I am sure that if you’re here and reading the blogs on this site, that you are as horrified as we are that the MAGAs and right-wing media have taken Vladimir Putin to their bosom. What in the name of God could be wrong with these people, you have asked, that they can side with a foreign dictator who is at war with one of our allies and whose conflagration in Europe is the worst seen since the 1940’s and is upending the global economy?
Bear this in mind: A staggering 41 million Americans believe in QAnon according to a survey released in late February from the Public Religion Research Institute. According to QAnon lore, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is simply the next phase in a global war against sex traffickers. If you realize that this many people in this country believe that Joe Biden is a pedophile and part of a global cabal of pedophiles and that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are the good guys and going to save us all — plus, and this is a biggy — herald in the End Times, the Rapture, all the good Biblical thunder bolts and earthquakes, hellfire and brimstone, then this will all make sense to you.
You have to see it through their eyes and apparently there are a lot of Americans who believe that life is a political/Bible cartoon, and cowardly Donald Trump and deluded Peter the Great wanna be Vladimir Putin are the strongmen of the Bible. That’s a lot of crazy worldview to ingest at one sitting, I know, but if you can try to see life through this fogged and broken lens, then it will at least make a kind of sense, and that’s what we’re trying to do, is make sense of the fact that our old Cold War nemesis, Russia, is now thought by many to be the good guy and that’s the skinny going around all the right-wing online forums.
Make no mistake, the political groundwaters of this country are being poisoned by people who are oblivious to reality, or who know what’s going on, but are making a buck off of their lies, such as Steve Bannon. New York Times:
The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.
“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.”
Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.
Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.
In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.
It’s getting worse, not better, and that’s frequently how it is with disease, you get sicker before you get well. If you get well. The problem with this disease is that it springs out of ignorance, not only ignorance as to the true character of the principals — and principles — involved, but also a devastating ignorance of recent history. America is literally becoming less educated, ergo more stupid. And I say this to you the day after a candidate for the House of Representatives declares her intention to abolish the Department Of Education if elected. Sheer idiocy, cobbled together by sheer idiots. This is the kind of willful stupidity that makes for the truism, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And forgotten we have.
The pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.
After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.
“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”
It’s taken hold since 2016 and it’s gotten worse since the Ukraine war started February 24.
But those with a pro-Russia stance have gotten louder online. Before the invasion, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, published a story listing “fun facts” about Russia and Ukraine, including the Russian talking points that are being used as justification for an invasion. The article spread in Facebook groups that support Mr. Trump, reaching up to 565,100 followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. […]
After Russia’s attack began, some online users explained Mr. Putin’s motives by blending them with conspiracy theories about Covid-19. One Twitter account named War Clandestine declared that Mr. Putin was targeting biolabs in Ukraine that were operated by the United States. The idea was made more believable, the author said, because of the conspiracy theory that the United States engineered Covid-19 at a lab in Wuhan, China.
Now if you haven’t read enough to make you sick, read the following. I don’t know how we’re going to keep America with this going on.
The growing appreciation for Mr. Putin was captured in recent polling from the Economist and YouGov, which showed he was viewed more favorably by Republicans than Mr. Biden. Another recent poll from Yahoo News and YouGov found that 62 percent of Republicans believed Mr. Putin was a “stronger leader” than Mr. Biden.
That sentiment was echoed in an informal poll online on Wednesday, when a QAnon influencer asked followers in the Patriot Voice group on Telegram if they trusted Mr. Putin. Nearly everyone who responded to the question said the same thing: yes.
If we are in fact this stupid, then we deserve to lose this country. You know the famous quote where Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a country America was and he replied, “A republic — if you can keep it.” It probably never dawned on the man that we might one day be so collectively ignorant and stupid that we couldn’t keep it for that reason.
And then there’s the quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “People get the kind of government they deserve.” Maybe we’re now so stupid that we deserve fascism. Horrible to contemplate but a statistic like 62% is a difficult one to ignore.
Bannon is at heart an anarchist. I truly believe he is so resentful of decades ago realizing he’d never achieve (much too lofty for him) goals he’d set that he decided instead he’d do damage instead. Destroying a structure, whether physical or institutional has always been much easer than building it. Or maintaining it. Once he realized he had access to the kind of people and resources to do wide scale damage he decided he wants to burn it ALL down. He’s not a fan of Trump or Putin any more than he is of Biden. The first two are simply a means to an end.
You want to know how darkly I see him? Every day in this country (others too) there are people who have been rejected who kill spouses/partners (or would be partners) and sometimes even their kids in the “If I can’t have them no one can” and often go on to take their own life. (Most of the time but I assure you not always men do this but that’s a longer subject) It is not only tragic but ugly in a way that can’t be described. I have literally seen bodies of both victims and perpetrators, often shattered or at least their heads if a gun was used on slabs. It tears at one in a way that as I said can’t be described. This is all too common.
Worse, there are people who do this writ large as we’ve seen with cults when the whole thing comes crashing down. For Americans think Jim Jones and those awful images from Gyuana, or more recently David Koresh and the Branch Dividians down in TX. Now imagine someone willing, with some capability of doing so making it their life’s mission to do it to an entire country and plunge the entire world into such awfulness.
That is Steve Bannon.
And far more people than I care to think about, people who pay attention to him or some of the vile political commentary offspring he has sired are all too susceptible to that mentality of actually killing a wife/lover who has rejected them. Even if they aren’t that far gone, massive numbers of people do in fact know on some level their shitty lives would become much worse if it all comes crashing down, but “owning the libs” is a price they are not only willing but (again for far too many) to pay.
There are still more of us than them. But, as you say there are tens of millions out there who are fucked in the head/their thinking. And like the Randy character in South Park when he gets off on some dumbass and crazy thing will do bat-shit insane stuff just to prove he’s right and others are wrong, or that he didn’t accept some dumbass notion.
Conservatives created their political monster in their “lab” and both fiction and real life (i.e. those cults I mentioned, or Germany following Hitler over the cliff) the asshole(s) whose ego convinces them they will always be able to control their monster and use it as a weapon learn along with everyone else that it can, and someday will grow beyond control. Make no mistake, a large and voracious monster that was created, fed and nurtured by conservatives has grown beyond the control of those who created it. Worse, they still won’t accept that an all-out effort is required NOW to kill it because they still believe they can regain control and use it to their own ends as they did for so long.
We, and the world are in perilous times.
Registered rethugs make up about 32 percent of the population, so 62% of 32% is nowhere near a majority. Our education system does seem to need some major overhaul. Cuts in budgets across the country have resulted in little to no civics instruction as well as arts and humanities.
I was fortunate enough to graduate from a great public high school (in 1975), but even then, when I started college there were students who needed remedial English (we are talking basics, what is a sentence, paragraph, etc.). I shudder at the thought of how badly prepared today’s HS grads are for college or life. All these Christian schools that teach creationism and RWNJs home schooling their kids contribute to the problem.
Ursula, that 41 million is a sobering statistic. It’s even worse than the larger number that were conned into voting for Trump twice. As Pete Townsend once wrote in a song, ” I believe in love, but how can men who’ve never seen light be ignited?” The age old mystery. A cult that large being egged on by lying mercenaries is a recipe for fascism. Add in our cultural myth that we, the USA, are exceptional, & what happens elsewhere couldn’t possibly happen here, means we are in serious trouble. I hope those with real power can look past their inertia & do something about these criminals. Sticking with the training all of us received in school to be quiet & not rock the boat will not get us out of this. Didn’t in ww2 either. The 400,000 dead American boys died for what?
What is it with the Q-pers and their fixation on sex-related crimes??? Sex traffickers, pedophilia?? Are they trying to tell us the truth about themselves, their leaders? More projection?
That seems to be the pattern.