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Yes, Putin and Trump are peas in a pod. And just because the US capitalist press attacks Putin doesn't mean they are wrong (no more than when they criticized Hitler or Mussolini). In 1814, Tsar Nicholas led the creation of the Holy Alliance, which was an alliance of the reactionary monarchist forces of Europe meant to stem the democratic tide on the continent. Two hundred years later, Putin is playing a similar role. Towards that end, among other things, he has weaponized the internet. Here is a review of a book that sounds very interesting. "When Westerners first began to hear of Vladimir Putin’s troll army—now some five years ago—the project sounded absurd. President Obama in March 2014 had dismissed Russia as merely a weak “regional power.” And Putin’s plan to strike back was to hire himself a bunch of internet commenters? Seriously?.... "Clausewitz defined war as the use of violence by one state to impose its will upon another. But suppose new technology enabled a state to “engage the enemy’s will directly, without the medium of violence,” Snyder writes—this would be a revolution in the history of conflict. This revolution, Snyder argues, is what Russia has imposed upon the United States and the European Union. How, why, and with what consequences is the theme of Snyder’s newest book, *The Road to Unfreedom <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/570367/the-road-to-unfreedom-by-timothy-snyder/9780525574460/>* .... "At first, Putin turned a sunny face to the West. He cooperated with the United States after the 9/11 attacks. In 2004, he endorsed EU membership for Ukraine and did not object to NATO enlargement. He attended a NATO summit in 2008 and spoke warmly of European economic integration. But as he centralized the state and consolidated his own power—rewriting the constitution to enable him to rule for life—he turned ever more harshly repressive at home and violently aggressive abroad. "He promoted ideologies that Snyder inventively describes as *schizo-fascism*: “actual fascists calling their opponents ‘fascists,’ blaming the Holocaust on the Jews, treating the Second World War as an argument for more violence.” Putin’s favored ideologist, Alexander Dugin, “could celebrate the victory of fascist in fascist language while condemning as ‘fascist’ his opponents.” "In this new schizo-fascism, homosexuals played the part assigned to Jews by the fascists of earlier eras. Democratic societies were branded by Russian TV as “homodictatorships.” When Ukrainians protested against faked elections and the murder of protesters, Russian TV told viewers, “The fact that the first and most zealous integrators [with the European Union] in Ukraine are sexual perverts has long been known.” Putin himself struck more macho poses and wore outfits more butch than all the stars of the Village People combined. In Snyder’s pithy phrase, "Putin was offering masculinity as an argument against democracy.” I urge you to read the entire review here: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/the-great-russian-disinformation-campaign/564032/ John Reimann -- _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
