The U.S. government has engaged in precisely this strategy around the world, having pro-U.S. parties not only complain about election fraud but to take to the streets in violent protests to impugn the legitimacy of election outcomes. That U.S. strategy has been applied to places such as Ukraine (the Orange Revolution in 2004); Iran (the Green Revolution in 2009); Russia (the Snow Revolution in 2011); and many other locations.
Pre-election alerts also have become a feature in U.S. elections, even in 2016 when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of the balloting, albeit for different reasons.
Yet, instead of seeing the AfD maneuver as a typical ploy by a relatively minor party -- and the German election outcome as an understandable reflection of voter discontent and weariness over Merkel's three terms as Chancellor -- the Atlantic Council and the Post see Russians under every bed and particularly Putin.
Loving to Hate Putin
In the world of neocon propaganda, Putin has become the great bete noire, since he has frustrated a variety of neocon schemes. He helped head off a major U.S. military strike against Syria in 2013; he aided President Obama in achieving the Iran nuclear agreement in 2014-15; Putin opposed and -- to a degree -- frustrated the neocon-supported coup in Ukraine in 2014; and he ultimately supplied the air power that defeated neocon-backed "rebel" forces in Syria in 2015-17.
President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left.
(Image by (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)) Details DMCA
So, the Post and the neocons want Putin gone -- and they have used gauzy allegations about "Russian meddling" in the U.S. and other elections as the new propaganda theme to justify destabilizing Russia with economic sanctions and, if possible, engineering another "regime change" project in Moscow.
None of this is even secret. Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, publicly proclaimed the goal of ousting Putin in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing: "The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so."
But the way neocon propaganda works is that the U.S. and its allies are always the victims of some nefarious enemy who must be thwarted to protect all that is good in the world. In other words, even as NED and other U.S.-funded operations take aim at Putin and Russia, Russia and Putin must be transformed into the aggressors.
"Mr. Putin would like nothing better than to generate doubts, fog, cracks and uncertainty around the German pillar of Europe," the Post editorial said. "He relishes infiltrating chaos and mischief into open societies. In this case, supporting the far-right AfD is extraordinarily cynical, given how many millions of Russians died to defeat the fascists seven decades ago."
Not to belabor the point, but there is no credible evidence that Putin did any of this. There is a claim by the virulently anti-Russian Atlantic Council that some "anonymous troll accounts" promoted some AfD complaint about possible voter fraud and that it was picked up by "a Russian-language bot-net." Even if that is true -- and the Atlantic Council is far from an objective source -- where is the link to Putin?
Not everything that happens in Russia, a nation of 144 million people, is ordered by Putin. But the Post would have you believe that it is. It is the centerpiece of this neocon conspiracy theory.
Silencing Dissent
Similarly, any American who questions this propaganda immediately is dismissed as a "Kremlin stooge" or a "Russian propagandist," another ugly campaign spearheaded by the Post and the neocons. Again, no evidence is required, just some analysis that what you're saying somehow parallels something Putin has said.
On Tuesday, in what amounted to a companion piece for the editorial, a Post article again pushed the unproven suspicions about "Russian operatives" buying $100,000 in Facebook ads from 2015 into 2017 to supposedly influence U.S. politics. Once again, no evidence required.
In the article, the Post also reminds its readers that Moscow has a history of focusing on social inequities in the U.S., which gets us back to the comparisons between the Old McCarthyism and the new.
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