Honestly, I am always loathe to share American media stories about "Russian interference" in U.S. politics for a number of reasons. First of all, I am not a nationalist and I am absolutely certain that pitting our "good" nationalism, against Putin's "bad" nationalism doesn't offer solutions to any problems labor class people should care about at all. Secondly given that America has embraced various degrees of fascist ideology throughout its entire history, I reject the idea that American fascism is wholly the product of some outside "foreign influence" on our political discourse who is "turning us" fascist; Putin simply doesn't have that kind of power and we're here at least in part because America has always to some degree or another, been fascist. Finally, when I look at the vast spider web of links, connections, and sympathies between fascist movements across the globe, I see the primary connective tissue as extreme wealth and power; in that context, Vladdy Putin isn't the ringleader of a global fascist movement, so much as one of many oil-soaked, genocidal, reactionary, billionaire shitlords driving us all towards the worst case scenario on a planet being boiled to death by capitalism. To me the struggle against fascism is about people, against power, wealth, and an ideological viewpoint that dictates only certain types of people actually matter and the rest are no more than cattle for the exploitation of a rich, primarily white, ruling class. It's not really about a nation to nation confrontation within the confines of a global capitalist order; even if it occasionally retains some of the trappings of such.

With all of that in the forefront of our minds however, I think it would be foolish to pretend that Vladimir Putin isn't *one* of the uber rich nazis trying to drive us all towards a permanent fascist world order, and using his position as the autocratic ruler of Russia to accomplish that goal. As such, I can't say I was terribly surprised to learn that influential fascist YouTubers like Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, and Lauren Southern were being paid upwards of $100,000 dollars per video to produce ideologically fascist content by a Tennessee cutout company funneling money from two employees of a Russian state-funded television network.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election-influencers-youtube

How Russian operatives covertly hired U.S. influencers to create viral videos

"Details in the indictment match Nashville, Tenn.-based Tenet Media, including its website description: "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues."

Tenet was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen, a conservative Canadian YouTuber, and her husband, Liam Donovan, whose X profile describes him as president of Tenet Media. Chen hosts a show on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and is a contributor to right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. She wrote opinion pieces for RT in 2021 and 2022.

According to the indictment, the Tennessee company's founders worked with Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva — who they knew were Russian — to recruit influencers to make videos that were published across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X. The indictment says its nearly 2,000 YouTube videos amassed more than 16 million views, which tracks with public statistics on Tenet Media's YouTube channel."

Look, if you want to start humping the flag in response to this news, I can't stop you from doing so. But I think the larger story here really is that we're watching the construction of an international fascist movement, backed by fucktons of billionaire funding, moving across borders in much the same way as capital has moved across borders since the normalization and widespread adoption of neoliberal economic orthodoxy. This doesn't absolve Putin at all, since he's one of the most powerful billionaire ideologues driving this movement, but it does place our story in proper context and avoid reinforcing nationalist tropes that merely determine what flavor of fascism happens to be winning at any given moment. I have no doubt that Russian oligarchs are helping to fund and popularize fascist movements all over the Pig Empire, but by that same measure I urge you not to forget the massive number of American and other Western oligarchs doing the same thing; guys like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Rupert Murdoch for example. Even examining the rise of prior fascist movements in Germany and Italy we can find oligarchs like Henry Ford, and Thomas W. Lamont serving the same purpose for 20th century European fascism. This is about wealth, and power, far more than it's about flags.

Of course if there's any hope in this situation, I think it lies in the fact that international fascist movements don't seem to rise up spontaneously; folks, including Putin, are paying for all this for a reason, and that reason is because we outnumber the fascists trying to install this permanent order.