Has Russia turned on Trump? Plus: The truth about the French crisis

Has Russia turned on Trump? That's the impression you'd get from this piece in the Daily Beast, which offers a precis of the hard-hitting attacks on Trump now peppering official media in Russia.

“Trump was never our friend – never!” exclaims Popov. Hosts and participants of “60 Minutes” previously made a habit of repeatedly boasting: “Trump is ours!” In light of their current commentary, it appears that “ours” was used in context of control or possession, not friendship.

As I've noted in several previous posts (including one written well before the Trump era), "ours" -- or nash -- is an old KGB term used to describe the ultimate loyalty of a double- or triple-agent. During the Cold War, the Americans also made jocular use of nash.

In an opinion piece for the Russian publication “Arguments and Facts,” Veronika Krasheninnikova, “Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies & Initiatives, Advisor to the Director General of 'Russia Today' and a member of the Kremlin-appointed Russian Public Chamber,” says that in light of the canceled meeting, Russia can now give up on the U.S. and “should have never trusted Trump to begin with.”

Krasheninnikova opines that “as long as Trump is in power, nothing positive can happen in the relations between the United States and Russia,” concluding that “Trump is a rock hanging around Russia's neck."

This is, in a word, crap. Propaganda.

Trust me on this: Russia stills views Trump as nash.

Long before the current contretemps -- hell, before the election -- I wrote that Russia's best course of action would be to denounce Trump in public, in order to discredit the growing belief that Trump was in Putin's pocket.

The Russians are finally getting around to using this tactic. I'm surprised that they didn't start down this road a long time ago.

If the Russians actually turn against Trump, we will all know. It'll be obvious. We will learn about such a shift not from Russian TV but from English-language Twitter offerings.

Suddenly, the Alt Right trolls will all issue blistering denunciations of Trump's perfidy. Many of those trolls operate out of St. Petersburg, while others are part of the international neo-Fascist movement, which reveres Putin.

To determine whether the wind has actually shifted, just look at Infowars. Use that site as your weathervane.

Alex Jones is a Russian ally, as I documented in this earlier piece. That earlier post quotes this piece published in the Observer:

InfoWars re-published over 1,000 RT articles within the past three years without the Kremlin-backed outlet’s permission. InfoWars’ plagiarism is evidenced by data from Buzzsumo, a social tracking website that monitors content as it is shared online.

Allow me to quote my earlier offering:

Accuracy in Media -- nobody's idea of a left-wing organization -- argued back in 2014 that Jones was pushing Putin-friendly conspiracy scenarios. AIM called AJ "a reliable outlet for pro-Russian propaganda."

Jones has bragged about receiving praise from "Top Putin advisers." How would he know what Putin's top advisers are saying?

Radio host and prominent Donald Trump ally Alex Jones was told by an RT host that Russian President Vladimir Putin asked him to "say hi to Alex.” Jones has claimed that he was told years ago that "Putin’s a big listener" and was previously informed that the “Russian government listens to" his show and the Kremlin partially “modeled” RT off of his Infowars network.

All right-wing conspiracy theorists segue into fascism, although they rarely use that word and usually pretend to be anti-fascist. (Rationalization springs eternal.) Putin is the king of international fascism. He is not the new Stalin; he is the new Hitler. As simple as that.

If Russia really turns against Trump, so will InfoWars. AJ, Breitbart, QAnon and all of the other right-wing conspiracists will pivot faster than a ballet dancer.

France: All you really need to know is that the protestors are wearing that damned Guy Fawkes mask, which has become the symbol of the neo-fascists -- or rather, of fascists-who-pretend-to-be-anti-fascist.

(I wish Alan Moore would wake the fuck up and denounce the way the far right has appropriated his work, just as Matt Furie has denounced the appropriation of Pepe the Frog. And when will the Wachowski brothers address the fact that "red-pilled" has become a synonym for "converted to fascism"?)

I agree with Malcolm Nance: The election of Macron gave the world a fighting chance. If Le Pen had won in France, the situation might now be beyond repair. (Some would say that the situation is already hopeless.) It has been established beyond debate that Putin funded Le Pen.

Obviously, Putin will continue to push for the fascist takeover of that key nation. Obviously, what's going on now is part of that plan.

So far, we have no hard evidence that Putin has funded les gilets jaunes (the Yellow Jackets), the people now undermining Macron. That movement has been careful not to identify itself with racism or with explicitly right-wing ideology.

But never forget that fascism has a long history of seeking every available fissure in a targeted society. Fascists always use legitimate grievances as a means of undermining democracy.

This tactic goes way back. Before and during World War II, propaganda produced by America's pro-German fascists exploited this country's history of oppression against Native Americans and black people. When fascists gave speeches in America, they often had a Native American standing on stage. Chapter 9 of this important book discusses fascist subversion of the black community.

From the Guardian:

Macron, who had said he would “never accept violence”, instructed the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, to meet what he has called legitimate protest groups and opposition politicians this week in an effort to calm tensions and stop “professional” rioters from infiltrating street demonstrations.

The Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said 378 people were in custody, including 33 under the age of 18. He said many of those arrested in battles with police were men aged between 30 and 40, often from regions far from Paris, who had “come to fight police while claiming to be part of the gilets jaunes movement”.

Someone is paying for this. Suivez l'argent.

The insurrectionists decorated the Arc de Triomphe with graffiti reading "Topple the Bourgeoisie." Cute.

Never forget: When fascism seeks to convert the young, it always presents itself -- initially -- as an épater le bourgeois ("shock the middle class") movement. This is the true lesson of the film and book Fight Club: A prole rebellion against conformity and conventionality always devolves into a new telling of the Mussolini story.

Note, too, that the Yellow Jacket movement is, at heart, rural. Fascism usually manifests as a revolt of the "country mice" against the "city mice." (Peter Viereck's Metapolitics offers some insight here.)

From the BBC:

A survey by the polling agency Elabe found that almost three-quarters of French voters approved of the protests, and that more than half of those who voted for Mr Macron support them.

Several of the main opposition parties have publicly backed them, including the centre right Republicains, the far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Also see here:

We should study populist social movements under centrist governments in order to identify the ways that far-right groups can hijack them—and figure out how we can prevent that. This is one of the reasons to pay close attention to the “yellow vest” movement unfolding right now in France under the arch-centrist President Macron.

I don't agree with much of the analysis on that page, since the writer appears to be an anarchist, and probably can never be cured of that delusion. Over the years, I have come to understand that anarchism is a road that invariably leads to fascism. Nevertheless, the concepts of infiltration and manipulation deserve close attention.

Remember the Occupy movement? The conventional right (hard to recall a time when such a thing still existed, isn't it?) hated that movement, but Alex Jones and his kin saw it as a means of conversion. Again: The key concepts are infiltration and manipulation. Jones understood that the movement hurt Obama, and thus helped to pave the way for what we now call Trumpism. Even though I also disliked Obama (for other reasons), I soon understood that Occupy was a trap and thus never fell under its sway.

Bottom line: We must support Macron. The choice is Macron or Le Pen -- democracy or fascism. The fall of Macron will be the triumph of Putin.