We are at war with Russia. Economic war certainly, political war at the highest level, military assistance but no actual fighting for us. Yet.
The fighting is being done by
our ally Ukraine, to whom every administration
has given economic and military aid since the last time Russia invaded Ukraine
to carve off Crimea in 2014. Like modern wars, the Russian attack on Ukraine is
televised. Everybody knows what is happening, except perhaps the few remaining
Russians who still believe the lies their governments have been telling them
their whole lives.
Until two weeks ago, Russia
was merely our global adversary. Shooting changes everything. For our military
and all the militaries in NATO, for our government forced to respond to
invasion of our ally, for populations and governments around the world, Russia
is now the enemy.
That is global news, but a
few people here at home openly support the other side. On the wide and colorful
right fringe of our national tapestry, the news is hard to swallow. Their years
of public admiration for the Russian strongman and his government, led by our
own fawning circus strongman, now suddenly look naive at best, and certainly
stupid.
But stupid can also be
dangerous. If “loose lips sink ships”, then shouting public voices can aid the
enemy. For years, RT America,
set up in the US by Margarita Simonyan under Putin’s control in 2005, has been
proselytizing for him. Simonyan served on Putin’s reelection team in 2018,
after informally helping to elect Trump in 2016. The obvious Russian media project to
interfere in our elections forced even the Trump administration to make RT
register as an “agent of a foreign government”. Now Simonyan on RT explains that Ukrainians greeted Russian troops with homemade
pies, and the line of tanks is “a standard parade rehearsal”.RT reports Putin’s claim that
Russia is attempting the “denazification
of Ukraine”.
According to a social scientific study by Mona Elswah and Philip N. Howard, “RT is the most
richly funded, well-staffed, formal organization in the world producing,
disseminating, and marketing news in the service of the Kremlin. RT is used as
an instrument of state defense policy to meddle in the politics of other
states. The channel has been established in the shadows of the Soviet media
system and its organizational behavior is characterized by Soviet-style
controls.” The EU personally sanctioned Simonyan two weeks ago, along with many
Russian people and entities, calling her “a central figure of the Government propaganda”.
War is always an opponent of
freedom of information and opinion. RT is a paid arm of the enemy trying to
derail the current American war effort. It may reach millions of Americans with
enemy propaganda disguised as news. Can they masquerade under the banner of
freedom of the press?
I care more about the
outsized influence of right-wing Americans flirting with treason in alliance
with RT. RT’s current BFF is Tucker Carlson. When the bombing of cities was
still in the future, Carlson constantly promoted his preference for the Russian leader over our own President and VP, who are “a senile man
and an imbecile”: “I think we should probably
take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.”
The idea of Ukraine possesses
enormous negative significance for conservatives who have never seen it: they
tried and failed to make Hunter Biden’s questionable activities in Ukraine a
bigger moral and political issue than Donald Trump’s. So Carlson explained his understanding of world politics at the beginning of February:
“Texas is a state that’s had well over 1 million foreign nationals pour into it
illegally over the last year. Right over the border. That is a far bigger
invasion than anything Vladimir Putin is planning in Ukraine.” Worry about
desperate impoverished families who would love to live in America, carrying
their belongings on their backs, not Putin. The policy of the Biden administration,
as in everything else, is “lunacy”. Hours before Russia’s invasion, he tweeted:
“Ukraine isn’t a democracy. It’s a State Department client state.”
Russian state television has
been delighting Russian officials and the official media by broadcasting translated
Carlson clips. Russian senator Alexey Pushkov claimed the West is “provoking
war”, and cited his source: “This isn’t just my opinion. Prominent Fox News commentator Tucker
Carlson says that the mainstream media is getting us ready for war, demanding
war.”
Russian media rebroadcast
Carlson’s friendly portrayal of Putin himself: “Has Putin ever called me a
racist? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he
trying to snuff out Christianity?”
So RT loves Tucker. Simonyan raved
about one of his video clips shown on Russian airwaves: “You showed the clip of
wonderful Tucker Carlson, who, by the way, is dreaming of interviewing Vladimir
Putin, simply dreaming about it! He is the most popular host in the United
States, who understands everything the way it should be understood.”
The extreme right committing
treason for the Russians is a double historical irony. Right after World War
II, American conservatives, led by Joe McCarthy and Robert Welch, propagated
the nonsensical story that the whole political establishment to their left,
including President Eisenhower, was in league with the Russians, then called
Soviets. Richard Nixon pioneered the winning use of “pink” in California
politics. American conservatism has proclaimed its unique loyalty to America
for my whole lifetime. A weaponized patriotism was directed at everyone with
the flimsiest links to Russia or whom the right didn’t like. Now the far right
is in bed with the enemy and it is Russia.
Some are scrambling to get
out. Others are hiding under the covers. On February 25, Carlson retreated: “Vladimir Putin started this war. He is to blame for what we're
seeing tonight in Ukraine.” That only lasted a day, as Carlson said “the
invasion of Ukraine is a humiliating defeat for Joe Biden.” The biggest shots
can’t bear to recant.
After the US declared war on
Germany in 1917, the Trading with the Enemy Act gave a newly created Office of Alien Property
Custodian the power to confiscate the property of people whose actions could
threaten the war effort. The president has the authority to restrict trade with
“hostile” nations or with their allies. Those provisions are now solely applied to Cuba, where actual fighting has only taken place when the
US invaded in 1961, another irony.
Have FOX News and its even
less scrupulous epigones on the right, like Breitbart and Infowars, who have
been spreading and amplifying RT’s message, all committed treason? Should their property be
confiscated?
I wonder why any American
would follow stupid, traitorous people who have been making a fortune sleeping
with the enemy? Maybe this finally is the wake-up call.
Steve Hochstadt
Boston
9 March 2022
