Almost
one year ago the United States Congress (with only a handful of “nay”
votes) adopted new and severe
sanctions against Russia for its supposed attempt to
influence and interfere in the 2016 national elections. Included in that
legislation was a provision—specifically placed there by Russophobe Senator
Lindsay Graham (R-SC)—that President Trump cannot alter or lift any of the
sanctions without future Congressional approbation.
The government of Vladimir Putin, in response to this provocation,
announced that the American diplomatic presence in Russia would be reduced by
755 persons, a drastic move by any standards. But we cannot say it was
unexpected—or undeserved.
That sanctions vote was fascinating as it illustrated during the
first year of the contentious Trump presidency a rare point of political unity
between the socialist Left, the Democrats and the mainstream media—formerly
noted for their “soft” and favorable attitude to the old and unloved Soviet
Communist Russian regime—and the conservative/GOP mainstream, dominated by the
Neoconservatives. Of course, perspectives and approaches to the question
differ, whether it was the Trump campaign that was colluding with Moscow, or if
it was Hillary and the Clinton Foundation that had collaborated in some way,
but their target remained the same: that man in the Kremlin and the country he
governs.
One thing was clear: the result of the 2016 presidential election
had the most unheard of and remarkable result in recent American political
history: a de facto alliance of these supposedly antipodal
political forces. And what we have witnessed is a phalanx of the pseudo-Right
Neocons and the formerly pro-Soviet Left linked together, competing to see who
could be more “anti” and who could come up with the more far-fetched Russia
conspiracy theories, and—as with the 2017 sanctions—the latest unwarranted,
over the top legislation.
Consider the recent—but largely unreported—formation of an
umbrella group, the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of
“uni[ting] the center-left and the center-right.” Its leaders include former
John McCain foreign policy advisor Max Boot, The Washington Post’s
Anne Appelbaum, Never Trumper Bill Kristol, former chess wizard Gary Kasparov,
and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations. [See “Neocons & Russiagaters
Unite!,” April 27, 2018] RDI’s manifesto calls for “fresh
thinking” and urges “the best minds from different countries to come together
for both broad and discrete projects in the service of liberty and democracy in
the West and beyond…. Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged
by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties
are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and
undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from
the right and left.”
Or, recall those on-camera Fox News Russia experts—think here of
General Jack Keane or the unhinged Colonel Ralph Peters who literally foamed at
the mouth when talking about Putin, calling him “the new Hitler,” and who
asserted that Putin had committed “worse crimes” than the German dictator.
(Peters is so anti-Russian that he finally left the Fox
News network in March 2018)
When Tucker Carlson on his prime time program last July 11, 2017,
demanded that Peters provide facts and figures for his accusations,
Peters immediately explodedand
implied that program host Carlson was a “Hitler apologist.” It was a classic
argument and instance of reductio ad Hitlerum.
Of course, such examples aren’t rare in the establishment
“conservative movement” media. Pick up any issue of National Review or The Weekly Standard or
listen to the Glenn Beck radio program and you can find the same hysteria,
largely laced with faked quotes or disinformation (e.g., “Putin wants to
re-establish the Soviet Union” or “Putin was head of
the KGB” or “Putin has had his enemies assassinated,” and so on, ad nauseum).
Indeed, another ploy by Neocon pundits (and Congress) has been to
parade Bill Browder, the grandson of American Communist Party boss Earl
Browder, as a star witness to President Putin’s nefarious dealings. Of course,
it should be noted that Browder fils lost big time financially in
his manipulations in Russia, as investigative journalists Philip Giraldi and Robert Parry have
documented, and he is engaged in a vicious personal vendetta against Vladimir
Putin.
For the Neoconservative leaders of what passes for “conservatism”
these days, it is as if nothing has changed since 1991, since
the ignominious fall of Communism. It’s even arguable that their hostility to
Moscow has increased since then.
Let me suggest several reasons for this: First, many of the more
prominent Neoconservatives descend from Russian Jews from the Pale of
Settlement, whose memories go back to the pre-Communist days of persecution and
pogroms under the Tsars. They originally welcomed Lenin and the Communist
regime as liberators and formed some of its staunchest supporters and
apparatchiks in the regime of terror that followed (especially in the Cheka and
KGB) until Josef Stalin unleashed a wave of anti-semitism after World War II.
[See the partially translated excerpts from Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years
Together at: https://200yearstogether.wordpress.com ,
and the commentary]
Putin, despite his strong support from native Russian Jews and
from the Moscow Rabbinate, is a Russian nationalist and fervent supporter of
the traditionalist Russian Orthodox Church, and those two factors bring up
painful memories of the “bad old days” of discrimination and Jewish persecution
for the Neocons.
A prime example of this comes in a recent volume authored by
prominent Neocon journalist and homosexual activist (yes, the two traits often
seem to go together), James Kirchick: The End of Europe: Dictators,
Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, 2017). In his jumble of Neocon
ideology and prejudice, Kirchick evaluates what for him seems to be happening
ominously in Europe. He is deeply fearful of the efforts to “close borders”
against Muslim immigrants from the Middle East. He blasts Marine Le Pen as a
racist—and most likely a subtle “holocaust denier!”—and attacks the attempts in
places like Hungary and Poland to reassert national traditions and Christian
identity; for him these are nothing
less than attempts to bring back “fascism.”
Russia comes in for perhaps his harshest criticism, and the reason
is unmistakable: Russia seems to be returning to its older national and
pre-Communist heritage, to its age-old Orthodox Christian faith. Russians are
returning by the millions to the church and the “old-time” religion. For
Kirchick this can only mean one thing: the triumph of bigotry, anti-semitism,
and “extreme right wing” ideology, and the failure of what he terms “liberal
democracy and equality” (including, he would no doubt include, feminism, same
sex marriage, across-the-board equality, and all those other “conservative
values”!).
Kirchick’s critique, shared by many of the leaders of the national
Republican Party and dominating the pages of most establishment “conservative”
publications and talk radio these days, joins him arm-in-arm with globalist
George Soros in efforts to undermine the Russian state and its president…all in
the name of “democracy” and “equality.” [See, “George Soros Aghast as
Collapsing EU, while Russia Resurgent,” January 19, 2018]
But, just what kind of “democracy” and what kind of “equality” do
Kirchick and Soros defend?
Beyond the ideological foundations for their hatred of nationalist
Russia are economic considerations and the issue of who controls and manages
the Russian economy: Wall Street and Bruxelles, or Russia,
itself. Unlike the weak and pliant Boris Yeltsin, Putin the nationalist ended
the strangle-hold of Russian industry, in particular control of Russia’s
important energy sector, by those few international businessmen, the oligarchs
(many of them Jewish), most of whom fled the country. That could not stand! How
dare Russia—and its president—oppose the economic diktats of
Bruxelles and Wall Street!
Lastly, we should add one more reason for hostility, and that is
Russia’s remaining international presence, in particular, in Syria. It is very
simple: you don’t go from being one of the world’s two “superpowers” to all of
a sudden a second-rate, economically-handicapped “has been” without some
remorse. As a patriot and nationalist President Putin has, understandably,
attempted to reassert Russian prosperity and power—certainly, not as much or in
the same manner as the old Communist leaders. But, from his reasonable point of
view, the largest country in the world does have interests, and not just in
what goes on in neighboring nations where millions of Russians (formerly within
Russia) reside, but also with long-time allies such as Syria.
Is not this same criterion true for the United States and its
dealings with its neighbors and allies?
More, for the past twenty-five years Russia has experienced the
poisoned tip of Islamic terrorism, domestically, including the brutal war in
Tchechnya in the Caucasus region and the horrid bombings in the heart of the
country, Moscow. From the beginning of his tenure Putin has offered to
cooperate with the United States in the fight against international Islamic
terror, but each time it was the United States—us—who refused, including
famously Paul Wolfowitz during the George W. Bush administration who replied to
one such offer: “We don’t need your assistance or intel.” And thus, the
revealing files on the Tsarnaev brothers (Boston bombing) were not received.
But, as Neocon Charles Krauthammer once declared: “We live in a unipolar world
today, and there is only ONE superpower, and that is the United States.” That attitude
was not received with equanimity by post-Communist Russia, a Russia that has
discovered its heritage and its traditions and has asked for partnership with
the United States, and not the hysteria we have witnessed in the United States
sweeping aside all rationality.
