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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: We have covered the origin, activities and expansion of the Ukrainian Nazi Azov Battalion in numerous programs. Part of the Ukrainain armed forces, this Nazi unit:
- Has spawned a civil militia which achieved police powers in many Ukrainian cities. “. . . . But Ukraine observers and rights groups are sounding the alarm, because this was not a typical commencement, and the men are not police officers. They are far-right ultranationalists from the Azov movement, a controversial group with a military wing that has openly accepted self-avowed neo-Nazis, and a civil and political faction that has demonstrated intolerance toward minority groups. . . .”
- Has as its spokesman Roman Zvarych. In the 1980’s, Zvarych was the personal secretary to Jaroslav Stetzko, the wartime head of the Nazi collaborationist government in Ukraine. Stetzko implemented Nazi ethnic cleansing in Ukraine during World War II.
- Wields influence with in the Ministry of the Interior through Vadim Troyan, the former deputy commander of Azov who is now deputy minister of the interior. ” . . . . The deputy minister of the Interior—which controls the National Police—is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of Azov and Patriot of Ukraine. . . . Today, he’s deputy of the department running US-trained law enforcement in the entire nation. Earlier this month, RFE reported on National Police leadership admiring Stepan Bandera—a Nazi collaborator and Fascist whose troops participated in the Holocaust—on social media. The fact that Ukraine’s police is peppered with far-right supporters explains why neo-Nazis operate with impunity on the streets. . . .”
- Gets arms and training from the U.S., despite official restrictions on such activity. ” . . . . The research group Bellingcat proved that Azov had already received access to American grenade launchers, while a Daily Beast investigation showed that US trainers are unable to prevent aid from reaching white supremacists. And Azov itself had proudly posted a video of the unit welcoming NATO representatives. . . .”
- Is fulfilling their strategy of networking with Nazi and fascist elements abroad, including the U.S. ” . . . . FBI Special Agent Scott Bierwirth, in the criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday, noted that Right Brand Clothing’s Instagram page contained a photo of RAM members meeting with Olena Semenyaka, a leading figure within the fascist, neo-Nazi scene in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, Semenyaka is an important voice within the Militant Zone and National Corps organizations and the Pan-European Reconquista movement, all of which have ties to the notorious Azov Battalion. Bierwirth said Azov Battalion, now a piece of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for neo-Nazi symbolism and ideology and has participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacist organizations. . . . .”
- Is networking with members of a group called RAM, some of whom were arrested by the FBI upon their return from Europe. violence.
- Is utilizing Ukraine’s visa-free status with the EU to network with other European fascist groups. ” . . . . ‘Their English has gotten better,’ Hrytsenko said, referring to Azov members behind the group’s Western outreach. . . . . Another thing that has helped, Hrytsenko noted, is that Ukraine’s break from Russia and move toward the European Union has allowed Ukrainians visa-free travel, making Azov’s outreach easier logistically. . . . .”
- Is looking to connect with more “respectable” European right-wing groups than they have in the past, this as a possible vehicle for Ukraine’s entry into the EU. ” . . . . Skillt, the Swedish national who fought as a sniper in the Azov Battalion, is one of them [critics]. ‘I don’t mind [Azov] reaching out, but the ones they reach out to… Jesus,’ he told RFE/RL, in an allusion to RAM. He added that he had recently distanced himself from Azov because of that association and others with far-right groups in Europe. Skillt, who runs a private intelligence agency in Kyiv and said his clients ‘really don’t enjoy bad company,’ argued that the group has made a mistake by not reaching out more to right-wing conservatives who could help with ‘influential contacts in Europe [so] you don’t get branded a neo-Nazi.’ But Semenyaka described praise of Azov from foreign ultranationalist groups who are increasingly welcoming it as evidence that the organization is taking the right path. And she said it isn’t about to let up. Next, she said, Azov hopes to win over larger, more mainstream far-right and populist Western political forces who ‘can be our potential sympathizers.’ ‘If crises like Brexit and the refugee problem continue, in this case, partnerships with nationalist groups in Europe can be a kind of platform for our entry into the European Union.’ . . . ”
- Was awarded the job of election monitoring by the Ukrainian government in their recent elections. ” . . . . They are the ultranationalist National Militia, street vigilantes with roots in the battle-tested Azov Battalion that emerged to defend Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists but was also accused of possible war crimes and neo-Nazi sympathies. Yet despite the controversy surrounding it, the National Militia was granted permission by the Central Election Commission to officially monitor Ukraine’s presidential election on March 31. . . .”
Supplementing discussion about the Azov milieu networking with foreign fascists, we note that alleged Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter Brent Tarrant had apparently networked with Azov during a visit to Ukraine:
- Brent Tarrant, allege Christchurch, New Zealand, Mosque shooter, had apparently visited Ukraine. ” . . . . His manifesto alludes to visits to Poland, Ukraine, Iceland and Argentina as well. . . .”
- Tarrant may have been a beneficiary of the aforementioned visa-free travel that EU association has for Ukraine. “. . . . Three quarters of them say the country is headed in the wrong direction, despite the fact that Ukraine has moved closer to Europe (it now has visa-free travel to the EU, for instance). . . .”
- Even The New York Times noted the possible contact between Azov and Tarrant. “. . . . The Ukrainian far right also appears to have ties in other countries. Australian Brenton Tarrant, accused of slaughtering 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand, mentioned a visit to Ukraine in his manifesto, and some reports alleged that he had contacts with the ultra-right. The Soufan Center, a research group specializing on security, has recently alleged possible links between Tarrant and the Azov Battalion. . . .”
- A private intelligence group–the Soufan Center–has linked Tarrant to the Azov Battalion. ” . . . . .In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attacks, links have emerged between the shooter, Brent Tarrant, and a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist, white supremacist paramilitary organization called the Azov Battalion. Tarrant’s manifesto alleges that he visited the country during his many travels abroad, and the flak jacket that Tarrant wore during the assault featured a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion. . . .”
Concluding with a piece of grotesque, unintentional comedy, The New York Times cited the fact that Mr. Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, is a non-practicing Jew as proof that Russian statements about Ukraine being dominated by Nazis and anti-Semites is nothing but propaganda. The fact that the Azov’s Nationa Corps militia served as election monitors was not mentioned. ” . . . . the near total silence on his Jewish background has demolished a favorite trope of Russian propaganda — that Ukraine is awash with neo-Nazis intent on creating a Slavic version of the Third Reich. . . .”
1a. The election of a non-practicing Jew as president of Ukraine is being hailed as proof that the obvious return of fascism to Ukrainian power structure is just “Russian propaganda.”
. . . . A few far-right nationalists have tried, in vain, to make an issue of the fact that Mr. Zelensky is Jewish. But the near total silence on his Jewish background has demolished a favorite trope of Russian propaganda — that Ukraine is awash with neo-Nazis intent on creating a Slavic version of the Third Reich. . . .
2. The milieu of the Azov Battalion is networking with fascists and Nazis from other countries, including the U.S. Four members of a group called RAM (Rise Above Movement) were arrested by the FBI following their trip to Europe, during which they networked with elements from the Azov Battalion and associated organizations.
Members of RAM have been charged in connection with the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Note than Olena Semyanaka, who met with the RAM contingent, is prominent in the “Azov Movement.”
A violent white supremacist gang known as the Rise Above Movement and two others traveled to Europe to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday and later met with a paramilitary chief there, federal prosecutors say.
Robert Rundo, a 28-year-old Huntington Beach, California, resident, 29-year-old Michael Paul Miselis, of Lawndale, California, and 25-year-old Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beachwent to Germany, Italy and Ukraine in spring 2018 not only to celebrate, but also to meet with European white supremacist groups, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint against Rundo unsealed this week.
FBI agents arrested Rundo on Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport, said Katherine Gulotta, a spokesman for the agency in Los Angeles. He had been arrested in Central America before being returned to the U.S.
Two others, 25-year-old Robert Boman of Torrance, California, and 22-year-old Tyler Laube of Redondo Beach, California, were arrested Wednesday.
A fourth RAM member, 38-year-old Aaron Eason of Anza, California, surrendered to the FBI over the weekend.
The four are charged with a series of violent attacks during events in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino, California, in 2017.
Prosecutors said the four men used the internet to coordinate “combat training,” recruit members and organize riots.
“Every American has the right to peacefully organize, march and protest in support of their beliefs — but no one has the right to violently assault their political opponents,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said in a statement.
The arrests and charges are the second batch filed this month against members of RAM, a violent white supremacist group that practices mixed martial arts and has been accused of showing up for rallies prepared to attack people.
Prosecutors in Charlottesville, Virginia, charged four other California men with traveling to that city on Aug. 11–12, 2017, to take part in and attack people at the “Unite the Right” rally.
Michael Paul Miselis, a 29-year-old Lawndale, California, resident, 34-year-old Thomas Walter Gillen of Redondo Beach, California, 24-year-old Cole Evan White of Clayton, California, and Daley are awaiting a court hearing in Virginia. They are also charged with rioting and conspiracy to riot.
Rundo is the owner of Right Brand Clothing, which promotes white supremacist themes and logos. The FBI believes he ran RAM’s now-suspended Twitter account.
RAM has been making entreaties overseas, including in Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe. The FBI said Rundo, Miselis and Daley met with European white supremacy extremist groups, “including a group known as White Rex.”
FBI Special Agent Scott Bierwirth, in the criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday, noted that Right Brand Clothing’s Instagram page contained a photo of RAM members meeting with Olena Semenyaka, a leading figure within the fascist, neo-Nazi scene in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, Semenyaka is an important voice within the Militant Zone and National Corps organizations and the Pan-European Reconquista movement, all of which have ties to the notorious Azov Battalion.
Bierwirth said Azov Battalion, now a piece of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for neo-Nazi symbolism and ideology and has participated in training and radicalizing U.S.-based white supremacist organizations.
Rundo was filmed reciting the “14 Words” pledge popular in white supremacist circles.
“I’m a big supporter of the fourteen, I’ll say that,” Rundo told fellow RAM members on the video.
The rioting and conspiracy charges stem from a “Make America Great Again” rally on March 25, 2017, in Huntington Beach. The FBI said RAM members split from the main rally and attacked counter-protesters, and Rundo, Boman and Laube hit a number of people, including two journalists.
Daley, who is not charged in California, was also at the Huntington Beach rally, Bierwirth noted.
The violence was later celebrated by RAM members online, noted on neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, and used in solicitation for others to attend the Berkeley rally and combat training to be held in a park in San Clemente.
“Front page of the stormer we did it fam,” Daley texted another RAM member on March 25, 2017.
At the Berkeley rally, on April 17, 2017, Rundo, Boman and Eason attacked multiple people, Bierwirth wrote. Rundo was later arrested after punching a “defenseless person” and a Berkeley police officer.
Again, Bierwirth noted, the attacks were celebrated online, with Boman posting photos of himself attacking people and RAM members taking part in combat training.
Bierwirth also wrote that Rundo and other RAM members participated in an “Anti-Islamic Law” rally in San Bernardino on June 10, 2017. The rally was part of a nationwide demonstration put on by anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America. According to Bierwirth, RAM members took part in violent attacks at the ACT event. . . .
3a. According to the following RFE/RL report, Azov has ambitions that go far beyond training American neo-Nazis. The group wants to create a coalition of European neo-Nazi groups, with Azov at its core.
As Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, told RFE/RL, “We think globally.” Expanding the “Azov movement” abroad is one of the group’s goals.
The training Azov is providing these foreign neo-Nazi groups goes beyond military training. It also included training in the propaganda techniques used to mainstream Azov, including setting up youth camps. When American neo-Nazi Greg Johnson recently gave a speech at an Azov gathering he declared that, “this is not a speaking tour, it’s a listening tour. I really want to learn how maybe we can do things better in the United States and Western Europe.” Semenyaka also asserted that when the RAM members recently visited, “they came to learn our ways” and “showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has.” Semenyaka denies any military training was provided.
The article also points out how Azov has been consciously attempting to downplay its over neo-Nazism without compromising its core neo-Nazi ideals for the purpose of expanding its popular appeal and bringing the movement into the mainstream.
Interestingly, Michael Skillt, the Swedish white nationalist sniper who was one of the first foreign fighters to join Azov, appears to have soured somewhat on the group, arguing that it should have avoided the overt neo-Nazi image and attempted to find common cause with more mainstream right-wing European movements.
Skillt is currently running a private intelligence agency in Kyiv.
Ominously, Semenyaka asserts that Azov cozying up to Europe’s mainstream conservative parties is next on Azov’s agenda, with the plan of turning these mainstream European conservatives into potential sympathizers for the purpose of getting Ukraine allowed into the European Union. As Semenyaka puts it, “If crises like Brexit and the refugee problem continue, in this case, partnerships with nationalist groups in Europe can be a kind of platform for our entry into the European Union.”
So Azov clearly has big ambitions for the mainstreaming of its movement across the West:
Robert Rundo, the muscly leader of a California-based white-supremacist group that refers to itself as the “premier MMA (mixed martial arts) club of the Alt-Right,” unleashed a barrage of punches against his opponent.
But Rundo, a 28-year-old Huntington Beach resident who would be charged and arrested in October over a series of violent attacks in his hometown, Berkeley, and San Bernardino in 2017, wasn’t fighting on American streets.
It was April 27 and Rundo, whose Rise Above Movement (RAM) has been described by ProPublica as “explicitly violent,” was swinging gloved fists at a Ukrainian contender in the caged ring of a fight club associated with the far-right ultranationalist Azov group in Kyiv.
A video of Rundo’s fight, which was streamed live on Facebook (below), shows that the American lost the bout. But for Rundo, who thanked his hosts with a shout of “Slava Ukrayini!” (Glory to Ukraine), it was a victory of another sort: RAM’s outreach tour, which included stops in Italy and Germany to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday and spread its alt-right agenda, brought the two radical groups closer together.
For the Ukrainians, too, the benefits extended outside the ring. It marked a step toward legitimizing Azov among its counterparts in the West and set in motion what appears to be its next project: the expansion of its movement abroad.
“We think globally,” Olena Semenyaka, the international secretary for Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, told RFE/RL in an interview at one of the group’s Kyiv offices last week.
The Rundo fight has received fresh scrutiny following an FBI criminal complaint against him unsealed last month that preceded his arrest. In it, Special Agent Scott Bierwirth wrote that Azov’s military wing is “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”
Washington has armed Ukraine with Javelin antitank missile systems and trained its armed forces as they fight Russia-backed separatists in the east.
But it has banned arms from going to Azov members and forbidden them from participating in U.S.-led military training because of their far-right ideology.
It was Azov’s Semenyaka who hosted Rundo along with fellow Americans Michael Miselis and Benjamin Daley, RAM members who participated in last year’s “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that was the backdrop for the death of 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer.
This month, in Kyiv, she hosted and translated for American Greg Johnson, a white nationalist who edits the website Counter-Currents, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “an epicenter of ‘academic’ white nationalism.”
Over the past year, she’s made several outreach trips to Western Europe to meet with far-right groups and spread Azov’s ultranationalist message.
And when she’s not doing it herself, Semenyaka said, that task is sometimes given to Denis Nikitin, a prominent Russian soccer hooligan and MMA fighter who founded the white nationalist clothing label White Rex and has a garnered a large following across Europe and the United States. In November 2017, the two traveled together to Warsaw and participated in the Europe Of The Future 2 conference organized by Polish white supremacist group and “ally” Szturmowcy (Stormtroopers), where they were meant to speak alongside American Richard Spencer, Semenyaka said. But Polish authorities barred Spencer from entering the country and he was unable to attend.
Often in Kyiv when he’s not traveling through Europe or visiting family in Germany, Nikitin operates as a sort of unofficial Azov ambassador-at-large and organizes MMA bouts at the Reconquista Club, the ultranationalist haunt where Rundo fought. A combination restaurant, sports center, and fight club, Semenyaka said Rundo and Nikitin met there and “exchanged ideas.”
In the current climate, with an apparent shift toward nationalism in parts of Europe, “it’s possible for far-right leaders to come to power now and — we hope — form a coalition,” Semenyaka told RFE/RL. And Azov, she added, “wants a position at the front of this movement.”
From Battlefield To Political Arena
The Azov Battalion was formed in May 2014 in response to the Russia-backed separatist advance sweeping across eastern Ukraine. Comprised of volunteers, it has roots in a group of hard-core, far-right soccer fans, including many violent hooligans, commonly known in Eastern Europe as “ultras.”
With Ukraine’s weak military at the time caught flat-footed, Azov and other such battalions did much of the heavy fighting in the early days of the war, which has killed more than 10,300 people.
But it was Azov that attracted those of far-right persuasion, including at least three Americans and many others from Western nations. One such fighter was Mikael Skillt, a Swede who trained as a sniper in the Swedish Army and previously described himself as an “ethnic nationalist.”
The Azov Battalion flaunts a symbol similar to that of the former Nazi Wolfsangel. (The group claims it is an amalgam of the letters N and I for “national idea.”) It has been accused by international human rights groups, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), of committing and allowing serious human rights abuses, including torture.
Following a 2015 deal known as the Minsk Accords that was meant to be a road map to end the fighting but did little more than turn down the intensity, the Azov Battalion was officially incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard and its leadership shifted focus from the battlefield to the political arena.
The Azov National Corps entered the political fray in October 2016, appointing battalion commander Andriy Biletsky to lead it. Biletsky was previously tied to other far-right groups and, in 2010, reportedly said that the nation’s mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”
The party incorporated two other far-right organizations, including Patriot of Ukraine, which according to the Kharkiv Human Rights Group “espoused xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideas and was engaged in violent attacks against migrants, foreign students in Kharkiv, and those opposing its views.”
As RFE/RL reported at the time, the National Corps’ inaugural ceremony arguably had pomp more reminiscent of 1930s Germany than of postwar democracy. It included nationalist chants, raised fists, and a torchlit march through central Kyiv.
In January, in another flashy ceremony, Azov introduced a new paramilitary force that it calls the National Militia. On a snowy evening, some 600 of mostly young men in matching fatigues marched from Kyiv’s central Independence Square to a lighted fortress on a hillside in the Ukrainian capital, where they swore an oath to clean the streets of illegal alcohol, drug traffickers, and illegal gambling establishments.
While not officially part of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry or any other government body legally authorized to enforce the law, the National Militia has more often than not been allowed to establish what it considers “Ukrainian order” on the streets of cities across the country. In many cases, that has meant attacking LGBT events and Romany camps, actions for which members of the group have not been prosecuted.
Combined, these groups are known as the “Azov movement,” which includes more than 10,000 active members, according to Semenyaka.
‘State Within The State’
But Azov’s success in growing the movement so far has not translated into much political success at home.
While the party has not yet been tested in parliamentary elections, less than 1 percent of eligible voters said they would vote for National Corps or its fellow far-right group Right Sector, according to June polling by Kyiv-based Razumkov Center.
Those groups didn’t fare much better in July, when GFK Ukraine asked whether voters would support an alliance of National Corps, Right Sector, and a third far-right party, Svoboda, and only 2 percent responded positively.
At the same time, however, Azov believes its influence has grown. In an October 29 post on Facebook, Semenyaka went so far as to say that “just within 4 years, the Azov Movement has become a small state in the state.”
Much of the success has come from recruiting new, mostly young, members, who it hopes will come to the polls in next year’s parliamentary elections.
Azov has done so with youth camps, including some that teach children as young as 9 years old military tactics and far-right ideology, recreation centers, lecture halls, and far-right education programs.
It has also utilized the reach of social media, particularly Facebook and Telegram, where the group recruits and promotes patriotism, nationalism, and a sport-focused lifestyle. Much of that effort caters to Ukrainians coming of age in a time of war and as illiberal governments rise on the country’s periphery, said Ukrainian sociologist Anya Hrytsenko, who researches far-right groups.
“Azov has made far-right nationalism fashionable, and they have been strategic in how they portray themselves, shedding the typical neo-Nazi trappings,” Hrytsenko told RFE/RL. “This has helped them to move from a subculture to the mainstream.”
Explaining that strategy, Semenyaka, who has been photographed holding a flag with a swastika and making a Nazi salute, said that “more radical” language was used previously, such as during the height of the war in 2014, when the Azov Battalion needed fighters, “because it was required by the situation.”
Now, she said, the strategy is to “moderate” in order to appeal to a broader base in Ukraine and abroad. But only to an extent.
“We are trying to become mainstream without compromising some of our core ideas,” she continued, adding that “radical statements…scare away more of society.”
And in its recalibration, Azov is not only thinking of Ukrainians but of like-minded groups abroad. Hence the addition of members like Semenyaka and collaboration with Nikitin, who literally speak the language of their counterparts abroad.
“Their English has gotten better,” Hrytsenko said, referring to Azov members behind the group’s Western outreach.
Nikitin, who could not be reached for an interview, is a Russian and German speaker.
Another thing that has helped, Hrytsenko noted, is that Ukraine’s break from Russia and move toward the European Union has allowed Ukrainians visa-free travel, making Azov’s outreach easier logistically.
Making Friends In The West
In recent months, Semenyaka and other Azov members have taken advantage of that, making several visits to EU countries to meet numerous European counterparts, according to investigations by RFE/RL and the open-source investigative group Bellingcat.
Semenyaka participated in and blogged about the Young Europe Forum in Dresden in August alongside far-right sympathizers from groups in Germany, Italy, and Austria. Specifically, she said she has met with those from groups that Azov considers close allies — for instance, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Italy’s CasaPound, Poland’s Szturmowcy, and Germany’s National Democratic Party and Alternative For Germany.
Other Azov members have traveled to meet counterparts in Baltic states and Croatia, she added.
…
Asked about the FBI allegations in the criminal complaint first reported by The New York Times — that Azov was “training and radicalizing” American far-right groups — she said it was not and dared U.S. authorities to “provide real evidence of this.”
In the case of Rundo, Miselis, and Daley, Semenyaka said, “they came to learn our ways” and “showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has.”
On the visit, the three Americans also attended a concert by the white-nationalist metal band Sokyra Peruna, where concertgoers made Nazi salutes and waved Nazi flags. They also posed for photographs to promote Rundo’s The Right Brand clothing line at Kyiv’s Independence Square, joined Azov members at Kyiv’s famous outdoor gym, Kachalka, for a weight-training session, and fought at the Reconquista Club. Rundo even got White Rex’s Viking warrior logo tattooed on his left calf.
“But there was no military training,” Semenyaka insisted.
Counter-Currents’ Johnson was perhaps the most recent American to ask for Azov’s help. In a rare public appearance, the alt-right ideologue visited Kyiv at the invitation of Semenyaka to lecture on October 16 about his Manifesto Of White Nationalism. Semenyaka translated for Johnson, who spoke to a small but crowded room at Azov’s Plomin (Flame) cultural center.
In a video of the event published on Azov’s Plomin YouTube channel, Johnson, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as “one of the leading voices of the far-right” and “an international figure for white nationalism,” doesn’t hide his motive for the trip: to learn from Ukraine’s ultranationalists and their successes.
“This is not a speaking tour, it’s a listening tour. I really want to learn how maybe we can do things better in the United States and Western Europe,” Johnson said, lamenting the state of the alt-right in the United States.
“It was a very, very influential and powerful movement for a very short time,” he said of America’s alt-right movement, without providing a precise time frame.
“And at the peak of it, we had a network that extended all the way to the office of the president,” he continued, in what appeared to be a reference to Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and alt-right figure.
“There were very few degrees of separation between people who were making ideas…and people who were in a position to make political policy, and that was totally destroyed,” Johnson added.
He praised Ukraine’s far-right groups, who he said were capable of “real street activism.”
Associations Too Much For Some In Azov
While Azov’s cooperation with groups like RAM has been largely welcomed by the group’s members, some have found it uncomfortable.
Skillt, the Swedish national who fought as a sniper in the Azov Battalion, is one of them.
“I don’t mind [Azov] reaching out, but the ones they reach out to… Jesus,” he told RFE/RL, in an allusion to RAM. He added that he had recently distanced himself from Azov because of that association and others with far-right groups in Europe.
Skillt, who runs a private intelligence agency in Kyiv and said his clients “really don’t enjoy bad company,” argued that the group has made a mistake by not reaching out more to right-wing conservatives who could help with “influential contacts in Europe [so] you don’t get branded a neo-Nazi.”
But Semenyaka described praise of Azov from foreign ultranationalist groups who are increasingly welcoming it as evidence that the organization is taking the right path. And she said it isn’t about to let up.
Next, she said, Azov hopes to win over larger, more mainstream far-right and populist Western political forces who “can be our potential sympathizers.”
“If crises like Brexit and the refugee problem continue, in this case, partnerships with nationalist groups in Europe can be a kind of platform for our entry into the European Union.”
3. Check out Ukraine’s new collection of poll-watchers for the upcoming presidential election on March 31st: Azov Battalion. Or, rather, Azov’s street vigilante offshoot, the National Militia. They’ve seriously been granted permission by the Central Election Commission to officially monitor the elections.
But the election commission is apparently rethinking that decision following National Militia’s the threats of violence. According to National Militia’s spokesman, Ihor Vdovin, the group will follow the instructions of its commander, Ihor Mikhailenko, “if law enforcers turn a blind eye to outright violations and don’t want to document them.” So what were Mikahilenko’s instructions? “If we need to punch someone in the face in the name of justice, we will do this without hesitation.” Yep, the commander of the National Militia is already openly declaring that the group’s members will punch people if they see election violations. Which is obviously attempted open intimidation of the electorate. Members of the Roma or LGBT community are going to be a lot less likely to vote if they see one of the people who previously violently attacked them standing there as a poll monitor. And that’s all why the election commission is rethinking the granting of National Militia this observers status. Rethinking, but not actually rescinding.
It’s all a pretty big example of why the relative lack of electoral successes for the Ukrainian far right aren’t an accurate reflection of the growing power of these groups. For starters, part of the reason for the lack of electoral success of the far right parties is the successful co-opting of their agenda by the rest of the more mainstream parties. And that mainstream co-opting of the far right includes moves like deputizing National Militia and giving them election observer powers. In addition, as the article notes, while Azov’s political wing, National Corps, isn’t winning over the support of the broader electorate (polls put National Corps support at around 1 percent), but its slickly produced videos are winning over growing numbers of young men to the far right cause. Recall how National Corps advocates that Ukraine rearm itself with nuclear weapons.
So Azov’s National Corps may not be winning elections, but winning elections isn’t really their path to power. Growing in numbers and relying on a mix of naked shows of force and threats of violence is Azov’s path to power. And that strategy is clearly working, as evidenced by the fact that they’re currently empowered to monitor elections despite their inability to win them:
They patrol the streets of the Ukrainian capital in matching urban camouflage and march in lockstep through Kyiv with torches.
They attack minority groups, including Roma and LGBT people. And some of them have trained with visiting American white supremacists.
They are the ultranationalist National Militia, street vigilantes with roots in the battle-tested Azov Battalion that emerged to defend Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists but was also accused of possible war crimes and neo-Nazi sympathies.
Yet despite the controversy surrounding it, the National Militia was granted permission by the Central Election Commission to officially monitor Ukraine’s presidential election on March 31. . . .
4a. Brent Tarrant, allege Christchurch, New Zealand, Mosque shooter, had apparently visited Ukraine.
. . . . His manifesto alludes to visits to Poland, Ukraine, Iceland and Argentina as well. . . .
4b. Tarrant may have been a beneficiary of the aforementioned visa-free travel that EU association has for Ukraine.
“Tragicomedy;” The Economist; 3/16/2019; pp. 44–45.
. . . . Three quarters of them say the country is headed in the wrong direction, despite the fact that Ukraine has moved closer to Europe (it now has visa-free travel to the EU, for instance). . . .
4c. Even The New York Times noted the possible contact between Azov and Tarrant.
. . . . The Ukrainian far right also appears to have ties in other countries. Australian Brenton Tarrant, accused of slaughtering 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand, mentioned a visit to Ukraine in his manifesto, and some reports alleged that he had contacts with the ultra-right. The Soufan Center, a research group specializing on security, has recently alleged possible links between Tarrant and the Azov Battalion. . . .
4e. A private intelligence group–the Soufan Center–has linked Tarrant to the Azov Battalion.
In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attacks, links have emerged between the shooter, Brent Tarrant, and a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist, white supremacist paramilitary organization called the Azov Battalion. Tarrant’s manifesto alleges that he visited the country during his many travels abroad, and the flak jacket that Tarrant wore during the assault featured a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion. . . .
The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand Year Reich
It’s that time again. Time to note that a neo-Nazi went on another murder spree. This time it’s two separate murder sprees involving three apparent neo-Nazis:
First, there was the mass shooting event at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California yesterday. The 19 year old shooter, Santino William Legan, didn’t give a clear reason for why he attacked the festival, but when someone asked him why he was doing it during the shooting, Legan reportedly replied, “Because I’m really angry.”
But it’s pretty unambiguously that Legan was motivated by a far right ideology. Shortly before the shooting started, Legan posted a picture on Instagram with a caption that told people to read Might Is Right, a 19th-century proto-fascist book considered a key text in the white supremacy movement. In addition, on his last social media post, he complained of paved-over nature and towns “overcrowd[ed]” with “hoards of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats.”
It’s not known if Legan had ties to any groups but there were also reports of a of a second suspect that authorities are still investigating. So this may or may not have been a lone wolf neo-Nazi attack, but it was definitely an attack by someone who wanted to promote far right ideas:
“Van Breen told the Associated Press someone in the audience shouted: “Why are you doing this?” and the gunman replied, “Because I’m really angry.””
So the shooter, who is now dead, was “really angry” about something. What was he angry about? We don’t know at this point, but the fact that he was promoting a far right book shortly before the shooting gives us an idea:
Given the bewildering nature of the attack, at this point the message the shooter appeared to be trying to send was just a generic promotion of the far right ideology he was clearly taken up with. And the guy was clearly suicidal. But he may not have been operating alone:
But whether or not he was working alone or as part of a group, Legan was definitely trying to promote an ideology through the promotion of the book “Might Makes Right”. A book that is wildly popular with neo-Nazis:
“A 19th-century text of unknown authorship (its origins have been attributed to everyone from British author Arthur Desmond to Call of the Wild novelist Jack London), Might Is Right has long been considered a key text in the white supremacist movement, says Keegan Hankes, a senior analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project. “It’s widely popular and present among ethnocentric white nationalists of all levels, from suit-and-tie white supremacists to neo-Nazis,” Hankes tells Rolling Stone.”
So that’s what we know about one of the recent neo-Nazi shootings. It’s also worth recalling how the Azov Battalion was coordinating with the California-based RAM neo-Nazi group. It’s a recent example of Azov networking with people in North America. Given that this shooting happened in California it would be interesting to know if the shooter was at all in contact with RAM...or Azov.
It’s the next story about a neo-Nazi murder spree that makes the question of whether or not Legan was in contact with RAM (or Azov) such an interesting question.
Here’s what we know about the two neo-Nazi teens still on the run from authorities in Canada after they killed three people last week during a road trip. Interestingly, it appears that at least one of the two may have been inspired by the Azov Battalion.
The teens, Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, were originally reported missing after their burned out camper trust was found. It turns out the teens left a trail of far right chatter on the online forums for Steam, the video game platform. One Steam user
The two have Facebook pages that are associated with an “Illusive Gameing” account. The banner image on that account’s profile features a modified Soviet flag, but the profile picture is the heraldic eagle of Nazi Germany. So there’s a strange Soviet/Nazi blending going with these two.
As we’re going to see, it turns out that Bryer Schmegelsky’s grandparents fled from Ukraine during WWII and, according to his father, the family always thought of themselves as ethnically Russian the the Nazis were the enemy. The father is expressing disbelief that his son could have been a neo-Nazi based on that family history, although he does acknowledge that his son thought Nazi paraphernalia was “cool”.
In addition, one of the online Steam accounts associated with the two teen’s Steam accounts uses the logo of the Azov Battalion. There’s an online Steam account associated with the two teens that claims to be located in Russia, near Moscow, and belongs to several groups for fans of sexualized Japanese animation. That account also used the heraldic eagle of the Nazis. So these two teens were potentially chatting online with people associated with the Azov Battalion and Russian neo-Nazis:
“The teens have Facebook pages under their own names and both are linked to an account called “Illusive Gameing.” That username, complete with the misspelling, also shows up on YouTube, as well as video-game networks Twitch and Steam. The accounts share similar imagery and themes, including the Communist icon, far-right politics, sexualized Japanese anime and the survivalist video game Rust.”
So the “Illusive Gameing” username appears to be their shared online gaming group, with accounts being created on various social media platforms. And it’s on that “Illusive Gameing” Facebook that we find the heraldic eagle of Nazi Germany as the profile pic. We find that same image on the Steam account of a group that claims to be located near Moscow. That Steam account was connected to the two teens, along with another Steam account that uses the logo of the Azov Battalion. And one Steam users claims Schmegelsky would repeatedly praise Hitler:
So it’s clear the two were actively engaged in far right activity on Steam and other social media making it highly likely they were in contact with other neo-Nazis. Was that Steam account using the Azov Battalion logo directly associated with the Azov Battalion’s neo-Nazis or was it some other random fan of Azov? That seems like a crucial question to answer at this point.
Now, here’s a piece where Bryer Schmegelsky’s dad expresses disbelief that his son could have been a neo-Nazi because his family fled from Ukraine during WWII and always thought of themselves as ethnically Russian:
“Alan Schmegelsky said that his son took him to an Army Surplus store eight months ago in his hometown of Port Alberni, B.C., and that Bryer was excited about the Nazi items there.”
The father was disturbed by his son’s excitement about the Nazi items, but he still couldn’t believe his son was actually becoming a believer in Nazi ideology:
And that all makes family background of Bryer Schmegelsky an intriguing part of this story, because if Schmegelsky really did grow up in a family that saw itself as ethnic Russian Ukrainians who taught the kids that the Nazis were the enemy it’s a demonstration of the power of online propaganda that a kid from that family could end up going on a neo-Nazi-inspired murder spree. But that’s what evidence is pointing towards at this point.
So that’s the update on the two recent sprees involving young neo-Nazis. In both cases, there’s no readily discernible motive for the killings. Other than the fact that neo-Nazis appear to feel that mass killings are a great advertisement for their cause.
@Pterrafractyl–
Yes, indeed, and “Might Is Right” also has links to: Anton LaVey, Katia Lane (wife of David Lane of the Order and 14 Words fame) and Michael Moynihan.
This is part of the vile Feral House milieu.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-437-counter-culture-fascism/
Excerpt:
” . . .Among the fellow travellers of LaVey are people who espouse Odinist religion. Within that milieu, in turn, are people of a truly murderous bent. Note the presence in this Satanist/Nazi milieu of the wife of convicted Order murderer David Lane. (For more about The Order, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 89, 386, 399, and the various programs discussing the topics of OJ Simpson case, the Oklahoma City bombing, and Serpent’s Walk. Important background information on The Order can be obtained from RFA’s 10–13—available from Spitfire.)
. . . LaVey, who is often only seen as a libertarian maverick, called for a new kind of fascism in a 1994 interview with Michael Moynihan in Seconds. Moynihan’s essay, ‘The Faustian Spirit of Fascism,’ was also published in the Church of Satan’s magazine, The Black Flame. LaVey even contributed an introduction to a new edition of ‘Ragnar Redbeard’s Might is Right, a Nietzschean and Social Darwinist tract first published in 1896 which LaVey had liberally plagiarized in his own book, The Satanic Bible. The editor of the new edition of Might is Right is listed as Katia Lane. She is the wife of David Lane, an Odinist leader of the high-profile far right paramilitary group called the Order, who is now serving a life sentence for conspiring to murder a Denver radio personality named Alan Berg
(Idem.)
17. The afterword of Might is Right (edited by the wife of convicted Order killer David Lane) was penned by George Hawthorne, head of the Ra Ho Wa racist musical group. Afterword author George Hawthorne is also the founder of Resistance Records, now owned by the National Alliance. (For more about Resistance Records and the National Alliance, see FTR#211.) Before being appropriated by the National Alliance, Resistance Records was distributed by the fascist Liberty Lobby. In charge of this distribution was Todd Blodgett, a former Reagan White House staff member. (For more about the Nazi underpinnings of the Reagan administration, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 180, 332, 421.)
The author of Might is Right‘s afterword is, arguably, even more; ‘devilish’ than LaVey. He is none other than George Hawthorne, head of the white racist musical group Ra Ho Wa (Racial Holy War) and founder of Resistance Records, whom Michael Moynihan interviewed for Seconds and The Black Flame, Moynihan is also thanked in the new edition of Might is Right for helping make the book possible.
(Idem.)
18. Promoting and extolling Charles Manson, the Abraxas milieu came into contact with James Mason, among other members of the American Nazi Party.) “In the mid-1980’s, Adam Parfrey formed Amok Press, the precursor to Feral House, with Ken Swezey of the Amok catalog. Amok’s first book, Michael, was an English translation of Nazi Prpaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ sole novel. Parfrey’s next book, Apocalypse Culture was followed in 1988 by The Manson File, which was edited by Nikolas Schreck (the boyfriend of LaVey’s daughter Zeena) in collaboration with Boyd Rice and others. Rice regularly visited Manson, and even campaigned to get him released from jail through an Abraxas spin-off called the Friends of Justice.” (Idem.) . . .”
Great stuff.
Keep up the great work!
Dave
Oh look at that: The FBI just arrested a member of the US army for planning domestic terror attacks. The army private, Jarrett Wiliam Smith, was charged with one count of distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction. Using the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Smith discussed with an undercover FBI agent his plans for a car bomb attack against an unnamed major cable news network’s headquarters and distributed bomb-making materials. He also talked about attacks against members of antifa and interested in finding like-minded individuals to help him.
And, surprise!, it turns out Smith has been in contact with the Azov Battalion. Yep. As early as 2016, Smith talked about traveling to Ukraine to join Azov. He joined the US military instead in June of 2017. After joining the military, Smith used Facebook to connect with another American who had traveled to Ukraine in 2017 to 2019 to fight with group similar to Azov (so presumably another neo-Nazi militia). This unnamed America reportedly acted as Smith’s mentor. So we’ve hit the point where the foreign extremists who have traveled to Ukraine are already acting as mentors for a next wave of foreign extremists. In this case, foreign extremists who happen to be Americans including an aspiring domestic terrorist:
“Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was charged with one count of distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction. As early as 2016, he also discussed joining the thousands of men traveling to Ukraine to fight alongside the far-right paramilitary group Azov Battalion, according to the FBI.”
So the guy has an interest in joining a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine, but instead he joins the US army and networks online with an American who traveled to Ukraine to join a different extremist group. It’s an example of how the influence of the far right groups operating in Ukraine doesn’t rely on people actually traveling to Ukraine with the internet and encrypted communication apps. And Smith doesn’t need to travel to Ukraine to share his bomb-making knowledge. He was readily sharing that information online...in this case with an undercover FBI agent which is what led to his arrest. But it’s clear he’s been communication with a number of other people online so who knows how many people he’s been sharing this knowledge with:
And keep in mind that that arrest is giving us a preview of the kind of damage that just one person with military training could create. As former FBI agent Ali Soufan recently testified before Congress, there’s an estimated 17,000 foreign fights who have traveled to Ukraine to gain paramilitary experience:
So with that chilling number of 17,000 foreign fighters — gaining paramilitary experience while they create a global network of far right extremists — in mind, here’s a Vice piece from back in July that reminds us that Ukraine really is becoming a kind of nexus for the international far right. Which is precisely what the Azov Battalion has been overtly working on doing all along:
“Researchers warn that Ukraine is radicalizing far-right foreign fighters in the same way Syria has with jihadis — albeit on a smaller scale — creating a global network of combat-tested extremists who pose a security threat that is now beginning to manifest itself.”
A global network of combat-tested far right extremists is now a thing and Ukraine is its hub. Azov has become the ISIS of white supremacy. Which happens to be exactly what Azov set out to do: make Ukraine the hub of an international network of combat-tested extremists who can get combat experience on the battlefields of Ukraine and take that experience back to their home countries:
“Olena Semenyaka, Azov’s international secretary, boasted last year that the movement had “become a small state [with]in the state.””
A “small state within the state.” That’s how Azov’s international secretary and spokesperson Olena Semenyaka described Azov last year. A state within a state where Nazis and far right fellow travelers around the world can come and safely gather, network, train, and coordinate without fear of surveillance or harassment by Ukraine’s state security services.
So as the story of Jarrett William Smith’s domestic terror plot unfolds, keep in mind that Smith is exactly the kind of ‘lone wolf’ terrorist this global Nazi network based out of Ukraine has set out to mass produce.
Here’s an update on the story of the former US Army Soldier, Jarret William Smith, who was arrested after disseminating bomb-making instructions and expressing a desire to attack a major cable news headquarters and kill members of antifa. Recall how, before joining the Army in 2017, Smith expressed a desire to travel to Ukraine and join the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. He later got in contact with an American who had already traveled to Ukraine and joined a different far right militia and reportedly acted as a kind of mentor for Smith. We now know the identity of that American Smith was in contact with and which Ukrainian militia he was involved with: Craig Lang, a 29 year old who joined Right Sector.
But there’s much more to Lang’s story. It turns out Lang is one of two Army vets implicated in the 2018 murder of couple in Florida. Lang, along with Alex Zwiefelhofer, are accused of robbing and then killing the couple in an effort to get money to travel to Venezuela to “participate in an armed conflict against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” Zwiefelhofer also fought with Right Sector, which he told the FBI and US Customs agents in September of 2016 after he returned to the US. Lang and Zwiefelhofer later traveled to Kenya in an attempt to get into Sudan for the ostensible purpose of fighting Al-Shabab but they were detained at the South Sudan border and returned to the US.
But Lang wasn’t exclusively in Right Sector. After leaving Right Sector he joined the Georgian National Legion which is also fighting in Ukraine.
Zwiefelhofer is currently being held in Wisconsin whereas Lang is being held in Ukraine and awaiting a court hearing in the city of Vinnitsya. Lang was apparently picked up by Ukrainian border guards after he was returning from Moldova. It’s unclear why he was in Moldova but we are told Lang was detained by the Ukrainian officials due to an international warrant.
We’re also told in the article below that Lang and Smith were in contact in 2016, which is a year before Smith joined the US Army. The previous Vice article stated that the FBI said Smith only got into contact with Lang after he joined the US Army in June of 2017, but the article below indicates Lang was in contact with Smith long before that. According to a June 23, 2016, conversation between Smith and Lang, Smith wrote, “No former military experience, but if I cannot find a slot in Ukraine by October I’ll be going into the Army ... To fight is what I want to do. I’m willing to listen, learn, and train. But to work on firearms is fine by me too.” Lang responded, “Alright, I’ll forward you over to the guy that screens people he’ll most likely add you soon[ ... ] Also as a pre-warning if you come to this unit and the government comes to shut down the unit you will be asked to fight. You may also be asked to kill certain people who become on the bad graces of certain groups.” So Lang basically warned Smith that he joins Right Sector, he might be asked to fight the Ukrainian government if the government decides to shut Right Sector down. Lang also warns Smith that he might be asked by the group to kill people. This is a year before Smith joins the US Army in June of 2017.
Keep in mind that Smith was arrested for sharing bomb-making technical skills which he presumably learned in the US Army and planning on waging a domestic terror campaign in the US. So given everything we know about this case at this point, it looks like Right Sector was basically sending a potential recruit into the US Army to learn the kinds of skills that would be useful for neo-Nazi terror campaigns and that recruit was arrested for disseminating those skills and planning exactly that kind of terror campaign:
“The case is one of a growing number involving former U.S. veterans and U.S.-based extremists and white supremacist groups who have cultivated ties with Ukrainian right-wing groups in recent years.”
Yep, the case Craig Lang and Alex Zwiefelhofer murdering a Florida couple is just one of growing number of cases involving US extremists networking with Ukrainian far right groups:
But Lang isn’t just a former member of Right Sector. He also apparently briefly joined the Georgian National Legion which is also operating in Ukraine:
This is a good time to recall the testimonies by five Georgians who were at the Maidan in 2014 about how they received weapons and instructions from Georgian politicians and far right figures (including an ex-US Army sniper) to fire on both the police and protestors and that they witnessed Right Sector-linked snipers shooting from Maidan protester-controlled buildings.
Finally, we’re learning that Lang was in contact with Smith as early as June of 2016, a year before Smith joined the Army in June of 2017, which raises the question of whether Lang asked Smith to join the Army specifically to learn the bomb-making skills Smith was eventually arrested for disseminating:
Keep in mind that when Smith was arrested in part for disseminated bomb-making instructions, which creates an interesting context for Smiths’s 2016 conversation with Lang where Smith says, “I’m willing to listen, learn, and train. But to work on firearms is fine by me too.” It’s the kind of statement that almost suggests that working on firearms isn’t what Smith was primarily interested in which raises the question of whether or not Smith and Lang had been already talking about Smith learning skills in explosives. Was Smith explicitly directed in to the US Army for the purpose of gaining explosives knowledge? That’s unclear at this point, but it’s not like there isn’t a long history of extremists joining the military specifically to gain skills.
It’s all a chilling reminder that Ukraine’s far right Nazi militias aren’t exclusively Ukrainian far right Nazi militias and are increasingly becoming a global problem.
Here’s a story from back in July about the increasingly international ambitions of the Azov movement: There’s going to be a new Azov Foreign Legion set and Croatia’s far right is going to be play a big role in it. In fact, Azov had a conference planned for Zagreb in September where they were going to announce the creation of the new Foreign Legion. This was announced back in June in a Facebook post. Bruno Zorica, a retired Croatian army officer and former member of the French Foreign Legion, has been repeatedly mentioned as a key figure in the unit’s creation. There doesn’t appear to be any more up to date reports on this conference and whether or not the Foreign Legion was officially formed, so that will be something to watch. As Azov’s “international secretary”, Olena Semenyaka, described in a March 2018 interview with a member of neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement, the Ukrainian government was hindering Azov efforts to bring in foreign recruits for the war in Ukraine, “But in the future we hope to create a foreign legion. There we could announce loud and clear when we seek volunteers.” So this Foreign Legion idea appears to be, in part, an effort to import even more international Nazis into Ukraine, although it’s unclear what government interference she’s referring to since there are already thousands of foreign fighters in Ukraine fighting under these far right militias like Azov.
The September conference in Zagreb is the first time the Azov’s “Intermarium conference” will be held outside of Ukraine. The conference focuses on far right networking in central and eastern European countries. As the article notes, the “Intermarium” idea is a central/eastern European regional security concept first advanced by Poland’s post-WWI leader Jozef Pilsudski in the early 1930s. Andriy Biletsky has made the Intermarium a core part of the ‘official geopolitical doctrine’ of Azov’s National Corps political wing. Azov is reportedly viewing Intermarium as a “springboard” to build an east European confederation of right-wing nationalist ethno-states. Recall how the Intermarium idea is also a complement to Pilsudski’s “Promethianism” project that envisioned the breakup of Russia (and later, the Soviet Union). So the Azov appears to be newly championing these old concepts as part of its efforts to lead an international network of Europe’s far right. Azov has a separate “Paneuropa” annual conference for western European nations.
The group in Croatia that Azov appears to be working the closest with is the Croatian Sovereigntists, an alliance of far right parties. The Sovereigntists came in a surprise third place in the EU parliament elections in May with 8.5 percent of the vote, which is the kind of surprise that shouldn’t really be surprising at this point. So Azov appears to be forming a new Foreign Legion in coordination with Croatia’s far right that is currently rising in popularity as part of its push to turn Europe into a confederation of ethno-states:
“Azov’s political wing is forging ties with a right-wing Croatian political bloc that made a strong showing in European elections in May, and the Ukrainian movement will hold a conference in Zagreb in September at which it may unveil plans for a ‘Foreign Legion’ of far-right sympathisers, built with the help of a Croatian war veteran.”
Azov’s international networking continues to grow and now includes holding conferences in European cities. But it’s not just a conference that Azov held Zagreb last month. It’s an attempt by Azov to building upon the “Intermarium” concept as a springboard for its vision of a confederation of European white supremacists “ethno-states” and part of Azov’s official geopolitical doctrine:
It’s at this Zagreb conference that the new Foreign Legion was scheduled to be announced. It’s a development that Olena Semenyaka predicted would make it even easier to bring foreign fighters into Ukraine’s civil war and a retired Croatian army officer has already pledged to lead it:
So it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not Azov’s Foreign Legion actually takes off and becomes another component of Azov’s international reach. On one level, it’s not clear what the creation of a Foreign Legion would change because Azov already acts as a kind of foreign legion. But if the creation of such a unit somehow attracts even more foreigners to fight for Azov that will indeed be a significant development. A significant negative development. And like so many significant negative developments involving Azov’s international ambitions, it won’t just be significantly negative for Ukraine.
Should the Azov Battalion be officially labeled a terrorist organization? The obvious answer for any sane person is, “yes, of course.” And that’s what a group of House Democrats are calling for. New York Rep. Max Rose, who chairs the counterterrorism subcommittee, submitted a letter to the State Department, co-signed by 39 fellow Democrats, calling on the State Department to designate three foreign neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations: the Azov Battalion, along with the UK-based National Action and the Scandavia-based Nordic Resistance Movement.
Part of what makes this move to designate these white supremacist groups as terrorist groups is that, as the following article notes, there is currently no domestic terror statute in the US. In order to charge a person with terrorism, prosecutors have to prove that they’re affiliated with one of the 67 groups labeled as a foreign terror organization (FTO) by the US State Department. And as we’ve seen, groups like Azov have had extensive contacts with US-based neo-Nazis. So if Azov and other international white supremacist groups affiliated with US far right outfits are designated foreign terror organizations by the State Department, it seems like that could provide a means of legally treating domestic Nazi groups as terror affiliates too, at least for those Americans who travel to Ukraine and join the Azov Battalion. As the article notes, Americans who go and fight for Azov are merely treated by the State Department as people who went on an extended vacation. That would presumably change if Azov was designated a terrorist organization. It’s an example of how designating Azov, which most assuredly deserves to be labeled a terrorist group, could both highlight the international nature of white supremacy while simultaneously giving legal tools for addressing white supremacist domestic terror. Which perhaps explains why the Democrats’ call received zero Republican support for this:
“On Wednesday, New York Rep. Max Rose, who chairs the counterterrorism subcommittee, submitted a letter to the State Department, co-signed by 39 members of Congress. It urged the department to designate Azov Battalion (a far-right paramilitary regiment in Ukraine), National Action (a neo-Nazi group based in the U.K.), and Nordic Resistance Movement (a neo-Nazi network from Scandinavia) as terrorist organizations.”
The chair of the House counterterrorism subcommittee is who made this request. With 39 Democratic co-sponsors. And zero Republican co-cosponsors. This is also following DHS unveiling a new counterterrorism strategy last month that, for the first time, placed a major emphasis on fighting white nationalist terrorism. But still no Republican support:
As we can see, there was 100 percent Republican support...for the Azov Batallion. So the next time an American neo-Nazi is caught either before or after a mass terror attack and we learn they’ve been networking with Azov, keep in mind that Congress chose to keep training and fighting with Azov in the “extended trip abroad” category of non-terroristic activities.
Here’s a set of articles that give us an idea of how the attempts at creating a sustainable peace process in Ukraine are going to be thwarted by Ukraine’s far right and how those far right efforts will be portrayed by the West as a reflection of ‘popular will’, despite the fact that Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelenskiy campaigned on a peace platform and won overwhelming:
First, here’s a short piece by Stratfor Worldview, that briefly mentions the obstacles facing Zelenskiy’s peace plan. As the article notes, Zelenskiy’s planned initial steps in the peace process — holding elections in the breakaway regions following the pullout of troops on both sides from the front lines and granting special status for the Donbas region — ran into a problem. The Azov Battalion is refusing to leave the village of Zolotoe on the front lines. So Azov is single-handedly preventing these initial tepid steps in the peace deal from happening.
But that’s only one example of how Ukraine’s far right is trying to derail the peace process. As the Stratfor peace also mentions, there were about 10,000 Ukrainians who marched through Kyiv on October 6th in opposition to Zelenskiy’s peace plan. This is portrayed as a sign of ‘popular resistance’ against the peace plan. But as we’re going to see, it appears to have largely been a far right rally but this fact has been largely obscured from the coverage of the rally. Most of the Western coverage made no reference to who was actually organizing the October 6th rally. The AFP at least mentions that “Members of several nationalist and ultra-nationalist groups were among the demonstrators,” along with former president Petro Poroshenko (Yep, Poroshenko is officially protesting the peace process). Pakistani news service, Urdu Point, has an article that includes a call by far right Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok for a larger rally on October 14th, but that’s pretty much it in terms of acknowledging the far right presence at that initial protest.
In the second article excerpt below we’ll see an Associated Press piece about that October 14th rally. It’s very explicit that it was primarily a rally of the far right, with black-clad men holding up red flares like torches leading the protest march and chanting “Glory to Ukraine!” But that article, which is currently available via the LA Times, doesn’t appear to be available any more on the Associated Press’s apnew.com website. Instead, as we’ll see in the third article below, the AP issued a ‘correction’ article that makes a vague reference to the original article and emphasizes that it wasn’t just far right people marching during those protests but some moderates too. So when the press does finally acknowledge that the opposition to this peace plan is primarily far right opposition, the article basically gets pulled and a ‘correction’ is issued. And that’s why it’s looking like allowing the Ukrainian far right to derail any peace plan and portraying this to Western audiences as widespread popular opposition to peace is the plan.
Ok, here’s that Statfor piece describing how the Azov Battalion is actively disrupting the peace plan by refusing to leave the front lines:
“Developments continue to muddy progress toward resuming the so-called Normandy Format to try to settle the conflict in Ukraine. Representatives of the separatist Luhansk People’s Republic informed observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that the group would be ready to begin withdrawing its forces on Oct. 9. The date was delayed two days when Ukraine postponed the pullout of some of its own forces because of artillery fire between both sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the Azov Battalion — a right-wing, pro-Ukrainian paramilitary group — announced on Oct. 7 that it was taking up positions in Zolotoe, a village on the line of contact. Ukrainian forces would likely have to leave Zolotoe as part of a withdrawal, but the Azov Battalion’s leader has said his forces will not abandon the village.”
It’s a sign of the outsized power these Nazi militias have in Ukraine: they are disobeying an order to withdraw and the general reaction is, ‘oh well’ and not, ‘this group needs to be forced to comply’.
The piece then goes on to mention the ~10,000 person protest that took place days earlier in Kiev against the peace plan, giving no indication of the far right element of the protest:
Now, here’s an Associated Press piece about the October 14th protest, via the LA Times (because the article doesn’t appear to be available on apnews.com at this point). As the article makes very clear, that protest, which had similar numbers to the October 6th protest, was primarily a far right event:
“Black-clad men holding up red flares like torches led the procession, some in white masks to conceal their identity.”
Guys in masks with flares led the procession. That’s a pretty strong indication this was primarily a far right protest. Even Andriy Biletsky, the head of Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, was talking to the press at the protest:
Note that Veterans’ Brotherhood is also an Azov affiliated gropu and the close-door meeting with the ‘nationalists’ that Zelensky held the previous week was a meeting with the leaders of Azov and other neo-Nazi groups like C14. Which, again, underscores the fact that the primary opponents to the peace plan is the far right.
And as the article notes, Zelenskiy still has the support of a majority of Ukrainians:
It’s one of the key facts in this situation: the ‘popular will’ that’s stopping the peace plan isn’t actually very popular. But it is demonstrably quite powerful.
So the above article doesn’t appear to be available on the Associated Press’s website, apnew.com. Instead, we find this vague correction that appears to be an attempt to whitewash the far right nature of those anti-peace protests:
These weren’t exclusively far right anti-peace protests. There were moderates there too! That’s the correction the AP apparently felt compelled to issue...at the same time it seems to have removed the story from its archives.
And that’s all why we should probably expect Ukraine’s neo-Nazis to successfully kill the peace process over the will of the majority and have it portrayed as ‘popular resistance’ in the Western press.
Here’s the latest story about Ukraine turning itself into the international neo-Nazi networking location of choice: A neo-Nazi black metal music festival organized by the Azov movement is taking place in Kyiv this week. It’s the fifth year of the Asgardsrei festival, so it started post-Maidan. The festival was started by Alexey Levkin, a Russian neo-Nazi who traveled to Ukraine to fight with Azov in 2014. Levkin is reportedly close to Azov’s international secretary Olena Semenyaka. The even also includes a mixed-martial arts “fight night” by an Azov affiliated fight club. According to observers, the festival has managed to become an important international networking event for neo-Nazis and has even members of Atomwaffen have been in attendance. Worse, it’s an example of how Kyiv has become a “safe space” where events like this can take place without harassment from the authorities, allowing Ukraining to become the world’s leading neo-Nazi safe space:
“Far-right experts say the festival, now in its fifth year in Kyiv, has become an important networking hub for the transnational white supremacy movement. The festival was organized by individuals linked to Ukraine’s powerful far-right Azov movement, the ultranationalist group that played a major role in the revolution and the war against Russian-backed separatists in the east. It also includes a mixed-martial arts “fight night” by an Azov-affiliated fight club on Friday night.”
An international neo-Nazi music festival for Nazi networking. That’s what the Azov movement has built on top of all the other international networking they’ve done. And this includes networking with overt terrorist groups like Atomwaffen:
Recall how Atomwaffen leader Kaleb Cole became one of the first people to have his guns removed (for a year) over a Washington State “red flag” law. At the time, court documents indicated Cole traveled to “Eastern Europe” in December of 2018 to ‘honor the sites of some of World War II’s most horrific scenes.’ So if a neo-Nazi makes a trip to ‘Eastern Europe’ in December these days there’s a good chance the trip involves this music festival. It’s an example of how Azov hasn’t just made this festival into an international Nazi networking event. And Kyiv hasn’t just been turned into an international gathering place where events like this can happen without interference from authorities. The entire country of Ukraine has been transformed into a hub for transnational far right extremism since the outbreak of the civil war 5 years ago thanks to the efforts of Azov and the willingness of the Ukrainian government to support those efforts:
It’s all a horrible reminder that, in addition to the challenge of somehow ending the Ukraine’s civil war and getting the separatist regions to agree to rejoin the countries, there’s also going to be a long-term challenge of demagnetizing Ukraine as the world’s most neo-Nazi-friendly country. Turning the country into a neo-Nazi hub is the kind of thing that’s going to haunt Ukraine for decades to come. And since much of the separatism in the Eastern Ukraine is driven by understandable outrage over the acceptance and even official embrace and use of these neo-Nazi groups in the post-Maidan period, this story is also a reminder if that if the international community wants to see a peaceful end to Ukraine’s civil war it’s probably going to have to do something about Ukraine being turned into an international neo-Nazi hub. Those Nazis aren’t exactly pro-peace.
News of President Trump’s plans to leave the White House would be expected to be relatively good news given all of the worries about a Trump-led coup that could transpire in coming weeks. But is this actually good news? Or just a different variety of the same bad news about a refusal to peacefully transfer power? These are some of the questions raised by the new reports about President Trump planning on permanently relocating to Mar-a-Lago abandoning the White House soon and never returning. That’s the scenario people in the Trump White House are reportedly increasingly speculating about, with Trump giving no indication that he’s planning on returning to the White House for any sort of inaugural transition ceremonies with the incoming Biden administration. And this is all of course happening in the midst of speculation that Trump will refuse to ever formally concede the 2020 race and might end up declaring his 2024 race to retake the White House during Biden’s Jan 20th inauguration.
So if Trump flees to Mar-a-Lago, and refuses to concede or acknowledge the validity of a Biden administration, is that just Trump’s way of dealing with this loss and moving on with his life? Or is Trump planning on making Mar-a-Lago the new capital of a neo-confederate MAGA-land after he declares himself to be the rightful president and the Biden administration a rogue occupier regime? These are the kinds of questions we predictably have to ask after electing an open fascist:
“Trump could return to Washington for the final days on his term. But there have also been some discussions about the President and the first lady remaining in Florida and not coming back to the White House, a White House official said.”
There’s a transition going on. A transition from President to ‘Alt-President’. An ‘Alt-President’ transition to life at the new ‘Alt-White House’. That increasingly appears to be the plan. Or at least the back up plan. We’re still on coup-watch here, after all.
And this all raises a much more general question that goes far beyond Trump’s plans for a post-White House future. The question of what happens to the broader Trump-loving US conservative movement that is demonstrated just as hard a time in accepting his loss as Trump himself. A recent Gallup poll found 83 percent of Republican voters were convinced Biden stole the election from Trump. What are the consequences of tens of millions of ardent Trump supporters not believing in the legitimacy of the US president, especially if Trump himself spends the next four years playing the role of ‘Alt-President’ and fanning those flames of doubt and grievance?
So here’s a story from back in February of this year that’s a reminder that if the most militant faction of Trump’s base decide to abandon America or prepare to fight in a future conflict for Trump’s triumphant return to power, there are places that will be happy to take them in. Places like Ukraine, where the Azov battalion will provide them all the military training and experience they could ask for. The story is about Virginia native Matthew Ryan Burchfield, a 20 year old American member of the the neo-Nazi terror group, “The Base”. Burchfield reported sought military training and war experience and considered joining the US military but instead decided to travel Ukraine and joined a military unit there. Burchfield’s Instagram profile features a photo of a nationalist lion statue in Lviv, Ukraine, associated with the Galician division of the Einsatzgruppen (SS) death squads.
Recall that this isn’t the first example we’ve heard about someone associated with “The Base” showing an interest in traveling to Ukraine. There as the group of seven “The Base” members who were arrested earlier this year for planning domestic terror attacks and assassination campaign, including William Garfield Bilbrough IV who reportedly also had an interest in traveling to Ukraine to join the neo-Nazi militias and gain experience.
And while “The Base” is considered extreme even by the standards of military far right extremism, being an “accelerationist” group like Atomwaffen that openly calls for domestic terror attacks, we should also keep in mind that if Trump tells his supporters that the White House was stolen from them through massive Chinese-led voter fraud a whole lot of those supporters just might end up transitioning to accelerationist extremism. Look out world:
“It’s an absurd story, involving a young man who by his own account went from participating in an accelerationist group chat to ending up in Ukraine, where Russian-backed paramilitaries are fighting neo-Nazi factions and the regular military, as part of a quest to lead “a normal life.” It’s also yet more evidence that terrorism analysts are right to be concerned that the war in Ukraine is becoming an international insurgent hotbed, drawing in members of American neo-Nazi groups like The Base and sending out radicalized soldiers.”
Yes, it’s the story of a young man who went from participating in an “accelarationist” neo-Nazi chat room to fighting on the battlefield in Ukraine. And it’s also the story of how Ukraine is becoming an international insurgent hotbed. So in the context of an American where President Trump transitions to ‘Alt-President’ Trump and declares the Biden administration a rogue occupier regime, how many young Trump die hard supporters are going to find themselves going down this same path? Might Trump’s loss further the transformation of Ukraine into the neo-Nazi version of Afghanistan, fueled with disaffected American Trump cultists? The international infrastructure is already set up so it’s really just a matter of whether or not the Trumpists are interested:
Also keep in mind that it’s still entirely possible Trump really will end up fleeing the US permanently if he ends up facing any sort of significant legal investigations once he’s out of office. It’s that threat that’s presumably partially motivating his refusal to concede. What happens to all the most die hard Trump followers if Trump relocated to, say, Turkey? Or the UAE? How many of them would take that as a sign to leave too? With all of the focus in right-wing media on scaring Trump supporters about the threat of antifa BLM activists coming into their towns and burning them all down there really could be intense hysteria inside some right-wing communities over a perceived personal threat from a totalitarian communist Biden administration.
So as speculation about the implications of Trump’s refusal to concede continues to grow along with speculation about where he might relocated to when he does end up leaving the White House, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that if Trump’s most ardent supporters decide to flee too it’s going to be Ukraine’s neo-Nazis that probably end up giving them the warmest welcome. A warm welcome and extensive military training and experience.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel recently had a report on a seemingly new far right organizations that just set up its headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The group calls itself the Sovereign American Project, a somewhat ironic name since it appears the group is part of an international far right network with contacts in Portugal and Ukraine. Investigators describe it as highly sophisticated and “nerdy” group that generates and cerebral content that feels more like a treatise on sociology. It’s also described as using unusually sophisticated communication techniques, with members communicating over the dark web and frequently changing their IP addresses to avoid being identified. So this is a new mysterious group with international ties pumping out sophisticated far right propaganda and maintaining a high level of operational security. What are we dealing with here?
What is the stated goal of the group? It claims to be all about “Natural Law”, but it’s really just about carving out separate societies for white conservatives. So it’s a white separatist group like so many others, but with a more sophisticated spin on their arguments. The group is calling for first trying to attempt some sort of peaceful separation between white conservatives and everyone else, and should effort that fail more extreme methods are hinted at. When directly asked if they advocate violence, the group strongly denies this, although observers note that plenty of their rhetoric suggests otherwise. It’s part of the sophisticated nature of the group’s propaganda: The group presents its white separatism agenda as a last-ditch genuine effort at peace, with the implication being that if the effort fails there’s simply no choice but for violence civil conflict...but the group doesn’t say the latter part out loud, at least not when talking to the public. It’s like putting a ‘we just want peace!’ face on the ‘accelerationist’ wing of the far right.
As the group’s president Matt Lawlor put it when asked by the Sentinel about the group’s attitude towards violence, the group “advocates for a peaceful separation of the left and the right in America. We do not call for violence or illegal activity of any kind.” That’s the spin. What Lawlor left out was comments like a Jan 2 tweet from the group that stated, “Here are the right’s options. 1. Separate from the left — a few different ways that could play out. Make blue cities into city-states, make new states, etc. Could be done peacefully. 2. Let the left conquer us 3. Scorched earth, with all its glory and all its horror.” It’s a peek at the actual agenda of the group: push for a peaceful separation of white conservatives first as a justification for going “scorched earth” later. The twitter account then asserted that leftists and anti-Trumpers “will make Pinochet or Hitler 2.0 necessary.” Those tweets are no longer available but here’s one from Jan 11 that puts forward a list of demands to Congress to restore “Natural Law”, with the alternative being civil war:
Part of what makes this approach so troubling — of arguing that white conservatives simply can’t live with everyone else — barring a complete “Natural Law” overhaul of society and peaceful separation is the only viable non-violent solution — is that this is more or less the growing message on mainstream right-wing media. Turn of Fox New’s prime time hosts or almost any right-wing radio host and you’ll one remark after another about how ‘the Left’ is plotting to destroy conservatives. Not simply defeat Republicans at the ballot box but actually destroy the lives of conservative Americans. That’s literally the message. Newt Gingrich was recently on Seant Hannity’s Fox News show telling the audience that Democrats were getting ready to “exterminate” Republicans. This idea that a loss of political power equates to an existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of conservative Americans had already been heavily pushed by mainstream right-wing media for years now and that sentiment is only growing in the wake Trump’s loss and claims of a stolen election. So the Sovereign American Project’s approach of claiming to advocate for a last-ditch peaceful effort to build a separate society for white conservatives really is playing into major mainstream right-wing media themes.
How about the group’s international contacts? Well, at this point all we know is that the group was started by three individuals: Matt Lawlor, of West Palm Beach; Noah Revoy, a “life, love and relationship” coach based in Portugal; and Nathaniel Major, 31, of Columbus, Ohio, who moderates a YouTube channel titled “Western Revival.” Revoy, in turn, creates far right philosophy videos with a contact in Ukraine, Curt Doolittle. Doolittle started the “Propertarian Institute” in Kiev, which advocates a philosophy that sounds like a modified version of Libertarianism that still allows for societies to impose traditional cultural norms on individuals. Which, if you think about it, is a philosophy that aligns with much of the contemporary Republican Party’s agenda of Libertarianism for business combined with social conservatism for individual behavior. Doolittle has reportedly been visited by the FBI recently.
Now, regarding Doolittle’s ties to the broader Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement and its extensive international networking efforts, there isn’t much information available. Although here’s a tweet from November 25, 2016, where Doolittle expresses his affections for Right Sector and Azov and decries Russian government propaganda:
So while the nature of the relationship between this group and the broader Ukrainian far right remains somewhat nebulous, they’re clearly on the same side.
There’s another interesting and troubling aspect to this story: that new Palm Beach headquarters was registered as a “social welfare” nonprofit. And that means any financial donations to the group are potentially tax deductible but also potentially anonymous. Recall how this isn’t the first recent instance of a far right group incorporating a “social welfare” nonprofit for fundraising purposes. The white nationalist VDARE organization literally received an anonymous $1.5 million in 2019 from Donors Trust — one of the most important Republican mega-donor ‘charitable’ entities — that the group used to buy an actual historic castle in West Virginia in 2020. And we still have no idea who ultimately made that donation. Will the Sovereign America Project get some of that Donors Trust sugar too? We’ll see. They obviously incorporated as a social welfare non-profit with the hopes of receiving donations (and avoiding taxes) so someone is probably sending them donations:
“The group’s leaders envision an America separated, as in the days of segregation, demanding “the end of forced integration” between races, according to their website. Their goals: dismantling affirmative action programs and other policies “that are detrimental to Whites”; undoing “the fallacy of feminism” and gay rights movements; and reversing multiculturalism, which the group’s website calls “a pressure cooker” ... “not a melting pot.””
White separatism one way or another. America either decides to reimpose racial segregation and undergo a far right “Natural Law” constitutional overhaul. Or civil war. Those are the only two options according to this group. A message wrapped in repeated declarations of peaceful desires coupled with statements of despair that such overtures will be accepted and warnings that “action will be necessary”. It’s propaganda seemingly designed to radicalize towards violence by first offering an absurd ‘peaceful solution’ and then saying “well, we tried! Violence is the only option left!’:
It’s the latest example of the mainstreaming of extremist thought and the merger of it with mainstream Republican activism. As the SPLC puts it, “There are almost no safeguards anymore, after Jan. 6, between extremist groups and the sort of broader GOP grassroots supporter you might find at a rally...This gradual unwillingness to disavow extremist groups is more what we’re seeing”. Which is exactly what has been happening in Ukraine for years now. It’s one of the reason we shouldn’t be at all surprised to find a Ukrainian connection to this story. The other reason being, of course, that Ukraine’s neo-Nazis have explicitly set out to turn Ukraine into an international far right hub. It’s also why, if there’s any foreign manipulation of the Sovereign America Project, it’s likely being done by the Ukrainian far right:
Finally, regarding the setting up of a non-profit group to allow for legal fundraising, keep in mind that America’s laws are now so heavily skewed towards protecting the identity of anonymous donors even from the IRS that it’s entirely plausible the group could receive donations from Ukrainian interests or any other interests around the world secretly. Anonymous foreign donations to US nonprofits are an option for anyone around the world who wants to finance a group dedicated to tearing the US apart:
While we should certainly be concerned about Donors Trust or other right-wing mega-donors making anonymous donations to this group, it’s not just the American mega-donors we need to be worried about!
Overall, this group clearly has international ties. There are probably already international sponsors we don’t know about. And it’s operating at a level of sophistication we don’t tend to find in these movements, pushing rhetoric that has a diabolical synergy with existing mainstream right-wing propaganda. What are we looking at here? Is this really just another far right entity started by a handful Americans pumping out extremist content on the internet and over-hyping their relevance? Or are we looking at what is basically a front group operating one component of a larger international organization? These are some of the questions we have to hope the FBI is seriously asking right now with the urgency it deserves, along with all the other urgent questions raised by the ongoing merger of the ‘accelerationist’ far right and GOP.
Now that Steve Bannon’s showdown with House investigators of the January 6 insurrection is slated to be an active issue during the 2022 political cycle, one of the aspects of this story that’s going to be grimly fascinating to watch play out is the mass cognitive warfare that’s going to be waged by the GOP and the right-wing disinfotainment media complex to normalize the idea of waging an insurrection. As we’ve seen, Bannon openly bragged on his podcast about how he did indeed advise Donald Trump to ‘kill the Biden presidency in the crib’ and Trump followed that up by decrying November 3 as the real insurrection. Justifying the insurrection is a major political objective of the Republican Party going forward. Or rather, simultaneously denying and justifying the insurrection. It’s going to be endless gaslighting, after all.
So now pro-insurrection cognitive warfare is slated to be waged on the US voting public for the foreseeable future, and since both Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are the kinds of figures who draws upon the lessons of international fascism to hone their craft, here’s a set of articles about the strategies used in mainstreaming of far right. Strategies around ‘metapolitics’ developed in the 1960s as part of the rebanding exercises associated with the rise of the New Rise in Europe. The kind of strategies practiced today, from Fox News to the Azov movement in Ukraine, where ideas are systematically “deconstructed”, redefined, and mainstreamed by a political and media complex dedicated to the long-term project of misinforming their audiences. And the kinds of strategies that someone like Steve Bannon is going to be highly familiar with and comfortable deploying.
The big question facing Bannon and whether or not he can successfully deploy these kinds of metapolitical strategies to shift public attitudes about the insurrection — and futures insurrections/coups — is whether or not they’re too long-term for his short-term needs. But we shouldn’t really question at this point whether or not Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are going to be waging metapolitical warfare going forward. They’re both clearly committed to the championing the idea that the only thing that went wrong on January 6 was the fact it didn’t succeed. It’s the kind of goal that requires a significant shift in public attitudes regarding the value of democracy. The push by Bannon and Trump to normalize the insurrection and set Trump up for a 2024 repeat attempt is going to require the successful waging of a metapolitical battle for the hearts and minds of the US electorate. The kind of battle that, once won, will leave enough of the electorate open or supportive of whatever coup attempt Bannon and Trump come up with next.
First, here’s a look at how Fox News and the Republican Party has rapidly gone from avoiding and denying references to the “Great Replacement Theory”, to redefining and embracing the term in just the span of a few short months. It’s metapolitics in action. Rapid action:
“As we wrote a while back, the Republican Party’s increasing embrace of replacement theory — the idea popular in white supremacist circles that immigrants are being brought in to replace native-born (read: White) Americans — has been a slow build. For years, it was an idea relegated to infrequent mentions by fringe Republicans who operated outside the political mainstream and weren’t generally welcomed in politer circles of the GOP. When it was mentioned, it was dressed up as something besides replacement theory, per se.”
The Republican Party just can’t help but eventually embrace a term like “replacement theory”, regardless of the political risks. The Great Replacement Theory is meta-narrative of Trumpism. There’s no way to genuinely deny it. Disingenuous denials, however, are always an option. And it’s that pattern of alternatingly disingenuously denying, and then redefining and embracing the “great replacement theory”, that characterizes this underlying cognitive warfare strategy of mainstreaming far right ideas. The rhetorical two-step Tucker Carlson and Matt Gaetz are engaging in here is merely one example of something that’s been going on across the right-wing media landscape over the last year as the right-wing media ecosystem suddenly embraced the “replacement theory” terminology. It was like someone flipped a switch:
What memes and terms will suddenly spring on across right-wing media in support of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump’s pro-insurrection worldview? We’ll find out. But as the suddenly explosion of “great replacement” rhetoric on right-wing media makes clear, the infrastructure for the coordinated mainstreaming of far right memes is fully operational and ready to go. It’s just a matter of honing the pro-insurrection messaging that can most effectively push the US public in the direction of supporting a right-wing coup.
And that brings us to the follow April 2019 Foreign Policy article about the metapolitical warfare strategy. A strategy that deprioritizes winning electoral office and instead focuses on long-term shifts in public attitudes in the direction of the far right Azov worldview. In this case, towards the Azov view of a the “Great Replacement” theory, but the European version of it where the white populations in Europe is the victim of a left-wing plot to replacement white Europeans with Muslims. Basically, the “Camp of the Saints” worldview Steve Bannon is such a big fan of. As the following article describes, it’s a strategy that was developed in places like France in the 1960s as part of the emergence of New Right political movement focused on moving past the demonized image of fascism in the post-Nazi period. In other words, it’s an established fascist strategy for shifting public attitudes. Which means Steve Bannon is going to be very familiar with this strategy:
“Venner is one of several icons of France’s Nouvelle Droite (New Right) who, beginning in the late 1960s, started laying out a new strategy for the postwar far-right. And while the Azov movement is a relatively new player on the global far-right scene, the key to understanding it has its roots nowhere near Ukraine.”
Yes, while Azov itself may have been a new organization when it emerged this decade, but it’s been operating from an old playbook. The New Right playbook around “metapolitics” that began to emerge from places like France in the 1960s. The kind of playbook where immediate political gains are given less priority than the long-term objectives of shift public opinion what’s acceptable and changing the public’s demonized image of fascism:
Finally, here’s a November 2018 piece about the ‘Alt Right’ embrace of these metapolitical strategies focused on trolling and gaslighted in order to achieve these metapolitical objectives of shifting public attitudes on fundamental issues. Strategies for slowly changing the public definitions of words: For example, first, the concept is disingenuously redefined beyond recognition; then, the alt-righter insists that he has not changed the concept’s uncontested meaning; finally, the alt-righter attempts to wield the redefined concept against those who would dismiss his convictions as per se repugnant and unworthy of intellectual engagement. Just straight up gaslighting and trolling. Strategically. No, there’s no expectation that this strategy is going to shift the attitudes of committed leftists. The target audience is the casual observer. The person who isn’t really engaged in the debate. So it’s basically a strategy for shifting the attitudes of the barely-engaged segment of the public, which is a pretty massive segment of contemporary America. That’s part of what makes these kinds of strategies so potent: they are ripe from promoting lies because these strategies systematically target the intellectually lazy:
“Friberg offers a two-part vision of “metapolitical warfare”: (1) The alt-right “undermines and deconstructs” what it perceives as prevailing left-wing narratives; (2) The movement then “translate[s] [the warfare] into actual political power” by influencing of “the masses” and public figures, including media elites (like Ann Coulter) and politicians (like Donald Trump).[5] In an effort to understand the operation of this metapolitical warfare, it is worth isolating the various strategic speech tactics that alt-right leaders employ to execute their larger strategy.”
It’s a two-part metapolitical form of warfare: first “undermine and deconstrauct” the prevailing left-wing narratives. Next, attempt to translate that persuasion into real political influence through politicians like Donald Trump or public personalities like Ann Coulter or Tucker Carlson. In other words, Trump and the right-wing disinfotainment media complex need each other, but a lot of work had to be done by that media complex in advance of Trump’s arrival. Trump may have propelled a lot of memes into the mainstream that the GOP previously publicly avoided, but it’s not like the gaslighting and trolling started with him. That right-wing disinfotainment media complex did a lot of advance work before Trump entered the political arena in 2015. It’s a reminder that right-wing audiences have been digesting media filled with gaslighting and trolling for years, led by right-wing talk radio and Fox News. And now that we’re in the post-Trump era, we’re seeing this same dynamic being used on steroids:
We’ve already seen how metapolitical ideas can be propelled from memes to political power. Donald Trump’s first term was a manifestation of exactly that. And now the fight to secure a second Trump term relies on the successful redefining of the insurrection. Who execute the insurrection, who told the Big Lies, and who is carrying out the cover ups. Those basic questions about what happened are the metapolitical battlefields for the coming US election cycles. Up is down, left is right, and the Biden administration was the real insurrectionists. Selling the public on that kind of metapolitical transition is going to be one of Steve Bannon’s core objectives going forward. A metapolitical objective shared with groups like Azov and all the other militant fascist movements that Bannon has been networking with over the years. And shared with Fox News and the rest of the right-wing disinfotainment media complex.
It all points towards something that’s easy to forget in the US-centric coverage of the January 6 Capitol insurrection: by the time Bannon and the rest of the right-wing in the US are finished with their agenda “deconstructing” and redefining democracy into a fascist parody of itself, it’s not just going to be Donald Trump and future US fascists who are primary beneficiaries. Groups like Azov who have been working on this same underlying anti-democracy metapolitical project are going to be beneficiaries too. After all, few things could do more to help the metapolitical project of overturning democracy in Ukraine, France, or anywhere else than watching the US descending into a Bannon-led fascist farce.
@Pterrafractyl–
This is a VERY important comment!
Note the role of the OAS working with the CIA elements who murdered JFK and tried to do the same to De Gaulle:
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1162-farewell-america-part‑1/
Note, also, how this dovetails with the meta-strategy of the German Nazi Party under Hitler:
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-33-they-thought-they-were-free/
Keep up the great work!
Dave
Under number 4 item above, link to “The Nation” article is scrubbed: https://www.thenation.com/article/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
Original article archived here: https://archive.ph/21DVn
There was a disturbing story out a Vermont last week with a rather unexpected Azov twist. Or maybe that Azov twist should have been expected? That general question of whether or not we should have expected the Azov twist is part of what makes this story so disturbing:
William Hillard, 51, was arrested following a police raid on his home that revealed bomb making materials and a semi-automatic rifle adorned with white power symbols. The raid was conducted in response to a tip off by someone claiming Hillard was preparing to kill his Democratic neighbors, black people, and had ambitions to overthrow the government.
There’s no indication yet that Hillard was working with with a larger network. But as you can see in one of the photos of that rifle, there’s an Azov Battalion symbol right in the middle of it, below the “WHITE POWER” slogan. The articles don’t mention this fun fact but it’s right there in the picture.
So that’s the Azov twist to this story. The kind of twist that should raise major questions about whether or not Hillard has been communicating with the group.
But it’s not the only twist. As Jeff Sharlet tweeted out, it also turns out that Hillard is the son of former Vermont GOP Chair Dan Hillard:
It turns out Dan Hillard had to step down as chair in 1998 after he was caught embezzling the funds of one of his clients. This was just a year after William Hillard was charged with a felony after he blew his hand up as a senior in college playing with explosives.
So William Hillard blows his hand up in college while his dad was the chair of the Vermont GOP. His dad is force to step down the next year over embezzlement charges. And flash forward a couple decades and William is getting charged with a white power domestic terror plot, sporting an Azov rifle. It’s been quite the political journey, which, again, raises the question about who William has been networking with and how did he actually get radicalized. Did he self-radicalize over the internet, or did he have help?
And that brings us to another tween that someone posted in response to Jeff Sharlet’s tweet: Based in Hillard’s Facebook posts, he was putting out pro-Israel messages as of 2011. By 2017, he was an open Azov fan:
So while there’s no indication yet that this neo-Nazi domestic terrorist has been networking with Azov, the clues are there. And that’s why one of the many disturbing questions raised by this story is the general question of whether or not Azov is targeting the children of GOP officials for radicalization. There’s an obvious logic to that strategy.
Ok, first, here’s an article that features a picture of the White Power rifle, with an Azov Battalion symbol right in the middle of it:
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged William Hillard, 51, on Thursday with illegally possessing an explosive device and a firearm. The federal complaint followed a raid of the house on Wednesday by local, state and federal authorities, during which they found a semiautomatic rifle adorned with “WHITE POWER” and skull stickers.”
Felony possession of a semiautomatic rifle isn’t great. Felony possession of a semiautomatic rifle adorned with white power symbols is a nightmare scenario. And when we look at the photograph of that rifle, it’s hard to ignore the Azov symbol right beneath the “WHITE POWER” slogan.
But the red flags about Hillard aren’t limited to his white power rifle. He’s apparently been making IEDs filled with shrapnel. Hillard even admitted to police himself that he’s made around 50 explosives in recent years. And according to a witness, Hillard has been talking increasingly about overthrowing the government and attacking his Democratic neighbors. Hillard explained that he merely wanted all of this weaponry for defensive purposes to protect himself from “Antifa” or “other Democrat-affiliated extremist groups,” in anticipation of “societal unrest”. It’s not quite a confession, but sure is close:
So it sounds like Hillard has been quite an avid bomb-maker in recent years. It’s the kind of discovery that raises alarming questions about who else Hillard has been in contact with. He clearly possesses ample bomb-making experience. And he wants to overthrow the government and wage some sort of civil war. Has Hillard been networking with any other white supremacist networks? Azov perhaps?
These are some of the questions raised by this story. Questions that include the general question of just how long has Hillard been an ardent Nazi. Was he already radicalized back when he received that 1997 conviction of making explosives while in college? It’s not a random question. Because as the following article points out, it turns out Hillard’s father, Dan Hillard, was the former Chair of the Vermont GOP. His chairmanship came to an end when he was charged with embezzlement in 1998. So right around the time William Hillard was first caught making explosives, his father was engaging in fraud and embezzlement while chairing Vermont’s GOP. That all took place in the late 90s and here we are in 2022 learning about how William never stopped building bombs and only seemed to get more radicalized and prepared to kill for his political cause:
“Hillard resides in the home owned by his mother, Stephanie “Stevie” Hillard, a middle school librarian. His father, Dan Hillard, a financial adviser and onetime head of the Vermont Republican Party before he stepped down following news that he’d embezzled a client’s money, died at age 76 in 2019.”
The son of the disgraced former chair of the state’s Republican Party. It would be nice if this was more of a surprise. But that’s all part of the context of William Hillard’s preparations to overthrow the government and kill his Democratic neighbors. This wasn’t just some random disturbed individual:
And that’s all why the path to Hillard’s radicalization is one of the biggest questions raised by this story. Don’t forget what we saw in that tweet:
Hillard didn’t appear to be an open Nazi by 2011. Flash forward to 2017 and he was an Azov fan. So what happened to Hillard during this period? Was Hillard in contact with Azov? Or are we just seeing a reflection of the success of Azov’s general promotional propaganda? It’s the kind of a disturbing question that only has disturbing answers.
Also keep in mind that now that the Azov Battalion is being embraced by the West as a key force in the fight against Russia, outreach to Azov by people in the US has probably been exploding over the past couple of months with no end in sight. That’s part of why the question about what potential influence Azov may have had on Hillard aren’t just relevant to Hillard’s case. After all, if Hillard really was intent on overthrowing the government, he presumably wasn’t planning on doing that alone.
Did the shooter have help? It’s one of the meta questions we’re forced to ask after every mass shooting. But in the case of the recent hate crime shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY, we more or less already have part of the answer to that question: yes, he had A LOT of help.
Not necessarily direct help. That remains unknown. But as the following articles make clear, when it comes to the ideas Payton Gendron was trying to promote with this mass shooting and the manifesto he posted online, we almost have to ask why he even bothered. The core argument in his manifesto — the “Great Replacement Theory” idea that there’s a giant diabolical left-wing plot to import large number of non-white immigrants to overthrow the US — is already an entirely mainstreamed idea heavily promoted across the right-wing media landscape and openly voiced by Republican politicians, as the Trump administration should empirically make clear. A recent study even found that Tucker Carlson alone pushed this idea more than 400 times on his Fox News show during a five year period from November 2016 through November 2021. This is the most popular show on cable news. Elise Stefanik, the third ranking GOP member in the House, continued to double down on the idea even after the shooting in Buffalo. The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ at the core of Gendron’s manifesto almost can’t get more mainstreamed in the GOP.
It’s also worth recalling that the Great Replacement Theory isn’t just a favorite meme in the US. As we’ve seen, the Azov movement in Ukraine uses a European Muslim-centric version of the Great Replacement Theory as a key plank in its ideology.
And as we’re also going to see, this idea that the US is being “invaded” by immigrants isn’t just being cynically used by elected officials to rile up voters. There’s a growing push by GOP lawmakers to actually declare that individual states like Texas and Arizona are suffering for a ‘Constitutional invasion’ that is covered by Article IV, Section 4 of the US constitution that requires that states be protected against foreign invasion. The idea appears to be that states can declare they are being invaded and then invoke special constitutional military powers to deal with the ‘invasion’ directly.
In the case of Texas, lieutenant governor Dan Patrick has been calling for all of the ‘red states’ to invoke Article IV, Section 4 and send state level authorities down to the Southern Border, take over border control powers, and directly turn back migrants. It’s effectively a state-level insurrection at the border.
Arizona’s Republican state attorney general took a slightly different approach by declare that the invasion is being perpetrated by transnational cartels and gangs, which could help get around legal challenges since courts have already shot down the idea that you can have a migrant-led invasion. So the GOP is experimenting with legal theories will allow GOP-led states to invoke special military powers to deal with immigrants under the pretext of defending state sovereignty. How well these legal theories perform in the courts remains to be seen, but it’s pretty clear already that the GOP sees enormous political potential in not just doubling and tripling down on The Great Replacement Theory, but actively declaring that the Great Replacement invasion is already underway and special military action needs to be unilaterally taken in response:
“Carlson, Fox News’ star and the post-Trump holder of the largest megaphone in conservative media, is also the most successful propagandist of great replacement theory. A New York Times investigation found more than 400 instances of Carlson pushing the idea that Democratic politicians and others want to force demographic change through immigration.”
Gee, where might Payton Gendron have gotten the idea that the US is on the verge of an immigration-induced collapse as part of a left-wing plot to subjugate white Americans? The most watched figure on Cable New only promoted that idea on 400 episodes of his show between November 2016-November 2021. And the third ranking member in the House GOP caucus literally double-down on the idea on Monday in direct response to the public outrage over Stefanik’s previously promotion of the Great Replacement Theory. Where oh where did Gendron get these ideas?
Or maybe Gendron happened to catch Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick’s rant on Fox News back in September, when he explicitly warned the audiences that “the revolution has begun”. A silent revolution that will deny “citizens the right to run our government”:
How did Gendron become filled with so many warped distortions of the realities of immigration and demographic changes? It’s such a mystery.
But it’s important to recognize that the mainstreaming of “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric doesn’t just have the effect of inspiring attacks like what took place in Buffalo. As lieutenant governor Dan Patrick hinted at during his Great Replacement rant on Laura Ingraham’s show, the idea that Democrats are intentionally allowing the US to be flooding with non-white illegal immigrants as part of a plot to overthrow White America isn’t just a pretext for white supremacist murder sprees. It’s also potentially a trigger for some sort of organized unilateral mass deportation operation by the ‘Red States’. Yep, that’s what Patrick was openly calling for during that rant: that the ‘Red States’ invoke Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution, declare themselves as being under a state of “invasion” by migrants at the southern border, and use the states’ own forces to unilaterally mass deport those migrants regardless of the federal immigration and asylum policies. A special anti-immigrant ‘Red State’ mass deportation force. That’s what Patrick was calling for during his Great Replacement rant on Fox News last fall:
“Patrick concluded the interview by saying “this is denying us our government that’s run by our citizens with illegals who are here, who are gonna take our education, our healthcare.””
The ‘illegals’ are coming to steal the government away. They’re gonna take our education, our healthcare, everything! It’s an invasion! A planned invasion orchestrated by the Democrats. He wasn’t mincing words. And in response to this silent revolution, Patrick was calling for “Every red state” to invoke Article IV, Section 4 of the constitution should invoke this clause because every red state is being impacted and the blue states reportedly don’t care”:
So what exactly would invoking Article IV, Section 4 of the US constitution empower states to do? That’s the question the GOP is trying to answer, and not just in Texas. As the following article from last month describes, the push for declaring a ‘Constitutional invasion’ isn’t just being advanced in Texas. Arizona’s Republican state attorney general filed a legal opinion back in February arguing that the state was being invaded by transnational cartels and gangs and similiarly called for invoking Article IV, Section 4 in response. Texas Land Commission George P. Bush is reportedly quite enomored with this approach of calling it an invasion by cartels and gangs since courts have already rejected the concept of a migrant-led invasion under the Constitution. We’ll see what sort of legal justification the GOP finally comes up with, but the general plan is clear: declare a “Constitutional invasion” of immigrants that will allow the invocation of special military powers directed against anyone suspected of being an immigrant under the pretense of defending state sovereignty:
“The constitutional “invasion” idea has long simmered on the fringes of the right, but its growing prominence shows the lengths to which Republicans are willing to go to try to secure the border on their own under President Joe Biden. Under the plan, Texas would invoke Article IV, Section 4, and Article I, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution to exercise extraordinary wartime powers and use state law enforcement— Department of Public Safety officers and state National Guard troops — to immediately turn back migrants at the border.”
Can states just make up their own immigration and asylum policies and mass deport migrants at the southern border regardless of the federal policies? Yes, according to a growing number of right-wing politicians and think-tanks. Under this legal theory, the migrants trying to get into the US constitute an invasion, allowing these states to invoke Article IV, Section 4 and Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution to exercise extraordinary wartime powers. So state-level wartime powers are enacted under this scheme that’s currently predicated on the idea that the Democrats are fomenting a foreign invasion of the US to seize power. But it’s not just Texas Republicans who are looking into this option. Arizona’s GOP is pushing it as well with the state’s attorney general filing a legal opinion back in February that the state was being invaded by cartels. The idea that there’s a ‘constitutional invasion’ taking place is clearly one of those ideas that the GOP is going to be developing for years to come:
So what are the odds that these schemes are going to make it through the courts? Well, note how the Arizona GOP’s push to declare a constitutional invasion relies on the idea that it’s not the migrants themselves who are waging this invasion, but the drug cartels. George P. Bush appear to be quite enamored with this trick:
So it seems like it’s just a matter of time before we start hearing about how Democrats are teaming up with Mexican drug cartels in their joint plot to take over the US. Will Democratic lawmakers get rounded up and detained as part of these special military operations? Maybe. Or maybe more people like Payton Gendron will simply be inspired to ‘take matters into their own hands’ and deal with the Democrats themselves. Don’t forget ‘stochastic terrorism’ is a form of stochastic teamwork too.
With the overturning of Roe v Wade set to take place as soon as next month, here’s a reminder that the underlying white nationalist sentiments that drove Payton Gendron to shoot up a grocery store in Buffalo really are deeply intertwined with many of the political forces driving the anti-abortion movement. Recall how the Evangelical right in the US more or less didn’t really care about abortion at all until the coming of major social revolutions of the 1960s: minority rights, the spread of birth control technologies, and demographic shifts with more non-white immigration. And sure, the pro-life movement has long denied that demographic angst was at the heart of its fixation on this issue, but it’s hard to ignore how abortion suddenly became the issue for the Evangelical Right only after these social changes.
But that reticence in acknowledging the demographic angst appears to be fading now that the far right has secured its lock on the US Supreme Court for decades to come. At least that appeared to be the case during the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Budapest, Hungary, where CPAC head Matt Schlapp just came out and said it: ending abortion is part of the solution to the Great Replacement. He didn’t mince words. Well, ok, he minced them a bit when directly questioned by reporters about his comments, but he didn’t really hide it. The message was abundantly clear: the fight to ban abortion is just one part of much larger larger white nationalist struggle. A global white nationalist struggle:
“Asked again if he agreed with Orban’s comments about European countries “committing suicide” by embracing immigration, Schlapp said: “I think Orban is skeptical of their solution, and I think in America we have a solution that could be right around the corner.””
Yes, the US’s ‘solution’ to the ‘Great Replacement’ is ending abortion rights. That’s what the head of CPAC just openly told a audience at CPAC’s gig event in Budapest. And when directly pressed about whether or not he backs the Great Replacement Theory, Schlapp gives a non-denial denial and then goes on to assert that the Buffalo shooting had nothing to do with it:
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So now that US conservatives are openly touting ending abortion as part of a broader national demographic ‘whitening’ project, we have to ask just how receptive will the US electorate be to these kinds of appeals. And that brings us to a new poll released just days before the shooting in Buffalo. According to this poll, roughly 1 in 3 American adults holds the view that immigration is weakening the status of native born Americans, and around 17% percent view this as part of an active Great Replacement plot:
“About 3 in 10 also worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to fear a loss of influence because of immigration, 36% to 27%.”
You can’t say there’ isn’t an market for what Matt Schlapp was selling. Well, Schlapp and Payton Gendron. One in three American adults are already adherents to something resembling the “Great Replacement Theory”. Because of course 1 in 3 Americans believe this. They’ve been told it over and over:
It’s clear that a large and growing number of Americans are very receptive to the idea that demographic shifts pose an existential threat to white Americans. But what isn’t at all clear yet is what happens when these audiences discover that banning abortion doesn’t actually result in more white babies being born but, if anything, end up forces disproportionately more non-white babies to be born. Don’t forget that ending Roe will primarily impact women without the financial resources to travel to a state where its legal and that’s disproportionately going to impact minority women. So what happens when abortion has been banned and the result is a quickening of these very same demographic shifts? We’ll find out, although Payton Gendron basically gave us a preview. Margaret Atwood also gave us quite a preview. And that’s really what we have to actively expect at this point: it’ll have all the awfulness of the Handmaid’s Tale, but with mass shootings too.
Is the US planning on prosecuting Russian war criminals? That appears to be the case according to new reports on the proposed changes to the US laws regarding just who can be charged with war crimes. Outrage over alleged Russian war crimes has generated bipartisan support for legislation that will change US law so that suspected war criminals apprehended in the US, or extradited from elsewhere, can be prosecuted even if neither they nor their victims are Americans. The change would bring US law in line with the Geneva conventions.
So, in theory, Russians or anyone fighting fighting for the Russian side in this conflict could be extradited to the US and prosecuted for war crimes. Of course, that could obviously apply to forces fighting for Ukraine. And with Ukraine increasingly reliant on foreign extremist militants to fight this conflict and domestic Nazi battalions notorious for torture, summary executions, and just about any other war crime you can imagine, the question of how the changes to US laws might be applied to people fighting on behalf of Ukraine looms large in this story.
And as we’re going to see in the second article excerpt below from a BuzzFeed piece published in October of 2021, that question of how the US might handle Nazi war criminals in Ukraine has been looming large for a few years now. Because it turns out neo-Nazi Craig Lang has not just been committing war crimes in Ukraine but has been videotaping the crimes — specifically, the torture of captured civilians in the Donbas — and those tapes are now in the possession of the DOJ. Recall how Ukrainian courts initially refused to turn Lang over to US investigators after he claimed asylum. Also recall how Lang ended up joining the Georgian National Legion after leaving Right Sector. During his time with Right Sector, Lang was also involved in recruiting another American, Jarret William Smith, to join the group, but warned Smith that “you may also be asked to kill certain people who become on the bad graces of certain groups.” Smith ended up joining the US military in 2017.
The evidence is so overwhelming that the DOJ appears to have decided to investigate Lang and six other US citizens working with Lang in Ukraine for war crimes. All six were members of Right Sector and some are acting as witnesses against Lang. Beyond that, the US has requested the extradition of Lang from Ukraine. An extradition that Lang has so far successfully fought. Initially, the Ukrainian courts refused his extradition but relented. Lang then appealed to the European Human Rights Court, which upheld his appeal pending its review of his case.
That was the status of Lang’s extradition for a war crimes trial as of October of last year. Things have obviously changed quite a bit over the last year. The kinds of changes that should raise major questions as to whether or not the US still has any interest in these kinds of war crimes investigations. Don’t forget war crimes Lang committed were done as he was a member of Right Sector. It’s a reminder that any investigation into the war crimes of these foreign members of Right Sector risks becoming an broader investigation of war crimes committed by these Nazi battalions, which is obviously an investigation the US would like to avoid at this point. That’s part of what makes the proposed changes to US war crimes laws so grimly interesting to watch: there is literally an open investigation into six US citizens who were members of a Nazi Ukrainian battalion notorious for war crimes. A Nazi battalion now deemed vital to a Ukrainian war effort seen as central to US national security. What’s going to happen with that investigation into Lang and his fellow travelers? And should that US war crimes investigation collapse, what does that say about how Western governments are planning on treating Western militant extremists who travel to fight in these conflict zones? Because you can have war crimes investigations or Gladio-like operations involving intelligence-sponsored militant extremists, but you can’t really have both. At least not easily.
Ok, first, here’s a piece describing the proposed changes to US war crimes laws. Changes that will give the US no valid excuse at all for continuing to ignore war crimes committed on behalf of Ukraine
“Widespread outrage at Russian mass killings and deportations as well as targeting of civilian infrastructure, has created bipartisan support for the justice for victims of war crimes bill. The legislation will transform US law so that suspected war criminals apprehended in the US, or extradited from elsewhere, can be prosecuted even if neither they nor their victims are Americans. The change would finally bring US law into line with the 1949 Geneva Conventions.”
A big update to US war crimes laws appear to be on the war in response to the allegations of Russian war crimes. And that raises the obvious question: so what about Ukrainian war crimes? Or war crimes committed by foreigners fighting on behalf of Ukraine? Are they going to be aggressively prosecuted too should they step food in the US? And that brings us to the following BuzzFeed piece from October of 2021 about the ongoing US investigation into US neo-Nazi Craig Lang. An investigation that started with the investigation into the 2018 murder of a Florida couple but appear to have blossomed into a full blown war crimes investigation. It turns out Craig Lang and his cadre of fellow US Nazis operation in Ukraine had a predilection for video taping their torture sessions. Some of those videos were uploaded a Google account and are now in the possession of US prosecutors.
At least that was the status of the investigation into Craig as of October of 2021. So what’s the status of that investigation now? That’s very unclear. As we’re going to see, Lang appears to still be living in Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife. At least that’s his last known status after Lang successfully fought against a US extradition request. It turns out that Lang initially won his attempt to block his extradition when arguing before a Ukrainian court (while sporting Nazi symbols during the hearing). But Ukraine eventually changed its mind and agreed to extradite Lang, who then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights which agreed to uphold his appeal until it gets a chance to hear his case. That’s the status of Lang’s case: Ukraine agreed to extradite him to the US but the EU Human Rights Court is blocking it. So while it’s possible Lang will eventually be extradited to the US to become the first US citizen to be charged with war crimes under US law, it’s also very possible he’s just going to slip away again or be killed on the battlefield...and likely hailed as a martyr:
“But now, BuzzFeed News can reveal that the Department of Justice and the FBI have in fact taken the extraordinary step of investigating a group of seven American fighters, including Lang, under the federal war crimes statute. Authorities suspect that while in eastern Ukraine, Lang and other members of the group allegedly took noncombatants as prisoners, beat them with their fists, kicked them, clobbered them with a sock filled with stones, and held them underwater.”
It really would be extraordinary if it ever happens. No American has ever been prosecuted by the US for war crimes. Craig Lang and his crew of fellow Right Sector ex-pats could be the first. If the prosecution actually happens, that is;
Beyond war crimes in Ukraine, another major fact connecting all of these Americans is their relationship with Craig Lang, who became a key contact for other foreign fighters looking to join the conflict in Ukraine and Right Sector:
Adding to the potentially explosive nature of this investigation is the fact that the DOB and FBI appear to have cooperating witnesses and video of the actual torture. Videos that were apparently uploaded to the Google accounts of one of the American’s under investigation, Quinn Rickert. Both Rickert and Santi Pirtle appear to have been working with investigators:
But despite the video evidence and apparently cooperating witnesses, no charges had been file as of the publication of this article from October of 2021. And yet, according to observers, this never investigation never would have gotten this far were it not for a sense by the investigators that they had a slam dunk case. Even Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Irina Venediktova, told BuzzFeed that she wanted to see their prosecutions happen and approved the requested extradition of Lang last year. Then the European Court of Human Rights stepped in and ordered a stay on Lang’s extradition until it could review his case. A review that appears to be ongoing more than a year after this report:
Also note the apparent origins of the war crimes evidence and the other allegations from this source: it started with a leak on the UkrLeaks website set up by former SBU consultant Vasily Prozorov, who appears to have a source inside the SBU. And according to other leaked documents published by Prozorov, the SBU has secret detention centers of its own. How many people are there being secretly detained and tortured in Ukraine right now?
Finally, note this remarkable detail in the allegations against Lang and Kennedy: they were planning on returning to Ukraine in 2017 with the intention of planning and participating in an armed attack on the Ukrainian parliament. A plot that would have obviously involved the broader Ukrainian far right. It’s the kind of anecdote that underscores the knife held to the throat of Ukraine’s democracy by the far right:
So which Ukrainian ‘nationalist’ neo-Nazi groups were Lang and Kennedy planning on working with in their armed attack on the parliament? Hopefully US investigators eventually get a chance to ask those kinds of questions, although it’s not clear that plots against the Ukrainian government will fall under the war crimes investigation. Still, it’s probably a good time to recall how Azov leader Sergey Korotkikh reportedly hosted US neo-Nazi members of the “Rise Above Movement” (RAM) members in Kyiv in 2018. Those members were also reportedly networking with Azov spokesperson Olena Semenyaka. Finally, recall how Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky had to face off with angry members of Azov demanding “No to Capitulation” in October of 2019 in response to Zelensky possibly pursuing negotiations to end Ukraine’s civil war. So when we hear about Lang and Kennedy planning to participate in some sort of 2017 plot to attack the Ukrainian parliament, it’s a reminder that Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, was also presumably constantly faced with the implicit threat of a Nazi coup too.
But, again, everything we’ve been hearing about so far predates the February 2022 Russian ‘Special Military Operation’ and subsequent ratcheting up of tensions between Russia and the West to levels not seen since the Cold War. Talk of nuclear exchanges is in the air. And that’s the kind of environment that can induce shifts in policies and priorities. So with Ukraine increasingly reliant on foreign fighters to fight this deepening conflict, has there been a shifting in priorities related to the US government’s desire to pursue war crimes? That’s one of the grim questions raised by the following Cover Action Magazine report that makes a disturbing observation regarding a number of the Western extremists who have traveled to Ukraine over the years: there’s a network of extremists hopping from one Western-backed conflict after another. Conflict zones like Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, and Ukraine keep seeing Western extremists showing up to fight. Often the same extremists. And when you find that the plans of militant extremists are seemingly aligned with the goals of Western intelligence agencies in conflict zones, we have to ask: is the growth of ‘foreign fighters’ on global conflicts a manifestation of a new Gladio-like operation? And if so, what does that say about the prospects of any of these US Nazis accused of war crimes actually ever getting prosecuted?
“The case of these individuals identified in this article not only highlights their connections to both Ukraine and Syria but how these foreign mercenaries are all connected to U.S.-EU-NATO operations in three different regions where operations are ongoing. This sinister nexus of military personnel, neo-Nazis, and intelligence networks is eerily reminiscent of Operation Gladio following the Second World War—a state terrorist operation involving the creation of underground armies to fight the Soviet Union and political left in Europe.”
Are we looking at the contours of a Gladio redux? And what role will the deepening war in Ukraine play in furthering such plans? These are the kinds of disturbing questions that would be a lot easier to dismiss if Craig Lang was actually in the US facing trial instead of continuing to fight his extradition in Kyiv. Because in one example after another we are seeing members of this international network of foreign fights that has blossomed over the last decade hop from one US/NATO-backed conflict to another: from Ukraine to Syria and back to Ukraine...with a possible detour in Venezuela. A far right network of militant extremists hailing for Western countries with long-term dreams of toppling Western governments but short-term objectives that aligned quite nicely with the foreign policy objectives of these governments. How much interest is there really in disrupting this global network? Especially now when foreign fighters are seen as vital to Ukraine’s war fighting abilities? These guys are now seen as important assets in a war against Russia, as the media coverage of captured British fights Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin makes clear:
Will Craig Lang ever face the death penalty? Maybe. If he’s caught by Russia. Because it doesn’t look like he’s ever getting extradited. At least the EU high court doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to review his appeal. We’ll see how that appeals process goes. Including whether or not Lang is openly sporting far right and neo-Nazi symbols during his court like he was doing during the hearing before a Ukrainian court:
Is Lang still alive? We don’t know. But he’s presumably still in Ukraine if he is alive. And he’s presumably still committing war crimes. Maybe he’s no longer videotaping those crimes, but he’s almost certainly committing them. And he’s obviously not the only member of these Nazi battalions with a love for death and torture. We’ll see how many people end up getting prosecuted under US laws for war crimes committed on behalf of Ukraine, but it’s pretty obviously that most of those crimes are going to be ignored. Systematically ignored. Which raises the question: is the systematic ignoring of war crimes by one side in a conflict a war crime? It’s one of those legal philosophical questions that will presumably remain highly hypothetical.
This was really just a matter of time. And presumably a prelude of things to come: Italian police just arrested five members of what appears to be a neo-Nazi terror cell plotting attacks in the country. A sixth member has been charged but is no longer in the country. Instead, he’s in Ukraine, apparently fighting with the Azov Battalion. And as we’re going to see, it doesn’t sound like the Azov ties to this group are limited to that one member. Instead, the group has “direct and frequent” contact with members of Azov and other Nazi battalions in Ukraine, with an eye on joining the military formations. That’s the story that just broke out of Italy: the breakup of a terror cell with close Azov ties and one member currently in Ukraine serving with Azov.
The five arrested members of the group, the Order of Hagal, were as follows: Maurizio Ammendola, the founder of the group, its vice president Michele Rinaldi, and members Giampiero Testa, Fabio Colarossi and Massimiliano Mariano. Colarossi is charged with spreading neo-Nazi propaganda.
Testa appears to be charged with planning something much more significant: an attack on a Naples police barracks. He also explicitly cited Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant as an inspiration. Recall how Tarrant also reportedly networked with Azov during a trip to Ukraine. It’s a growing theme.
The sixth member who is reportedly still in Ukraine as a member of Azov is Anton Radomsky, a Ukrainian citizen who has lived in Italy. Police say Radomsky planned to attack the “Volcano Buono” shopping mall in Naples. So we have two attack plots in Naples. One at a mall and one at a police barracks.
And in case it’s not clear that this wasn’t just talk, police also say they recovered ”soft air weapons” that could be “easily modified to fire authentic bullets,” ammunition, tactical gear, and even a grenade launcher. And who knows what else they could get their hands on when you have a member of a plot already operating in an active war zone.
This is a good time to recall how this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a Nazi fugitive fighting in one of Ukraine’s Nazi battalions. Recall the story of American neo-Nazi and fugitive Craig Lang, who ended up as a member both Right Sector and the Georgian Legion. When US prosecutors first tried to get Lang extradited for a series of murders in Florida, the Ukrainian government initially refused. Then Ukraine relented and decided to extradite, leading Lang to appeal the EU Human Rights Court. That court agreed to stay his extradition pending its hearing of his case. Lang is still in Ukraine to this day. That’s part of the context of this new story out of Italy. Although, as we’re going to see, this story isn’t all that new. The arrests are new, but the investigation has been going on since 2019 and that includes a series of home searches carried out against 26 individuals in October of 2021.
As we’re also going to see, the group in question, the Order of Hagal, appears to have a more benign-seeming public chapter and has been involved in the various ‘anti-COVID’ protests that have been a focus of right-wing parties in Italy since the outbreak of the pandemic. When the home searches were conducted last year, the group denied any terror plots or ties to Ukrainians at all and insisted that it was simply a group with a ‘religious/social-spiritual mission’ that was being persecuted. So now that we have one of the most openly far right Italian governments in decades, it’s going to be very interesting to see how that public relations battle plays out.
Ok, first, here’s a Grayzone piece about the five arrests announced days ago and the sixth member — accused of plotting attacks a Naples mall — still serving in Ukraine’s military:
“The “Hagal” members are accused of plotting terrorist attacks on civilian and police targets. A sixth member of the Hagal group, now considered a fugitive, is in Ukraine and embedded with the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.”
A domestic Italian terror plot with a Ukrainian neo-Nazi twist. That appears to be what we’re looking at here. It’s not just that they were associates of Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion. They maintained “direct and frequent” contact over Telegram “probably in the view of possible recruitment into the ranks of these fighting groups.” And the two members charged with plotting terror attacks both appear to be particularly close to Ukrainian Nazis. Anton Radomsky, a Ukrainian citizen, is reportedly actively fighting with Azov in Ukraine. Radomsky is charged with plotting an attack on the Volcano Buono shopping mall in Naples. And then there’s Giampiero Testa, described as “dangerously close to far-right Ukrainian Nationalist groups.” Testa is accused of plotting an attack on a Naples police barracks, referencing Brentan Tarrant, someone who reportedly trained with Azov himself. And it wasn’t just talk. Police found ammunition and even a grenade launcher:
And note how this is a new terror plot. The investigation first opened in 2019:
Will Italian police manage to get Anton Radomsky extradited from Ukraine? Let’s not forget the case of American neo-Nazi Craig Lang and the US government’s attempts to get him returned. First Ukraine refused before relenting and agreeing to extradite Lang, who then proceeded to appeal the extradition to the European Human Rights Court, which upheld his appeal pending its review of his case. Lang remains in Ukraine as of today. So we’ll see if Italy tries to get Radomsky extradited. And we’ll also see how Ukraine and the EU courts respond to those requests.
But it’s also important to keep in mind that this is a multi-year investigation that Italian authorities have been involved with for years now. For example, the “26 personal, home and computer searches,” the police are touting in the wake of the arrests actually happened last October. And as the following report describes, part of what is going to make this case interesting is that the Order of Hagal has a public charter and presents itself as a a simple ‘religious/spiritual’ entity that is being persecuted by Italian authorities. So they’re playing the ‘we’re just an innocent activist group getting targeted by the big bad government’ public relations card. At the same time, Italy now has one of the most openly far right governments in decades. Yes, Giorgia Meloni’s government has taken pains to make clear that its supports Ukraine in the ongoing conflict. The same side Anton Radomsky is currently fighting for in Ukraine. And that’s all part of what it’s going to be interesting to see what, if any, involvement Meloni’s government has in the ongoing prosecution of this case:
“In particular, on October 19, 2021, Italy’s State Police carried out house searches against 26 people in nine Italian provinces, from the north to the south of the country. At least 12 people are now formally under investigation for “subversive association of neo-Nazi and supremacist matrix”, apology for fascism, denial of the Shoah, incitement to racial hatred and to anti-Semitism.”
As we can see, it was over a year ago, on October 19, 2021, when Italian authorities carried out a series of house searches against 26 people. So while those five individuals were just arrested a few days ago, the total number of people under investigation was much larger. And that brings us to this observation about the hierarchical structure and rigid information compartmentalization and the fact that the group has a public charter where it presents a benign ‘religious/social-spiritual mission.’ So when we find that the group was vehemently denying the charges, keep in mind that some group members may have been genuinely unaware of such a plot:
Now, regarding the reported mentions of David Lane by members of this group, it’s worth recalling that Lane is a revered figure on the Ukrainian far right. Recall how Svoboda appears to have named its C14 militia after Lane’s notorious “14 Words”. Also recall how members of Azov who were involved with the “Gonor” NGO during protests in Hong Kong were seen sporting “Victory or Valhalla” tattoos, a reference to the title of a compilation of Lane’s writings. Ukrainian fascists have a fascination with David Lane so you have to wonder if references to Lane by members of this Order of Hagal is a reflection of Ukrainian nationalist proselytizing of Lane’s writings as a kind of international white supremacist ideological glue:
It’s that international character of this network and the ideology driving it that is perhaps the most significant aspect of this story. Significant because we keep seeing this same story over and over. The individuals change. The specific terror plots differ. But the underlying story remains the same: Nazi terrorism is an international phenomena fostered by a growing number of transnational alliances and working relationships. And Ukraine is increasing the hub for this international Nazi networking. Mission accomplished.
At least partially accomplished. The fascist revolutions still need to be executed. But the foundations is being laid, one international Nazi relationship at a time. Or many international Nazi relationships flowing through Ukraine, as the case may be.
Are we looking at an Azov/Bannon backchannel? That’s one of the fascinating questions raised by the following article in Vice that provides us with an update to the story of the “Order of Hagal” Italian Nazi terror cell. A terror cell with reported “direct and frequent” contact with both Azov and Right Sector. One of the members of this group, Anton Radomsky, is a Ukrainian citizen believed to be currently in Ukraine fighting with Azov. The nature of this Italian terror cell was already still opaque, and then we got the following twist:
It turns out that Giampiero Testa, the member charged with plotting a ‘Christchurch’-style attack on a Naples police station, claimed to have had a meeting with Steve Bannon. Those claims were apparently found in intercepted communications according to police reports. So these aren’t claims Testa made to investigators following his arrest. The meeting allegedly took place during one of Bannon’s trips to the Trisulti Charterhouse, a former 13-century Italian monastery that Bannon was trying to convert into a right-wing think-tank. Testa claimed to have met with both Bannon and Benjamin Harnwell, Bannon’s British associate who co-founded the Dignitatis Humanae Institute/Human Dignity Institute (DHI). Recall the interview Harnwell gave of Bannon where Bannon basically tried explain how hard-edged capitalism was a divine force for peace and harmony in the world but it wasn’t serving the masses well due to all the cronyism.
Also recall how the DHI was also networking with the US-based Acton Institute, underscoring Bannon’s focus building international far right alliances. It’s that international fascist alliance-building that puts this new report about an alleged secret meeting between Testa and Bannon so fascinating. Because as we’ve also seen, Bannon isn’t the only prominent contemporary fascist with a keen interest in building international alliances. That’s more or less the meta-goal of the Azov movement at this point. And yet we don’t really hear about Bannon’s interactions with Azov. So we have to ask: what is Bannon’s relationship with the other fascist group working on the same goal? Surely there must be a relationship of some kind. Is that what we’re looking at here?
Interestingly, while Harnwell doesn’t confirm that he met with Testa, he doesn’t entirely deny it either and instead tells Vice that he could not rule out having met with Testa or his associates, but adds their names did not appear in any of his text or email records. Harnwell then dismisses the possibility that Bannon could have met with Testa because Bannon’s trips to monastery “were always private and unannounced (for security reasons), and he never had external meetings organised at Trisulti.” So Bannon and Harnwell are accused of holding a secret meeting with Testa at the monastery and Harnwell’s response is to claim he has no record of any such meeting and assert that Bannon couldn’t have done it because his meetings at the monastery were always a secret:
“Moreover, one of the arrested men, 25-year-old Giampiero Testa, also claimed to have met with American alt-right ideologue Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, during a visit to Trisulti, the sprawling 13th-century Italian monastery where Bannon was attempting to set up a right-wing think tank.”
Now that is an interesting investigative twist. Was Giampiero Testa — who is accused of plotting an attack on a Naples police barracks and views Christchurcch shooter Brentan Tarrant as an inspiration — telling the truth when he made these claims about meetings with Bannon? Note how Benjamin Harnwell — Bannon’s British associate who co-founded the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) — doesn’t confirm such meetings took place, but doesn’t really deny them either. Instead, Harnwell gives this highly suspicious explanation for why Bannon probably didn’t meet with Testa: Bannon’s trips to the Trisulti Charterhouse were also off-the-record and a secret. So Testa is alleging in those intercepted communications what would obviously be a secret meeting with Bannon at Trisulti Charterhouse and Harrnwell’s response is that such a meeting would be unlikely because Bannon’s trips there were always a secret. It’s not exactly a compelling alibi. Quite the opposite. Harnwell was describing secret trips that would have been the perfect set up to conduct clandestine meetings with potential terrorists:
Given the close ties between Testa’s “Order of Hagal” network and Ukraine’s Nazi battalions, we have to ask: was Testa acting as a kind of middle-man between Bannon and Ukraine’s Nazis? It all raises the question: given Bannon’s self-appointed role as an organizer of pan-European ‘populist’ fascism, what is his relationship with the Azov movement that set out to do the same thing and build international far right alliances. We’ve never really gotten an update on how Bannon’s and Azov’s mutual pan-fascist efforts overlap. And how here we are, learning about alleged secret meetings between Bannon and an Italian Nazi terrorist with close Azov ties and given deeply uncompelling denials. Such uncompelling denial that it raises the question of what else is under this rock. Let’s not forget that Testa was plotting a terrorist massacre in Naples. That seems like the kind of person one would want to meet with in secret, especially if you knew about the plot or were even involved with it.
So Were Italian terror strikes part of Bannon’s plans for uniting the European far right? Plans with an Azov angle? If so, that points to what is probably the darkest aspect of this report: If Bannon was in on the Order of Hagal’s terror plot, there’s a good chance the network behind the terror plot is a lot bigger than just the Order of Hagal. And still actively plotting away.