2017

Part of the Kremlins campaign to vilify Hillary Clinton involved catering to her rivals on the far-left & pushing any number of crankish conspiracy theories that appeal as much to “anti-imperialists” as to neo-Nazis. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-putin-played-the-far-left
Moscow’s attempts to cultivate America’s far-left predate Putin

The Kremlin donated more funds per capita to the U.S. Communist Party than any other communist claque during the Soviet period
When Moscow’s intelligence operations against the “main adversary” involved recruiting agents of influence & spies of a progressive background who were sympathetic to the Soviet cause
But the past 18 months have seen a noted spike in information warfare aimed at gulling the Bernie Bros & Occupy-besotted alternative-media set, making them see Clinton as more of a political danger than it did Trump.
Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT.
Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow & her accommodations there

Her campaign ignored multiple questions.

We do know that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin & Gen.Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser.
She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.”

In Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” claiming Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agreed w/ her “on many issues.”
she took pleasure in her marriage of true minds w/ a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists & invades foreign countries.

Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin & Stein are opponents of U.S. foreign policy.
Stein joined the Russian president & Kazakhstani dictator Nazarbayev in describing Ukraine’s 2014 EuroMaidan revolution as a “coup”

bizarrely said NATO is “fighting… enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff
“Russia used to own Ukraine,” by way of defending its colonization

She even selected a VP who, when asked whether the downing of Flight MH17—a massacre caused by Russian-supplied separatists in eastern Ukraine—was a false flag, responded, “[T]hat’s exactly what has happened.”
Green Party officials across Europe slammed a “delusional” Stein & her VP for their views, with leading Russian environmental activists saying they were “deeply shocked” by her comments during her Moscow trip.
No matter

For her efforts in burnishing Kremlin conspiracy theories for American audiences, Stein was awarded not simply w/ an invitation to the 2015 RT gala, but RT even hosted her party’s 2016 presidential debate—a move Stein hailed as a “step towards real democracy.”
As I helped catalog at the Columbia Journalism School, RT, rather than focus solely on puffing up GOP candidates, expends also effort in targeting America’s far-left fellow-travelers.
There’s a reason, after all, that Kremlin-funded Sputnik hosts podcasts by Americans who claim “progressive” viewpoints—at least when it comes to altering the exclusively domestic landscape in America.

Nor are these fake news outlets tilling fallow soil.
Consider one of the flagship magazines of the American left, which, for all its support of gay rights, government transparency & voting rights as they pertain to U.S. society, has developed a notoriously soft spot for a regime that violently opposes all of the above.
The Nation’s coverage of Russian affairs is a national embarrassment

RT is a website that hosts neo-Nazis as “expert” commentators
Yet that does not stop The Nation from publishing whataboutist articles in defense of the propaganda channel; articles pushing the same argument, w/ the exact same headlines, as those found in white-nationalist publications.
The Nation’s crop of Russia watchers busied themselves by lending credence to the “autonomy referendums” in eastern Ukraine, legitimizing illegal & neo-imperialist land-grabs

notions the entire Ukrainian crisis was “instigated by the West’s attempt “to smuggle Ukraine into NATO”
That these views bizarrely mesh with those of Trump and his Breitbart-friendly advisers is perhaps another oddity of an age of ideological psychosis.
Stephen Cohen, The Nation’s Russia analyst (husband editor in chief & publisher), has been endorsed by David Duke & the wife of white-nationalist Richard Spencer, the godfather of the pro-Trump “alt-right,” as a rare voice of sanity when it comes to U.S.-Russian relations
The substance & style othe “alt-left” are indistinguishable from its counterpart on the other end of the political spectrum

Moscow’s info-warriors appear to appreciate the resemblance, as the American arm of Sputnik exhorted supporters of Sanders to vote for Trump-as did Trump
In years of researching Kremlin influence-peddling, I’ve discovered first-hand just how eerily similar far-left and far-right Putinists are to each other.
I pointed out 1 of The Nation’s contributors , ex J.P. Morgan banker Carden, exec editor of the American Committee for East-West Accord—an org partly funded by vanden Heuvel’s family—continues to contribute to Kremlin-funded Russia Direct, I received a deranged ad hominem.
Carden,appeared on RT weeks ago to claim WAPOST is pursuing a “project of promoting a new Cold War w/ Russian” sent me a note on LinkedIn calling me a “sniveling shit,” & vaguely threatening me w/ violence, demanding to see if I was “brave as BATMAN” IRL.
Another Nation staple, contributing editor Doug Henwood, has maintained a professional relationship w/ WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, yet is apparently very tetchy about the collaboration, as I also discovered when I engaged him.
Henwood planned to work w/ Assange on putting out a book on HRCs “speeches” —Henwood annotating, Assange writing the foreword—transcripts of which were of course hacked by Russian intelligence & disseminated through WikiLeaks, with the express purpose of helping Trump get elected
When I brought up this pending project, as detailed both on the book publisher’s website & in articles, Henwood called me a “fucking idiot.”
WikiLeaks is clearly the online epicenter of the 21st-century’s red-brown convergence

How else to account for how an Australian cyberanarchist has found common cause w/ a racist millionaire real-estate baron?
Wikileaks saw fit to partner with anti-Semites who delivered leaked U.S. State Department cables to Belarus’s pro-Moscow dictatorship, which used these sensitive documents to chase down dissidents.
Nor has this caused WikiLeaks or Assange any moral misgivings

Assange refused to address WL role in aiding the machinations of Belarusian President Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator, whose secret police (still known as the KGB) arrested activists & opposition
A quick glimpse through WikiLeaks’s Twitter feed lately is enough to confirm the group’s disconcerting preference for siding with the Putinist narrative, and Kremlin interests, all in the name of anti-Americanism.
” WikiLeaks’s feed has layered Kremlin-friendly conspiracy over everything from the Eurovision Song Contest to, like Stein’s candidacy, the destruction of MH17. (Stein considers Assange a hero.)
Or, as WikiLeaks tweeted on Ukraine, “Cable shows USA was already warned of Russia’s concerns so it now looks like Obama is the provocateur; not Putin.”
Stein, The Nation, and WikiLeaks are hardly outliers on social media or insignificant in their political reach; to their respective audiences, they wield as much influence as Breitbart does w/ Trump loyalists.
In a few swing states, after all, Clinton lost to Trump by a margin smaller than Stein’s total statewide voter haul.

The Nation has tens of thousands of subscribers & a venerable, 150-year-old pedigree for liberal advocacy.
What remains of the internationalist wing of the GOP is understandably unnerved by how much of the American right has happily aligned w/ Putin’s spymasters & arms-length purveyors of “active measures” &provided cover for a foreign government’s interference in a U.S. election.
The far left has reason to take stock
Ideologically promiscuous & unbound by orthodoxies of a single party or historical narrative, Putin cultivated dupes, fellow travelers & purblind fools among American progressives who helped facilitate the rise of the most extremist &reactionary president this country has elected
You can follow @MaggieDay55.
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