Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/10/comrade-mike-johnson-takes-orders-from-his-leader-vladimir-putin-ukraine-aid-sits-in-limbo.html
…
11 Likes
So does the Guardian piece, or any other, describe any evidence of Johnson’s direct ties to Putin?
I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that any of today’s Republicans were getting say money, or death threats, or something tangible from Putin. And many of them certainly act like they are.
But with so many claims that he’s their puppet master, you’d think by now we’d have tangible evidence of an actual puppet string or two? Is it all untraceable payments and/or threats?
16 Likes
If Putin fears noone, why does he keep sitting at extra long tables and murdering anyone who looks at him funny? It’s probably closer to the truth to say he fears everyone.
27 Likes
Sure seems as if Russia is pulling US politician’s strings to protect its interests. The jury is out on Johnson but the Russia influence on Green, Goetz and Gosar and the rest of the xitter insurrection cadre is pretty effing clear imho.
Comprised America is.
12 Likes
How do you suppose its exerted? Bribes of some sort? Threats?
I don’t doubt such things, but if they’re happening, I’m amazed that U.S. security services and such have yet to indict any of these seeming stooges on the basis of hard evidence. The ongoing lack of it seems weird to me.
Maybe they’re all just in thrall to Tromp, who in turn is mesmerized by Rasputin-like powers wielded by Putin. 
9 Likes
I suspect Putin hasn’t had to make a payment, use kompromat, or make direct threats. They are all fascists and birds of a feather flock together.
15 Likes
I’m kind of surprised to see that Cameron hasn’t been keeping up with US politics enough to figure out what Donald Trump is by now.
8 Likes
When your right-wing loons can make a pigfucking Bullingdon Toryboy look reasonable, you may have gone too far.
8 Likes
It could just be a case of aligning ideologies. It’s well-established that white supremacists now look to Russia as a source of inspiration, and Johnson might not be openly white supremacist, but his own twisted religious movement certainly has sympathies in that direction.
As @mallyboon said.
13 Likes
Indeed. And of course.
What I’m getting at is our continued use of terms like “taking orders from Putin” and “Putin’s puppet,” since we’re never presented with any hard evidence of such things. Why do we keep saying that, while imagining Putin as an Oz-like, mastermind Bond villian? When our fascists are plenty capable on their own of fascist tendencies and actions?
(Which is not to overlook the reality that Russia does “meddle” in our elections, not to mention that we meddle in other countries’ too.)
I thought it was a great moment when, long ago by now, Clinton accused Tromp of being the latter in a debate. But then I grew disappointed when actual evidence continued its non-emergence, year after year.
5 Likes
I think that’s just one of those things about fascism. The strongman doesn’t give explicit orders. He (and it’s always been a he so far, so that’s the pronoun I’m going to use) doesn’t give orders. He doesn’t have to. It’s all implied. Plausible deniability.
And if someone below the strongman in the chain of command doesn’t get the message or misinterprets the message? That’s what windows are for. The will of the strongman must be obeyed, with or without explicit orders.
8 Likes
Whatever is motivating them, directly or indirectly, they are indeed doing Putin’s bidding as if they are puppets taking orders. I would say that they don’t so much fear him but are in awe of him, just as the members of the original American First movement regarded Hitler. Awe often resembles fear in its poses of submission to and craven admiration of raw power.
The adversary in this case is himself a former security state apparatchik for his own country. He is more insistent than most world leaders when it comes to ensuring his intel services follow best opsec practices to obscure Russian operations. For example, I have no doubt that the FSB uses layers and layers of cut-outs (human and shell corporations) when it’s running a blackmail or bribery operation on a Republican politician.
There’s also a not entirely unreasonable reluctance on the part of the FBI to investigate sitting American elected officials in counterintel operations. Putin is no doubt aware of this as well and uses it to his advantage.
16 Likes
Evangelicals (or at least one faction thereof) see Russia as a bastion of Christianity and “traditional values”. Putin has made the Russian Orthodox Church the de facto state religion and is waging a culture war against the “international LGBT movement”. It wouldn’t be hard for Johnson to admire Russia without bringing explicit white supremacy into the equation.
Meanwhile, some Evangelicals have noticed that Russia is oppressing their brethren. Naturally they see an opportunity to gain influence in Ukraine under the guise of defending “religious freedom”.
The most obvious goal of religious freedom in Ukraine today is ending the Russian persecution, the destruction of churches and persecution of clerics. As well as the invasion itself.
But the people pushing the religious-freedom rationale have historically defined it more broadly. They include reshaping governments to mirror their religious beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and abortion.
And that distorted vision of religious freedom has a history of getting smuggled into law and policy, even in the U.S., sometimes abetted by Democrats. In an example I reported back in 2022, the new Respect for Marriage Act became law only after a toxic interpretation of religious freedom was injected, with some Democrats none the wiser.
Family insiders, too, have a history of interpreting religious freedom as the right to enshrine their religious beliefs into law.
6 Likes
That’s a good point, of course. We do run the risk of veering into unsubstantiated explanations like “Putin” is some puppet master…
There is plenty of publicly available information to suggest that there are organized forces between the various online disinformation campaigns around elections (and no doubt there is a similar one from the US). But we can’t know what more covert ops the Kremlin has going.
It is pretty clear that the far right here aligns with Russian interests and it does seem likely that’s organic rather than orchestrated. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t attempts to communicate with the far right here and push them in a particular direction. 
12 Likes
Who also want a white male dominated social order. There is strong overlap between white evangelicals and white supremacists.
9 Likes
Someday we may know what happened at the Republican “summit” between the Moscow 8 and Putin’s intelligence agents.
7 Likes
The thing is the intelligence guys are prone to paralysis by the fear that if they reveal what they know, that will also reveal how they got the information and that source of information will dry up.
And with Trump, who knows? On the one hand he acts like Putin has something on him, but he also seems to love most authoritarian rulers.
7 Likes
The “I am reek” attitude in one of those Trump / Putin pictures looks more like something on than simple admiration.
4 Likes
Vladimir Putin’s grandfather crossed paths with Rasputin. Later he became Lenin’s personal chef.
3 Likes
Putin fears everyone which is why he has henchmen murder his opponents, rigs elections and hides in the Kremlin behind a desk the length of a football field.
3 Likes
