Thread by @neil_abrams

I hesitate to call it a “mask-off moment” since, to have a mask-off moment, you need to actually wear one in the first place. But the tweet below is revealing of a fundamental truth about the man: @MaxBlumehthal—I shit you not—is an imperialist shill. A thread.

It’s despicable, albeit predictable, for @MaxBlumenthal to pretend that last Friday’s staged annexation “referendums” in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk & Luhansk were somehow free and fair. But the “Novorossiya” line takes Blumenthal’s nihilistic depravity to another level.

Let’s start with the preposterous notion that 87% or more of these regions would ever vote to join Russia. Do you know what % of their respective populations is actually made up of ethnic Russians?

Here’s the breakdown from the latest available census:

Luhansk: 39%
Donetsk: 38%
Zaporizhzhia: 25%
Kherson: 14%

Not that ethnic Russians in Ukraine have ever been all that enthusiastic about getting annexed by Russia. Below are opinion polls from 2014 and 2022. Note how much lower the % of people expressing support for union is than the actual % of ethnic Russians living in each region.

(The 2022 poll shows results not by individual oblast but by W, C, S, and E Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia & Kherson are 2 of 5 oblasts in southern Ukr while Donetsk & Luhansk are 2 of 3 in eastern Ukr.)

2014 poll: kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

2022 poll: kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

Want to know how “referenda” actually work under Russian occupation? Phone intercepts between Donetsk warlords and their Kremlin masters from 2014 show the latter picking a random number out of thin air to use as the “result” of a referendum that hadn’t happened yet.

Source for above: washingtonpost.com/news/worldview…

So, no, @MaxBlumenthal, these “referenda” that were just held in the four Ukrainian regions Russia is pretending to annex were themselves pretend-farces that could never be real given the entirely understandable hostility of local residents to the prospect of joining Russia.

But @MaxBlumenthal’s blind acceptance of the “referendum” results isn’t even the most revealing part of his tweet; it’s his use of the term “Novorossiya” to refer to the regions of southern and eastern Ukraine Russia is annexing. Here’s why:

“Novorossiya” isn’t an actual thing—at least not since the days of the Tsarist empire, when it referred to an administrative unit carved out of modern-day Ukraine and Russia that had been annexed in the mid-18th century by Catherine the Great.

When the Tsarist empire ceased to exist, so did Novorossiya. But after the Soviet collapse, far-right Russian nationalists salty over losing their precious empire revived the term and used it to refer to swathes of now-independent Ukraine that they felt should be part of Russia.

In 2014, when Putin occupied Crimea and launched his stealth invasion of eastern Ukraine, dispatching Russian Nazi fighters (yes, really) and eventually Russian troops to take over parts of the country, he revived the term “Novorossiya” to legitimize his new imperial project.

(Source for above:) washingtonpost.com/news/worldview…

The whole project was abandoned pretty quickly after the Kremlin realized there was no appetite whatsoever for separation from Ukraine outside of the Donbas (and was a minority allegiance even there—see above). Naturally, however, he’s brought it back it for the 2022 invasion.

I cannot emphasize enough just how fake this concept of “Novorossiya.” Aside from weird, esoteric Russian nationalists, nobody in eastern Ukraine had even heard of, much less identified with, the idea until the Kremlin started promoting it in 2014. theatlantic.com/international/…

And yet here is @MaxBlumenthal, a guy who revels in smearing others as imperialists, peddling the Kremlin’s bullshit about “Novorossiya” as a means of sugarcoating Putin’s nakedly imperialistic project to crush and dismember a neighboring country.

So next time you see @MaxBlumenthal call someone *else* an apologist for empire, just remember that apologizing for empire is his very reason for existing. This is not a guy with actual principles. He’s just a nihilist hawking imperialist propaganda for money and clout. /end