Russia Caused Far Right Nationalism (if you believe the media)

I know it's difficult to pull away from the Epstein murder suicide (which Russia caused by the way if you believe MsNBC), but I saw a story in the NY Times today that blames Russia for the rise of right wing nationalism everywhere, even in Sweden.

Of course, Trump is blamed as well, because he and Putin are best buds. And what they want, apparently is "far-right wing nationalism" to spread across the entire globe.

To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplication of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed, that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia and the American far right, underscores a fundamental irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism.

The central target of these manipulations from abroad — and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists’ success — is the country’s increasingly popular, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber.

A New York Times examination of its content, personnel and traffic patterns illustrates how foreign state and nonstate actors have helped give viral momentum to a clutch of Swedish far-right web sites.

Russian and Western entities that traffic in disinformation, including an Islamaphobic think tank whose former chairman is now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, have been crucial linkers to the Swedish sites, helping to spread their message to susceptible Swedes.

Beyond the fact that these bare-faced allegations in the Times article about Russia's influence in spreading right wing nationalism are not supported by any, well, facts, is the reality that Sweden, just as in the United States has a long history of nationalist and nativist movements. The nationalist party in Sweden is the Sverigedemokraterna, ort Sweden Democrats. According to Wikipedia, it was formed in 1988, or more than 30 years ago. Not surprisingly, with the increase in immigration, especially refugees from the Middle East, the party has shown significant growth over the last decade, similar to the rise in strength of nationalist parties and movements in other European countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany. An article in The Harvard Political Review, dated February 11, 2017, sums up nicely the factors that have led to the ascendancy of right wing nationalism in Europe.

These right nationalist campaigns, including those of Brexit and Trump, have run on two fundamental ideas currently trending in many western countries: uplifting the poor working class in a crippling globalized economy, and constricting immigration from the Middle East. Although the political clashes in culture and economics seems to be the major driving forces of the rise of the far right, there is another factor at work. The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public’s trust in institutions.

Two and a half years later, however, The New York Times is having none of those squishy nuanced arguments. It focuses its narrative primarily on Putin and Russia as the source of rising right wing nationalism.

At least six Swedish sites have received financial backing through advertising revenue from a Russian- and Ukrainian-owned auto-parts business based in Berlin, whose online sales network oddly contains buried digital links to a range of far-right and other socially divisive content.

Writers and editors for the Swedish sites have been befriended by the Kremlin. And in one strange Rube Goldbergian chain of events, a frequent German contributor to one Swedish site has been implicated in the financing of a bombing in Ukraine, in a suspected Russian false-flag operation.

The distorted view of Sweden pumped out by this disinformation machine has been used, in turn, by anti-immigrant parties in Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere to stir xenophobia and gin up votes, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that tracks the online spread of far-right extremism.

So, at last, buried deep within the Times story, is the source for its claim that Russia is behind everything. So, what is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and who is behind it?

If you go to Wikipedia, you find it was founded by George Weidenfeld, a famous London publisher, lifelong Zionist and friend to, among others, Angela Merkel, Kurt Waldheim (yes, that Kurt Waldheim) and too many Israeli politicians and military figures to count. When he died in 2016, he was granted the singular honor by Israel of burial at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Before his death, he founded a chair for Israel Studies at University of Sussex, for the purpose of countering criticism of Israel.

Weidenfeld died at the age of 96 in 2016. During the last few years of his life, he emphasized that he regarded Israel studies as explicitly political.

Teaching the subject, he said, was “very important” in universities “with an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic presence.” Weidenfeld’s comments indicate that he conflated criticism of Israel as a state with bigotry against Jews.

ISD partners with and receives funding from a number of private social media multinational corporations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. It also has ties to numerous governmental agencies around the world, including the US State Department, a plethora of NGOs and several US and UK neoliberal think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, as well as charitable foundations ranging from The Carnegie Corporation to the Open Societies Foundation (founder: George Soros). All in all, ISD is deeply tied to groups promoting the global status quo. Many of them also take a confrontational stance when it comes to Russia, while ignoring any bad actions by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the United Sates.

Obviously, it's become a reflexive response by the corporate and legacy media in the US to blame Russia for all our troubles regarding race and political polarization, as if none of these problems existed before Trump assumed office. Certainly, I agree Trump's actions have enabled right wing extremists and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, but neither he nor Russia created the problems of racism and xenophobia that have been with us since the beginning of American history. To continue to harp on Russia as the sole bad actor in foreign and domestic affairs around the world is ludicrous, especially as it ignores the underlying factors that are driving right wing nationalism: increasing poverty, massive wealth and income inequality (which has arguably surpassed the levels that existed prior to the Great Depression) and the increasing efforts in the media to divide people from one another along racial and ethnic lines.

No one who benefits from these levels of income and wealth inequality wants to point out the real reason why populist/nationalist movements are attracting more and more followers. As always, it's the economy, stupid. A 2016 study conducted by the IMF, hardly a bastion of radical leftists, makes this point very clear:

Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality and have not delivered as expected, according to a 2016 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Neoliberalism, a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector, has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s. It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets and, secondly, through privatization and limits on the ability of government to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt, the paper – dated June 2016 - explained. [...]

The IMF authors also state that the costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent and such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda. They further argue that increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth.

Obviously, that isn't the reality that the powers that be in our country want to promote - not at all. It might give people the idea that, instead of living in a democracy, we are actually governed by puppets of wealthy and powerful corporations that are squeezing us dry to benefit their bottom lines. Those in control of our two major parties much prefer disinformation, such as the promotion of the conspiracy theory that our former Cold War adversary bears most, if not all, of the blame for everything bad happening in our country, from the election of Trump to gun violence to political polarization. Telling the truth would be harmful to their interests. These same powerful and wealthy interests would risk the takeover of governments around the world by fascist and right wing authoritarian regimes, rather than change existing policies that favor unfettered capitalism and globalism, policies that are literally threatening our future on this planet.

In short, expect more truthiness like this from the Times and other media outlets when it comes to explaining the causes of right wing nationalism here and abroad:

As the 2018 elections approached, Swedish counterintelligence was on high alert for foreign interference. Russia, the hulking neighbor to the east, was seen as the main threat. After the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 American election, Sweden had reason to fear it could be next.

“Russia’s goal is to weaken Western countries by polarizing the debate,” said Daniel Stenling, the Swedish Security Service’s counterintelligence chief. “For the last five years, we have seen more and more aggressive intelligence work against our nation.”

But as it turned out, there was no hacking and dumping of internal campaign documents, as in the United States. Nor was there an overt effort to swing the election to the Sweden Democrats, perhaps because the party, in keeping with Swedish popular opinion, has become more critical of the Kremlin than some of its far-right European counterparts.

Instead, security officials say, the foreign influence campaign took a different, more subtle form: helping nurture Sweden’s rapidly evolving far-right digital ecosystem.

Oh those subtle Russkies! How they manage the time to destroy the democracies of every country on earth is beyond me, but then, I'm not a reporter for The New York Times.

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detroitmechworks's picture

I feel like I'm playing Paranoia LARP, complete with the Commies being blamed for EVERYTHING. Uniform out of order? Commie Sabotage.
Computer Malfunction? Commie Saboteur.
Don't know about latest pop sensation? Commie Infiltrator!
Suspicious about government motivations? Right Wing Nationalist, Anti-Semite and probably a Terrorist of some kind.

Seriously, they should just set up speaker systems on the corners to shout "WOLF" randomly at times to save themselves some time and money.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXOAcuNhFS4]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks
Except I'm not in Elementary School, Unions are all but dead and the public sees no hope for the future.

And it's the Democrats seeing Russians under the bed instead of Republicans.

The democratic Party has become the 1950's Republican Party and
the Republican Party is an unholy union of the KKK, and the Nazi Party.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

lotlizard's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness  
Republican “Nazis” who are welcomed in Israel as friends, with open arms?

https://www.jns.org/in-largest-ever-delegation-72-congressmen-dont-skipt...

What a paradox, eh?

Either that, or something’s wrong with the comparison.

The same contradiction exists in the blame-Russia narrative: as if Putin, or any Russian ruler, would want to see an ideology revived across Europe that attacked Russia and cost her tens of millions of lives.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks @detroitmechworks

see the following video at 1:44

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal And random hot twenty somethings hooking up. Because that's what the audience wants.

/snark

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector, has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s". Thank you for this definition. (Great essay btw) People throw the term neoliberalism around too easily, beyond the confines of its definition. Having said that; I feel better now.

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@p cook

It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved through deregulation

However, history shows us over and over that unrestrained unregulated capitalism leads to monopoly and oligopoly, that is a narrower market not a wider market.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness It leads to slavery, just like in the 1500-1600s, the unfettered movement of capital.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@p cook

has gotten itself nice late-twentieth-century words to dress up in.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Not surprisingly, with the increase in immigration, especially refugees from the Middle East, the party has shown significant growth over the last decade, similar to the rise in strength of nationalist parties and movements in other European countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany.

Not to mention being a major cause of Brexit.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

The NYTimes in 2016 put the blame for the movement against TPP squarely on Putin.

In Attempted Hit Piece, NYT Makes Putin Hero of Defeating TPP

And a few more.

PUTIN IS FUNDING GREEN GROUPS TO DISCREDIT NATURAL GAS FRACKING

Anti-GMO articles tied to Russian sites, ISU research shows

POLITICS JANUARY 30, 2018 Russian Trolls Stoked Anger Over Black Lives Matter More Than Was Previously Known

But blaming the rise of far right nationalism on Russia is definitely a major point as it diverts attention from the many and varied causes for it which goes to the very heart of the globlist neoliberal capitalist order. Just as a side note, academia is one of the important stalwarts in the diversion as they are gladly producing phony studies of tweets, etc which confirm these beliefs.

BTW, the idea that Russia was responsbile for the rise of white nationalism and racism goes back a while now. There were a few diaries on TOP that got a lot of attention claiming Putin had a major hand in Charotsville when it occurred.

I am surprised by the continued insistence that Russia is making "divisions" over BLM. It is an obvious attempt to minimalize America racism, and also to marginalize BLM and smear it as Russian lackies (shades of the Civil Rigths movement and MLK). This originally caused some anger within Black activists so the narrative became that Russians were pushing both pro-BLM and anti-BLM messages (although wink wink, we know the Russians are really anti-Black).

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

Gee what a way to dismiss what people have gone through and had finally had enough and started protesting against it. It's like saying that Putin supported OWS and that was why Obama broke it up.

As to your saying that the kids blamed Russia for Charlottesville I think it's because they believe that Putin is trying to disrupt the country and bring it down. Bolton got us out of a treaty during his time in the Bush administration and no one blamed it on Russia. But now that he's taken us out of the INF one it's all Vlad's doing. This is just rewriting history to fit your current narrative and their narrative is that the only reason Herheinous lost to Trump was because of Russia's help. It's like mass hypnosis has taken over most Hillary supporters. My uncle is one and too this day I can't point out how bad Obama was for the country. He refuses to see he continued many things that Bush started.

As for Russia supporting the white nationalist movement. Good lord, haven't they ever studied its history during WWII? Do they also think that Putin is supporting the neo Nazis in Ukraine?

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Shahryar's picture

'cause if you they questioned "Russia" for something insane they'd have to revisit the original, which they wouldn't want to do.

and since they (the suckered) don't want to be wrong on the election and thus can't question new "Russias" those who utilized the trick feel free to continue it.

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Steven D's picture

@Shahryar In for a penny, in for a pound.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

k9disc's picture

doing neoliberalism, they've just switched the type of market. It looks like a good fit if you are looking at tanking the labor market. Import cheap, disempowered labor to create the market that you want.

I was going to say something about how Globalists are really pushing immigration too far. It would be better to rise the standard of living in your colonies and vassal states, but that would cost money and dilute control, so instead you import them and shift to domestic colonialism.

Inserting large, non-assimilated populations into democratic states IS a problem to many people. Loss of self governance - "We didn't get a say in this.", loss of a national or cultural identity - which becomes white vs non-white, it rigs the labor market and promotes inequality via a two tiered economic system.

But that IMF quote jumped out at me, and they're still doing neoliberalism, but they're doing it to crush labor markets instead of opening markets or tapping international labor markets. It fits well within neoliberal ideology.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

snoopydawg's picture

Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?

Then there's this one.

"At long last..."

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Shahryar's picture

@snoopydawg

totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they’re all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."

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snoopydawg's picture

@Shahryar

I'm just dumbfounded at how many people have thrown out their reasoning skills and bought into the Russian propaganda nonsense.

Here's Rubio's tweet..

Marco Rubio

#Putin bots & trolls are aggressively pushing hashtags on social media promoting Trump & Clinton conspiracies about #Epstein death.

It’s sad (and frightening) to see so many Americans on both sides of partisan unwittingly helping them.

Putin has weaponized our polarization.

I agree that it's sad and frightening that so many believe him.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Shahryar

But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge.

Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty and got a standing ovation.

Smile

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lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  
https://www.salon.com/2011/05/24/netanyahu_standing_ovations/

Congress treated Bibi like the Lady from Twenty-Nine Palms.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg The Hillbots, not the Rooskies, are all in for restricting "hate speech", which means anybody who disagrees with them. Talk about xenophobia. Dems have this in spades, as well as more than a few Repugnants. We are being outmaneuvered away from peaceful co-existence to Russia ruins everything.

Orange man bad is corollary to RussiaRussiaRussia.

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detroitmechworks's picture

@Alligator Ed Mentioning that Israel units have skulls and reapers on their unit patches and then playing this video is considered anti-semitic.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

ludwig ii's picture

@snoopydawg guaranteeing American constitutional rights? But I thought the current Democratic talking point is that the big tech monopolies are private companies so they can censor and misinform with impunity. Does McFail also concede that we have a right to privacy on that wonderful "AMERICAN" platform?

It's hilarious this was Obama's ambassador to Russia. I didn't think you were supposed to hate the people, culture, and government of the country to whom you had been assigned as a diplomat.

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snoopydawg's picture

@ludwig ii

saying about Russia were instead directed at Israel? AIPAC would be in front of congress daily to get people to stop saying those things.

Misfud is the guy who told Papadapoulus that Russia had Hillary's emails who then 'got drunk and blabbed it to the Dutch ambassador' who then told someone in the FBI who then decided to open an investigation into the Trump campaign. I just read that this information about Misfud has come to the intelligence committee's attention. So I'm sure that any day now we will be told to forget everything we've been told about how Trump colluded with Russia right? Any day...yup...congress is going to tell us that the two year long propaganda campaign that they have been pushing on us was false. Just like Trump said it was. Any..day..

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg

Has been a big promoter of Russiagate for years, since near the beginning. How do I know he's working with the Clintons? Longtime Clinton ally and co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Transition Team, Neera Tanden, repeatedly cites him as a source of validity for Russiagate in this video. You can make a drinking game out of how many times she says "Marco Rubio."

As Jimmy Dore said, "Oh, Marco Rubio said it? Then it must be true. Don't tell me Louie Gohmert said it too!"

What a great sell for the Democrats Neera Tanden is. Listening to her, who *wouldn't* want to vote for Hillary Clinton?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

is that Chris Cuomo actually behaves like a real journalist. I wonder how many more talking heads up there in corporateworld actually would like to be journalists?

Wonder what it was about Neera that pushed him over the edge and made him betray his journalistic leanings.

Maybe Chris Cuomo is a Russian asset.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

karl pearson's picture

The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public’s trust in institutions.

Years ago in a sociology class, I learned that 5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system. These 5 elements are interrelated, so when one goes awry, other parts are affected. It is no secret that our political system is broken and our economic system (neoliberalism) is cracking. Many mainstream churches are losing membership, being replaced by non-affiliated ones. For a couple of decades public education has been the enemy due to right-wing conservatives, hoping to replace this system with private and home schooling. Public universities are in their crosshairs, too. Of course, all these malfunctioning components affect the basic structure of a society: the family. I'm afraid we're in for a bumpy ride, before the air is cleared.

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k9disc's picture

5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system.

Corporate owns all of them, save the family, but they're working on it...

Education - completely corporate dominated with public acquiescence.
Political - Think tanks create policy for sponsored talent to ratify
Religion - Atheism, Megachurches, televangelists, political activity, NGOs as slush funds
Economic - Private FED, banks, ratings institutions, bailed out by stakholder bail-in
Family - 2 worker families, tv as baby sitter, mobile phones

Seriously, corporate owns or can significantly disrupt all 5 pillars of a functioning society. It's rather terrifying.

@karl pearson

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

@k9disc
I think not.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

k9disc's picture

of word, but I think in any society larger than a tribe you have to have some kind of common ground, a common belief system - cultural mores and values. If you look at secular humanism and atheism as religion or belief system, it completely fits.

Politics and science are near religions for many people at this point in time, IMO, replete with priests, choirs, dogma, and blasphemy.

Politics and science are also highly material at this point in time. Values are predicated on profits and social control and ideas are nothing more than mechanistic computations. If you suggest something that costs profits or removes social control, or you offer ideas that say we're in anything but a mechanistic, dead, dumb universe, you're blaspheming.

I'd say they did a pretty fine job of creating new religions and belief systems, and they are every bit as dogmatic and stupid as their big boss man in the sky predecessors.
@The Voice In the Wilderness

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

k9disc's picture

upthread.
@The Voice In the Wilderness

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

snoopydawg's picture

She said that Russian bots were helping push what Tulsi said about her and they spread the "taking a knee" when it was Kaepernick who started it. Kamillary for this BS! She hired Hillary's campaign team as well as her lawyers. Hillary got people to go to the Hamptons for a Harris fundraiser.

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the White House, propaganda from all sources of public information.
It feels like 1943.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Steven D's picture

@on the cusp with nukes.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Pricknick's picture

but is very good to hear from you again Steven.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

snoopydawg's picture

Trump is a student of Hitler & a disciple of Putin, with whom he’s had several secret conversations with Putin giving him advice. Putin certainly knows how to make troublesome people disappear while keeping enough distance to claim plausible deniability & may have given Trump some tips on how to do the same (assuming Trump hadn’t already learned that from his ample experience with mobsters).

A disciple? A student of Hitler? Seriously where do people come up with this sh*t? And why do others agree with that person? SMDH. I can't understand how anyone can believe this.

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Trump's previous wives, Donald kept a copy of a book of Hitler's speeches on the bedside table.

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@wokkamile
ex-husbands too

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Deja's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness
. . . didn't take my tip seriously. The lady on the other end of the line was all ears about the assault rifles stamped "US ARMOURY" that I reported being hidden in the garage of where I had lived, as well as something I had never seen that might have been a grenade launcher due to the size of the barrel.

However, when she found out I was the "estranged" wife of the person who possessed them, she actually told me my tip would not go any further because "estranged" wives can't be believed.

No way in hell I was going to report it while I was still living there. I did it after going into hiding almost a thousand miles away. Our son and I remained in hiding for 6 years, until the ex also almost killed the next love of his life in front of a neighbor. We were freed by that neighbor's testimony and a 99 year prison sentence for retaliation (he held her at gunpoint too after being released on no bond for assaulting her because his dad was buddies with the local judge). But yeah, ex wives lie.

Now I know: If you see something, say not a goddamned thing because you won't be believed anyway.

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@The Voice In the Wilderness can also tell some inconvenient truths.This one is backed by the fellow who gave him the book. When a reporter, who had heard about this, asked Trump about it, he claimed it was a copy of Mein Kampf, and that anyway it's all innocent enough because the friend who gave it to him was a Jew.

When the friend was contacted, he clarified that it wasn't MK but My New Order, a book of Hitler's speeches. And that, actually, he isn't Jewish.

This story definitely seems to be true.

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travelerxxx's picture

@wokkamile

Further, Trump's ex-wife brought this up - if I remember correctly - 20, or more, years ago. It was from an interview in Vanity Fair. You can dredge it up online if you want. The Vanity Fair site was where I read it years ago.

I don't think Trump was planning a presidential bid back in the day, so the revelation of Trump's reading material wasn't quite the bombshell then. Curious? Yes, even then. Hardly surprising if you've followed Trump's antics over the decades.

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@travelerxxx the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.

We know he had a brief bid for the presidency in the 2000 cycle, iirc.

And practicing his speechmaking with the Hitler speeches: reminds me that Hitler himself spent years before he came to power practicing in front of a mirror, with a photographer capturing images.

No, Donald is not Hitler. But does have authoritarian/dictatorial tendencies, along with the desire to whip up the crowd on an ignorant populist basis, including racial division.

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travelerxxx's picture

@wokkamile

...the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.

And so it is! I missed it! Thanks.

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