Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #118 Russian Fascism?

Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

The hypoth­e­sis was advanced in 1992 that Rus­sia and per­haps oth­er republics of the for­mer Sovi­et Union might turn to fas­cism. Events that have tak­en place since sug­gest that that unap­pe­tiz­ing prospect remains a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. This pro­gram ana­lyzes the polit­i­cal land­scape in Rus­sia in 1998. Just as nation­al humil­i­a­tion over defeat in World War I and the extreme eco­nom­ic hard­ship that Ger­many expe­ri­enced in the 1920s and ear­ly 30s helped to dri­ve the Ger­man peo­ple into the arms of Hitler, eco­nom­ic pri­va­tion and nation­al humil­i­a­tion over defeat in the Cold War threat­en to pro­pel the Russ­ian peo­ple in a sim­i­lar direc­tion. On the 57th anniver­sary of Ger­many’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union in World War II, Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin warned of the grow­ing dan­ger of Nazism in Rus­sia. (A por­tion of the text of his address is read into the record in this pro­gram.) One of the pri­ma­ry ele­ments in the rise of Russ­ian fas­cism is the so-called “Red-Brown Alliance,” a polit­i­cal union of resid­ual hard-line com­mu­nists and neo-fas­cists, who share a com­mon bond of extreme nation­al­ism and anti-Semi­tism and who exploit the social tur­moil pro­duced by the eco­nom­ic hard­ship cur­rent­ly beset­ting Rus­sia. Many Rus­sians are open­ly dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of inter­ven­tion in the coun­try’s polit­i­cal affairs by the impov­er­ished Red Army and sev­er­al for­mer gen­er­als are emerg­ing as poten­tial lead­ers, notably gen­er­al Alexan­der Lebed (an admir­er of the social poli­cies of for­mer Chilean dic­ta­tor Augus­to Pinochet). (See also RFA#36 and FTRs 94 and 95, avail­able from Spit­fire.) (Record­ed in Decem­ber of 1998)

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #118 Russian Fascism?”

  1. This arti­cle show that Russ­ian Fascist/Nazis par­tic­i­pat­ed in a large dark mon­ey fund­ing (osten­si­bly to assist for Repub­li­cans and Trump). The Rus­sians involved are Nation­al­ist Racist Extrem­ists i.e. Nazis. Russ­ian fas­cism is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 139, 710 and 929. When review­ing the infor­ma­tion about Zhiri­novsky in the arti­cle, keep in mind that has received financ­ing from Ger­hard Frey, Gen­er­al Walk­er’s friend at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, high­light­ed in FTR #971.

    Also con­sid­er that the mon­ey from the NRA ends up poiti­ciz­ing extrem­ist views held by Nazis, oth­er para­mil­i­tary extrem­ists, and their sup­port base in gen­er­al. These peo­ple are opposed to any form of gun con­trol even though the found­ing fathers could not have envi­sioned such tech­ni­cal achieve­ments such as machine guns when they wrote the Sec­ond Amend­ment.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/exclusive-russian-gun-group-with-ties-to-nra-backed-by-right-wing-extremists

    Talk­ing Points Memo (TPM)
    Exclu­sive: Russ­ian Gun Group With Ties To NRA Backed By Right-Wing Extrem­ists
    By Sam Thiel­man | Feb­ru­ary 6, 2018 2:49 pm
    TWEET
    A Russ­ian pro-gun group with ties to the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion boast­ed an “hon­orary mem­bers” list that’s a who’s‑who of far-right and nation­al­ist Russ­ian polit­i­cal fig­ures.
    The group, The Right To Bear Arms, is run by Alexan­der Tor­shin, the Russ­ian cen­tral bank offi­cial and Putin ally at the cen­ter of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the NRA received ille­gal Russ­ian mon­ey to boost Don­ald Trump in 2016.

    The NRA has denied being con­tact­ed by the FBI about any­thing relat­ed to Rus­sia, but has said almost noth­ing about the report­ed probe. The NRA spent more dark mon­ey in the 2016 elec­tion than any oth­er polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion.

    The hon­orary mem­bers list offers addi­tion­al evi­dence that the Right To Bear Arms enjoys sup­port from pow­er­ful far-right fig­ures in Putin’s Rus­sia. And it rais­es ques­tions about the NRA’s rela­tion­ship with the group: The Right To Bear Arms host­ed top NRA offi­cials for a 2015 meet­ing in Moscow and has forged oth­er close con­tacts with the NRA. One per­son on the hon­orary mem­bers list told TPM he received his mem­ber­ship at a 2015 NRA meet­ing.

    As recent­ly as 2016, Right to Bear Arms list­ed 22 “hon­orary mem­bers” on its web­site, accord­ing to an archived ver­sion of the site, which described them as “indi­vid­u­als who make deci­sions on a nation­al scale, as well as opin­ion lead­ers.” The Right To Bear Arms site said the hon­orary mem­bers were list­ed “with their con­sent.”

    Many of those list­ed work along­side Tor­shin in the Russ­ian par­lia­ment. They include top brass from the right-wing nation­al­ist LDPR and Rod­i­na par­ties. That’s a pow­er­ful mem­ber­ship for a group which was found­ed in 2012 by a then-24-year-old Siber­ian fur­ni­ture store own­er, Maria Buti­na, and which has had lit­tle suc­cess in pro­mot­ing Russ­ian gun rights.

    “For near­ly a year, the NRA has avoid­ed answer­ing basic ques­tions about why it cozied up to Moscow and a Russ­ian gun group with close ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime,” John Fein­blatt, pres­i­dent of Every­town for Gun Safe­ty, told TPM. “Until the NRA comes clean and starts answer­ing ques­tions, Amer­i­cans will con­tin­ue to won­der what the NRA might be hid­ing.”

    An NRA spokesman didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment.
    One name on the list, Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Rus­sia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhiri­novsky, is a long­time ally of Putin, who he has called “the tsar.” For decades, Zhiri­novsky has been a leader of Russia’s far right. He has blamed Jews for start­ing the Sec­ond World War and pro­vok­ing the Holo­caust, and he played a key role in help­ing the intel­li­gence offi­cer sus­pect­ed of poi­son­ing defec­tor Alexan­dr Litvi­nenko get elect­ed to Russia’s par­lia­ment. A 2002 video shows a drunk­en Zhiri­novsky threat­en­ing Con­doleez­za Rice, then the U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er, with gang rape. In Octo­ber 2016, Zhiri­novsky threat­ened “Hiroshi­mas and Nagasakis every­where” if Amer­i­cans vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton.

    Oleg Volk, a Ten­nessee-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er who makes pro-gun posters and graph­ics, also is list­ed as an hon­orary mem­ber of The Right to Bear Arms. Volk told TPM that Buti­na and Tor­shin pre­sent­ed his hon­orary mem­ber­ship to him at “a brief lunch meet­ing” dur­ing the 2015 NRA con­fer­ence in Nashville, as a thank you for mak­ing Russ­ian-lan­guage images for the group to use.
    Volk said he was “amused” to see Zhirinovsky’s name near his own.
    “He was kind of the bogey­man in Russ­ian pol­i­tics, he was very anti-Semit­ic,” said Volk, who is Jew­ish. “Peo­ple like him caused my fam­i­ly to get out of Rus­sia.”

    Among the oth­er names on the Right to Bear Arms list: Ilya Droz­dov, the deputy head of LDPR, who has called for Ukraine to be “wiped off the map;” as well as at least three oth­er LDPR mem­bers.
    Alex­ei Zhu­ravlev, also on the list, is a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Russ­ian par­lia­ment and the head of the Rod­i­na par­ty, which, like LDPR, oppos­es the pro-West­ern gov­ern­ment in Ukraine. Zhu­rav­elv has pub­licly sup­port­ed the head of the Donet­sk Sep­a­ratists, who declared the east­ern Ukrain­ian region of Donet­sk a sep­a­rate region called “Lit­tle Rus­sia.” 

    Rod­i­na backs the The Antiglob­al­iza­tion Move­ment of Rus­sia, which has court­ed aspir­ing seces­sion­ists in Cal­i­for­nia, Texas and Puer­to Rico and active­ly courts neo-Nazis. In 2015 Rod­i­na host­ed a nation­al­ist event that fea­tured atten­dees from Greek fas­cist group Gold­en Dawn and the vio­lent far-right orga­ni­za­tion Britain First, as well as Ku Klux Klan lawyer and white suprema­cist Sam Dick­son, and Jared Tay­lor, who leads the Amer­i­can Nazi group Amer­i­can Renais­sance.
    Russ­ian trans­la­tion pro­vid­ed by Jer­ry Vinokurov

    Posted by Mary Benton | February 6, 2018, 7:11 pm

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