Two inter related themes. Extremism in Russian Federation and the Freedom caucus /MAGA devotees. How they feed off each other and victimize Ukraine
Where I disagree with Paul Combaugh. There is ONLY ONE way to stop this nightmare. Take down the Putin regime. ALL of it. Everything wrong in the geo political universe stems from Putin, Once Putin is over thrown, the Freedom Caucus, Trump and the like will be like fish flopping out on the beach and will DIE off, politically
First though we need to look at the rats nest of TREASON the Kremlin installed in the USA
Quote
, Charles Flynn, the deputy chief of staff of the Army, was not listed as participating in any of the calls that day about mobilizing the National Guard to respond to the riot.
The Washington Post was the?first to report?Flynn's participation in the call.
"I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending, as I believed a decision was imminent from (then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy) and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision," Flynn said in a statement released to CNN. There was no clear answer about how long Flynn was on the call or whether he contributed to the conversation.
The Washington Post reports that the Army "falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn" was involved in the key meetings. One of the officials who was on the call told CNN in the days following the insurrection at the Capitol that Flynn was not on the calls, but the military did not confirm his participation until Wednesday.
end of quote
You want the reason why there was no NATIONAL guard ? At the capital ? Look no further
Whereas what Paul Combaught brought up
quote
The pendulum has now swung to the exact opposite direction and the primary difference is, the right is trying to destroy our form of democracy and replace it with authoritarianism?or as some claim, fascism. The goal, a pseudo democracy better described as a replica of Putin’s Russia where democracy is a show-horse, not actual and all power is consolidated in one dictator’s hands, along with a few close allies and colleagues.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”?
-?????????Maya Angelou
Besides the threat of destroying US constitutional democracy, there are countless associated threats to all those who don’t precisely align themselves with the extremists. There is racial, religious, ethnic, gender violence, the assault on every belief system other than theirs. Even Christianity would be excluded unless it was the far-right version that flies in the face of the teachings of Christianity.
end of quote
That is too nice a summary. So I do not get branded for it, what I have to really say is off the record on that one, but I think a few of you can guess it
quote
The main challenge to Putin’s power, then, comes not from the street but from within the regime itself. Putin turned 70 on the eve of the Kerch Bridge attack. Whether rumours of his chronic illness are correct or not (CIA director William Burns said in August that he believed that Putin was ‘far too well’), the debate over Putin’s successor has been at the forefront of the minds of Russia’s top power-brokers for at least three years. In February 2019 the chief Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov dared to publish a long essay discussing what a post-Putin Russia might look like. ‘Putinism’ would outlast Putin himself, Surkov argued, attempting to reassure the ex-KGB men who were Putin’s closest confidants that they had nothing to fear from a transition of power. They were not reassured. It was Surkov rather than Putin who was later shown the door.
end of quote
Ladies and gentlemen I submit that both the mutated GOP, and Putin's hell hole center in Moscow will NEVER leave Ukraine alone. Any Slavic democracy not in thrall to the criminal empire embracing Moscow and the GOP will make it its first job to destroy Ukraine, because Ukraine is a reproach to both GOP toadying to Putin, and Putin's hell center.
Cut the head of the snake off. DO IT
https://www.truthaboutthreats.com/p/never-again-but-how
quote
Never again... but how?
When the right is controlled by the extremist Trump wing
12 hr ago
1
Happy Friday
Well, my friends, yesterday I promised a long post about the subject of yesterday’s January 6th Hearing, revolved around. It’s a topic worthy of a series of books. Still, this must be discussed.?I will do my very best to limit this to what is essential.
In order to keep such a broad topic manageable, I will break this up into a handful of shorter sections. This will help focus, both me at the keyboard and you, wherever you’re reading on the ideas I would like you to take-away for future consideration.
It is not hyperbole to say that these hearings are historical in the American experience. Benedict Arnold at the top of the traitorous heap, has?now been replaced by Trump.
Intro:
Like every other American voter, the Trump era has been an emotional roller coaster for me too. I intentionally did not write yesterday while still under the influence of my emotions. I am angry. Well to be fully honest… I’m furious with so many people and organizations which you will find described in section 3 below. A colleague calls this “righteous anger” because it is grounded in my personal morality and my long history of believing in and protecting our nation and its values.
On the other side, the right-wing, currently dominated by extremists of all types, is angry too. Their anger though is mostly manufactured anger by immoral professional influencers who have molded their identity for years, decades actually. Like most anger, it spikes most when threatened. The US and the democracy, our brilliant founders foresaw for us, is currently at significant risk by selfish, ideological extremists trying to undo a couple of centuries of a “shining city on the hill.”
Two sides angry with each other is by definition, a threat. When one side is motivated by morally deficient extremism, the threat is far more severe. We spent four bloody years killing each other over slavery which politicians refused to settle in the runup to Fort Sumpter. The religious rhetoric and economic ramifications of giving up the “peculiar institution” were prime factors of the imminent war. Southern Christianity could not see past racial barriers and developed religious rhetoric to underpin their insistence on maintaining the slave trade. Today’s right has done the same.
How exactly the US right has been influenced to become a threat to our unique democracy, is a professional specialty of mine. Without going into how this happens, just know that I and my peers have been keeping track of our slide into extremism, for decades. Yes, I’m that old.
Every time I research this topic or watch a January 6th Hearing, it triggers my anger. Still, I find it difficult to sustain anger at my family, friends and fellow citizens who have “drunk the Trump/ extremism Kool-Aid.” It’s difficult because I professionally understand that they’ve been conned by professionals in my field who know how to achieve subservience to an immoral ideology.
My question and what today’s post is about, is what happened, who is responsible and where do we go from here? Please follow along as I weave a lot of critical information into my narrative.
One final admonition before starting is: there is no dispute that Trump and colleagues planned and executed a military-styled, armed rebellion meant to overthrow the US government. My long professional experience, in and outside the intelligence world paints an irrefutable picture of corrupt, traitorous behavior. This is not in dispute by true, non-politically compromised, professionals.
1st a little background from my point of view
2nd the severity of the threat
3rd Who is to blame
4th Where do we go… from here
Take a deep breath and let’s get started.
1st a little background from my point of view
My wife, friends and professional colleagues consider me a bit obsessive about the credibility of sources. They are spot on. Like math, you simply cannot plug in facts, numbers, half-lies and conspiracy theories and expect to come up with well-reasoned answers to a problem. In the last 3/4s of my career, faulty information could easily lead to lethal consequences for the wrong person, friend or foe. Having retired from the Army in 2015, I have carried over my obsessive caution about sources, into my current work. I may not be the sharpest knife in-the-drawer, but I have experience, research skills and good, ‘ole fashioned, midwestern common-sense. Most of all, raised by a lifelong Republican mom and Democratic dad (both crossed party lines when facts dictated it) I was raised to give my fellow citizens…?the benefit of doubt.
After retiring in the fall of 2015 and like many retiring military members, began using LinkedIn during the heat of primary season for the 2016 general election, which will live in infamy.?As a recognized expert in the field of influence,?I immediately noted the relationship between?the now infamous, Russian “troll factory”?and the?US mid and far right. By the summer of 2016 I had already written a substantial report to my congressman, a former CIA officer about what the US right, still mostly denies, Russian support for Donald Trump.?The online battles with trolls and right-wing ideologues, sometimes both, were intense.?My congressman’s staff ignored my reporting and never passed it to Congressman Hurd, all the while sending me spam letters on different topics. No one was listening.
Very few in government were raising alarms until Candidate Trump became President Trump. By then, it was too late. Both Russia and the right, defended every word uttered by the man who would go on to plan and lead, an?armed rebellion, in an attempt to overthrow the US government.?The threat still exists?but is now expanded.
I do not make this claim about an?existential threat?to our democracy lightly. Above all else, I am a true believer in the tenets of our nation and its values. The Trump folks have neither. This isn’t meant to be an insult but as the next section will demonstrate, it is simply a hard truth, that we all, Trump supports too, must swallow. They had been professionally influenced to adopt a identity described as patriotic but was actually… traitorous.
Bear with me please. This first section’s relevance will make more sense as we go.
2nd the severity of the threat
Or… truth is what folks do, not what they say
Analysis of threats is intended to determine the level of risk to whatever it is that you’re trying to protect. In this case, it is precisely to protect our democracy from mafia-styled authoritarianism, built on the Russian model. There are plenty of excellent terms that people use in the national security world use to describe things like this depending on who is analyzing and from what perspective. Those distinctions are less important here as that the far right, with ongoing Russian support can less about their intended style of government, so long as the cult leadership “wins.” In most cases, this means Trump. so long as a great many of Trump’s followers are either now in the Mike Flynn camp or at least share allegiances between the two. Remember, it’s Mike Flynn who had the?military/ operational control of the assault on our Capital, led the planning, tactics etc.
Flynn also leads an extremist,?Christian Nationalism?movement that is very similar to the?theocracy in Iran. Authoritarian, dishonest based on an extremely rigid, false ideology. If you really wish to have a better understanding of Mike Flynn’s threat to our democratic republic, I highly recommend the?joint investigation by the Associated Press and Frontline. If you believe in what our founders bequeathed us all, this should terrify you.?
January 6th was just one of the most significant threats stemming from the Trump, far right and Russian collaboration. Their collective activities have capitalized on the right’s decades long attempt to redefine what American patriotism actually is. We’ve been through this before, during my youth in the 60s, thru the early 70s, where it was the US left’s extremism, that was the threat to government and its function. Even then, I never believed that the dominant movement within the left was trying to destroy our form of government. Still, the attacks, propaganda and disruptive events either bordered on or were defacto extremist acts. The pendulum has now swung to the exact opposite direction and the primary difference is, the right is trying to destroy our form of democracy and replace it with authoritarianism?or as some claim, fascism. The goal, a pseudo democracy better described as a replica of Putin’s Russia where democracy is a show-horse, not actual and all power is consolidated in one dictator’s hands, along with a few close allies and colleagues.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”?
-?????????Maya Angelou
Besides the threat of destroying US constitutional democracy, there are countless associated threats to all those who don’t precisely align themselves with the extremists. There is racial, religious, ethnic, gender violence, the assault on every belief system other than theirs. Even Christianity would be excluded unless it was the far-right version that flies in the face of the teachings of Christianity. Intolerance, hate, exclusion, racism etc. are but some of the violations of what many said a decade or so ago, “what would Jesus do,” better known by its acronym, WWJD. Somehow, with extremists as the thought police, love, compassion, forgiveness and charity would go out the door. This is the antithesis of WWJD.
Economically, Fascism destroys economies. No historical dictatorial nation in modern history has survived with their economy intact, over the long run. Sure, the elite do well but the rest of us working folks… we experience a modern form of indentured servitude to our overlords, or what the Russians called serfdom.?A simple look at the economies of nearly all, “red states” clearly demonstrates this serfdom for lower- and middle-class, working citizens. As an example, Texas, after 27 years of exclusive and progressively extreme, right-wing leadership, sees high levels of poverty, poor education, extremely limited access to healthcare for these two classes of citizens. This is playing out across the country in states dominated by today’s version of the Republican party or rather the GOP which is controlled by its extremist wing. My home state growing up, Ohio and the state my mom’s side hail from, Missouri, are representative of this as well.
There is a lot, maybe too much in this section but it highlights the difference allowed under true American democracy and the intended version by the Trump crowd. If you are lower or middle class, the Trump version is a nightmare for you and your family’s future.
3rd Who is to blame
There is a very long list that are invested in an extremist, right-wing government, so I will pare the list down to the most severe.
1.????Trump (enabled by his family)
a.?????The alleged billionaire is and has long lied about his wealth, rarely paid his bills and has been penalized (along with his father) for racist practices in his businesses, all the while screaming that he, not the others persecuted is the victim. This is a very tired act used to manipulate people to do his bidding.
b.????His?organized crimes connections, especially in New York, New Jersey and?Russia are legendary.
c.?????His dependence on extremist movements like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, III%ers and a large, diverse variety of white supremacist, anti-government, ethic/ religious haters etc. are long cultivated and employed to do his bidding. Jan 6th, 2021 is a perfect example.
d.????Corrupt business practices in his?personal life?and?as POTUS.
e.?????He cares about nothing but?his own classic narcissism
f.??????Along with?Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, Trump coveted, planned and executed an attempted coup.?
2.????The GOP
b.????This makes the party itself, a threat to the nation, until or if, principled conservatives regain control.
c.?????Every vote for the GOP by a principled conservative only serves to help Trump and his extremists. The party is dominated by and operates as a bloc, to enforce the extremist agenda of Trump. Yes, it’s that simple.
3.????Right wing extremist movements and media
a.?????A simple glance at the banners, flags, tattoos, symbology on display during the?January 6th armed insurrection is demonstrable of the absolute support for Trump?by all manner of right-wing extremists
4.????Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Tucker Carlson etc.
a.?????These names, especially Stone and?Flynn?are extreme threats to our democracy. Stone is infamous and is an?admitted, “dirty trickster”?with morality on the scale of an ameba.?Flynn is a holy warrior operating a movement not unlike ISIS?or AQ.
5.????Russia:
a.?????Russia and the Soviet Union have operated against the US and the West, especially NATO for decades in the realm of influence.?They call this Active Measures. It is literally part of Russian doctrine. Beginning at the very earliest stages of the Cold War, the Soviets attempted to undermine the strength of the West, somewhat led by the US by finding cracks in our society and exploiting them to cause civil unrest and disunity.
?????
d.????One of the primary objectives of Active Measures is to divide US and Western democracies in order to weaken alliances and the unity built around national identity. One of the methods is to push an alternate, divisive identity that obliterates the highest unifying values of a nation. This is what FOX has been doing for decades.
e.?????The key to influencing audiences as with FOX and other extremist propaganda is to be able to predictably “trigger” your preferred response in that audience.
f.??????In Russia’s and the global right-wing movements/ populism we are currently experiencing, the same dynamics are present.
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g.?????If you don’t understand an audience’s identity, the other way to influence is to “build your own identity in an audience.”
h.????There are many narrative concepts that help understand identity but for the sake of simplicity, I will assert from a professional point of view, that Russian and global far-right movements have been working for decades to create an easily triggered audience. When I say predicably triggered, just assume that it is very much like “Pavlov’s dog.” This is called “conditioning” an audience
i.??????Finally, Russia played an extraordinary role in Trump winning the 2016 election. Despite?the massive efforts by right-wing media to discredit this as a “hoax,” they have failed.?Their?efforts are well-documented in intelligence, research and professional writings, including the five volume report done by the?SSCI, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.?The evidence within is beyond damning, including the overt threat to the US by Russia.
j.??????For the record,?Russia is habitually involved in Active Measures around the globe, especially with?US allies and partners by exploiting far right extremism.
a.?????One of the primary objectives of Active Measures is to divide US and Western democracies in order to weaken alliances and the unity built around national identity. One of the methods is to push an alternate, divisive identity that obliterates the highest unifying values of a nation. This is what FOX has been doing for decades.
b.????The key to influencing audiences as with FOX and other extremist propaganda is to be able to predictably “trigger” your preferred response in that audience.
c.?????In Russia’s and the global right-wing movements/ populism we are currently experiencing, the same dynamics are present.
d.????If you don’t understand an audience’s identity, the other way to influence is to “build your own identity in an audience.”
e.?????There are many narrative concepts that help understand identity but for the sake of simplicity, I will assert from a professional point of view, that Russian and global far-right movements have been working for decades to create an easily triggered audience. When I say predicably triggered, just assume that it is very much like “Pavlov’s dog.” This is called “conditioning” an audience
f.??????Finally, Russia played an extraordinary role in Trump winning the 2016 election. Despite?the massive efforts by right-wing media to discredit this as a “hoax,” they have failed.?Their?efforts are well-documented in intelligence, research and professional writings, including the five volume report done by the?SSCI, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.?The evidence within is beyond damning, including the overt threat to the US by Russia.
g.?????For the record,?Russia is habitually involved in Active Measures around the globe, especially with?US allies and partners by exploiting far right extremism.
4th Where do we go… from here
Yes, I am an optimist
Now for the most important piece of this article about the threat revolving around January 6th.?Make no mistake about it, this will be tough. Altering the worldview of extremism can take decades, if it works at all. Like me, please check your anger at the door, take a deep breath and let’s see how we avert this lethal threat to our nation and all that it stands for.
First and foremost, we must stop permitting tribalized politics to be the most important part of our identity. This is tough and even with some success, will take a generation or more. Still, we must start somewhere and time is running out to get going. Secondly and as described above, those we’re closest to and that are still under the influence of right-wing extremist media, FOX included will need to be allowed back into our world, but with caution. They will not recover from their radical views completely. This means creating an America where it’s shameful to act on their beliefs.
In my long years in CT, Counterterrorism I learned a hard and painful fact; when people start down radical paths, they can normally only be “saved” up until the point that they cross the threshold into violent extremism. Violent extremism does not always mean actual violence but the willingness to put your crazy on public display, inciting more extremism. Even among the best professionals, keeping violent extremists from recurring adventures into it, are somewhat rare. Rabies being incurable, is a good comparison. My professional opinion is that no matter what they say, the January 6th crowd will never privately give up their extremism. They may be shamed into hiding their true beliefs, but they will never fully disappear. All Americans swallowing their pride a bit will allow us all to live by true American values instead of those willing opposed to those who won’t.
This last paragraph means that for family members, friends and others we know that jumped into the Trump movement will likely never change entirely. We must simply accept this. Don’t forget, the “pied pipers” who led our loved ones astray triggered behavior that was already susceptible to influence. A good saying here is, “a leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
Knowing that the vulnerabilities in the Trump crowd are still existent, even though increasingly hidden from shame imposed on them publicly, they are still vulnerable to triggering. This raises the basis for our first viable step to mitigate this extremism. Marginalize the fully radicalized crowd.
In the Civil Rights era, the Klan was marginalized, and they had to take their hate underground. This was the result of some very fine work by the FBI and the steadily increasing intolerance by most of America for such disturbing activities. Yes, the KLAN, like all extremist groups thrive on anti-American values.?They are NOT patriots.
In the Newt Gingrich era, the right engaged in scorched earth politics, heralding an era where it was nearly impossible to cross party lines. That alone is as un-American as it gets. Our nation is built on the premise that we all get a voice and few if any, get their way exclusively. Extremists demand absolute control, not democracies. Have you noticed how the current version of the GOP always accuses the opposition of curtailing free speech? That is called projection or seeing their own sins in the opposition.
Once we accept that we cannot change the rigid ideologues, we must demand that both political parties stop their unwillingness to talk to and work with each other. It is absolutely in our power to have a far better crop of representatives. Both parties just tell you that this isn’t achievable so you must stick with them… exclusively.
Americans must demand, not ask that all media stops acting like the profit driven in the marketing industry, where there’s nothing, they won’t do to get a better, “bottom line.” Let’s remember that our founding document were grounded and built around morals, ethics and freedom.
This brings me to today’s final point. With the “Citizen’s United” decision by the US Supreme Court, they unleashed all the demons of crony capitalism. Elite corporations now buy the government they want. Candidates spend most of their time chasing those enormous campaign donations and then get something in return. Most often it means that they have a plethora of tax avoidance opportunities that we the people, don’t have. Corporate and other “1%” greed is the driving factor behind so much national level legislation. In a true democracy, this doesn’t occur but somehow, our SCOTUS did not or refused to see the human weakness for corruption.
Finally, as I come to the end, I will restate without equivocation, that Donald Trump is a most severe national security threat. When the entire story of the classified documents is revealed, or as least as much as can be made public, you will find a traitor. For those on the right with the courage, they will finally acknowledge that he did in fact conspire with Russia to steal the 2016 election. During his administration, not one true US value was supported. Trump and his cronies ran the US government the same as a mob boss runs their turf, decency be damned.
What I am most proud of are those on both sides who have scrupulously adhered to real American values and protected our 2020 election. It’s long overdue that US political parties come under intense public scrutiny. I would even go so far as to say that, any politician who does not support absolute transparency in campaign finance, is failing America’s true values. When money, like all of the other pillars of power are achieved by high political office, only the most insincere and corrupt will run for office. That is not what James Madison, the author of our Constitution envisioned. Many of our founders had their faults, especially by modern standards. What they did not lack was wisdom and the fire within to build something far better for humanity. I am fed up with those who are sworn to uphold those values, using our government as a piggy ban and embracing any set of values, no matter how extreme to maintain power.
Donald Trump and his minions are still that threat.?That is irrefutable. The question is, who among us will demand integrity in November’s election, rather than loyalty to party, over country?
The best way to erode the influence of extremism is for the majority of our citizens to demonstrate at the polls that it’s not acceptable. We also must support accountability for those who attacked and still threaten our republic. We have an extraordinary set of national values bequeathed to us by our founders. Who will join me in protecting those values in the most American way possible? At the polls.?
As a final note and as that this topic is a severe threat, I would be grateful for any sharing you feel comfortable with. The quickest way to dampen extremism is to remove leadership from office. This allows time to rebuild… the American way.
end of quote
Whereas the miserable state of Russia
quote
Kremlin crack-up: who’s out to?get Putin?
From magazine issue:?15 October 2022
The soldier with the Kalashnikov wasn’t happy. Neither were the hundreds of comrades who had chosen him as the spokesman for their angry complaints as they milled about on a train platform somewhere in Russia. ‘There are 500 of us, we are armed, but we haven’t been assigned to any unit,’ the newly mobilised soldier complained on a video that went viral earlier this month. ‘We’ve been living worse than farm animals for a week… Nobody needs us, we’ve had absolutely no training.’ Other soldiers, most of them masked, chipped in with more grievances. ‘The officers treat us like animals,’ shouted one. ‘We’ve spent a fortune on buying food for ourselves.’
The video – and others like it – was rightly cited in the western press as evidence of the chaos that followed the ‘partial’ mobilisation announced by Vladimir Putin on 21 September. But the video also revealed something much more significant about how defeat in the field is sending cracks running through the ‘power vertical’ over which Putin presides.
Watch carefully and you can see among the ordinary forest-green camouflage army-issue uniforms several of the soldiers wearing more sophisticated kit, marked with the distinctive death’s-head badge of the Wagner private military company. The video was distributed by social media channels associated with Wagner’s founder and public face Yevgeny Prigozhin – a billionaire St Petersburg caterer and businessman better known as Putin’s chef. In other words, this video shows not only discontented soldiers but also a private army engaged in political manoeuvres.
It’s not hard to guess Prigozhin’s agenda in distributing – and possibly orchestrating – the video. The head of Russia’s largest private army is trying to undermine Russia’s beleaguered Minister of Defence, Sergei Shoigu. And Prigozhin is far from alone. Since Ukrainian advances near Kharkiv last month, Shoigu and his generals have come under heavy and public attack from patriotic pro-war bloggers, Wagner-affiliated media and the hawkish Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and even state-controlled TV. ‘The guilty should be punished [though] we don’t have capital punishment unfortunately,’ the ultra-nationalistic TV host Vladimir Solovyov told his viewers. ‘They don’t even have an officer’s sense of honour because they are not shooting themselves.’ Aleksey Slobedenyuk, who runs a network of Telegram channels for Prigozhin’s patriot media group, was arrested by a squad of paramilitary police, and the footage was widely broadcast by pro-Shoigu media factions.
So far, only Russia’s military command, not Putin himself, have come in for public criticism. But the obvious question is whether, or when, Putin will come into the firing line. The image of the good tsar surrounded by bad advisers is as old as Russian history. But history also shows that military defeat – from the Russo-Japanese war to Afghanistan – rarely ends well for regimes whose corruption and incompetence are brutally exposed by the stress-test of war.
Modern Russia is not just a security state but a state that has been taken over by its own security services
To date, Putin has stayed one step ahead of the rising tide of military humiliation and criticism by constantly escalating the conflict. In response to the collapse of the Kharkiv front, he announced partial mobilisation and ordered hasty referendums in the occupied territories, followed by formal annexation. In response to the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge, Putin launched more than 100 cruise missiles in two days at mostly civilian targets in more than a dozen Ukrainian cities. In July, Putin dismissively said that: ‘We haven’t even started [fighting] in earnest yet.’ Now, in response to a rising chorus of critics urging the Kremlin to take off the kid gloves, Putin has publicly gone all-in.
But what happens if the Ukrainians keep winning? Putin can continue firing commanders (as he did after the Kerch attack). He can organise some public show trials of alleged Ukrainian ‘Nazis’ from among the unfortunate Azov battalion prisoners taken after the battle of Mariupol. And he could, theoretically, make good on the renewed promise he made last month that he was ‘not bluffing’ about the use of nuclear weapons – though the West has made clear that their conventional response to a nuclear attack would make it a suicide strategy for the Kremlin.
The good news, for Putin, is that 20 years of efficient repression and media control have meant that so far there has been little public resistance to the Ukraine war. On the evening of Putin’s mobilisation call, I saw some 200 people gathered on the Old Arbat for a brave but futile protest that was almost instantly extinguished by riot police who outnumbered the protestors by at least two to one. Two mass exoduses – one following the outbreak of war and another after the 21 September mobilisation – have seen between 500,000 and 700,000 people leave Russia for good. Among them were the bulk of the urban, politically engaged ‘protesting classes’. Currently, as historian Anatol Lieven recently wrote, ‘There is no coherent or organised force in Russian society that could bring about… revolution.’
The main challenge to Putin’s power, then, comes not from the street but from within the regime itself. Putin turned 70 on the eve of the Kerch Bridge attack. Whether rumours of his chronic illness are correct or not (CIA director William Burns said in August that he believed that Putin was ‘far too well’), the debate over Putin’s successor has been at the forefront of the minds of Russia’s top power-brokers for at least three years. In February 2019 the chief Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov dared to publish a long essay discussing what a post-Putin Russia might look like. ‘Putinism’ would outlast Putin himself, Surkov argued, attempting to reassure the ex-KGB men who were Putin’s closest confidants that they had nothing to fear from a transition of power. They were not reassured. It was Surkov rather than Putin who was later shown the door.
Institutionally, the Kremlin has for years been effectively an extension of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. The three most powerful men in Russia today are all current or former FSB chiefs – Putin himself, the Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev and the current FSB head Alexander Bortnikov. They met in the Leningrad KGB in the mid-1970s and have known and worked with each other for nearly half a century. Most other top Kremlin mandarins – for instance the Rosneft head Igor Sechin, the foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin and many more – are also drawn from that same tiny Leningrad KGB circle, leavened by a few of Putin’s old friends from his time as deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s.
For these people, the question of who is eventually chosen to succeed Putin is much less important than who does the choosing. In 2000 Patrushev – newly appointed as head of the FSB by his former subordinate Putin who had just become President – wrote an essay comparing the FSB to Russia’s ‘new nobility’. And over the subsequent 20 years the FSB did indeed proceed not only to take over swaths of Russia’s state and private business but also to appoint their children as ministers and even – just like the aristocracy of tsarist Russia – make dynastic marriages among themselves.
Modern Russia is not just a security state but literally a state that has been taken over by its own security services. Putin is the ultimate decision-maker and arbiter in various disputes between rival factions inside that extended FSB-connected ruling class. And insofar as a ‘collective Putin’ exists, it’s composed of a tiny group of very closely connected, very paranoid old men whose chief goal is to preserve their wealth and power and pass it on to their children and protégés.
So when we consider whether regime change is possible in Russia, what we are really wondering is whether some outside force could ever challenge the rule, not of Putin himself, but of the extended FSB clan that currently holds ultimate political and economic power.
The army has not played a decisive political role in Russia since the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953, when Marshal Georgy Zhukov effectively pulled off an armed coup by arresting and soon after murdering KGB boss Lavrentiy Beria. Ever since that painful showdown between soldiers and secret police, the KGB and FSB made very sure that Russia’s military had no role in internal security – most recently by creating the Russian National Guard, headed naturally by a former KGB man, Putin’s former body-guard Viktor Zolotov. The silent majority of Russia’s elite – the mid-level bureaucrats, professionals and business-people who have been robbed of their futures and their wealth by the war – are by all accounts collectively horrified by it. Notionally these people represent significant economic and bureaucratic power. But they have no organised political voice and generally have too much to lose to risk rebellion.
So when Kadyrov, Prigozhin and the other heavily armed patriotic critics attack the failed war effort, they are not so much challenging the status quo as jockeying for advantage within it. And they succeed in advancing up the chain of command to positions of greater influence. There are other critical voices – for instance the ultranationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, the Orthodox Christian fundamentalist billionaire and TV station owner Konstantin Malofeev, or the novelist-turned-Donbas rebel commander Zakhar Prilepin or former Donetsk People’s Republic defence minister Igor Strelkov – who were once in the nationalist opposition to the Kremlin but now find themselves more or less aligned with the newfound radical nationalism of the Putin regime. All have called for Putin to be more ruthless and aggressive in Ukraine. Strelkov has been a vocal critic of the Russian military’s failures from the start, and last month said that the war is already lost. Such radical nationalists are the true believers, they are armed, and they have spilled blood for their country. And they will not forgive further failure on the front lines.
If the Russian army suffers a serious collapse and the country moves into a revolutionary situation, such nationalist firebrands will be the Kremlin elite’s most dangerous foes. It is much more likely, however, that the FSB clique around Putin will respond to a rising tide of nationalist anger and frustration by becoming more nationalist and authoritarian themselves. They may make Kadyrov defence minister or appoint Prigozhin to a senior ministerial post. But Kadyrov’s and Prigozhin’s ambitions in themselves do not present a fundamental challenge to the power of the ruling FSB clan which controls serious military force, and has a stronghold on Russia’s media and politics.
The power of the extended FSB dwarfs that of any potential challengers except for one: a rising, angry people who feel cheated of victory by their corrupt leaders. That revolution is likely to be as chaotic and ugly as the one which followed Russia’s last catastrophic military defeat in 1917 – and will doubtless begin, as the previous one did, with angry soldiers on remote train platforms railing against the tsar’s corrupt ministers.
WRITTEN BY
Owen Matthews writes about Russia for The Spectator. His latest book Overreach, a history of the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war, will be published by HarperCollins in November
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Army now acknowledges the brother of Michael Flynn was a part of Army response to Capitol riot
By?Oren Liebermann?and?Barbara Starr, CNN
Updated 9:16 PM ET, Thu January 21, 2021
'Far too close:' Army secretary reveals sobering details on riot?01:40
Washington (CNN)The Army is now acknowledging that Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the brother of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was in the room for one of the key January 6 phone calls in which DC government and US Capitol Police?were asking for National Guard troops?to quell the unfolding violence at the US Capitol.
The decision-making has come under scrutiny as city and Capitol Police officials have alleged that the Pentagon was slow to respond, while the Pentagon and Army maintain they never denied or delayed requests for the National Guard.
In official timelines released by the Department of Defense in the wake of the riot, Charles Flynn, the deputy chief of staff of the Army, was not listed as participating in any of the calls that day about mobilizing the National Guard to respond to the riot.
Evidence shows Capitol rioters brutally attacked police with flagpoles, fire extinguishers and fists
The Washington Post was the?first to report?Flynn's participation in the call.
"I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending, as I believed a decision was imminent from (then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy) and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision," Flynn said in a statement released to CNN. There was no clear answer about how long Flynn was on the call or whether he contributed to the conversation.
The Washington Post reports that the Army "falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn" was involved in the key meetings. One of the officials who was on the call told CNN in the days following the insurrection at the Capitol that Flynn was not on the calls, but the military did not confirm his participation until Wednesday.
There is no indication that Charles Flynn agrees with his brother, who was a vocal adherent of disputing President Joe Biden's victory on behalf of the former president.
Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by Trump, had?suggested in an Oval Office meeting?that the President should invoke martial law as part of the effort to overturn the election, though others in the room pushed back on the idea, CNN previously reported. At a rally the day before the riot, Michael Flynn urged the crowd to dispute the election results.
BIDEN WHITE HOUSE
"Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow, we the people are going to be here, and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie," he said.
The official timeline from the office of then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller listed McCarthy, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, the city's deputy mayor, DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Director Christopher Rodriguez, and Metropolitan Police Department leadership as participants on the call. Gen. Walter Piatt, director of the Army staff, was also on the call.
But there was no mention of the involvement of Charles Flynn, a three-star general who has already been approved by Congress for a fourth star. Flynn is responsible for operations, plans and training, but he is not part of the chain of command of the DC National Guard, and he does not have the authority to deploy troops.
The revelation comes as the Department of Defense is already trying to rebut accusations that it denied or delayed the deployment of additional troops as the riot worsened on Capitol Hill, eventually leaving five dead, including a Capitol Police officer. A DC official called the process of calling up more guardsmen "long" and "tortured."
Pentagon officials have repeatedly denied the accusations, insisting there were no intentional delays, though McCarthy on Monday told CNN the response was hampered by an "archaic system."
In the days leading up to January 6, Pentagon officials were sensitive to the deployment of troops on the streets of DC, particularly after the?criticism they faced?following the Army's response to June's protests. Nevertheless, the Pentagon deployed 340 members of the DC National Guard, asking both the city and the Capitol Police if they needed more troops. Both said no. But as the situation rapidly deteriorated on January 6, now-ousted Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund and DC officials say military leaders waffled and were overly concerned about the public perception of more troops being deployed on the streets once again.
The open involvement of Charles Flynn, just one day after his brother, Michael Flynn, egged on Trump supports with cries of a stolen election and violent imagery, would have only increased that scrutiny. The elder Flynn was permanently banned from Twitter for promoting QAnon and spreading lies and conspiracy theories about the presidential election. Michael Flynn, who briefly served as Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian diplomats before?Trump pardoned him in November.
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Andrew Beckwith, PhD
Retired Independent Consultant, Author
1 年Only the Russians can do that.