Phony “Dissidents”

Not content with having done much to gin up a disastrous war in the Middle East, Andrew Sullivan joins the ranks of the New Cold Warriors in targeting Vladimir Putin as the neo-Stalin, implying that a Washington-based critic of Putin was attacked by the KGB even while local police ascribe his mugging to street thugs. Check out the picture Sullivan uses, which is of a member of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party being carried away by Russian cops. The National Bolshies have an … interesting political orientation that is reflected in the party flag: a hammer-and-sickle on a red-white-and-black color scheme that deliberately evokes Nazi symbolism. Here is a super-nationalist grouplet that mixes Hitler’s National Socialism with Stalin’s brand of Bolshevism to come up with an ideology that combines racism and anti-Semitism with nostalgia for the Gulag. These are the “dissidents” that we are supposed to lionize. Sullivan tries to prettify things with a quote from Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov, but that flag tells the real story.

Oh, and how come we haven’t heart anything about the alleged poisoning of Senor Litvinenko, another phony “dissident”? Perhaps the evidence is not producing the desired result ….

Get used to it. Every time a critic of Russia stubs his toe, Putin is going to be blamed. Logic is not a strong point with our New Cold Warriors….