I must point out one sentence from JD Vance’s Munich speech that shook me to my core with particular revulsion and anger: “If Russia buying digital advertising for a few hundred thousand dollars poses a danger to your democracy, your democracy wasn't very strong to begin with." He was, of course, talking about Romania. The excellent @Daractenus has addressed much of this undeserved assault. Here I want to point out the horrendously, sadistically injurious implications of this victim-blaming logical fallacy.

You should sit down for this. Read and retweet.
The new Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy, @DarrenJBeattie, is a white supremacist, a Kremlin and Beijing lover who hates Ukraine and Taiwan, and a promoter of anti-Western vitriol. Receipts below.
⬇️ As the Jan. 6 revolt was underway, Beattie, who even before the 2020 election was urging Trump to start executing a coup, tweeted at conservative black lawmakers that they must “learn their natural place” (presumably as slaves) and “take a knee to MAGA.”

Here’s a simple set of seven truths that, if accepted, will go a long way towards the de-programming of the Western public from decades, centuries even, of Moscow’s propaganda.
⬇️ 1. No nation exists for the purpose of either affirming or denying Russian World.

The fact that many nations’ histories are “tangled” with that of Russia is a sign of relentless Russian aggression and imperialism, not a sign of destiny or of being “fraternal nations.”

The political class in the U.S. from left to right and top to bottom suffers from that disease of the mind that ancient Greeks knew fully well inevitably leads to downfall — hubris, in this case gigantic, unshakeable hubris. The hubris of the Republican Party and MAGA is, of course, monumental. The history of politics rarely knows such toxic bad faith, permanent delusion and cynical intent to keep lying to the end. However, this wouldn’t be possible without the hubris of their opponents.

Even three years of a genocidal full invasion and ten years of overall aggression against Ukraine have not cured many minds of the spell they’ve been under for decades. The spell that leads to the conviction that, no matter what, Russia is entitled to its “sphere of influence.” And that it is entitled to deferential attitude on our part as to Russia’s feelings and opinions as to what happens in that “sphere of influence,” a euphemistic term for “imperial control over less-than-fully-sovereign states.”

The takeover of the FBI and overall intelligence community by Trump’s team isn’t really aimed at retribution against political enemies, which is the red meat he throws to the fevered base. It is worse. It is, I believe, aimed at dismantling U.S. counterintelligence. Short 🧵 FBI counterintelligence has been the most persistent and greatest threat to Trump since 2016. Time and again, it has picked up contact after contact between his team and Russian intelligence. If he doesn’t dismantle it, the threat would be even greater this time around.

Even aside from any morality and based only on “national interests,” the policy of the Western escalation managers and escalation masseurs has been a profound failure. They think they can divide the world again and call it a day. Small problem: this isn’t the Soviet Union. 🧵 While they won’t admit it, many of them are basing their policies on the arrogant assumption that they can simply turn back time and reach a workable equilibrium by giving Russia its “sphere of influence.” This is not only reprehensible but impossible.

We’ve seen this playbook before. It goes by the cynical name of “sovereign democracy.” It’s Putinism and Orbanism. It’s the crushing of any resistance anywhere and the concentration of power. It’s enforcement of loyalty, clientelism and massive, massive corruption. Above all, it aims to destroy that quaint notion of laws and norms. Laws and norms are what the Dear Leader decides they are and that’s ok because he embodies the collective will.

Here’s what I believe led to submission, appeasement and morally compromised leadership becoming the norm — the West’s growing, widespread failure to recognise that (true) peace and liberty are interdependent, tightly locked in a union. The concept of peace is, by itself, empty. It is only when peace and liberty go together that each acquires a meaning. Peace without liberty is “Russian peace,” a simulacrum that has managed to hoodwink millions of people. It is the slave’s peace - an impossibility.

Viktor Orbán was financed by the Russian mafia:

“Semyon Mogilevich [supreme Russian mafia don] asked me to give a suitcase with 1 million DM to a young man. After he won the [1998] election I realised this man had been Orbán. Mogilevich said that had been electoral help.” The above is from the affidavit of Dietmar Clodo, associate of the Solntsevskaya Bratva. In German in the photo.

“In the 1990s, I lived in Budapest and worked with Semyon Mogilevich. I handed envelopes with cash [from the Solntsevo mafia] on his behalf to many corrupt people.”

The Idiot’s Guide on How to Deal with Russia.

No on press conferences, speeches, statements of concern and reports on escalation likelihoods.

Yes on shooting down Russian missiles, lifting strike restrictions and providing Ukraine with an overwhelming military capability. 1/ No on phone calls to Moscow to “reassure counterparts” that we “are not at war” with them.

Yes on communicating to Russia that if it does not stop its attacks AND withdraw from Ukraine, every single Russian soldier and piece of equipment in Ukraine will be destroyed. 2/

To this day, the statements of William Burns, ex-U.S. ambassador to Moscow and current CIA Director, are routinely used by the Russian academics who run RIAC and Russia in Global Affairs, two appendages of the Russian state, to support their propaganda. Here’s Fyodor Lukyanov:
With his cable, which he entitled Nyet means Nyet (related to NATO membership for Ukraine), Burns inaugurated a particularly flawed and irrational type of pseudo-analysis — the taking of Russian statements at face value as, allegedly, critically important “signalling.”

There is a dangerous idea taking hold in Western capitals: a “victory” for Ukraine consists in the survival of any Kyiv-containing entity that carries the name “Ukraine.” By this logic, Zelensky is stubborn, unreasonable and unrealistic in insisting on territorial integrity. No profound analysis is needed to see this view’s similarity with that of multiple Kremlin mouthpieces, except you’d have to switch “victory for Ukraine” with “victory for Russia.” How can something viewed by Russia as its victory be also Ukraine’s victory? It cannot, of course.

Reminder that even some former ambassadors of the U.K. and U.S. to Moscow are entirely compromised. Tony Brenton was the British ambassador from 2004 to 2008. In 2014, he used the pages of The Guardian to slander Ukraine and try to absolve Russia. Brenton promoted the “coup” narrative about Yanukovych and said Crimeans welcomed their “reincorporation” into Russia.

Let’s do some close reading of this devastating account of the Biden administration’s imbecility and cowardice.
“US officials unconvinced Ukraine needs long-range strikes.”
archive.ph/z83xC U.S. officials would like to express their frustration that Ukraine is still resisting and “demanding.” I mean, imagine the impudence of still being alive. “Occasionally” cautious is here the kind of euphemism that is really a lie.

In 2021, a Foreign Policy columnist hailed the then-new National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan as someone likely to become one of the greatest ever. He had had a “cult like” reputation for years among the establishment. (Think about what that says about that establishment.) One of the few people in Washington who seemed to know exactly what was about to happen was John Bolton. Often ridiculed and disdained, he had it exactly right (minus the specific reference to China): the U.S. was about to truly cede the field.

Russian crimes are so staggering in quantity and in nature that even talking about them runs the risk of becoming banal. Language fails. There are no appropriate adjectives for their depravity. There are no appropriate nouns for their impact on victims and survivors. Reducing these crimes to dry legalese fails to capture the nature of this wave of inhumanity determined to stamp out life itself.
Language isn’t quite able to describe it because normal human minds cannot truly grasp it.

Newly obtained internal Kremlin documents confirm the massive and quite successful Russian operation targeting the West aimed at: boosting Moscow’s far-right Western assets so they cut off aid to Ukraine; manipulating public opinion; and inserting fake news. 🧵 Over only 4 months this year, the Kremlin’s secret propaganda arm, the Social Design Agency, created 33.9 million comments, 4,641 videos and 2,516 memes, for which professional cartoonists are employed, including the “Zelensky begging for more billions” one that Musk reposted.

It is a giant lie that there is a meaningful opposition to the war in Russia.
800,000 Germans were imprisoned by the Gestapo for resistance during WW2 and thousands were executed.
In Russia, as of March this year, there were 892 court cases. Out of 140 million. 🧵 Since the faux Russian oppositionists love to bring up “those who rot in prison”: yes, over the years I have known people who were clearly murdered by the regime; I’ve known political prisoners. I’ve known people who killed themselves due to harassment and out of despair.

I received “fan mail” from people who were triggered by these facts about the then-Marxist functionary Olaf Scholz who whitewashed Soviet aggression and spoke against the U.S. and NATO. Facts are pesky things, aren’t they? It’s actually even worse than that. See posts below.

https://twitter.com/Rail_splitter1/status/1832013595926008194

In January 1984, Scholz and the Juso delegation went on a high-profile visit to GDR. There, Scholz shamefully said, “We agree with Comrade Krenz that no one in GDR is imprisoned for their beliefs” while he knew Bärbel Bohney, Ulrike Poppe and many others languished in prison.

Beware this false argument: “TENET media? Unimportant bloggers. This is what you claim is Russia interfering?”

Let me introduce you to the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP),
black-power separatists, and Yes California. Don’t know about them? Russia does. It owns them. 🧵 Most people are ignorant of how Russia subverts societies. This is to our peril. Russia is exceptionally patient, systematic and granular. Think about this: Russia worked to interfere in St. Petersburg’s politics. No, not that one. St. Petersburg, Florida.