Right Russia
It’s hard to think of the Russian state as much more than an organized crime syndicate that possesses a government. Arguably, this state of affairs predates the fall of the Soviet Union, where the “organs” of state security were the people with the actual tools of oppression and violence in their hands, not bound by any particular laws or systems of accountability. These state security institutions—mainly the KGB and GRU (military intelligence)—used whatever means at hand to keep internal and external threats to the regime under control. Their preferred method was subterfuge.
As it turns out, the cartoon enemy in the 1960s popular TV comedy series Get Smart wasn’t too far off the mark in naming the enemy organization “KAOS,” obvious stand-ins for the Soviet spies during the Cold War. As the villains for the series, the agents of KAOS were interested mostly in sowing chaos, which served as a great basis for slapstick and schtick: comedy gold!
Meanwhile, the real KGB did in fact attempt to sow political chaos abroad by fostering radicalism and terrorism outside the Soviet Union—and they were happy to use as much violence as possible to make themselves more menacing. They didn’t really care if the vehicles for that radicalism were ideologically of the far left or the far right. The main thing was to create instability by any means available, mainly by finding radicals in the target country and making sure they could spread their message and expand their ranks, helping them gain access to money and weapons.
In the Cold War frontline state of West Germany, for instance, the Soviets supported (through their client state of East Germany) the leftist Marxist-Leninist radicals and terrorists as well as the right-wing neo-Nazis who scared the bejeepers out of the civilian population time and again from the 1960s through the 1980s. The Soviets used the existence of the neo-Nazis they financed as proof that the West was full of violent fascists.
This Soviet practice was redoubled and expanded when Vladimir Putin, as a former KGB man, became ruler of the successor state, the Russian Federation. Putin’s past included supporting West German right-wing radicals. And present-day Russia has persisted in this activity in various countries.
Contributing to such efforts, Russia’s own mercenary Wagner organization takes its name from the German composer Richard Wagner, considered to have been the preferred composer of German fascists and national socialists. The Russian state has at times pretended that the organization is a private entity, but it has rather been fostered by Russia, with no official objection to its extreme Russo-caucasian philosophy.
For all their domestic political repression, the state security forces of the Soviet Union and modern Russia have always permitted their own radical nationalist-fascist right to persist. One example is the Russian Imperial Movement, RIM. Moreover, the Russian state has done all it could to find like-minded organizations outside Russia for Russian fascists to support and partner with. Thus, it was probably a Russian-backed organization that sponsored the letter bombing campaign in Spain recently, using domestic Spanish groups. Similarly, Russian neofascists were strongly suspected in the (rather clownish) far-right coup plot that Germany broke up recently in its early planning stages. Russia helps its domestic neofascists make such connections and collaborate with right-wing extremist organizations throughout Europe and America.
Similarly, the Russians have been happy to let their extreme nationalists partner with the Iranian regime’s “state within a state” of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC. They have shared weapons and money in terrorist activities abroad. Writing for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, Ovid Lobel compares Russian efforts at rear-guard political subterfuge in the West as part of the Ukraine war:
The [RIM, a neo-fascist outfit] trains white supremacists and neo-Nazis from across Europe, including the former members of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement that conducted bombings in Sweden in 2017, and has even allegedly networked with US-based far right extremists. It has also directly participated in Russia’s destabilisation and then invasion of Ukraine since at least 2014. In 2022, the US sanctioned two key facilitators of the group, which it said is “building a global network of violent groups that foster extremist views and subvert democratic processes” and continues “to exacerbate Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.”
It is typical for Russia to allow entities to exist on its territory that violate Russian law to all outward appearances. As with other authoritarian regimes, nothing exists at home without the state’s tacit approval. When these supposedly illegal organizations are helpful to the authoritarian state’s aims, law enforcement protects them from the law: domestic, foreign, and international.
Since this spills into the world of covert operations that nation states engage in, it’s difficult not to suspect shadowy and malign foreign government behind all sorts of evils in the world. If you look hard enough and start to feel you can draw conclusions, you can catch yourself getting paranoid. Which is, in fact, one of the ways the subterfuge works: by sowing doubt and paranoia, by making target populations frightened and uncertain. On the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore evidence of such activity when it comes to light. There may be nefarious actors at work—or maybe none at all.
For a rundown of the Wagner Group’s background and its activities in Ukraine and Africa, here is a decent place to start It’s fairly brief and heavy on advertising.
Friday night was basketball, and a sad night. My son's team lost,but they were playing the legue leading team, so that wasn't unexpected. His team missed free throws which allowed the game to get away from them.
The sad part was there's a kid on the opposing team who trained with my youngest, during middle school years. The coach stresses character development, so his players are consistently kids you root for, they are polite, good sports, good teammates. My wife wondered why I liked the kid so much; he's the star of his team, but if you double-team him he simply hits a cutter with a pass. He'd rather win than score (the opposite of so many today).
He entered the game 28 points shy of 1,000 for his career. Early in the 4th quarter, having scored 10 points he broke his ankle, so his season (and HS career) is over. Before the game, his Mom held up a sign with 28 on it, and I told Katie I hoped he got the 28 against us. After the game, during the post-game handshakes, Carson slid into the chair next to him, giving him a side hug, telling him he was sorry.
That earthquake in Syria/Turkey is horrendous. My prayers are with the people over there. The devastation is horrific. I followed pix of it last night on twitter. Horrific.