Election Season in the U.S. Means Its Witch Hunt Season

JOHN VAROLI
SUBSTACK.COM

Five months remain before the elections in November, and no election in modern America is complete without a witch hunt for “Russian spies and agents of influence”. If you believe the White House, these extraordinary super-agents can dupe millions of Americans into voting for ‘right-wing’ candidates just by posting videos on websites that few people have seen, as well as humorous memes on social media.

Our fragile American democracy is easily subverted by these nefarious ‘Russian agents’. They hate us for our freedoms and want to enslave us with their communist ideology. If you listen to U.S./ NATO officials, these Russian agents are everywhere; so always be vigilant. How to discern a ‘Russian agent’? One clear sign, of course, is that they criticize the White House’s policies and agitate for peace on Earth.

In their effort to root out ‘Russian influence’ the White House has a number of tools at its disposal — from the muscle of FBI goons and criminal cases that bankrupt the accused, to the defamatory pen of New York Times propagandists. On the hit list over the past month have been two independent American journalists and one activist in New York whose only ‘crime’ is being interested in Russian history.

1) In early May, the FBI stepped up its investigation into the organizers of the New York chapter of the Russian historical movement, The Immortal Regiment. 2) In early June, Biden’s goons went after Scott Ritter, a critic of U.S. militarism and proponent of friendly relations with Russia. 3) The New York Times did a hit piece on John Mark Dougan, another critic of U.S. militarism who fled to Russia in 2016 after facing persecution for his investigation into local corruption in his home state of Florida.

These certainly won’t be the last victims caught up in the White House’s anti-Russian witch hunt before the November elections. Let’s take a closer look at the three cases.

 

Founded in Russia in 2012, The Immortal Regiment is an annual non-political event that is now global. Participants meet once a year — on May 9 — to commemorate their ancestors who served in the Soviet army that defeated European Nazism. It’s a beautiful and inspiring event. (Unless, of course, you are a Nazi sympathizer).

"The main front of World War 3 is on the field of information and psychological warfare. Each of us is on the front lines. There’s a battle raging for your mind and soul..."

Since the White House avidly supports the regime in Kiev, which openly glorifies Nazi butchers, it’s not surprising that the U.S. government harasses and threatens members of The Immortal Regiment. Because of their hatred for Russians, even Nazis are now heroes for western liberal elites. (Remember how last autumn Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s government publicly honored a Ukrainian Nazi).

Igor Kochan, a long-time New York resident and Russian citizen, was one of the organizers of the recent (and last) Immortal Regiment march in New York City, on May 9. He had long faced FBI harassment, but this spring the threats reached a boiling point when they confiscated his cell phone — an act indicating that a criminal case is being fabricated. In mid May, Mr Kochan fled the U.S. for the safety of Russia where he now has the freedom to speak out.

For years, Mr Kochan had faced FBI harassment and was even fired from his job due to his Russian ethnicity, a severe violation of U.S. federal law. But in the U.S., Russians have no rights, are widely viewed as “the enemy” and therefore stripped of any legal protections. “Russians are persecuted in the U.S.,” Mr Kochan recently said in a TV interview in Moscow.

The FBI’s harassment of other organizers and participants in The Immortal Regiment in New York continues, and concocted charges against some of them are highly likely as November approaches. The FBI has to justify its vast budget fighting “Russian election interference”.

 

The next incident came on June 3 when military analyst Scott Ritter was prevented from boarding a plane in New York to travel to Russia to attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. Several men claiming to be police officers demanded his passport and still haven’t returned it — an ominous sign.

I’ve never heard of the U.S. confiscating someone’s passport,* and I wonder if it means the White House is fabricating a criminal case against Mr Ritter. He is certainly a huge thorn in Biden’s side.

A statement from Mr Ritter’s podcast producer, Jeff Norman, said: “Just prior to boarding the plane, he was prevented from doing so by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who confiscated his passport. They told him they were acting on orders from the U.S. State Department. He was given no other explanation, and wasn't given a receipt for his passport. Scott has sent a letter to the State Department seeking an explanation and the return of his passport.”

Later, on his podcast, Mr Ritter said that the White House wants “to send a signal to anyone who wants to travel to Russia. They were afraid about what I was going to say and where I was going to say it”. The St Petersburg Economic forum is a “giant megaphone to the whole world”.

Mr Ritter is already on “Mirotvorets” the hit list run by Ukrainian nationalists and that receives support from the U.S. government. Mirotvorets labels Mr Ritter an “information terrorist”, which is an open call to have him killed. (Assassination of journalists supported by our tax dollars. Where are you George Clooney?!).

Despite the threats, Mr Ritter said on his recent podcast: “We’re not giving up. I’ve been at war with the U.S. government 24/7, for 30 years. It wears you down, but the cause — to stop a nuclear war and promoting peace — is very important.”

 

On May 29, the New York Times published a hit piece on John Mark Dougan, an American who faced persecution in Florida for fighting against corruption in the local sheriff’s office. The article’s author is Steven Lee Myers, a man who describes himself as an “expert on Russian disinformation”; in fact, Myers closely cooperates with liberal regimes and is an egregious spreader of disinformation about Russia.

The second thing that surprised me is the article’s length — over 2,600 words (about five A4 pages) and an audio version that runs almost 21 minutes. Articles of this size are usually reserved only for very important public figures and events.

With all due respect to Mr Dougan, who I do not know and have never met, the fact is that he’s an unknown and minor figure. Devoting so much space and time to a man whose life and actions have little impact on the world is quite bizarre. But Meyers has to justify his high salary — he has to produce ‘evidence’ that supports the White House’s fake narrative of ‘Russian interference’ in our elections.

Meyers writes: “Mr. Dougan, 51, who received political asylum in Moscow, is now a key player in Russia’s disinformation operations against the West. …Working from an apartment crowded with servers and other computer equipment, Mr. Dougan has built an ever-growing network of more than 160 fake websites that mimic news outlets in the U.S., Britain and France. …With the help of commercially available artificial intelligence tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has filled the sites with tens of thousands of articles, many based on actual news events.”

Intriguing. But is it true? Is there any evidence? Look closely at the article. In fact, there’s none. Nothing. We’re supposed to blindly trust Meyers and the NYT. The article’s main premise revolves around the dubious testimony of two characters who provide no evidence.

POST SCRIPTUM: I take no pleasure in writing these articles, exposing American corruption, mass murder, and the rise of a totalitarian state in Washington DC. Like many of you, I was raised to love my country and take pride in it. Today, however, there’s little to love and take pride in. Everywhere I look I only see reason for eternal shame. And don’t think for a moment that we’ll escape the Almighty’s judgement.

I’ve decided to make deconstructing and exposing western media lies a main focus of my labors. Today I’m launching my Telegram channel (link here). It’s in Russian only, precisely because it’s meant to be a tool to help Russian parents and teachers help their children/ students who might be susceptible to western disinformation. The main front of World War 3 is on the field of information and psychological warfare. Each of us is on the front lines. There’s a battle raging for your mind and soul.

ADDENDA BY THE EDITORS

* A case also worth remembering is that of Paul Robeson.
Here's a rather fair account (excerpted) of Robeson's trials with the US Government, of all places in Politico,  a liberal interventionist publication, via WWW.HISTORY.COM

Paul Robeson gestures May 31, 1948, as he tells the Senate Judiciary Committee he is willing to go to jail rather than answer a question as to whether or not he is a communist. | HUAC Photo By ANDREW GLASS 08/16/2018 12:01 AM EDT Before World War II, Paul Robeson, an African-American advocate for civil rights and an entertainer renowned for his work on Broadway and in films, became so dismayed over racism that he left the country and lived in Europe until 1939. During his 11 years abroad, Robeson became enamored by the Soviet Union, focusing on its disavowals of racial bias. During the war, while the United States was allied with Soviets against Nazi Germany, Robeson often performed before U.S. troops around the world. With the advent of the Cold War, the political climate changed; Robeson’s public statements in support of the Soviet Union began to draw pushback from official Washington. Before and after his performances, Robeson gave numerous interviews condemning segregation and discrimination. Some U.S. policymakers, including John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, viewed America’s race relations as the nation’s “Achilles’ heel” in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union. Witnessing a well-known, globally popular African-American denounce segregation while praising the Russians was deemed unacceptable. In 1950, Robeson attempted to renew his passport so that he could travel abroad to fulfill his performance contracts. State Department officials insisted that before a renewal occurred Robeson sign an affidavit declaring that he was not a member of the Communist Party and that he was loyal to the United States. Robeson refused to do so and filed suit in federal court. On this day in 1955, a federal judge ruled that the State Department was within its legal rights to deny Robeson a passport. After the decision, Robeson declared that it was “rather absurd” that he was not “allowed to travel because of my friendship — open, spoken friendship — for the Soviet people and the peoples of all the world.” At a 1956 hearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Robeson said: “Whether I am or not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.” In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court in Kent v. Dulles affirmed painter Rockwell Kent’s right to travel, declaring the denial of a passport a violation of his civil rights. The majority opinion, written by Justice William O. Douglas, found that “the right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.” Six years later, in Aptheker v. Secretary of State, the court found that a law that barred communists from traveling abroad violated First Amendment principles, while leaving unsettled the extent to which this “liberty” can in any circumstances be curtailed. The 5-4 decision in 1958 also led to the restoration of Robeson’s passport. The damage to Robeson’s professional career, however, was done. He performed for a few more years before retiring in the 1960s, although the FBI continued to investigate him until his death in 1976 at age 77.

ADDENDUM 2
Leading civil libertarian and geopolitical analyst Garland Nixon sounds the tocsin about our vanishing constitutional rights—every American should listen
Here's Garland Nixon's trenchant analysis of the ruling elites' intensifying harassment of dissidents, as typified by their attacks on geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter, and the slandering and framing of independent websites opposing imperialist war and the rapid unraveling of Constitutional rights in the US, such as The Grayzone and The Greanville Post, both mentioned in this video commentary. 

Garland Nixon