The Saker: How I Became A Kremlin Troll

Authored by The Saker,

Today, with the kind permission of Phil Butler, I am posting the full text of my contribution to his book “Putin’s Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls“.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  The main one is that I strongly believe that this book deserves a much bigger visibility than it has received (this is also why, exceptionally, I am placing this post in the top “analyses” category and not elsewhere).  Please read my review here to see why I feel so strongly about this book.  Frankly, I am rather shocked by the very little amount of reviews this book as generated.  I don’t even know if somebody besides Russia Insider has bothered writing a review of it or not, but even if somebody has, it is still a crying shame that this most interesting volume has been so far ignored by the alternative media including the one friendly to Russia.  So by posting my own contribution here I want to bring back this book to the “front page”, so to speak, of our community.  Second, I want to ask for your help.  Right now the Kindle version of the book has 15 reviews on Amazon and only 1 review for the printed paper version.  This is not enough.  I am therefore asking you to 1) buy the book (Amazon wants reviews by purchasers) and 2) write a review on Amazon.  Guys – that is something most of you can do to help, so please do so!  We need to show the world that there is what I call “another West” which, far from being russophobic is, in fact, capable of producing real friends and even defenders of Russia.  So, please, do your part, help Phil in his heroic struggle, get the paper version of the book and review it on Amazon!

 

Thanks a lot for your help, hugs and cheers,

 

The Saker

*  *  *

How I became a Kremlin troll by The Saker

By birth, experience, and training, I truly had everything needed to hate Putin.  I was born in a family of “White Russians” whose anti-Communism was total and visceral.

My childhood was filled with (mostly true) stories about atrocities and massacres committed by the Bolsheviks during the revolution and subsequent civil war.  Since my father had left me, I had an exiled Russian Orthodox Archbishop as a spiritual father, and through him, I learned of all the genocidal persecutions the Bolsheviks unleashed against the Orthodox Church.

At the age of 16, I had already read the three volumes of the “Gulag Archipelago” and carefully studied the history of WWII.  By 18 I was involved in numerous anti-Soviet activities such as distributing anti-Soviet propaganda in the mailboxes of Soviet diplomats or organizing the illegal importation of banned books into the Soviet Union through the Soviet merchant marine and fishing fleet (mostly at their station in the Canary Islands).  I was also working with an undercover group of Orthodox Christians sending help, mainly in the form of money, to the families of jailed dissidents. And since I was fluent in Russian, my military career took me from a basic training in electronic warfare, to a special unit of linguists for the General Staff of the Swiss military, to becoming a military analyst for the strategic intelligence service of Switzerland.

The Soviet authorities had long listed me, and my entire family, as dangerous anti-Soviet activists and I, therefore, could not travel to Russia until the fall of Communism in 1991 when I immediately caught the first available flight and got to Moscow while the barricades built against the GKChP coup were still standing.   Truly, by this fateful month of August 1991, I was a perfect anti-Soviet activist and an anti-Communist hardliner.  I even took a photo of myself standing next to the collapsed statue of Felix Derzhinsky (the founder of the ChK – the first Soviet Secret police) with my boot pressed on his iron throat.  That day I felt that my victory was total.  It was also short-lived.

Instead of bringing the long-suffering Russian people freedom, peace, and prosperity, the end of Communism in Russia only brought chaos, poverty, violence, and abject exploitation by the worst class of scum the defunct Soviet system had produced.  I was horrified.  Unlike so many other anti-Soviet activists who were also Russophobes, I never conflated my people and the regime which oppressed them.  So, while I rejoiced at the end of one horror, I was also appalled to see that another one had taken its place.  Even worse, it was undeniable that the West played an active role in every and all forms of anti-Russian activities, from the total protection of Russian mobsters, on to the support of the Wahabi insurgents in Chechnya, and ending with the financing of a propaganda machine which tried to turn the Russian people into mindless consumers to the presence of western “advisors” (yeah, right!) in all the key ministries.  The oligarchs were plundering Russia and causing immeasurable suffering, and the entire West, the so-called “free world” not only did nothing to help but helped all the enemies of Russia with every resource it had.  Soon the NATO forces attacked Serbia, a historical ally of Russia, in total violation of the most sacred principles of international law.  East Germany was not only reunified but instantly incorporated into West Germany and NATO pushed as far East as possible.  I could not pretend that all this could be explained by some fear of the Soviet military or by a reaction to the Communist theory of world revolution.  In truth, it became clear to me that the western elites did not hate the Soviet system or ideology, but that they hated Russian people themselves and the culture and civilization which they had created.

By the time the war against the Serbian nation in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo broke out, I was in a unique situation: all day long I could read classified UNPROFOR and military reports about what was taking place in that region and, after work, I could read the counter-factual anti-Serbian propaganda the western corporate Ziomedia was spewing out every day.  I was horrified to see that literally everything the media was saying was a total lie.  Then came the false flags, first in Sarajevo, but later also in Kosovo.   My illusions about “Free World” and the “West” were crumbling.  Fast.

Fate brought me to Russia in 1993 when I saw the carnage of meted out by the “democratic” Eltsin regime against thousands of Russians in Moscow (many more than what the official press reported).  I also saw the Red Flags and Stalin portraits around the parliament building.  My disgust by then was total.  And when the Eltsin regime decided to bring Dudaev’s Chechnia to heel triggering yet another needless bloodbath, that disgust turned into despair.  Then came the stolen elections of 1996 and the murder of General Lebed. At that point, I remember thinking “Russia is dead.”

So, when the entourage of Eltsin suddenly appointed an unknown nobody to acting President of Russia, I was rather dubious, to put it mildly.  The new guy was not a drunk or an arrogant oligarch, but he looked rather unimpressive.  He was also ex-KGB which was interesting: on one hand, the KGB had been my lifelong enemy but on the other hand, I knew that the part of the KGB which dealt with foreign intelligence was staffed by the brightest of the brightest and that they had nothing to do with political repression, Gulags and all the rest of the ugly stuff another Directorate of the KGB (the 5th) was tasked with (that department had been abolished in 1989).  Putin came from the First Main Directorate of the KGB, the “PGU KGB.”  Still, my sympathies were more with the (far less political) military intelligence service (GRU) than the very political PGU which, I was quite sure by then, had a thick dossier on my family and me.

Then, two crucial things happened in parallel: both the “Free world” and Putin showed their true faces: the “Free world” as an AngloZionist Empire hell-bent on aggression and oppression, and Vladimir Putin as a real patriot of Russia. In fact, Putin slowly began looking like a hero to me: very gradually, in small incremental steps first, Putin began to turn Russia around, especially in two crucial matters: he was trying to “re-sovereignize” the country (making it truly sovereign and independent again), and he dared the unthinkable: he openly told the Empire that it was not only wrong, it was illegitimate (just read the transcript of Putin’s amazing 2007 “Munich Speech”).

Putin inspired me to make a dramatic choice: will I stick to my lifelong prejudices or will I let reality prove my lifelong prejudices wrong. The first option was far more comfortable to me, and all my friends would approve. The second one was far trickier, and it would cost me the friendship of many people. But what was the better option for Russia? Could it be that it was the right thing for a “White Russian” to join forces with the ex-KGB officer?

I found the answer here in a photo of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Putin:

If that old-generation anti-Communist hardliner who, unlike me, had spent time in the Gulag, could take Putin’s hand, then so could I!

In fact, the answer was obvious all along: while the “White” and the “Red” principles and ideologies were incompatible and mutually exclusive, there is also no doubt that nowadays true patriots of Russia can be found both in the former “Red” and “White” camps. To put it differently, I don’t think that “Whites” and “Reds” will ever agree on the past, but we can, and must, agree on the future. Besides, the Empire does not care whether we are “Red” or “White” – the Empire wants us all either enslaved or dead.

Putin, in the meantime, is still the only world leader with enough guts to openly tell the Empire how ugly, stupid and irresponsible it is (read his 2015 UN Speech).

And when I listen to him I see that he is neither “White” nor “Red.”  He is simply Russian.

So, this is how I became a Kremlin troll and a Putin fanboy.

Moscow Furious Over US Plan To Search Russia Trade Mission, Calls It "Unprecedented Aggressive Action”

Yesterday, the San Francisco fire department scrambled a team of firefighters to the city"s Russian consulate (scheduled to be vacated today in the latest tit-for-tat diplomatic escalation between the US and Russia) following reports of "blowing smoke" emerging from the building, only to learn that the Russians were engaged in what appears to have been some last minute confidential document "redaction."

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, explained that the smoke was part of a “mothballing” according to Reuters.

“In relation to this, the windows could be closed, the light could be turned off, the water could be drained out, the heating appliances could be turned off, the garbage could be thrown away, essential services could be turned off and many other things."

Of course, what was really going on was 11th hour document destruction (albeit the old-fashioned way, one not involving a hammer, blackberries, and thousands of deleted emails) and as subsequent events have showed, the Russians had reason to be paranoid: on Saturday, the US unveiled its intention to search the soon to be vacant Russian trade mission in Washington, a move which has infuriated Moscow, prompting Russia to summon the deputy chief of mission of the US Embassy in Moscow to lodge a note of protest over the planned search.

Anthony F. Godfrey was summoned to the ministry on Saturday, it said in a statement, adding that Russian diplomats have been denied access to the trade mission building despite it being owned by Russia and protected by diplomatic immunity. 

The ministry called the planned “illegal inspection” of Russian diplomatic housing an “unprecedented aggressive action”, which could be used by the U.S. special services for “anti-Russian provocations” by the way of “planting compromised items”.

“We consider the planned illegal search of Russian diplomatic premises in the absence of Russian officials and the threat we have received to break down the door of the building as an aggressive action, which the US intelligence service may use to orchestrate an anti-Russian provocation by planting compromising items."

We call on Washington to refrain from compromising the immunity of Russian missions in the USA https://t.co/A4eTKbhVUa#RussiaUSA pic.twitter.com/A8YkrLCWNP

— MFA Russia ???????? (@mfa_russia) September 2, 2017

Moscow has called on Washington to stop violating international law and refrain from compromising the immunity of Russian missions in the country. Otherwise, retaliation may follow, the ministry warned. On Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the FBI was planning to search the general consulate premises, including homes of the diplomatic staff, which would violate diplomatic immunity.

Former US diplomats, questioned the reasons behind the searches, saying it will only lead to a further escalation of tensions. The US authorities are highly unlikely to find “anything of interest” in the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, as there is probably nothing more than “confidential diplomatic materials,” which are supposed to be there anyway, said Ted Seay, a former US diplomat.

“What are our people going to do in your ambassador’s apartments or in the consulate in San Francisco? Look for illegal recipes for borsch? Of course, you have to respond and to go into our consulate in St. Petersburg – looking for what? Perhaps, for too many copies of Doctor Zhivago in the embassy’s library?” John Graham, former US ambassador to Libya, said.

“This foolishness happens [but] it happens usually at the lower levels,” he added. Meanwhile, Seay warned that “things are already too tense between the two countries” and both sides should proceed with “great care. To me, that means again that anyone who is actually planning to raid diplomatic premises in San Francisco, has lost their mind,” the former US diplomat said.

"Fake News" Exposed: Louise Mensch Duped By Hoaxer

The woman who has been widely credited with the creation of the “liberal conspiracy theory” has – finally and definitively – been proven a fraud. According to the Guardian, Louise Mensch and her writing partner Claude Taylor published “bogus” allegations about President Donald Trump that had been fed to them by a hoaxer who claimed to work for New York Attorney General (and longtime Trump antagonist) Eric Schneiderman.

Mensch, a former British MP who moved to the US with her American husband a few years back to found the now-defunct Rupert Murdoch-backed conservative news website Heat Street, has garnered a large following (she has some 300,000 followers on Twitter) thanks to her “scoops” about the Russia investigation. Her "exclusives" have included patently false "stories" like her claim that the FBI had issued a sealed indictment for the president. She once suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart murdered to clear the way for Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, allowing Bannon to guide Trump to electoral victory - an assertion for which she was resoundingly mocked.

The Guardian confirmed that another one of Mensch’s claims – that Trump’s inactive fashion agency is under investigation for alleged sex trafficking – was solely sourced to the hoaxer.

“Claude Taylor tweeted fake details of criminal inquiries into Trump that were invented by a source whose claim to work for the New York attorney general was not checked, according to emails seen by the Guardian. The allegations were endorsed as authentic and retweeted by his co-writer Louise Mensch.

The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking.”

The hoaxer said she acted out of a “frustration with fake news” after reading other obviously ridiculous reports published by Taylor and Mensch.

“The hoaxer, who fed the information to Taylor by email, said she acted out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch. Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that the president was already removed from office in a process kept secret from the American public.

Taylor asked no questions to verify my identity, did no vetting whatsoever, sought no confirmation from a second source – but instead asked leading questions to support his various theories, asking me to verify them,” the source said in an email.”

Mensch’s assertions have occasionally osmosed into the mainstream media. In March, the New York Times published an op-ed by Mensch advising members of Congress on how to proceed with their investigations into Trump’s Russia ties. The op-ed came after the paper backed up her still-unverified claim that a FISA warrant had been issued to surveille the Trump Organization. As the Guardian notes, Sen. Ed Markley (D-Mass) was forced to apologize earlier this year after repeating Mensch’s claim that Trump was under investigation.

“During a television interview earlier this year, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts repeated unverified information about the inquiries into Trump and Russia that he had gleaned from Mensch’s website. He later withdrew the comment.

Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for Schneiderman, said in a statement that the incident highlighted the importance of using “legitimate news outlets, which know to verify their sources and their facts”

Joe Scarborough once repeated one of Taylor and Mensch’s false claims on his show, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“The bogus source first contacted Taylor by email on 20 July with an email titled “NYAG investigation”. Earlier that day, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough had quoted approvingly from an online post by Taylor, describing it as “one of the best tweets of the past month.”

Mensch and Taylor eagerly embellished the false claims fed to them by the leaker, insinuating that they knew more than the leaker had shared with them.

“After being asked by a follower for more information, Taylor claimed to know even more than the hoaxer had told him. “I have few details but apparently the possibility exists that our president has been a sex trafficker,” he said.

Mensch then weighed in, reposting this false claim by Taylor and adding a vague allegation of her own that the full story was even worse.

Taylor and Mensch also repeated an invented claim from the source that former president Bill Clinton knew of criminal wrongdoing by Trump’s model agency and was was preparing to testify for the prosecution. Taylor posted another series of tweets making lurid allegations about Trump’s model agency that yet again matched invented claims supplied to him in emails from the hoaxer.”

The Guardian published the contents of the hoaxer’s emails with Taylor alongside Taylor and Mensch’s tweets about the false claims, which neither of them bothered to try and verify (note the liberal use of the hashtag #PIMPOTUS).

From NYAG Schneiderman source, "I am aware of at least one sealed indictment targeting multiple Trump Organization Principals".

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) July 22, 2017

Schneiderman is moving https://t.co/sseoG0yKw9

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 22, 2017

On all three. Many Russian nationals are also among the targets as are other Trump family members.

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) July 23, 2017

I have few details but apparently the possibility exists that our president has been a sex trafficker. That"s frowned upon. https://t.co/SFScjkaLlK

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) July 22, 2017

      

From Schneiderman source on money laundering case. Targets include Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka, Jared & Trump Sr, Felix Sater & 15 Rus nationals.

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) July 28, 2017

Clinton is an @AGschneiderman witness against Trump. #PIMPOTUS #humantrafficking pic.twitter.com/m6uiEYJIBR

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 6, 2017

     

It"s #PIMPOTUS day on Twitter. #TeamPatriot please use the hashtag and let"s trend @realDonaldTrump human trafficking #Epstein #TrumpModels pic.twitter.com/vWxksCBZjn

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 6, 2017

Just in case you needed another reminder - don"t believe everything you read on the Internet.
 

Friday Humor: Leaked Email Suggests 'Russophobia' Campaign Is Prelude To US Invasion Of Ukraine

Satirically authored by Ramin Mazaheri via The Saker,

Leaked email suggests Russophobia campaign prelude to US invasion of Ukraine

(Note: This leaked email has not yet been verified by WikiLeaks:)

Date: 2017-06-14
Source: Pentagon
Classification: SECRET/NOFORN/BLTPBJ
S E C R E T
SECTION 03 OF 1,242 WASHINGTON – 314159265
SUBJECT: Major General protests decision to continue the Russophobia campaign
CLASSIFICATION APPROVED BY: CLASSIFIED
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d)

I strongly urge those reading this email to finally acknowledge that the conditioning phase of the Russophobia campaign has been completed.

The situation is exactly as planned to begin troop movements into Ukraine.

Further delays are unnecessary and could jeopardize the long-range planning of Operation Reverse Mongol.

President Trump has renounced his appeasement rhetoric concerning The Menace Putin. Trump has been rendered sufficiently pliable to formally announce conflict engagement.

Media saturation has been total for some time, as is well-documented.

Battalions – infantry, airborne and tank – have been placed on medium-high alert.

However, Americans have a short attention span. Therefore, I strenuously object to the recent decision to continue the Russophobia campaign.

How much longer is this going to go on? Now is time for Trump to declare hostilities in Ukraine!

Follow normal procedures: This requires a formal letter to the UN on White House (not Trump) letterhead. Send copy to Kremlin. Make sure they sign for it.

Let this email confirm that Lieutenant General Kleinphoffer was the first to request Trump’s signing pen as a souvenir. He says he is redecorating his den.

I remind readers that the Russophobia conditioning campaign was neither meant to go on forever, nor was it done without a clear goal in mind. The US Army does not waste time, money, resources or manpower – that’s what we have the Navy for. (Don’t worry, they are not copied on this email.)

The conditioning campaign must now be converted into a war propaganda campaign for multiple reasons, both theoretical and practical.

Hillary is getting cabin fever, and Bill said that he never signed up to spend so much time with her. We know she needs the spotlight and, frankly, she deserves it: It wasn’t easy to get her on board, but she understood her fall was necessary in order to provide enough of a pretext to invade Ukraine.

In fact, Hillary has acted like a champ for the Pentagon time and again, repeatedly postponing her ascendancy to the White House. First for 8 years of Obama, and now for 4 years of Trump.

Hillary is indeed a true patriot of the Bilderberg Group, and this email serves to inform that I am recommending her for our highest honor: Ensign of the Cross of the Griffin of the 3^rd Phase of the Moon. This also gives her a preferential parking space at future meetings.

Frankly, I’ll be retiring when she does finally take office – she’s just going to keep us way too busy for my age. I have total confidence that she’ll be a great wartime president, just as she was a great wartime first lady, wartime New York senator and wartime Secretary of State.

Note: We must increase funding to her “Resistance” Political Action Committee. Hats off to the people across the hall in PentPropInform who came up with that title. Excellent further conditioning – really makes one think that they are the good ones fighting pure evil.

Personal statement:

Gee whiz, I’m just so darn happy!!! I’ve been waiting so gosh darn long! Now we can finally start stopping the Red Menace!

Yes, I know that Major General Feffernetter is adamant that Russia is not red anymore because they aren’t communist – he insists they should be brown: as in bears and birch trees. But I say birch is more of a gray! Get your eyes checked Feffernetter!

Anyway, we cannot confuse our citizens, so stop bringing that up to CNN – Wolf Blitzer spent 22 minutes on this yesterday!

But I’m just over the moon that we can finally land in Ukraine and start moving eastward to Russia: We almost let decades of planning go to waste! But I never had any doubt that Trump wouldn’t know which buttons to press – “small hands”, LOL.

Obama’s “pivot to China” diversionary tactic has worked – they’ll close the back door as we sweep eastward!

Exciting times, exciting times indeed! But we still have loose ends to tie up. To wit:

Cultural Angles:

Rachel Maddow is asking for more money – I guess #1 ratings aren’t enough. Give that braying giraffe whatever she wants. We can’t lose her now, and she knows it.

But somebody simply HAS TO tell her that it’s too damned risky to keep letting her use an army barber! I don’t care how much they “understand her type of hair” – someone could see her and ask questions!

I know I promised everyone an advance listening of the new Pussy Riot single, but they’re saying they need time to rehearse. When did they start doing that?!

We all remember what happened when The Monkees tried to play their own instruments, right? For sure, whatever they come up with will be unlistenable, so let’s increase our funding to boost their single sales at the Apple Store.

And what is going on with our Chinese version of Pussy Riot – “Sideways Sino Sucky Sucky”?

I thought all the kids like that punky music nowadays? Somebody hook up one of those angular banjos they play to a distortion pedal and get it on MTV ASAP! Do I have to call Viacom myself? Like I did to get that Kardashian’s phone number for General Stupotski?

(And what did he do with it? Nothing! Don’t believe his bragging – I’ve seen the surveillance tapes! Wasn’t even one of the good Kardashians….)

I don’t want to say “I told you so”, but I remind people that we have gotten virtually nowhere with our program to promote Ai Weiwei. As I’ve said all along: the only people who care about modern art and Ai Weiwei are 2% of the New York Times readership, and 99% of them are bluffing.

Human Rights Angles:

Continue with the Chechnya homosexuals media campaign – DNA testing came back and Chechens do classify racially as White, and we cannot tolerate any sort of abuse of human rights for White people. Hey, I had them pegged as some sort of Turkic tribe, but you can’t argue with racial science.

Anyway, we need some sort for pretext or the Russian invasion, right? We can’t use Communism anymore; there’s no American expatriate community to defend; I checked around, and it seems that Russians actually do have a somewhat solid claim to pretend they are Christians.

Look at just the most recent example of French soldier pedophilia in Burkina Faso– nobody cares about kids. And don’t tell me it’s because they’re Black kids, because I just don’t buy it.

So it’s the gays or back to the drawing board.

Terrorism angles:

You know, we need to stop breaking our arms from patting ourselves on the back for how good we’ve done with this angle in Muslim nations.

Yes, this is our bread and butter…and yet we’ve done nothing as regards Russia.

And yes, the neo-Nazi terrorists have done great in Ukraine – no one is denying that – but you know we can’t trumpet that success in the media.

But I’m tired of hearing: “People simply won’t believe there are Russian bombers in Manchester or Paris.” I’d believe it! Maddow would too!

Anyway, aren’t there Muslims in Siberia? Mongolian Muslims or something? If so, increase their funding immediately.

Human Resource Issues:

We do have a problem with our #3 agent in Operation Journalist Putemania: Agent Maxwell Klinger’s gender issues are causing major morale problems, so can we please clarify which bathroom the agent should use?

Yesterday I caught him or her standing in front of a latrine door and crying – he or she said he or she didn’t know whether to use the his or hers!

There was even a new secret EU Army delegation passing by, even! They’re already trying to bypass our munitions producers – we don’t need this negative press!

Frankly, Klinger is rather chubby and I always thought she was man, but others said he was a woman, and now we all know that he or she has no idea. Us too. Can we please get this issue and Agent Klinger sorted out post-haste?

I don’t even know why Klinger is hesitating? The men’s bathroom stinks like a rabbit hutch! We really need to get some young blood in the Pentagon…all the aiming equipment of us old farts has gone to pot without any action. This good long war will revivify us!

But, yes, I take responsibility for that: I’m the one who insisted that my neighbor get the custodial contract.

I’m telling you his kids were ruining my lawn! And you should see Mildred’s hydrangeas now that baseballs aren’t constantly rolling through there!

I’ll talk to him about not being so cost-cutting with the disinfectant and also about getting some sort of gender-neutral signs. Maybe that’ll put the Klinger issue to bed.

But frankly, someone needs stop Klinger from getting distracted from the larger issues. Operation Reverse Mongol is not fun and games.

Yours sincerely and Bilderberg Forever,

Maj. Gen. Lawrence Pepperbottom

Democrats Chase Red Herring Of 'Russia-Gate'

Authored by Norman Solomon via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

President Trump has caused many prominent progressives to degrade their own political discourse. It’s up to us to challenge the corrosive effects of routine hyperbole and outright demagoguery.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

Consider the rhetoric from one of the most promising new House members, Democrat Jamie Raskin, at a rally near the Washington Monument over the weekend. Reading from a prepared text, Raskin warmed up by declaring that “Donald Trump is the hoax perpetrated on the Americans by the Russians.”

Soon the congressman named such varied countries as Hungary, the Philippines, Syria and Venezuela, and immediately proclaimed: “All the despots, dictators and kleptocrats have found each other, and Vladimir Putin is the ringleader of the unfree world.”

Later, asked about factual errors in his speech, Raskin floundered during a filmed interview with The Real News.

What is now boilerplate Democratic Party bombast about Russia has little to do with confirmed facts and much to do with partisan talking points.

The same day that Raskin spoke, the progressive former Labor Secretary Robert Reich featured at the top of his website an article he’d written with the headline “The Art of the Trump-Putin Deal.” The piece had striking similarities to what progressives have detested over the years when coming from right-wing commentators and witch-hunters. The timeworn technique was dual track, in effect: I can’t prove it’s true, but let’s proceed as though it is.

The lead of Reich’s piece was clever. Way too clever: “Say you’re Vladimir Putin, and you did a deal with Trump last year. I’m not suggesting there was any such deal, mind you. But if you are Putin and you did do a deal, what did Trump agree to do?” From there, Reich’s piece was off to the conjectural races.

Propaganda Techniques

Progressives routinely deplore such propaganda techniques from right-wingers, not only because the Left is being targeted but also because we seek a political culture based on facts and fairness rather than innuendos and smears. It’s painful now to see numerous progressives engaging in hollow propaganda.

CIA seal in lobby of the spy agency’s headquarters. (U.S. government photo)

Likewise, it’s sad to see so much eagerness to trust in the absolute credibility of institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency — institutions that previously earned wise distrust. Over the last few decades, millions of Americans have gained keen awareness of the power of media manipulation and deception by the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. Yet now, faced with an ascendant extreme right wing, some progressives have yielded to the temptation of blaming our political predicament more on a foreign “enemy” than on powerful corporate forces at home.

The over-the-top scapegoating of Russia serves many purposes for the military-industrial complex, Republican neocons, and kindred “liberal interventionist” Democrats. Along the way, the blame-Russia-first rhetoric is of enormous help to the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party — a huge diversion lest its elitism and entwinement with corporate power come under greater scrutiny and stronger challenge from the grassroots.

In this context, the inducements and encouragements to buy into an extreme anti-Russia frenzy have become pervasive. A remarkable number of people claim certainty about hacking and even “collusion” — events that they cannot, at this time, truly be certain about. In part that’s because of deceptive claims endlessly repeated by Democratic politicians and news media.

One example is the rote and highly misleading claim that “17 U.S. intelligence agencies” reached the same conclusion about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee — a claim that journalist Robert Parry effectively debunked in an article last week.

What Americans Want

During a recent appearance on CNN, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner offered a badly needed perspective on the subject of Russia’s alleged intrusion into the U.S. election. People in Flint, Michigan, “wouldn’t ask you about Russia and Jared Kushner,” she said. “They want to know how they’re gonna get some clean water and why 8,000 people are about to lose their homes.”

White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also President Trump’s son-in-law

Turner noted that “we definitely have to deal with” allegations of Russian interference in the election, “it’s on the minds of American people, but if you want to know what people in Ohio — they want to know about jobs, they want to know about their children.” As for Russia, she said, “We are preoccupied with this, it’s not that this is not important, but every day Americans are being left behind because it’s Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Like corporate CEOs whose vision extends only to the next quarter or two, many Democratic politicians have been willing to inject their toxic discourse into the body politic on the theory that it will be politically profitable in the next election or two. But even on its own terms, the approach is apt to fail. Most Americans are far more worried about their economic futures than about the Kremlin. A party that makes itself more known as anti-Russian than pro-working-people has a problematic future.

Today, 15 years after George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” oratory set the stage for ongoing military carnage, politicians who traffic in unhinged rhetoric like “Putin is the ringleader of the unfree world” are helping to fuel the warfare state — and, in the process, increasing the chances of direct military conflict between the United States and Russia that could go nuclear and destroy us all.

But such concerns can seem like abstractions compared to possibly winning some short-term political gains. That’s the difference between leadership and demagoguery.

Confronting Russophobia

Authored by Srdja Trifkovic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There is a paranoid, hysterical quality to the public discourse on Russia and all things Russian in today’s America.  The corporate media machine and its Deep State handlers have abdicated reason and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering.  We have not seen anything like it before, even in the darkest days of the Cold War.

The roots of Russophobia’s emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process.  Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other “issues” indicative of a society’s moral and intellectual decrepitude.

The liberals’ ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter hostility to Russia shared by Deep State operatives in the intelligence and national-security apparatus, in the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. The result is a surreal narrative that mixes supposedly unprovoked “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, hostile intent in the Baltics, serial war crimes in Syria, political destabilization in Western Europe, and gross interference in America’s “democratic process”. The result is an altogether fictitious “existential threat,” which has made President Trump’s intended détente with Moscow impossible.  He may have been serious about turning over a new leaf, but the Deep State counterpressure proved just too great.  A solid rejection front emerged, left and right, conservative and liberal, which extends even into his own team and finally inhibited him from making moves that could have appeared too friendly to Putin.

The Russophobes’ narrative is unrelated to Russia’s actual policies. It reflects a deep odium of the elite class toward Russia-as-such. That animosity has been developing in its current form since roughly the time of the Crimean War, when in his Letters From Russia the Marquis de Custine said that the country’s “veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible.”

“No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant—in short, as untrustworthy in every way—as the Russians,” President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1905.  John Maynard Keynes, after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1925, wondered whether the “mood of oppression” might be “the fruit of some beastliness in the Russian nature.”  J. Robert Oppenheimer opined in 1951 that, in Russia, “We are coping with a barbarous, backward people.”  More recently, Sen. John McCain declared that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”  “Russia is an anti-Western power with a different, darker vision of global politics,” Slate wrote in early 2014, even before the Ukrainian crisis reached its climax.

This narrative has two key pillars. In terms of geopolitics, we see the striving of maritime empires—Britain before World War II, and the United States after — to “contain” and if possible control the Eurasian heartland, the core of which is of course Russia. Equally important is the already noted cultural antipathy, the desire not merely to influence Russian policies and behavior but to effect an irreversible transformation of Russia’s identity.  Some of the most viscerally Russophobic stereotypes come from Russia herself, from those members of Moscow’s “intelligentsia” who feel more at home in New York or London than anywhere in their own country.  The late Anna Politkovskaya thus wrote in the Los Angeles Times 12 years ago that “it is common knowledge that the Russian people are irrational by nature.” It is impossible to imagine a mainstream publication publishing a similar statement about Jews or Muslims.

The Russophobic frenzy comes at a cost.  It further devalues the quality of public discourse on world affairs in the United States, which is already dismally low. It has already undermined the prospects for a mutually beneficial new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations, based on a realist assessment that those two powers have no “existential” differences — and share many actual and potential commonalities.  It perpetrates the arrogant delusion that there is a superior, “Western” model of social and cultural thought and action that can and should be imposed everywhere, but especially in Russia.

Saddest of all, Russophobic mania prolongs the European civil war that exploded in July 1914, continued in 1939, and has never properly ended — not even with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It would be in the American interest, as well as Russia’s and Europe’s, for that conflict to end, so that the existential challenge common to all— that of resurgent jihad and Europe’s demographic crisis — can be properly addressed.

Why Is Obama Moving Troops Into Poland, Provoking Russia Right Before The Inauguration?

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

January 20th cannot come soon enough.  Instead of stepping back and trying to ensure a smooth transition for Donald Trump, Barack Obama has decided to go hog wild and use every ounce of presidential power still available to him.  He has been establishing a bunch of new national monuments, he just stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, and on Thursday he even took time to give Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia.  Every few days it seems like Obama is doing something else to aggravate Russia, and if he wasn’t leaving office in about a week I am sure that the mainstream media would be full of speculation about a possible war.

Lame duck presidents are not supposed to make risky moves like this once a new president has been elected.  On Thursday, we learned that U.S. troops have been permanently deployed to Poland for the very first time…

American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia.

Some people waved and held up American flags as U.S. troops in tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland from Germany and headed toward the town of Zagan, where they will be based. Poland’s prime minister and defense minister will welcome them in an official ceremony Saturday.

Poland was once a key member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and the Russians are quite alarmed that U.S. troops will now be stationed so close to the Russian heartland.  The following comes from ABC News…

“These actions threaten our interests, our security,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. “Especially as it concerns a third party building up its military presence near our borders. It’s not even a European state.”

And it has also been announced that NATO troops will arrive in Lithuania in late January.  If you will remember, Lithuania was actually part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

All of a sudden, Russia has become enemy number one.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say that Russia is to blame for Clinton’s election loss, and so at the end of December Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the country.

That is the sort of thing that you do before a war starts.

Over in Europe, they are so freaked out about potential Russian interference in their elections that they are “erecting defenses to counter possible Russian cyber attacks”…

Nations in Europe, where Germany and France this year hold elections, are erecting defenses to counter possible Russian cyber attacks and disinformation to sway Western politics, but intelligence experts say this might be too little and too late.

The issue of Russian “influence operations” has taken on new urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies released a non-classified assessment that President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to move the U.S. election in favor of Donald Trump.

European nations and NATO are setting up centers to identify “fake news”, bolstering cyber defenses and tracking use of social media which target Russian-speaking communities, far-right groups, political parties, voters and decision-makers.

Back in 2012, Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was a serious threat to our national security.  He even joked that the 1980s were calling Romney because they wanted their foreign policy back.

At that time, Barack Obama boldly declared that the Cold War had been over for 20 years.  But now here we are just four years later and Barack Obama has gotten us into a new Cold War.  The crisis in Ukraine, the civil war in Syria, the price of oil, cyber-espionage and a whole host of other issues have brought tensions between the United States and Russia to a boiling point.

Many are hoping that relations with Russia will improve during the Trump administration, but the truth is that things could go either way.

It is important to remember that Trump will be surrounded by military people that are virulently anti-Russia.  For example, retired Marine General James Mattis has been nominated to be Defense Secretary, and this week he told Congress that Russia is the “principal threat” to U.S. security…

While much of the hearing has so far been without controveries, in the most striking moment so far, Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia stands as the “principal threat” to the United States’s security. He said this is because of its actions and efforts to “intimidate” other countries.

Senator John McCain questioned Mattis to get his opinion on how much of a threat Russia represents. Mattis response was that the world order is “under biggest attacks since WW2, from Russia, terrorist groups, and China’s actions in the South China Sea”, agreeing with the neocon senator that Russia is trying to break up NATO.

“I’m all for engagement” with Russia, “but we also have to recognize the reality of what Russia is up to,” Mattis told Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island).

There is a great deal of concern that Trump’s view of Russia could be significantly shaped by strong military men such as Mattis.  Both Democrats and Republicans want Trump to become much more anti-Russia, and let us hope that he does not give in to the pressure.

Over in Russia, they view us very negatively as well.  A Gallup survey taken in mid-2016 found that current U.S. leadership (the Obama administration) only had a one percent approval rating in Russia.

Yes, you read that correctly.

You can’t get much lower than one percent.

The Russians consider themselves to be the great force for good in the world, and they consider the United States to be the great force for evil.  They openly talk about the possibility of nuclear war on their news broadcasts, and on one recent broadcast people were actually encouraged to locate the closest nuclear bomb shelter to their homes.

And in response to U.S. troops being deployed to Poland, the Russian government has deployed advanced anti-aircraft missile systems around Moscow…

Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile systems around Moscow to protect the capital from attack in the latest sign Vladimir Putin is preparing for war.

The s-400 Triumph air defence system has been providing air cover for Russian forces in Syria since November, and is now being deployed on home soil.

It is capable of hitting moving airborne targets including planes and incoming missiles and has a range of 400km.

We should be very thankful that Barack Obama is leaving office, because right now we are on a path that leads to war with Russia.

Every American should be hoping that Donald Trump will work to greatly improve relations with the Russians, but all it would take is one wrong move for things to start deteriorating once again.

A new Cold War has begun, and the stakes are incredibly high…