AND NOW, BACK TO UNREALITY

Except it isn't

Man, oh man. If I ever pitched a story that used these elements in it, I would forever be thrown out of the Writer’s Guild for being crazy.

But this unreality, this is real:

Ivy League certified genius (not!) Senator Ted Cruz gave a speech earlier this month at Texas A&M University (home of the Aggie Joke: “Why did the Aggie step backwards off the bus when it came to his stop? He heard someone say they were going to take his seat.”), he was asked about his thoughts regarding the Texas secessionist movement. Not having a clue what they were talking about, but anxious to maintain his bonafides in Crazytown, he said “I’m not there, yet.”

There’s been a lot of talk about secession on the right, but it is important to understand that the modern secession movement is NOT a product of Lone Star pride, or anything else in America.

It’s an idea that has been introduced into the American Right by Russia.

Secession as a political movement is one of the Kremlin’s “active measures” campaigns: the idea is to promote fringe wackos everywhere they’re found in the West in the hope that, eventually, they’ll break something. It’s easy, it involves a very small investment in time and manpower on Russia’s part, and sometimes something happens. As in this case.

The wackos have been breaking things.

The subject of the question to the World’s Dumbest Ivy Leaguer was the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), the state of Texas’s most prominent secessionist organization.

Little noticed, back in 2015, TNM’s leadership attended a meeting in St. Petersburg of international extremists organized by Rodina (“Motherland” in Russian), the fascist offshoot of Putin’s United Russia party.

That gathering welcomed German Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Greece’s Golden Dawn, and other far, far right groups from Europe and the United States to gather and praise Vladimir Putin’s defense of Western (i.e., “white”) culture. Nate Smith, TNM’s executive director has denied attendance, but his photo can be found on Rodina’s website.

These “active measures” got so bad that Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians working with the TNM in 2016 to (wait for it) do oppo research and spread misinformation about one Senator Ted Cruz during the presidential primary, to help Donald Trump with his claims that Cruz’s father had palled around with Lee Harvey Oswald. Cruz was even very upset with these people, back in 2016, before he decided the path to power included “going down” on Trump, publicly if possible.

One of the even-nastier attendees at Rodina’s celebration of international fascism was the Council of Conservative Citizens - known during the Civil Rights Movement 60 years ago as the White Citizens Council. They’re the group Dylan Roof credited in his manifesto for inspiring him to “take it to the real world” before he entered Mother Emmanuel Church, where he shot and killed ten people.

There’s a neo-Nazi/white nationalist group called Atomwaffen, one of the groups aspiring to create a race war, whose then-teenage leader founded in Florida with the help of a messaging platform created by (wait for it) - a Russian. Roof’s manifesto - along with manifestos from other white nationalist killers like the Christchurch New Zealand killer of 54 people - can be found on the despicable white nationalst swamp 8chan - which after it lost its internet access was relaunched as 8kun, by (wait for it) - two Russians.

The “Heart of Texas” Facebook page, which advocates secession, was identified as having been created by (wait for it) - Russians. When it was taken down, it had more “likes” than the official Republican Party and Democratic Party Facebook pages, combined. The Americans associated with the page organized a rally of white nationalists and AR-15 enthusiasts in downtown Houston in 2017.

In 2020, the FBI came down on a white nationalist group called The Base (the English translation of “Al Qaeda”) when several members were arrested for plotting to murder anti-fascist protesters in their sleep in Richmond, Virginia. They were also trying to instigate a race war with a plot to kill cops and then blame Antifa. Previously, they carried out “Operation Kristallnacht,” tagging synagogues with swastikas.

Where does the leader of “The Base” live? (Wait for it) - Moscow.

Richard Spencer, found guilty last week of fomenting the Charlottsville, Virginia white supremacy riots in 2017, used to appear regularly on Putin’s RT cable channel, commenting as an expert on everything from Syria to U.S. cultural affairs. Looserana Fuehrer David Duke lived in Russia, and once rented his Moscow apartment to another American neo-Nazi, Preston Wiginton, a proud Aggie, who organized presentations on the Texas A&M campus for Richard Spencer and Russian ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, a man who befriended Duke in Russia.

These people may have grown up in America, but they are not “home grown extremists.” They would have no power or influence if they did not take Vladimir Putin’s money and act as his weapons.

And Ted Cruz - who was on the receiving end of this in 2016 - has no problem welcoming their support today.

Playing culture war has gotten people killed.

Either Cruz is so dumb he really does not know, or he’s so scummy that he does not care - that destroying the country he claims to love is what Vladimir Putin is working to achieve.

The problems are not in our politics, the problem is in our culture. Politics is merely a visible symptom.

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