Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Russia's
Blueprint for Political Chaos: Alleged Election Hacks May Just Be Part of
Vladimir Putin's Grand Game
December 29, 2016
1
Many people
are familiar with the alleged efforts of the Russian government to hack computer systems [3] belonging
to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential
campaign. What is now becoming clear is that these apparent efforts are
actually part of a much larger strategy to subvert advocates of liberal democracy
around the world.
While the
efforts to subvert Clinton’s campaign took place in secret, Russia’s other
attempts to undermine American unity aren’t secret at all. They’re just not
widely known. Among them are the nascent campaigns for both California and
Texas to secede from the United States.
“Texas
nationalists” largely reflect a far-right or neo-Confederate worldview.
California secessionists are almost uniformly leftists disgusted by
conservative hegemony in the heartland. They don’t have much in common when it
comes to their views of governance, but they do have a powerful shared ally —
the Russian Federation.
Salon’s
investigation suggests that for nearly a decade, Vladimir Putin’s government
has promoted and funded the efforts of such separatists as part of a larger
campaign to promote dissenters from the broader Western world order.
The net
effect of these efforts, when you include the successful Brexit campaign for
British withdrawal from the European Union — which Russia also supported — has
been to elevate the idea of American states going their own way from a
laughable fringe movement into something discussed as an actual possibility by
politicians and elite journalists alike.
Of course,
breaking away from the U.S. has been dear to neo-Confederates ever since the
“Lost Cause” of the Civil War. More recently, the secessionist cause got a
strange boost after John Kerry was narrowly defeated by George W. Bush in the
2004 presidential election.
Bush’s
victory stunned many of Kerry’s supporters and, for the first time, many
progressives began to openly consider the prospect of breaking up the
union. Some of the more embittered began posting images of themselves holding
up handwritten notes apologizing to the rest of the world [4]. Kerry
backers also widely circulated a meme image depicting the states that voted for
Bush as “Jesusland [5]” and those
who voted against him as the “United States of Canada.” Visits to the website
of Canada’s immigration service increased by nearly 600 percent [6] on
the Wednesday following Election Day, more than double the previous record,
according to the agency.
Future
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell was an advocate of secession, telling the
Washington Times a week after Bush’s re-election [7] that
“New York and California, Connecticut — the states that are blue — are all the
states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does.” He and
many others saw no reason for these higher-income states to continue
subsidizing policies they didn’t support.
For all the
public venting and aspirational web surfing, however, nothing really came of
that left-wing angst. Barack Obama’s 2008 wipeout of John McCain certainly was
a factor. McCain’s defeat — which most observers saw coming a mile away — came
as a shock to many conservatives, however. Some of them began wondering if
there was something to the secession idea after all. America had become a
nation of “takers” instead of “makers,” to use Paul Ryan’s phrase [8].
Around the
time of the 2008 election, the prospect of breaking up the United States
became a hot topic in Russia’s tightly controlled state media as well.
Government-owned outlets began hyping the work of political scientist Igor
Panarin and his 1998 prediction that America would break up into six separate
countries by the middle of 2010. According to a Wall Street Journal report [9], Russian
state news organizations, including its English-language TV network RT,
interviewed Panarin as often as twice a day during 2008.
RT and its
fellow government-run press outlets have also been remarkably interested in
“Calexit,” an invented term referring to California’s hypothetical secession
from the United States. A Google search within RT’s site yields nearly 5,700
results for the word; one restricted to Sputnik News, another Russian state
property, comes up with more than 6,200.
But the
Russian bear has done more for secessionist movements than dole out copious
amounts of flattering news coverage. It has also provided money to help their
causes through an international nonprofit called the Anti-Globalization
Movement of Russia. According to the group’s president, Alexander Ionov, direct
governmental funds amount to 30 percent of its general budget. The
organization also works “on many issues” with Rodina, the political party
formerly headed by Russia’s deputy prime minister, Ionov said via email.
These
Russian subsidies are typically used to pay for travel costs and conferences
designed to bring disparate secessionist movements together. One of these was
AGM’s recent “Dialogue of Nations” event that took place in September at the
Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, mere blocks away from the Kremlin, power center of the
Russian government. At the conference, separatists from American states and
territories mingled with representatives from breakaway movements based in
Spain, Morocco, Ireland and Somalia. Notably, there were no attendees [10] advocating
secession from Russia. It is a crime to do so in the Federation, one that can
yield up to a five-year prison sentence.
In an
interview, Texas Nationalist Movement president Daniel Miller rejected the idea
that his organization was beholden in any way to the Russian government. While
he admitted that the group received some assistance from the AGM to attend the
Dialogue of Nations conference, Miller said the funds constituted a tiny
portion of his organization’s revenues.
“This idea
that there are strings tied to us that are from places outside, not just of
Texas but outside of the United States is, frankly, very insulting to us,” he
told Salon via telephone. “This idea that, somehow, Vladimir Putin is flying
over our office in a helicopter dumping cash out is just garbage.”
Louis
Marinelli, president of the most prominent Calexit group, Yes California, takes
a more open attitude toward seeking assistance from the Russian government,
even as he insists that he disagrees with some of its policies. The group has
done more than just attend the Dialogue of Nations conference. It has also
partnered with AGM to create an “Embassy of the Independent Republic of
California” inside Russia. A conference unveiling the initiative featured posters of foreign leaders[11] representing
a spectrum of anti-American opposition, including late Cuban leader Fidel
Castro; former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás
Maduro; Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and, of course, Vladimir Putin.
Yes
California intends to open facilities in five other countries as well. In an
interview, Marinelli said that his group will be opening one in Germany next.
Marinelli
has lived off and on in Russia since 2006 and resides there now [12], thanks in
part to assistance from AGM. In a Skype interview, he defended Yes
California’s relationship with Russia and likened it to the collaboration that
American revolutionaries received from France via the Marquis de Lafayette. He
also said separation from the United States was the best way for progressive
Californians to preserve and expand the policies that they prefer.
During his
presidential campaign, Donald Trump called the Supreme Court ruling that
legalized same-sex marriage “shocking” and said he would overturn it [13]. Since
being elected, however, Trump has seemingly reversed course by calling the
matter “settled [14].”
According
to Marinelli, the majority of Californians who support marriage rights for
lesbians and gays should support secession as the best way to protect their
values. Intriguingly, the Yes California chief once worked worked for the
National Organization for Marriage, an anti-LGBT group, to organize a nationwide bus tour [15] to
rally opponents of same-sex marriage. Marinelli said he changed his views in 2011 [16] after
coming into contact with LGBT advocates and soon began divulging internal NOM
documents. Before joining forces with NOM, Marinelli had volunteered for the
2004 presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards.
Marinelli
said he saw no contradiction between indirectly receiving support from the
Russian government, which has become internationally infamous for its
persecution of LGBT citizens, and advocating for gay rights in California.
“We have to
understand that there are going to be differences of opinions between nations,
and we are going to have to maintain a dialogue with those with whom we
disagree on issues,” Marinelli said.
“Part of
California culture are the values of tolerance, diversity and equality. So what
better way to promote those values abroad in a place that perhaps needs those
values more than Russia?” he said. “We can do a lot more work in supporting the
values of equality if we set up an embassy in a country where they perhaps lack
equality, rather than setting up an embassy where they have it.”
Marinelli
also said that Russia’s veto power in the United Nations Security Council would
be essential in getting international recognition for an independent
California. “We want to focus in those five countries in the council who have
the veto,” he said, referring to China, France, the Russian Federation, the
United Kingdom and the U.S.
Russia’s
support for separatists in California, Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico is a
fairly recent development during Putin’s lengthy rule over the Federation. But
they fit within a larger context of Russian efforts to bolster an anti-liberal
consensus (most American conservatives, in this context, are perceived in
Russia as another species of “liberal”).
Quite
often, the good feelings are reciprocal. Many figures on the Christian
right in America have praised the Putin government for its anti-LGBT policies,
particularly its law prohibiting non-negative literature about homosexuality
from being given to minors. Pastor Franklin Graham, son of the legendary
evangelist Billy Graham, has repeatedly praised Putin and has even met him in person [17].
Fundamentalist radio host Bryan Fischer has called the Russian leader a “lion of Christianity [18].”
Religious-right
organizations in America and elsewhere have been the beneficiaries of official
and unofficial Russian monies. The World Congress on Families, an influential
but little-known social conservative group that places a strong emphasis on
opposing homosexuality, scheduled its 2014 annual conference in Moscow, thanks
to the efforts of well-connected Russian financiers and
clergy [19]. The organization removed its name from the proceedings, however,
after Russia invaded Ukraine and WCF came under criticism. The event went on
mostly as scheduled, with most of the invitees attending in their personal capacities [20] rather
than as representatives of any group.
The
admiration of Putin on the part of Christian nationalists appears to be
centered around the mutually shared belief in “demographic winter [21]” — the
idea that Western countries are being overrun by nonwhite Christians. According
to this hypothesis, white people of Christian descent are using birth control
methods to lower their birthrates, while also allowing large numbers of
immigrants into their countries.
The racial
aspect of this theory also explains why Putin is widely admired by the alt-right, [22] a
political movement mostly centered in the United States that has sought to put
a new, tech-savvy face on traditional racist viewpoints.
Alt-right
activist Matthew Heimbach spoke for many of his compatriots [23] when
he told the Business Insider [24] recently,
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now.”
Richard
Spencer, the man who co-created the term [25] and
is widely seen as the leader of the movement by mainstream journalists,
is married to the English translator of
Aleksandr Dugin [26], the man who is perhaps Putin’s
favorite political philosopher. White nationalist icon David Duke once rented
an apartment in Russia which he then sublet to another alt-right figure,
Preston Wiginton, an associate of Dugin’s. Wiginton is also the man who brought
Spencer to address the campus of Texas A&M
University [27] recently.
As much as
the far right appears to believe in Putin, however, there are strong
indications he does not really believe in them [28]. In July,
the Russian president signed a law prohibiting proselytizing outside of formal religious
facilities [29]. Russia’s interest in Crimea
have placed the Putin regime in direct opposition to the Ukrainian Svoboda
party which has been called racist and anti-Semitic and is widely perceived as
allied with the European far right.
The Russian
government has also been involved in promoting left-wing
dissent. Veteran British leftist George Galloway, a former member of
Parliament who was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003, currently hosts a program on the state-owned RT channel [30]. Current
left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has encouraged party members to watch the network [31],
and Corbyn’s top lieutenant has reportedly traveled to Russia on the Kremlin’s dime [32].
Elsewhere
in Europe, the radical Greek party Syriza has been strongly supportive of
various Russian initiatives. Its leader, Alexis Tsipras, called for an end to
sanctions against the Federation for its invasion of Ukraine the day after he was elected as
Greece’s prime minister [33]. The Spanish left-wing
party Podemos [34] has
repeatedly condemned the international community’s alleged double standard in
its dealings with Russia compared to the United States.
These
conflicting signals strongly suggest that ideology is not what lies behind
Russia’s apparent interest in promoting dissenters of all stripes. Putin
clearly prefers Donald Trump over Barack Obama, and is no doubt delighted that
Hillary Clinton will not become president. But it’s worth remembering that in
2008 Obama promised to improve relations with the Russian leader. Clinton, who
served as Obama’s first secretary of state, went so far as offering a
stage-prop “reset button [35]” to
Russia’s foreign minister. (Comically, the button’s Russian label meant “overcharged [36]” instead
of “reset.”)
Obama and
Clinton’s efforts were reminiscent of former president George W. Bush’s 2001
remarks about hoping to get “a sense of [Putin’s] soul.” Bush and Obama
could hardly be more different in terms of leadership and personal style, but
both wound up feeling cold toward a man they initially hoped they could do
business with.
It’s
dangerous to make predictions in the wake of the 2016 presidential
campaign. But chances are that today’s Putin-Trump bromance is just as likely
to end in acrimony as the last two presidents’ attempts to work with the
Russian premier. It will be interesting to see who gets hacked after that
happens.
Matthew
Sheffield is a journalist currently working on a book about the future of the
Republican Party. You may follow him on Twitter: @mattsheffield [37]. This
article is reprinted by permission from Praxis [38].
[40]
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matthew-sheffield
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/16/fbi-agrees-with-cia-russia-intervened-in-the-election-to-help-donald-trump-win/
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Sorry-Everybody-Apology-Re-Election-George/dp/1592581633
[5] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jesusland
[6] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3987697.stm
[7] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/nov/9/20041109-122753-5113r/
[8] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/05/paul-ryan-60-percent-of-a_n_1943073.html
[9] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123051100709638419
[10] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yoGyicnueGvZsLOF_Oq5AfcM1GK-mLxA3xRhBLwdYVI/edit?usp=sharing
[11] https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/810660245848674306
[12] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-07/how-to-make-california-great-secede-with-a-little-help-from-putin
[13] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-trust-me-to-overturn-the-shocking-gay-marriage-decision/
[14] http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/politics/trump-gay-marriage-abortion-supreme-court/index.html
[15] https://www.queerty.com/five-months-later-nom-defector-louis-marinelli-quits-fighting-for-marriage-equality-20110830
[16] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/13/anti-gay-marriage-crusader-louis-marinelli-on-his-conversion.html
[17] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/23/the-religious-right-has-an-unholy-crush-on-vladimir-putin_partner/
[18] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-praises-putin-calls-him-lion-christianity
[19] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/will-american-religious-right-groups-go-ahead-their-kremlin-summit
[20] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/utah-event-revives-the-strange-case-of-the-moscow-world-congress-of-families/
[21] https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-right-babies/
[22] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/trump-putin-alt-right-comintern/506015/
[23] http://thediplomat.com/2016/10/beyond-trump-and-putin-the-american-alt-rights-love-of-the-kremlins-policies/
[24] http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-connections-to-the-alt-right-2016-11
[25] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/08/how-the-alt-right-became-racist-a-short-history-of-hate-part-1/
[26] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/20/meet-the-moscow-mouthpiece-married-to-a-racist-alt-right-boss.html
[27] https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/01/meet-strongest-skinhead-who-keeps-bringing-white-n/
[28] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-09/putin-s-european-allies-don-t-need-his-money
[29] http://forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2197
[30] https://www.rt.com/shows/sputnik/
[31] http://heatst.com/world/now-russias-grip-on-uk-politics-is-obvious-but-its-always-been-there/
[32] http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/seumas-milne-political-firebrand-and-corbyns-guardian-angel-a3128121.html
[33] https://www.ft.com/content/a87747de-a713-11e4-b6bd-00144feab7de
[34] http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21643222-who-backs-putin-and-why-kremlins-pocket
[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset
[36] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/06/clinton-reset-button-gift-to-russian-fm-gets-lost-in-translation/
[37] https://twitter.com/mattsheffield
[38] https://praxis.ink/
[39] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Russia's Blueprint for Political Chaos: Alleged Election Hacks May Just Be Part of Vladimir Putin's Grand Game
[40] http://www.alternet.org/
[41] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/16/fbi-agrees-with-cia-russia-intervened-in-the-election-to-help-donald-trump-win/
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Sorry-Everybody-Apology-Re-Election-George/dp/1592581633
[5] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jesusland
[6] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3987697.stm
[7] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/nov/9/20041109-122753-5113r/
[8] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/05/paul-ryan-60-percent-of-a_n_1943073.html
[9] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123051100709638419
[10] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yoGyicnueGvZsLOF_Oq5AfcM1GK-mLxA3xRhBLwdYVI/edit?usp=sharing
[11] https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/810660245848674306
[12] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-07/how-to-make-california-great-secede-with-a-little-help-from-putin
[13] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-trust-me-to-overturn-the-shocking-gay-marriage-decision/
[14] http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/politics/trump-gay-marriage-abortion-supreme-court/index.html
[15] https://www.queerty.com/five-months-later-nom-defector-louis-marinelli-quits-fighting-for-marriage-equality-20110830
[16] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/13/anti-gay-marriage-crusader-louis-marinelli-on-his-conversion.html
[17] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/23/the-religious-right-has-an-unholy-crush-on-vladimir-putin_partner/
[18] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-praises-putin-calls-him-lion-christianity
[19] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/will-american-religious-right-groups-go-ahead-their-kremlin-summit
[20] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/utah-event-revives-the-strange-case-of-the-moscow-world-congress-of-families/
[21] https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-right-babies/
[22] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/trump-putin-alt-right-comintern/506015/
[23] http://thediplomat.com/2016/10/beyond-trump-and-putin-the-american-alt-rights-love-of-the-kremlins-policies/
[24] http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-connections-to-the-alt-right-2016-11
[25] http://www.salon.com/2016/12/08/how-the-alt-right-became-racist-a-short-history-of-hate-part-1/
[26] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/20/meet-the-moscow-mouthpiece-married-to-a-racist-alt-right-boss.html
[27] https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/01/meet-strongest-skinhead-who-keeps-bringing-white-n/
[28] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-09/putin-s-european-allies-don-t-need-his-money
[29] http://forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2197
[30] https://www.rt.com/shows/sputnik/
[31] http://heatst.com/world/now-russias-grip-on-uk-politics-is-obvious-but-its-always-been-there/
[32] http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/seumas-milne-political-firebrand-and-corbyns-guardian-angel-a3128121.html
[33] https://www.ft.com/content/a87747de-a713-11e4-b6bd-00144feab7de
[34] http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21643222-who-backs-putin-and-why-kremlins-pocket
[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset
[36] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/06/clinton-reset-button-gift-to-russian-fm-gets-lost-in-translation/
[37] https://twitter.com/mattsheffield
[38] https://praxis.ink/
[39] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Russia's Blueprint for Political Chaos: Alleged Election Hacks May Just Be Part of Vladimir Putin's Grand Game
[40] http://www.alternet.org/
[41] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
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