Political pundits in Russia are declaring that the nationwide protests on racial killings and police brutality are to Donald Trump’s benefit politically. They have advised him to “wait it out” and exploit the situation to his advantage. You can’t blame them for their attitude. We were stupid enough to elect Trump once, they’re banking on us being gullible enough to be manipulated into it again, while they sit over there and point and laugh at us. Daily Beast:
Instead of siding with the protesters, Russian state media focused on the benefits Trump may be able to reap once he is able to crush the uprising. Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov suggested, “It would be better for Trump to wait it out—just not too long—to terrorize a significant part of the society; 83 percent of the Minnesotans are white, a great majority. That’s why he should wait it out, to create fear and terror. And then he can ride in on a white horse as someone who will restore order. That will be very important for him right now, especially in light of the economic difficulties.” […]
The view from Moscow is curiously similar to the opinions reportedly held by Trump’s advisers, who believe that the impression he’s restoring law-and-order will help him to turn the unrest to his advantage—particularly with the seniors, whose support has diminished in light of the president’s poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
This is the gambit that both the Russians and Trump’s allies are hoping that he will play, the theory being that if suburbanites are terrified that the unrest will reach out their way, and if Trump manages to quash it, then he will be seen as their savior and vote for him. It’s hard to imagine that anybody who has lived in this country the past three and a half years is stupid enough to believe that Donald Trump can fix anything, but this is a prevailing political “theory,” if you will. My own theory is that people are so disgusted of living this way, with a vacuum in top leadership, that they will vote Trump and the Republican senate the hell out of Dodge. But I always acknowledge that I could be wrong. But while we ponder these matters, the Russians are sitting around with a vodka gleefully wonderfuling just how bad it’s all going to get.
What we’re seeing in America now is what the Kremlin has wanted for a long time. Back in 2018, appearing on Russia’s state TV show The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow’s State University, Andrey Sidorov, complained: “Unfortunately, Trump didn’t reach the level of Abraham Lincoln and didn’t drive the U.S. to civil war. That’s sad. Hopefully, he’ll become Herbert Hoover and at least drive them into a Great Depression.”
In 2020, the Kremlin’s wish list is on the verge of being fulfilled, as the perfect storm of the coronavirus pandemic, economic turmoil and civil unrest has been unleashed upon the United States.
But it’s not only the Kremlin that’s rejoicing. Pandemonium unfolding in the United States hit the sweet spot at the intersection of Russia’s and China’s anti-American propaganda, cross-pollinating for maximum exposure. During the broadcast of Russia’s 60 Minutes, host Evgeny Popov repeatedly showcased an offensive image posted by People’s Daily (Zhenmin Zhibao, an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) on its Russian-language Facebook page. It depicted the Statue of Liberty, kneeling over the neck of George Floyd. Facebook flagged the post for “violent or graphic content,” but did not remove it.
So now two of the biggest human rights violaters on the planet, Russia and China, are looking at the United States melting down and capitalizing upon it for their own propaganda purposes. If nothing else, what’s going on here provides a distraction from what’s happening in their countries. What a 180 degree spin from the days of the Cold War era, when America was the shining beacon of freedom and equality and oppression and brutality were the purview of Communist countries. And don’t think Russia and China aren’t thinking that very thing and praying for Donald Trump to cripple us totally. They’ve wanted to crush the United States for a very long time and Trump has proven an immensly valuable tool to gain that end.
If Trump was capable of doing this, he would have done it from the beginning of his presidency.
This is your best piece ever, Ursula Faw.
Bless your heart, Annette. I just wish more people would read it. This and the story about Trump calling Putin today — and then ragging on governors and threatening to unleash the military on the populace. This Russian connection cannot be minimized or ignored. We are in the deepest of shit and we have a Putin-esque tool in the Oval Office. That is as simple as it is.
Okay, it’s official. The Russians are cutting their losses and using Donnie Boy the way he uses the MAGA maggots. Nothing short of a brain transplant is going to make this strategy work for the latter.
Oh and FYI, Ursula, as the movie K-19 The Widowmaker made plain in the scene of the commissar showing footage of American civil rights protestors getting the hoses and dogs, Russia has been using our hypocrisy as propaganda for decades now.
The problem with that plan is that it assumes nobody in the US knows anything but what the WH propaganda line is.
This plan only has ONE problem?
“What a 180 degree spin from the days of the Cold War era, when America was the shining beacon of freedom and equality and oppression and brutality were the purview of Communist countries.”
Well, in those days America was the “shining beacon” if you were white, straight and middle-class or better. For OTHER Americans, it wasn’t all that “shining.” Remember the “days of the Cold War era” started barely a decade before we were seeing images of police loosing dogs and firing water cannons at Black people who were merely trying to share in that “freedom and equality.” Communist countries, like Russia and China, were VERY quick to capitalize (pardon the pun) on that blatant double standard*. Let’s also remember that, in the “days of the Cold War era,” the same America that was allegedly the “shining beacon of freedom and equality” was also the top sponsor of right-wing military dictatorships throughout Latin America as well as a key supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and Rhodesia.
*I’m not trying to imply that the Communist regimes were really any better since they weren’t. But, then again, the previous regimes in those countries weren’t exactly models of “freedom and equality” for their citizens either. Russia had been an autocracy under the tsar where the overwhelming majority of the population lived in dire poverty. And China’s first attempt at a republic, starting just before World War 1, was a disaster; by the time the Communists took over in 1949, it was the first time that ordinary people could get through a day with some semblance of normalcy, literally in decades (just imagine not knowing if your little farm was going to be turned into a battlefield between rival warlords or get burned down because you failed to pay proper allegiance to whichever authority was in charge of the area that day and, instead, merely worry that there would be too much or too little rain for your crops or that the only threat to your life was a disease or some wild animal).
It is because of such history, Joseph, that I refuse to play the nostalgia game. Not even what went down in DC was that unprecedented. Shay’s Rebellion, Haymarket Square, the Pullman strikes, breakup of the Bonus Army, Kent State…it’s been a while but it’s happened before.
My God but this was good work Ursula. And, well, “right” scary too. Wondering when the majority of Americans wake up to at least some understanding of how much trouble we are in–thinking even with unemployment reaching depression highs, a virulent virus that is still silently stalking the land, a man killed on camera and folks of good will protesting, never mind there are others dressed and masked in black, all or most all of them white, who are trying to hijack the protests and have so far succeeded, still there seems to be not nearly as much outrage as those of us here are expressing. As I’m not a Facebook denizen, nor a Twitter follower, maybe I’m overly pessimistic. Sure hope so. Anyway, great work here.