urban75 forums

I was going to post this in the main Ukraine thread but it is potentially quite a large topic so thought it deserved its own thread.

US Extremists Have Picked a Side in Ukraine: ‘Lol Putin Is Brilliant’

White nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes is cheering on Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

“I wish Putin was president of America,” he mused to his 45,000 subscribers on Telegram on Wednesday morning.

Fifteen hours later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. And Fuentes, who’s hosting a far-right conference in Florida Friday night, was psyched.
“I am totally rooting for Russia,” he wrote the following morning. “This is the coolest thing to happen since 1/6.”

“UKRAINE WILL BE DESTROYED", added Fuentes, who describes himself as a “Christian nationalist,” someone who thinks the U.S. is a fundamentally Christian nation. “I never doubted you [Putin], my Czar."

Over on the Gab platform, its CEO Andrew Torba also expressed his support for Putin.

“Lol Putin is brilliant. Western Media, which is obsessed with ‘muh Nazis’ will have a tough time spinning this one,” wrote Torba, who’s sponsoring Fuentes’ conference, the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), this weekend. “What he really means is Ukraine needs to be liberated and cleansed from the degeneracy of the secular western globalist empire.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Wednesday night, far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist. In their minds, Ukraine is just a corrupt pawn in a vast “globalist” conspiracy.

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Here he is at some alt-right rally today with the crowd cheering for Putin and chanting his name:



I wonder to what extent this is organic - Putin's Russia is indeed more akin to what conservative Christian white men would like America to be like - and to what extent this is a product of Russian online propaganda campaigns?

I've noticed a lot of the left wing subs on Reddit are dominated by mods who hand out permabans for the slightest criticism of Russia, and I have a suspicion - albeit evidence free - that this is a deliberate and careful campaign by Russian propagandists to make the western left echo pro-Russian viewpoints. There could be something else going on in right wing online circles too, which may be why the "anti-imperialist" tankie left and the alt-right seem to be converging on pro-Putin positions.

I also wonder if there is a drift towards a more clear ideological split, or for a kind of transnational anti-democratic traditionalist movement to emerge with a loose affiliation to the Kremlin, similar but ideologically inverse to the Cold War era network of Moscow-aligned CPs.

Also, there does seem to be some kind of red-brown pipeline in the conspiraloon sphere. I wonder if tankies and the alt-right could resolve their contradictions in future and there could emerge a sort of bona-fide "red brown" reactionary movement? And is this already happening? There are shades of it within anti-vaxx circles.

I'm not sure what anti-vaxxers are saying about Ukraine, but at least in Czechia there does seem to be an overlap between anti-vaxxers and Putin apologia. Not sure if there is also a tankie and alt-right overlap.

Czech anti-vaxxers turning into pro-Russian activists. Groups of Czech activists organising mass demonstrations against COVID-19 measures openly support Russia in its aggression towards Ukraine, and their leader has business ties with Moscow.

“The US with its dollar needs a war, Ukraine with its collapsing and corrupt economy needs to find the culprit. Putin is no fool, but if genocide is occurring in the separatist republics, he will eventually have no choice but to intervene,” the most popular Czech anti-vax group, Chcípl PES, posted on its Facebook profile.

Czech daily Hospodářské noviny reported that the post was deleted a few hours later by the administrator of the social site.

“I’m standing on the side of Russia”, the popular anti-vax activist Patrik Tušl posted on its site with roughly 10,000 followers.

According to the Czech elves, an organisation of cyber activists fighting disinformation, it is evident that groups opposing COVID-19 measures are rapidly turning pro-Russian.

“In all disinformation channels, we can see that the scene moved to an intense support for Russia,” the analysis reads. “Quantitatively and qualitatively, the theme of COVID-19 is receding,” the cyber activists reported.

Moreover, the Czech news site Forum24 also pointed out that the head of Chcípl PES initiative has several business activities in Russia.

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