Alt-Right Leaders Passion for Putin

Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 03 September 2017 07:39.

Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:

The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.

Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.

Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.

Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”

Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP

In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.

Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.

Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.

“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”

In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.

Casey Michel@cjcmichel
Replying to @cjcmichel

Heimbach: “Russia is the leader of the free world right now.” http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-connections-to-the-alt-right-2016-11 …

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Casey Michel@cjcmichel

And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017

Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.

Casey Michel@cjcmichel
Replying to @cjcmichel

One additional note: Heimbach specifically cited the USSR’s dissolution as his vision for the US. http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/In-Age-of-Trump-Profile-of-Maryland-White-Nationalist-Grows-397694981.html … pic.twitter.com/BcJacTMPxP

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Casey Michel@cjcmichel

And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017

The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.

Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin.

Just Rich @JustMeRich
Replying to @splcenter

Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.

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Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81

And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017

Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.

On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.

Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.

Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.

Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.

“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.

In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.

In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.

“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.

Tags: Christianity, Far Right, Global Elitism, Globalisation, Greater Israel Project, Russian Politics, That Question Again, The American right, U.S. Politics, White Nationalism, World Affairs

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Posted by Putin's Chekist side vs the Magnitsky Act on Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:12 | #

Bill Browder is a (((bracket))). However, he was the largest foreign business investor in Russia (Hermatage Fund) and spent ten years in Russia; during that time he found massive corruption in its companies, Gazprom among them, and got on the wrong side of Putin when he exposed them and with it, a dark side of Putin, ranging from massive larceny to murder (viz., Sergei Magnitsky):

https://soundcloud.com/freespeechbroadcasting/2017-09-17-2-bill-browder

The US responded with “The Magnitsky Act” to investigate everyone in Russia involved with that murder and similar acts. In retaliation, Putin banned American adoption of Russian orphans.

Putin said that it was his biggest foreign policy goal to get the Magnitsky Act repealed. His motivation is clear, because the over 200 billion dollars that he stolen will be exposed by investigations under the Magnitsky Act and lead to sanctions on Russia.

This connects to the meeting of Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was supposedly meeting with Trump Jr. about adoption, when in fact it was about an effort to get the Magnitsky Act (and its investigation of thieves and murderers) repealed through a Trump election.

Business Insider, The story behind the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year”, 12 July 2017:

The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and other top Trump campaign officials in June 2016 is a white-collar defense attorney, former prosecutor, and prominent advocate for the repeal of the 2012 Magnitsky Act, a US law that blacklists Russians suspected of human-rights abuses.

In a series of emails that Trump Jr. made public on Twitter on Tuesday, the president’s son was told that Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was identified as a “Russian government attorney,” had information that “would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father ... as part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

In a statement to the news media on Sunday, Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya provided him with “no meaningful information” about Clinton and that the “claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting” in which Veselnitskaya broached other topics, including the Magnitsky Act.

In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Veselnitskaya denied ever having incriminating information about Clinton, who was then set to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

“I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that,” she said, adding, “It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

Veselnitskaya, a successful private attorney, spent the early years of her legal career in the Moscow regional prosecutor’s office, dealing in large part with land disputes, according to Bloomberg View’s Leonid Bershidsky.

After marrying Alexander Mitusov, a powerful law enforcement official who later became deputy transport minister for the Moscow region, Veselnitskaya established a private practice through which she has represented numerous high-profile clients, including Russian state-owned businesses.

Most notably, Veselnitskaya represented Denis Katsyv, the son of a senior government official and owner of Russian real estate firm Prevezon, which was sued in 2013 by then-Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on charges of laundering money in a massive Russian government tax scam.

The scam is also known as the Magnitsky affair, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer for American investment fund manager Bill Browder who is widely believed to have been tortured and killed in a Russian prison after exposing the $230 million fraud.

After Magnitsky’s death, Browder sought justice for his former attorney in the US and Europe and, in 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which froze the assets of and denied visas to 44 Russian businessmen believed to have been involved in Magnitsky’s death.

Natalia VeselnitskayaNatalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016, is best known in the US for defending a Russian businessman accused by the US government of laundering millions.Yury Martyanov/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin retaliated against the Magnitsky Act by blacklisting Americans, including Bharara, and banning US adoptions of Russian children.

Since then, Katsyv and Veselnitskaya have persistently lobbied for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Katsyv registered a nonprofit in Delaware called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation in February 2016, the stated aim of which is to overturn the adoption ban. Veselnitskaya, who represents HRGIF, has also helped organize screenings of an anti-Magnitsky film that casts doubt on both Browder’s claims and Magnitsky’s findings and promotes Putin’s stance.

In an interview with Business Insider last Saturday, Browder said Veselnitskaya made fighting against the Magnitsky Act her “main project last year,” and argued that “there was no obvious reason” for Veselnitskaya and her team to engage in this lobbying “as part of their defense for Prevezon.”

“It wouldn’t have helped the company address the money laundering allegations mounted by the US Department of Justice,” Browder said. “The only reason for them to do this would have been at the behest of the Russian government.”

Veselnitskaya denies having any connections to or acting on behalf of the Russian government.

“I have never acted on behalf of the Russian government and have never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government,” she told NBC.

The Kremlin also denies knowing or having ties to Veselnitskaya.

“No, we don’t know who it is and, certainly, we cannot track down all movements of all Russian lawyers both within Russia and abroad,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

In 2015, Veselnitskaya was initially denied a visa to enter the US with her children, but she was later granted temporary entrance in order to represent Katsyv in court in New York, The Daily Beast reported.

The temporary “parole letter” was extended past its original end date in January 2016. Based on the emails sent to Trump Jr., it appears she was in court in New York on the same day she met with Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the president’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner in June at Trump’s offices.

In May 2017, two months after Trump fired Bharara, the US Attorneys office reached an unexpected $6 million out-of-court settlement with Katsyv, who never admitted guilt in the case.

“No lawyer in Veselnitskaya’s situation could have asked for more,” Bershidsky wrote on Tuesday.