-immigration fist, including politicians from Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and France, some of whom are known for their fascist if not indeed Nazi backgrounds. And Moscow is encouraging them every step of the way.


Continues at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... right.html
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 16, 2016 10:50 pm

Red Skies at Night article on far right anti-imperialism

By Matthew N Lyons | Sunday, October 16, 2016

Issue #3 of the independent leftist journal Red Skies at Night includes my article “Anti-Imperialism and the U.S. Far Right.” Here I trace a number of historical roots of right-wing anti-imperialism, such as:

the America First movement that opposed U.S. entry into World War II,
wartime Axis support for anti-colonial struggles within the British and French empires, and
Francis Parker Yockey’s call for post-war fascists to ally with the USSR and Third World nationalist movements.


The article also discusses the interactions between current-day far right anti-imperialist currents, including Third Position, the European New Right and its offshoots, and the Lyndon LaRouche network.

Red Skies at Night #3 is available from http://www.redskiesatnight.net/order-copies.html for $9 within the United States. The same issue also includes articles on transformative justice, the Occupy movement, environmentalism and working class struggles, the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, Chican@ liberation, and revolutionary strategy. Check it out and help support independent radical analysis and writing!

In “Anti-Imperialism and the U.S. Far Right,” I highlight some of the strategic questions that far rightists are facing today:

“First, in opposing ZOG [the ‘Zionist Occupation Government,’ i.e. Washington] or the globalist conspiracy, should they align themselves with a countervailing power (most immediately Russia, but in the long run maybe China or someone else) or pursue an independent course? Second, should they work together with non-white and non-rightist forces internationally, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, or left-populists such as Hugo Chavez? These issues are actively being debated, and could significantly affect the kind of organizing work that far rightists do and their capacity to attract supporters.”


So I was very interested to read the recent article “Beyond Trump and Putin: The American Alt-Right’s Love of the Kremlin’s Policies” in the online journal The Diplomat. Author Casey Michel argues that many of the white nationalists and fascists supporting Trump’s campaign have also been praising Russian President Vladimir Putin. Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network/Traditonalist Workers Party called Putin “the leader, really, of the anti-globalist forces around the world.” Richard Spencer, arguably the alt-right’s founder, recently praised Russia as “the sole white power in the world.” A number of American white nationalists, such as American Renaissance head Jared Taylor, have denounced U.S. foreign policy at political gatherings in Russia, such as the 2015 Russian Imperial Movement conference in St. Petersburg and the 2016 Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia conference in Moscow. (I wrote here about the 2014 AGMR conference, which was also attended by various U.S. rightists, as well as by leftists associated with the Workers World Party.)

This phenomenon doesn't mean we should accept every accusation that right-wingers are sympathizing with Moscow. Others, such as Glenn Greenwald, have charged that the Clinton campaign and its supporters have engaged in Kremlin-baiting — using smear tactics to imply that political opponents on both the left and the right are friendly to Russia and therefore disloyal to the United States. Michel is dismissive of this concern as the work of "lefty journalists with little grasp on post-Soviet developments." I disagree. Kremlin-baiting by Clintonites is real — and far right overtures to the Russian government are also real.


Continues at: http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2016/ ... right.html
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:31 am

Viktor Orbán’s Pyrrhic Victory

This month’s referendum on immigration showed that Viktor Orbán’s xenophobic agenda is challenged more by an apathetic electorate than any real opposition.

by Mattia Gallo & Adam Fabry

Image
Viktor Orbán in 2011. European People's Party



The referendum on European migrant quotas failed to reach the quorum, despite the xenophobic politics of Prime Minister Orbán. How was this result possible?

Let’s be clear about this, the results are a huge defeat for the Orbán regime, especially given the incredible amount of time and money that they have spent on promoting their racist agenda in Hungary and abroad (according to some news reports the referendum cost more than the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom!).

Of course, Orbán and his supporters are still arguing that the result was an “outstanding victory” for “Hungarians,” but everyone is just laughing at such absurd claims. But all this does not seem to hold Orbán back from pushing ahead with modifying the constitution. However, the reasons why Orbán lost the referendum are arguably complex and part of a lengthier process of crisis and decay.

Indeed, in a paradoxical way, the Orbán regime has been shaken by the referendum, although the position of most Hungarian citizens with regard to the refugee crisis has remained largely the same. Therefore, I think that the reasons why the Orbán regime lost the referendum have to be found elsewhere. The truth is that Hungary has been declining in a socio-economic, cultural, and moral sense ever since the “transition” in 1989.

Similar to elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc, neoliberal restructuring led to the entrenchment of mass unemployment, declining living standards, and the formation of a vast new “underclass,” comprised of permanently unemployed people lacking any access to health care, education, or social security.

The “novelty” of the Orbán regime, compared to previous governments in Budapest, was that it was merely shifting the blame for the disastrous results of the “transition” onto “foreigners” – a strange mixture of “meddling” EU bureaucrats, corrupt communists and liberals, the “lazy and undeserving” poor (i.e. the Roma), and, more recently, “illegal” Middle Eastern and North African migrants. For a long time, this strategy seemed to be working very well, but this weekend’s referendum showed that the Orbán regime’s authoritarian policies and racist rhetoric are no longer enough to mobilize the voters of the Hungarian right.

Today, it is becoming clear to everyone — even loyal supporters of the regime, as well as the supporters of the official far right (represented by the nationalist party, Jobbik) — that the resources of the Orbán regime are dwindling; that public hospitals and schools are on the verge of collapse, while tens of thousands of Hungarians are leaving the country each year in search for a better life in the West.

Against this background, many Hungarians were rightly outraged by the government’s nauseating propaganda campaign, its scornful arrogance, and simply chose to stay at home on the day of the referendum. In the light of all this, Orbán’s triumphalist post-referendum speeches are even more comical.

This does not mean that Orbán’s political career is finished (in fact, the first signs after the referendum are that he is not going to surrender easily), but he has lost his charismatic power. As G.M. Tamás has argued in the wake of the referendum, “He is just another lying, incomprehensibly rich politician among many others; perhaps he is still the most skilled of them all — but all this is of little value.”

What was the role of the media during the referendum campaign? What was the position of the main opposition parties in the referendum?

Already before the referendum, the Hungarian media landscape was skewed heavily in favor of the Orbán regime, but still the level of racist propaganda in recent months has been incredible. It was simply everywhere: from gigantic billboards spread out in every Hungarian town and village, through campaigns on television channels and the Internet, to letters from prime minister Orbán or phone calls from Fidesz [Orbán’s national-conservative party] politicians to mobilize people for the “no” vote.

The state propaganda machine was spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories, racial stereotypes, and invented stories in the run up to the elections. For example, on the day of referendum, the state television was running a story of “hordes of immigrants” waiting on Hungary’s borders, preparing themselves to “overrun” the country in the case that the referendum was invalid.

Against this deafening racist propaganda, there was very little that the opposition parties in parliament could have done (if they wanted to). So some of the opposition parties remained silent, while agreeing with Orbán on the question that the so-called “immigration quotas” dictated by the European Union were an issue of national sovereignty, to be decided by the Hungarian parliament. The Democratic Coalition (DK), led by ex-prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, called for people to abstain from the referendum, but given his widespread unpopularity among the Hungarian electorate, I doubt that this had any significant impact on the results.

Actually, the only party that openly questioned — albeit in a mocking way — the Orbán regime’s anti-immigrant propaganda was the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party (MKKP), which only became an official political party in 2014. With very meager means it ran a campaign with satirical slogans, like “Did you know there is a war in Syria?,” “Did you know one million Hungarians want to emigrate to Europe?,” or “Did you know that since the migration crisis, there are more blue billboards [official anti-immigrant billboards] than immigrants?,” and asked their supporters to invalidate their votes. In the end, 6 percent of the votes were invalid, so you could say that they were rather successful.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hung ... migration/
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Re: The Far Right's Love of the Kremlin’s Policies

Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Oct 17, 2016 12:35 pm

"American Dream"*, indeed. You are an increasingly shameless and blatant propagandist for The West™ at a time when The West™ is openly supporting Al Qaeda in an ongoing attempt to destroy yet another Arab nation, when the propaganda campaign against Russia reaches truly hysterical heights, and when actual war with Russia is looking likelier than at any time since 1962. But your slip is showing, pal, you're getting sloppy (out of cockiness): Screed upon screed from the likes of Proyect and Penny is bad enough, but when you quote entire articles without comment from The Daily fucking Beast, then your pretence at being any kind of leftist (or anti-imperialist) becomes so threadbare as to be utterly transparent.

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Your agenda is obvious. You've been spamming this anti-fascist discussion board for years now, with complete impunity. How (and why) do you get away with it? I think we should be told.

*Why, exactIy? And I remember when you had Che Guevara as your avatar. Funny, funny joke, that.
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