How the Kremlin is feeding far-right Texas secession fantasies — and using Ted Cruz as a useful idiot: report

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union didn’t have the internet to use against the United States. But in 2021, the Soviet Union is long gone, Russia has a government that is far-right rather than far-left/communist, and the internet has changed everything from politics to shopping to journalism. The Kremlin is great at using the internet to manipulate the far right in the U.S., including secessionists in Texas.

In an article published by The Bulwark on November 29, Kristofer Harrison (a former Bush Administration official and Never Trump conservative) explains why allies of the Kremlin have been encouraging the secessionist fantasies of Texas’ far right.

“It is important to understand that the modern secession movement is not a product of Lone Star pride,” Harrison emphasizes. “It’s an idea that has been force fed into the American conservative movement by Russia. Secession is one of the Kremlin’s ‘active measures’ campaigns: Promote fringe wackos abroad and hope that eventually, they break something. This may not sound like much of a plan, but it sometimes works. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has been openly building his portfolio of wackos for a while. And the wackos have begun breaking things.”

Harrison notes that in Texas, the “most prominent secessionist organization” is the Texas Nationalist Movement — and in 2015, some of its members traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to attend a far-right event organized by Rodina, an offshoot of Putin’s United Russia Party.

One of the useful idiots of Texas’ secessionist movement and its Russian supporters, according to Harrison, has been Sen. Ted Cruz. When Cruz was asked about that movement during a recent appearance at Texas A&M University, he said he wasn’t “there yet.” But he didn’t condemn secessionists either. And Harrison, in his article, slams Cruz for “cozying up to” them.

“Fortunately for us,” Harrison writes, “secessionists aren’t killing people — they’re not ‘there, yet’ — but Putin’s propaganda can be convincing…. Putin invests broadly in his pet extremist wackos. Richard Spencer used to appear regularly on RT, where he commented as an expert on everything from Syria to U.S. cultural affairs. David Duke lived in Russia…. The only way to understand the neo-Nazi mob and the secessionist movement is as Vladimir Putin’s weapons.”

Harrison points out that The Base, a neo-Nazi/ White supremacist group in the U.S., also has its supporters in Russia.

“In 2020, the FBI began cracking down on a nationalist group called The Base — that would be the English translation of ‘Al Qaeda,’” Harrison observes. “Several members were for plotting to murder anti-fascist protesters in their sleep in Richmond. They also wanted to instigate a race war by killing cops and then blaming Antifa. They also carried out something they called ‘Operation Kristallnacht,’ during which they tagged synagogues with swastikas.”

Harrison continues, “Where does The Base’s leader live? Moscow. Ted Cruz seems to think that the job of a United States senator is to shitpost on Twitter and own the libs. But playing at culture war can get people killed. Cruz either does not know, or does not care, that this is exactly what Putin is trying to achieve.”