The confrontation was a long time coming. When Erdoğan first became Prime Minister, in 2003, he was the Islamic world’s great democratic hope, a leader of enormous vitality who would show the world that an avowedly Islamist politician could lead a stable democracy and carry on as a member of NATO, too.Those hopes evaporated quickly. Erdoğan, who was elected Turkey’s president in 2014, has taken a page from Vladimir Putin’s playbook, using democratic institutions to legitimize his rule while crushing his opponents, with an eye to ultimately smothering democracy itself.
This is a welcome development for the Balts, who are wondering whether they really did achieve irreversible independence when the West won the Cold War. Their apprehension is grounded in NATO’s flaccid response to Putin’s aggressive revanchism, particularly in Ukraine. Obama still won’t provide Ukraine with even defensive weaponry. This follows years of American accommodation of Putin, from canceling a Polish-Czech missile-defense system to, most recently, openly acquiescing to Russia’s seizure of a dominant role in Syria.
If there’s the sniff of a Clinton tie to corruption and crime, the conservative press will find it. In the listings below, The Daily Caller shouts on that.
For any interested (including the FBI) in Fethullah Gulen, BackChannels has visited the presentation of the personality in online news at least twice (as listed) and somewhere on this blog there’s a related poem involving “winks ‘n’ nods” (you’ll appreciate it more if you find it on your own). 🙂
Erdogan the Malignant with the White Palace?
BackChannels has had some say (also as listed).
Psychological alignment: Erdogan along with Orban may share more with Putin as personalities than they may with other NATO leaders and the leaders of westward-leaning former Soviet states or clients.
That’s life with “malignant narcissists”.
Their people will be beaten up for a buck; their manipulated constituencies will drift toward fascist nationalism or some near equivalent (on this blog, keep in mind “Syndicate Red Brown Green“); but they will be glorious in wealth and treasure plundered from state coffers — just as Putin would have it (and has as much for himself as regards kleptocracy and absolute power).
Americans, often written off as being more concerned with Kardashians and sports scores, probably should immerse for a brief spell in Cold War and post-Soviet history, so as to get a grip not only on machinations driving contemporary foreign affairs but to check the state’s own Machiavellian preference for developing perhaps too much business and politics “behind the curtains”.
But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement. This got me thinking even more intently about the similar ways that the two — despite their differences — have applied, encouraged and supported the use of violence. In light of these parallels, the lessons derived from the decades-long struggle against communism throughout the world may provide important guidance for the continuing fight against jihadism.
These attacks — Dallas, Nice / Black Lives Matter, ISIS (et al) — should not be seen separately. Each devolves to familiar Soviet / post-Soviet agitation, manipulation, and misinformation, at least. With “terrorist-type” “actions”, direct relationships (or “orders”) are not needed as “actor” compulsions pushed by incitements, and permissions plainly work to produce attacks.
Moscow’s Themes
Confusion Through a Massive Agitprop Press — e.g., Information Clearinghouse, Mint Press, RT, etc. — confusing or inverting issues — developing and promulgating disinformation that may weave into more moderate but still far liberal press like Democracy Now and Mother Jones, legitimate stalwarts on the west but perhaps also a little seduced;
Corruption, Kleptocracy, State Mafia — “Chaika” may be all that needs to be signaled to find the entrance to that rabbit hole;
Ends-Against-the-Middle throughout NATO-aligned and westward-leaning states — “Syndicate Red Brown Green” — Old Comrades, New Nationalists, Islamists;
Political Absolute Power — centralized governance; state aristocracy; sustained secret police state (read through the “Russian Section” of this blog’s library);
Terrorism – Moscow refuses to designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and in recent years it has hosted representatives of the infamous PFLP.
The last piece posted in October 2015, and it may need an update. However: having incubated ISIS to blackmail and goad the west, Putin has now the option of demonstrating “revived” Russian military prowess by eating ISIS alive but not too much at a time. Khamenei-favoring Shiite militia in Iraq, long hosting Revolutionary Guard advisors, have also their convenient foil.
As regards Europe, Moscow-(Tehran) favors resurgent nationalism — le Pen or Orban (and Jobbik), which is exactly what terrorism compels or encourages in the states it targets.
It’s hard to imagine the kind of narcissism / malignant narcissism (and cowardice and — what sets off the narcissism — “narcissistic mortification”) that would build such a theater of politics and war as Syria-Iraq and a troubled Europe, but go back to the Cold War, which was supposed to have ended 25 years ago, and drag forward the Soviet / KGB Era methods in manipulating whole “chess boards” — both sides of any conflict to advantage.
Then look again at Moscow.
How has Moscow played both sides of a conflict?
There’s a related history lesson in this gem of a BBC video interview:
Soviet secret services have been described by GRU defectors Viktor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev as “the primary instructors of terrorists worldwide.”[4][5][6] According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky once said: “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”[7] He also claimed that “Airplane hijacking is my own invention” and that in 1969 alone, 82 planes were hijacked worldwide by the KGB-financed PLO.[7]
Lt. General Pacepa described operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States. According to Pacepa, the following organizations received assistance from the KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services: PLO, National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara), the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, and the Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975.[8]
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/opinions/russia-soviet-fighters-istanbul-bombing-bergen/ – 7/1/2016 – Note: ISIS has also served Moscow as a target to which to channel its own Islamists. In effect, ISIS by existing in numbers in Syria provides a “KZ” or “kill zone” in which to concentrate fighters for later warfare. HOW such fighters may then come to launch actions against NATO members forms a question beyond the means of this blog to address.
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The last word on this post goes to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart:
In an earlier column, I briefly addressed the similarities between the utopian ideology of the Islamic State and that of the global communist movement. I have also compared the counterinsurgency efforts used against the two movements in the past. But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement.
The post-Cold War, post-Soviet Era remain a legitimate framework for understanding contemporary American political protest. Organizations like Black Lives Matter and the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and Repression offer a perspective that should have faded with the dissolving of the Soviet almost 25 years ago.
The world has changed around them.
The chief of police might be a black man; the “white” policeman a Latino; the lawyers, the social workers, other professionals: any minority, faith or race, or white and possibly Christian, or not: basically, anyone can become what they want to become in these United States of America. The politics that promote division and the psychology that accompanies some want of respect and manages to turn that into a tyrannical voice may devolve to “malignant narcissism” (on this blog and with reference to dictatorships: “differents talks — same walk”).
Our YouTube feeds respond to our Internet habits — all that Google Chrome or other mammoth machinery may capture (about us), crunch with algorithms, and throw back to us with the logic that if we clicked on it, we must have been interested in it — but let me not get distracted with computer-human interactions, social engineering, and programmers.
Regarding the above clips: Farrokh Sekaleshfar had his name made the moment Omar Mateen operationalized at least an opinion similar to his own; Nouman Ali Khan, whose online presence I found connected with the Islamic Center of Irving (Texas) appears a countervailing speaker to Sekaleshfar; and then, in the way of YouTube’s relational “other video” options, comes a voice of reason about madness — Omar Mateen’s ex-wife.
What do they look like together, these three videos?
BackChannels 