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Active Measures, authoritarian lines of power, political absolutism, politics, psychology of dictatorship, Soviet post-Soviet, terrorism
The role of the Soviet Union and KGB “Active Measures” — a term of art that may be looked up online — in the amplifying anti-western anti-Semitic animus has been far overlooked by the public focused – by related political manipulation – on Islamic Terrorism. Whether following the timeline from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the early appearance of Hitlerism, and the Stalin Era or coming forward to the Vietnam War Era or on to this day, you will find the Russian state deeply involved either with the sponsorship of terrorism (see Wikiepedia “Terrorism in the Soviet Era”) or the tolerance of it!
Today, Russia will not condemn Hamas, Hezbollah, or PFLP as terrorist organizations.
Soviet cartoons distributed in the Middle East to leverage “the masses” into the Soviet camp. This one may date from the early 1970s.
This piece on my blog perhaps needs an update — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/15/ftac-its-not-islam-its-moscow/ — but it’s message remains factual and clear.
When the Soviet Union dissolved 25 years — December 8 (in secret), 25 (public declaration), 26 (Russian tricolor raised above the Kremlin), 1991 — the west may have been both too confident and too eager to establish business and cooperation with the new criminally wild but proto-democratic state, which unbeknownst to the west had already had in place a transition plan to attempt to maintain the architecture and privileges of the Party nomenklatura (reference _Putin’s Kleptocracy_ by Miami University scholar Karen Dawisha).
Vladimir Putin’s complete “pivot” at Syria — not to mention those “little green men” who invaded Crimea — tells of a Russian revanche this time as a feudal, neo-imperial totalitarian and ultra-nationalist state that may manipulate terrorism to suits its ends.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/
Pat Condell – what binds Putin, Assad, and Khamenei (to lesser extent Putin and Orban plus Putin and Erdogan) is the shared drive for absolute power, or medieval political absolutism, which might remind us of someone else. The malignant narcissists who become dictators — “different talks — same walk!” — appear to have an affinity for one another. As much would seem to inform the world’s code “Brown” “New Nationalism” and the familiar “Red-Green” alliance of old “comrade networks” and the strident among Muslims.
Thank Moscow for once again driving both Far Right and Far Left extremism — and with that, perhaps also our own division today in the United States. The rancor serves to weaken EU / NATO cohesion.
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