“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” —Hillary Clinton
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“Pepe the frog, the most prominent symbol of the white nationalist so-called ‘alt-right’…”
Ms. Salaky, I appeal to you: For the love of G-d, please stop normalizing Nazis.
You’re only playing into a Luntzian-like narrative by using sanitized, Orwellian terms.
The Klan, Nazis, racists, Jew baiters…take you pick, but please – enough with the Bannonspeak.
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Of course, London is where Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and killed with radiation
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Stick with Peppa the Pig, Theresa.
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Nice…let’s go with insults and intimidation Russia…it worked for Trump! Maybe at your hand?
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I’d recommend Ms. Salaky go with Right-wing, fascist, white supremist tiny brained wipers of other peoples bottoms. But she doesn’t strike me as a big Monty Python fan.
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If anyone thought this overt alt-right propaganda would slow or come to an end with the election of Trump because Russia was now satisfied with their results and would rest on their laurels, they were sadly mistaken. In fact, it seems they feel even more emboldened with their ability to interfere in the body politic, of any Western country or ally. This is a full-on Fascist and ultra-rightwing Nationalist assault conducted by the Russians…continuing to use its multi-pronged efforts as well.
They make provocative statements and then they mind-fuckingly challenge the right to a free press (smokescreen) when they know they’ll be deliberately called out on their propaganda. So they use disinformation, subterfuge, and a relentless effort at making sure their speech is the only one that’s heard to sway public opinion while demonizing whichever politician they choose to go after. It worked with Hillary. Why not continue doing this in upcoming elections in Europe? Only, why hide it now that the cat is out of the bag?
Russia will continue to sow division in the West, which has everything to do with weakening US alliances so that Russia can step into the breach, whenever they see that coming to benefit their own interests over those of the West.
Trump is such an idiot and useful pawn in allowing them to achieve their objectives. There are no words to describe how despicable I think he is as a traitorous asshole to US interests around the world and here at home.
Its really quite frightening how the rise of the alt-right uber-nationalist and xenophobic movements in Europe (as well as here on US soil) have a plan to go full steam ahead now on their ideas. And parenthetically, our GOP-led Congress is along for the ride, onboard with a Trump alt-right agenda, and sees absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. Traitors all. Fucking sell outs to this country that I love.
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Those people are not the majority obviously since the majority elected Hillary and what’s more, the election that got us UnPresident Nazifrog was rigged from before the casting of the first vote.
Greg Palast told us in August in the Rolling Stone exactly what would happen in November and nobody listened then and nobody is listening now.
But it was not because the majority of Americans wanted Trump - we did not.
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It’s not stupid. It’s deadly serious. What’s going on here is clear if you read the report on the Russian election interference published on Friday.
This is all part of the global agitprop campaign. It has two purposes. First, through the artifice of ostensibly trolling Americans, they are engaging in a passive-agressive injection of memes into European media that reinforce the existing angst and worry about the coming collapse of America’s commitment to protect Europe from Russian provocation and hegemonic incursions, particularly in the former Soviet bloc countries. The idea being to weaken the will of the front line countries to resist their attempts to stir up ethnic discontent and impose hegemonic control and, longer term, aid Putin’s long-term goal of breaking up the entire western alliance system.
Second, by conducting their trolling campaign from the London embassy, they are, again passive-agressively, injecting memes into our media that further reinforce the angst and worry about the collapse of democracy and democratic institutions among Trump’s opponents in a way that makes us feel helpless and powerless before the might of Russia’s ascendent thugocracy. Because If their American embassy had been doing this, there would be demands that the whole goddamn staff from the Ambassador to the cute young women in the file-shredding room be declared persona non grata and kicked out of the country, which would be empowering. But they know Trump isn’t going to ask May to stop them.
And, just as significantly, in addition to trying to demoralize people like us they are moving to get the authoritarian assholes on the American right to explicitly align themselves psychologically with Russia. They’re attempting to harness their seemingly endless capacity for doublethink, and their instinctive gravitation toward anything that pisses us off, to lead people on the American right to reject democracy and democratic norms and align them with the authoritarian sham democracy ideology Putin is pushing across the world. And, they’re using the same insidious tool–punch down fake “humor”–that conservatives have used for thirty years to renormalize and validate racism, sexism and hatred for “elites.” They’re using a vehicle conservatives have been systematically programmed to respond to to attack us.
On both sides of our political divide, and on both sides of the Atlantic, however, its about destroying belief in democracy, in American power and in American institutions. And one of the reasons they’re succeeding is because we are unable to see the big picture. We just see the individual pieces and, predisposed as we are to reject conspiracy theories, think it’s silly and banal.
This isn’t a joke. In their minds, this is deadly serious, part of the asymmetrical warfare Putin has been waging against western democracy across the world. And it’s working because people raised in a democracy that hasn’t had a real authoritarian ideological rival for going on two generations lack any of the mental antibodies, any of the tools, and any of the institutions necessary to analyze it, see if for what it is, resist it, or combat it.
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I think it is safe to say that the Russian Embassy in the UK has nothing to do with diplomacy, any more than the Trump administration will have anything to do with diplomacy.
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I understand that and please put that figurative frying pan down, but this current electorate…
nah.
If had my frying pan out you’d know it and I don’t. hahahahaha But I don’t think the current electorate is as fucked up as it looks right now since Hillary’s vote margin was pretty damn large and should have been a lot bigger but it was cut down by a number of different tricks.
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Even though you mentioned they have a friend in Trump, there really will be a void in national leadership at the top like President Obama could provide when Orange Julius takes office. We need a leader, a President that can help explain all this to the country so there is no mistaking what intentions are afoot by the Russian kleptocracy. Instead, we’ll have the “leader” of our country that is completely OK and amenable to Russia’s anti-democratic behavior (probably because he’s only capable of seeing his financial interests at stake). They do and will pose as an alternative to our democracy, and use the idea of an “authoritarian sham democracy” as the bait.
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The VOA was known for telling the truth. Russia, in any of its incarnations, has never been known for telling the truth.
Here, Putin is attempting to claim that unless we treat their racism with respect we are not tolerant of free speech. But if challenged, they will claim that the frog is just a joke.
The other little fascist game they have been playing is causing their own journalists to disappear.
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Your reminder that Russia has devolved into a nation run by insecure manchildren.
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Yes.
A month or two before the election, I finally abandoned a stock-trading blog where I had been a long-time reader. The person running it went full alt-right before the election. A large percentage of the material presented was either from RT or nutty analyses of wikileaks materials, including the nonsensical “bombshells” about pedophilia, witchcraft, and so on
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Must be an Obama appointee.
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Indeed. Many in the financial blogosphere seems to be alt-right infected. That’s were I first picked up alarming signs of re-surging Antisemitism long before Trump decided to run.
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Seem odd to me for russia or russians to care about black when they probably are around so few.