Putin & America’s far right wing

Politics

[View here as a Twitter thread]

 Information in this thread comes from Yale Professor Timothy Snyder’s Road to Unfreedom.

Putin consolidated power by torpedoing rule of law, which he did by undermining the existence of facts. Nothing is true, he said. Everyone lies.

1/His strategy: tell outrageous lies and turn news into entertainment, while convincing people that the truth was unknowable. Eventually the people stopped expecting facts. Truth was what they were told. Without facts, rule of law is impossible. The leader’s word becomes law.

2/ Without rule of law, there can’t be fair competition, which means no hope for economic advancement—and nobody can compete with the oligarchs or challenge their economic power. (Oligarchy is when a few wealthy people hold all the power, which means enormous income disparity.)

3/A consequence for Russia was that without rule of law, they couldn’t join the European Union. Nor could Russia, under the rule of oligarchy, compete with the EU or match European standard of living. Rule of Law in Europe means wealth is more evenly distributed.

4/ If Putin couldn’t bring Russia up to the level of the EU, he’d make Europe like Russia. So he set out to disintegrate the EU and destroy Western liberal democracy [meaning representative government in which leaders are constrained by laws and citizens have maximum liberty].

5/ For fascism to thrive, it needs to create an enemy of the people. Putin cast the West as the enemy trying to “corrupt the purity” of Russia. Russians attacked the EU and Western democracy by means of disinformation and cyber wars (also actually invading Ukraine, etc.)

6/ Russia got behind Brexit, infiltrating British social media to sway the outcome. British voters interacted with Russians believing they were having discussions with their own fellow citizens. Russia used sophisticated psychological warfare to manipulate the fears of voters.

7/ Another target: Ukraine, where Russians honed their cyberwar and disinformation skills. Far right wing leaders in both Europe and the United States, who prefer fascist rule to liberal democracy, allied themselves with Putin.

8/ This is where Manafort comes in: He strategized on behalf of the Russian-backed Ukranian president Yanukovych, and worked “on a plan to increase Russian influence in the US.” What came next was Putin’s “greatest campaign. . . a cyberwar” against the United States of America.

9/ Russia declared Trump their candidate for President, and engaged in cyberwar and disinformation war to get him elected. Trump was the ideal vehicle because, in the words of Russian parliament member Alexei Pushkov, “Trump can lead the Western locomotive right off the rails.”

10/ It’s not a coincidence that Manafort went from strategizing for a Russian puppet in Ukraine to managing Trump’s campaign. “Russian oligarchy won an extraordinary victory in 2016,” says Snyder.

11/ The Fox-Trump-GOP uses Putin’s techniques to undermine rule of law in the US. Here’s an example that includes whataboutism, passing off facts as fiction, implying that all politicians are corrupt, and distraction:

12/ Now American right wing leaders and Fox commentators are pushing Russia as our ally—and much of the GOP seems to be fine with that. If you wonder how Americans can push Putin’s agenda in the US without seeing themselves as traitors, see https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1019977664113860608 …

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