In some parts of the world, the war in Ukraine seems justified

>> John Eligon, The New York Times

Published: 17 Mar 2022 

• 

  A man drives a car with an image depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin wearing a traditional Serbian hat, during a rally in support of Russia, in Belgrade, Serbia, Mar 13, 2022. REUTERS/Zorana Jevtic

To an independent filmmaker in Hanoi, Vietnam, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is a “wise leader.” In Rio de Janeiro, a former restaurant owner said he was convinced that Ukraine had hired actors to fake war injuries. And a 27-year-old doctor living near Nairobi in Kenya questioned how Americans could be outraged over the Russian invasion when “for so long, they had a monopoly over anarchy.”

Most of the world has loudly and unequivocally condemned Putin for sparking a war with Ukraine. But in countries where governments have remained neutral, tacitly supported Russia or encouraged the dissemination of false or sanitised accounts of the war, citizens are voicing a much more complicated and forgiving narrative of Putin’s invasion.

Interviews with dozens of people in those countries — from Vietnam to Afghanistan to South Africa to China — reveal that while many are disturbed by the war and the loss of innocent lives, some are sympathetic to Russia’s justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, and do not accept the good versus evil scenario presented by the United States and Europe.

Their views are shaped by factors such as their countries’ deep and historic ties to Russia and the history of interventions and atrocities perpetrated by some Western countries — as well as disinformation and censorship that in some places is propagated by the state.

Many found resonance in the argument that Ukraine’s effort to join NATO compromised Russia’s security. Some held on to a nostalgia for the old Soviet Union. Still others could not side with a West that they viewed as hypocritical. These attitudes have helped prime the pump for the flourishing of conspiracy theories about the war.

“The US invaded Iraq and no one made the same noise as people are doing against Putin,” said Eni Aquino, 52, a sports commentator from Goiânia in midwestern Brazil.

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has strong ties to Putin and flew to Moscow right before the invasion, but has taken a position of neutrality on the war. Polls show wide approval for this stance.

Arthur Maia Caetano, 68, said that since shutting down his restaurant in Rio de Janeiro because of the pandemic, he has been using his time to read Russian news websites and bulletins from the 70 or so groups that he follows on the social messaging app Telegram.

“When I started to look carefully at war, I saw that the first to die is the truth,” Caetano said, citing unfounded claims circulating online, such as that Ukraine has hired actors to pretend they were injured and that it maintains biological weapons laboratories funded by the United States.

In China, state media has done much to bolster false stories about what is unfolding in Ukraine.

Outlets have republished official Russian propaganda without verification, including false reports that Ukraine had been using civilians as human shields and that President Volodymyr Zelensky had left Kyiv.

While Chinese officials have not explicitly endorsed the Kremlin’s actions, they have framed the invasion as a rational decision by Russia to resist aggression from the West, and specifically from the United States.

Zhang Han, 37, has been an avid consumer of that messaging. Zhang, a programmer at a technology company in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said he was initially shocked by Putin’s actions. But he said he also empathised with the Russian leader’s desire to absorb Ukraine and pointed to China’s ambition to unify with Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing has long claimed as its own.

“Of course, I pity the situation of Ukrainians and hope that the war can end soon,” he said. “But that’s the mindset of a big country.”

In Vietnam, state authorities have also attempted to control the narrative about the war. Two editors for a Vietnamese online magazine and a state broadcaster said they were issued directives on reporting on the war that included reducing the extent and frequency of coverage, and banning the word “invasion.” Both asked to remain anonymous for fear of government reprisals.

Vuong Quoc Hung, a 36-year-old stockbroker from Hanoi, said he grew up watching documentaries and films on national television about the Soviet Red Army heroes who battled Nazi Germany during World War II. That made him fall in love with Russia, he said.

“So when Russia attacks Ukraine, people like me will sympathise with Russia, assuming that it is purely Russian self-defence,” he said.

The difficult balance for some, though, is that innocent Ukrainian lives are being lost. That toll is impossible to justify, some said, even if they think that Russia had the right to attack in self-defence.

Although Tran Trung Hieu, a 28-year-old independent filmmaker in Hanoi, firmly opposes the atrocities of war, he said his faith in Putin was unshaken.

“I’m quite sure that a wise leader like President Putin must have given a lot of thought before sending troops into Ukraine,” said Hieu, who was born in Russia.

He added that he was “a big fan of ‘Uncle Putin,’ because he always takes drastic actions.”

In India, the affinity for Russia is about much more than friendship. India relies on Russia for about half of its arms supplies, and has not spoken out against Russia. Some in India are critical of the United States for fighting wars overseas.

“Wherever they’ve gone, they’ve left it in a mess,” said Naresh Chand, a retired lieutenant general in the Indian army who trained in Russia and Ukraine.

The devastation of US military intervention remains fresh and painful in Afghanistan, leaving many Afghans angry at the United States and NATO for their failures, and the crushing economic and humanitarian disasters that followed the fall of the Western-backed government last year.

Nazir Hussani, 34, said he thinks the West will only widen the scope of the war in Ukraine by sending weapons there. And, he said, he doesn’t trust the Americans because of their history in Afghanistan, which they invaded in 2001.

“I know they don’t want to share the truth with the media and people,” he said.

To some, the West’s position on Ukraine’s war reeks of hypocrisy.

Dr Lucky Muange, who lives in Kiambu County, several miles north of Nairobi, said NATO and Western nations had little right to vilify Putin when they have in the past invaded and occupied poor countries, or interfered to topple their governments.

“So now they are shocked when Russia is the one doing it?” he said.

Since the start of the war, the South African government has been adamant about remaining neutral, and repeatedly called for peace. But officials have also gone out of their way to highlight the country’s longstanding friendship with Russia.

The Soviet Union was the first major world power to provide direct support for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Countries like the United States supported South Africa’s white, racist regime until the 1980s.

The African National Congress, which was in the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement, is South Africa’s governing party. The latest edition of its weekly newsletter includes an article with the headline, “Situation in Ukraine is about denazification of the country by Russia.” The article perpetuates the false claim, promoted by the Russian government, that in 2014 Ukraine’s government “was replaced by ultra-nationals and neo Nazis who were backed by the US and the EU.”

Siyabonga Ntuli, a 28-year-old software developer in Johannesburg, said that Putin’s claims about Nazis in Ukraine were false propaganda meant to justify the invasion. Still, Ntuli said, he believed that Putin did have good reason to go to war with Ukraine, because NATO’s eastward expansion threatened Russia.

“It’s a shame that Ukraine is going to end up picking up the bill for it,” he said. “But I think that NATO knew it. I think they wanted to test his resolve.”

Ntuli was chatting with three friends on a sunny afternoon in Gandhi Square in downtown Johannesburg, where they regularly meet to discuss life and current events.

Zamani Msimango, also 28 and a software developer, likened the current situation to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the United States threatened to invade Cuba after the Soviet Union placed nuclear-armed missiles there.

“But somehow now they act like they don’t understand, when they themselves are pushing closer and closer to Russia, what that’s going to lead to,” Msimango said.

Thandiswa Bonani, a 40-year-old fashion designer in Johannesburg, said she believed that Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, was “manipulating other countries to feel sorry for him.”

“Putin, he didn’t just invade Ukraine,” she said. “There’s something there. I might not be able to put it in words, but there is something there.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Ukrainian embassy torches Israel over restrictive refugee policy

Tel Aviv mission says relaxed criteria still not covering main challenges faced by non-Jewish refugees and urges Jerusalem to allow asylum seekers to temporarily work in the country

Itamar Eichner|
Published: 03.17.22

The Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv on Thursday sharply criticized Israel's policy regarding Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war-torn Eastern European country which it deems too restrictive.

Israel moved to relax the criteria for the admission of non-Jewish refugees from Ukraine, saying those who have relatives in the country would be excluded from the refugee cap initially set by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, while Prime Minister Naftali Bennett promised the country will allow those refugees to stay in Israel until it's safe for them to go back.


Ukrainian refugees in Ben Gurion Airport
(Photo: Yariv Katz)

Nevertheless, the Ukrainian Embassy posted on its Facebook page that "the recently updated immigration policy of Israeli Government towards Ukrainians is not covering the main challenges for non-Jewish refugees from Ukraine. Russia is committing genocide of Ukrainians, killing thousands of civilians, while the Israeli Government inspects each and every refugee from Ukraine with a fine-toothed comb. We urge those who take decisions to cancel the policy of quotas and other artificial obstacles towards women and children fleeing war-torn Ukraine."

The embassy also urged Israel to allow the refugees to work in the country temporarily, saying that it had presented a detailed plan to Shaked.

"We hope that the government, whose nation experienced the refugee life throughout its existence, will embrace those, who are saving their own lives and lives of their children - looking for a temporary shelter from horrors of war."
The Ukrainian embassy also stressed that Ukrainians who are seeking temporary asylum in Israel did not come there randomly and have family or friends in Israel who are ready to host them.


A compound in Ben Gurion Airport for Ukrainian refugees
(Photo: Riki Carmi)

The Ukrainian embassy has previously called on Israel to join the global effort to sanction Russia amid the invasion.

"Don't do business with murderers!" the embassy wrote in Hebrew. "Every transaction with Russia helps [President Vladimir] Putin's regime continue to harm innocent people. The boycott of Russian business can save lives and delay the genocide. We call upon you to join the world's leading companies in an effort to stop the genocide."

Russia is now reliant on heavy artillery — Stalin’s ‘God of War’ — in Ukraine

The Conversation
March 23, 2022

Ukraine (Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse)

Vladimir Putin had clearly hoped his invasion of Ukraine would be over quickly and not involve prolonged fighting for large cities.

Putin and other Russian leaders know well the high cost of fighting for cities, both from Soviet and recent Russian history. While there is talk of a peace deal — and Putin could be looking for a face-saving exit strategy — the fighting still continues and Russian attacks on civilians are intensifying.

As the battle to capture Berlin during the Second World War and more recent fighting for the Chechen capital of Grozny in both 1994-1995 and 1999-2000 show, fighting for urban areas generally leads to high casualties among combatants and civilians alike.

Fighting over cities is also slow. In light of Russia’s experience with this type of warfare and the ferocity of Ukrainian resistance, neither Putin nor his generals were probably expecting quick results in Ukraine.

To take cities like Kyiv or Kharkiv without suffering unsustainable casualties, Russian forces will have to continue to make widespread use of artillery — something Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once described as “the God of War.”

During the Second World War, artillery typically involved unguided munitions fired from either guns, howitzers or rocket launchers. Today, artillery also includes firing munitions that are guided, but the cheapest form of artillery remains the unguided shell or rocket.


Soviet artillery bombards German positions during the early stages 

of the operation to capture Berlin in April 1945.
(Deutsch Bundesarchiv Bild), CC BY

Soviet experience

Russian forces have a long history of capturing cities after heavy fighting. Perhaps the most famous example is the capture of Berlin by the Red Army in May 1945 after two weeks of fighting.

The widespread use of artillery was crucial to keeping Red Army losses down against German defenders who were at times fanatical. Whole blocks of the German capital were levelled by both artillery and bombing by Soviet aircraft. Nonetheless, the Red Army still took horrendous casualties capturing the heart of the Third Reich — nearly 80,000 were killed.

Soviet tanks had a role to play in the capture of Berlin, but by the end of the Second World War, tanks were extremely vulnerable to recently developed infantry anti-tank weapons such as the German Panzerfaust.


Militia men in Berlin hold Panzerfausts.
(Deutshe Bundesarchiv Bild), CC BY

During the final phases of fighting for Berlin, one Soviet commander had to bang on the side of Soviet tanks to rouse tank crews inside and encourage them to move forward when they were unwilling to advance towards the Reichstag building in the city centre. In front of those young tank crews stood three burnt-out tanks, a testament to the dangers posed to tanks operating in urban environments.

Casualties among senior Russian commanders in Ukraine suggest that they, too, have had to lead from the front in order to motivate their troops.
Second Chechen war

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechen separatists wanted to leave the Russian Federation. But Russian leader Boris Yeltsin had just overseen the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and wasn’t about to allow what was technically part of Russia to leave.

The fighting for the Chechen capital Grozny in late 1994 and early 1995 was a stark reminder for Russian forces of how difficult it is to fight for urban areas.


In this 1995 photo, a young Russian soldier keeps watch from his anti-aircraft gun position in Grozny, Russia.
(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Russian troops suffered heavy casualties against a stubborn defence. After an initial attempt to seize the city, the Russian army subsequently had to regroup and engage in a much more systematic destruction of enemy resistance, making widespread use of artillery and air power.

Civilian casualties were high — as many as 27,000 people were killed. The Russian army would officially acknowledge the deaths of 1,376 Russian soldiers in fighting for the city, with another 408 missing.


Chechen citizens look over the rubble of destroyed houses 

during a lull in the fighting in Grozny in January 1995.
(AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)

During the second Chechen war in 1999-2000 — with Vladimir Putin in charge — Russian troops had learned their lesson from the first. Rather than trying to rush the city’s defenders, Russian forces took a more systematic approach.

Russian artillery and air power systematically pounded the city before Russian ground forces fought well-prepared defenders block-by-block. A corridor for civilians to flee the besieged city was established, but it was dangerous and many chose to stay.

It still took Russian forces more than a month to capture the city of Grozny during the second Chechen war — and even then, they faced guerrilla warfare after they had done so.

The war in Ukraine

Logistically, the Russian army wasn’t prepared for a long war when it invaded Ukraine. The Russian army also didn’t expect to have to use the artillery assets that are now being employed against cities like Kharkiv.

Russia started to use its artillery when it became clear the war wasn’t going well, but doing so nonetheless plays to the Russian army’s strength in artillery.

Stubborn Ukraine defenders — well-equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons from the West — are proving to be difficult to root out from urban areas. To send Russian infantry and tanks into cities without first “suppressing” or “neutralizing” defences, as attacking defenders is known in military jargon, would no doubt lead to unacceptable losses for Russian tanks and infantry.

With Russian aircraft vulnerable to western-supplied anti-aircraft weapons, this leaves Russian artillery. Stalin’s God of War is now, in many ways, the principal Russian weapon in Ukraine.


A self-propelled Russian howitzer, an example 

of Russian artillery, during practices for the 2014 Victory Day parade.
(Vitaly V. Kuzmin), CC BY

In practice, conventional artillery is indiscriminate. Russian forces are therefore resorting to the indiscriminate artillery-oriented strategy that was used to subdue Grozny and will be difficult for Ukrainian forces to counter.

Russian commanders are no doubt aware that it takes time to conquer a well-defended city. They do, however, have the advantage of a recent historical precedent in Grozny for eventually “winning” against an entrenched defender in an urban environment. Still, the key coastal city of Mariupol has been under siege for weeks and has still not been captured.


A mother embraces her son who escaped the besieged city 

of Mariupol and arrived at the train station in Lviv, western 

Ukraine on March 20, 2022.
(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Whether Russian society is willing to accept the sort of Russian losses that will likely result from capturing Kyiv, and other major Ukrainian cities, remains to be seen. The cracks are already appearing in Russia, but there is probably still a long way to go before Putin feels he has to make peace on less than desirable terms and lose face.

Sadly, the bloodshed could continue for some time. If it does, many more soldiers and civilians alike will be killed and maimed amid the hell of what is essentially old-school urban warfare.

Alexander Hill, Professor of Military History, University of Calgary

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MR.PRIVATIZATION МР ПРИВАТИЗАЦИЯ

'Highest level' Putin adviser flees Russia over Ukraine invasion: report

David Edwards
March 23, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting with members of the Government via videoconference. -/The Kremlin/dpa

A longtime adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly resigned and will flee his home country.

Bloomberg reported that Russian climate envoy Anatoly Chubais cited his opposition to the invasion of Ukraine as the reason for stepping down. Chubais would be the "highest-level official to break with the Kremlin over the invasion," according to the report.

"Known as the architect of Russia’s 1990s privatizations, Chubais gave Putin his first Kremlin job in the mid-1990s and initially welcomed his rise to power at the end of that decade. Under Putin, Chubais took top jobs at big state companies until the president named him envoy for sustainable development last year," Bloomberg noted.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to immediately comment.

Ukraine conflict presents a minefield for Anonymous and hacktivists

Agence France-Presse
March 23, 2022

Hacker collectives have conducted several cyberattacks

 against Russian targets since the start of the war in Ukraine, 

which has led to an upsurge in hacktivism. © Studio graphique FMM

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked a surge of volunteer hackers, or hacktivists, battling on the digital frontline with Moscow. Groups such as Anonymous, Squad303 and Cyber Partisan have carried out several cyberattacks against Russian targets over the past few weeks. But these highly publicized attacks against Russian sites also pose a danger.

Weeks after declaring an “electronic war” on the “Kremlin’s criminal regime”, Anonymous – a hacking collective – claimed to have hacked 2,500 Russian and Belarusian government, state media and other sites “in support of Ukraine”.

The claim, which was posted on Twitter on March 17, was impossible to verify. Corroborating assertions by a decentralized collective of anonymous hacktivists – which anyone can claim to be – is extremely difficult.

But one thing is certain: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a resurgence of cybermilitancy and new recruits for Anonymous, which had its moment of glory in the early 2010s. "There has never been such a mobilization of hacktivists at the international level to defend the same cause," said Athina Karatzogianni, a media and communications lecturer at the University of Leicester, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

Calling ‘digital talents’ for an ‘IT army’

For those who know how to handle the digital weapon, hacking campaigns against Russian targets are used "to express solidarity – a bit like people who agree to host a Ukrainian refugee", Dennis-Kenji Kipker, a cybersecurity specialist at the University of Bremen, told FRANCE 24.

The sense of mission was fueled by a call, two days after Russia launched its invasion, by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister for digital transformation. In a February 26 post, Fedorov called for “digital talents” since Ukraine was “creating an IT army”.

Soon after the post was published on various platforms, the Anonymous collective "declared war" on Russian President Vladimir Putin. They were joined by several other groups, such as the Polish hacktivist movement Squad303 and the Belarusian Cyber Partisans, who say they are opponents of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

This international group of hackers against Moscow then multiplied its operations. There was a succession of “denial of service” attacks (DDoS attacks are used to make a site inaccessible by overloading the servers with requests) against the sites of the Kremlin, the FSB (the intelligence service) and the state RT television station.

These activists have also managed to steal large amounts of information from the servers of major business groups such as Gazprom and the site of Roskomnadzor, the Russian media regulator. They also took control of several Russian news channels, such as Russia 24 and Channel One, for about ten minutes in order to broadcast images of Russian bombings.

Finally, Squad303 has developed a tool that allows anyone to send messages to Russian cell phone numbers in order to "alert them to the reality of the conflict", according to the hacking group named after the 303 squadron of Polish fighters during World War II. They claim that more than 20 million messages have been sent to Russians.
‘Beating the Russians’ in the information war

At a time when the fighting is claiming many victims in Ukraine, these efforts in cyberspace may seem anecdotal. A cyberattack on the Duma website to insert a pro-Ukrainian message on the homepage will never have the same effect as a bomb dropped on a residential area in Kyiv or Mariupol.

"Certainly these operations will not change the face of the conflict, but they will have an impact," said Kipker. "It’s still too early to assess the role of these activists in the conflict and above all, they are only one piece of the puzzle of all the efforts – including economic sanctions – put in place to counter Russia," said Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, a specialist in hacktivism at the University of Portsmouth, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

For instance, "data stolen by Anonymous could prove useful for the Ukrainian authorities", noted Karagiannopoulos.

There’s also "the symbolic impact of these cyberattacks", noted Karatzogianni. They show that the Russian cyber army, often portrayed as one of the most experienced in the world, is not unbeatable. "It’s also a message sent to the Ukrainians to show them that we are doing what we can to help them," she added.

Operations such as the hacking of Russian television channels "allow us to beat the Russians in the information war, which is supposed to be one of their strong points", explained Karatzogianni.

The success of Anonymous and other collectives have seen a rise in hacking operations, with Twitter teeming with messages warning of ever larger attacks. It’s a rise in cyber power that is not without risk.

The risks of playing Putin’s game

"What happens if one of Anonymous' attacks were to damage critical infrastructure in Russia, such as a hospital?" asked Kenji Kipker. "They have not received any training in cyber warfare, and there is always the risk of significant unexpected collateral damage," acknowledged Karatzogianni.

UK authorities have already warned amateur hackers not to join Ukraine’s “IT Army” amid fears that activists could be breaking the law or launch attacks that spiral out of control, reported the Guardian newspaper. "There’s always a risk of escalation if Vladimir Putin can use an Anonymous attack as a pretext and claim that it is proof of the West's involvement in the conflict," said Karagiannopoulos.

This is "the problem with collectives like Anonymous, because they do not speak for anyone and they don't have the right to 'declare wars' as they have done", said Kipker. In other words, since they don't represent anyone, the Kremlin will have no trouble portraying them as agents of the West. "Especially if these hacktivists do damage to infrastructure that matters to Russians on a daily basis [such as railroads, hospitals etc.], which could strengthen Russian public support for Vladimir Putin," he explained.

Instead of taking the risk of carrying out offensive actions that could go wrong, Anonymous and other hacktivists "could help find the best ways to secure Ukrainian computer networks against attacks by Russian hackers", suggested Kipker.

The war in Ukraine could be a pivotal moment for hacktivism. It may go down in history as the conflict that allowed this form of activism "to become known worldwide as an effective means of struggle", noted Karagiannopoulos. But it could also br the factor that led to a new escalation of Europe’s most serious conflict since the end of World War II.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

Russian ministry says it's 'recording unprecedented attacks' on government websites

BY CAROLINE VAKIL - 03/17/22 

© Getty Images

Russia’s digital development and communications ministry said in a statement on Thursday it is “recording unprecedented attacks” on government websites and state-run news outlets amid Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.

“We are recording unprecedented attacks on the websites of government authorities,” the Russian ministry said, according to the newspaper. “If their capacity at peak times reached 500 GB earlier, it is now up to 1 TB. That is, two to three times more powerful than the most serious incidents of this type previously recorded.”

The Russian ministry said traffic from outside of the country was being filtered, but it did not go into specifics about how this was being done, The Post noted.

Internet regulator Roskomnadzor, Russia’s Ministry of Culture and the Federal Penitentiary Service all had their websites hacked earlier this month, in addition to others.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry appeared to have its website hacked this week, with a number that Russian soldiers could call if they wanted to leave the military replacing a hotline number previously listed on the site, The Post reported.

The digital development and communications ministry said on Feb. 26 that over 50 denial-of-service attacks had hit Gosuslugi, the Russian public services portal, the newspaper noted.

FBI 'concerned' about possible Russian cyberattacks on critical...

Meanwhile, shortly after the invasion began, an ad urging Russians to protest the war was posted on the Russian state-run media outlet Tass, which was also hacked.

The developments come more than three weeks after Russia launched its attack in Ukraine, which has been widely condemned internationally and prompted more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine.

The Hill has reached out to the Russian government’s Press Service and Information Department for comment.

Hotel owner faces furious backlash and employee exodus after declaring she will no longer serve Native Americans

Timothy Evans
March 23, 2022

Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City, S.D. (Hotel website gallery photo)

A hotel owner in Rapid City, South Dakota, is facing significant blowback for a social media post in which she said that Native Americans no longer would be welcome at her business.

On Sunday, Connie Uhre, owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel, wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post, “Due to the killing that took place at the Grand Gateway Hotel on March 19, 2022…we will no longer allow any Native American on property.”

TV station KNBN reports that police responded to a report of a disturbance at the hotel around 4:30 a.m. Saturday and were notified that a gun had been fired in one of the rooms. They discovered the victim, a male in his late teens, who was transported to the hospital with serious, life-threatening injuries. Despite Uhre's description of the incident as "a killing," a spokesperson for the Rapid City Police Department said the victim is still alive.

The hotel owner wrote that she can "not allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers," adding she can't tell "who is a bad Native or a good Native." Cheers is a sports lounge and casino on the hotel property.

The city's mayor, Steve Allender, shared Uhre's Facebook message on his Twitter feed. He told the Rapid City Journal on Monday that he felt he couldn't be silent on the issue after he saw the hotel owner's comments.

"I just felt that I couldn't be silent and pretend like this is just a harmless venting out of frustration," he said. "This is an attack on not only the 12% of Rapid Citians who are Native American, but also the larger Native American population nationwide. So I sent the Tweet, on the road traveling today, as a bare minimum symbol of support to the Native American community."



Tribal, city, county, law enforcement leaders have also issued a joint statement, which described the comments as “wrong, harmful and hurtful not only to Native Americans but also to Rapid City citizens, businesses, and the community at large.”

But the hotel is suffering more than just verbal rebukes. According to SDPB Radio, the entire staff at the hotel's bar has quit. "I can't have that be a part of my life, that negativity. So I just don't want to be associated with that," explained former employee Red Elk Zephier. "I didn't even think about the money or anything involved, I just, I can't have that in my life."

Many residents also told SDPB Radio that they plan to boycott the establishment.

Is Donald Trump a Russian oligarch?

John Stoehr
March 23, 2022

US President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017 (AFP).

The former president keeps telling on himself. During an appearance Sunday on Jeanine Pirro’s radio show on WABC, Donald Trump expressed, yet again, his sympathy for Russia’s reigning kleptocrat.

"He's got a big ego," Trump said of Vladimir Putin. “I think what's going on now is hard. I understand he's gotten rid of a lot of his generals."

They wanted to rebuild the Soviet Union. That’s what this is all about to a large extent. And then you say, what’s the purpose of this? They had a country. You could see it was a country where there was a lot of love and we’re doing it because, you know, somebody wants to make his country larger or he wants to put it back the way it was.

Sympathy, yes, but there’s more.

Sympathy is practical.

Whenever Trump is asked to comment on Putin’s 2014 capture of the Crimean peninsula or his invasion of Ukraine now, he gives these odd statements – odd because they never feature principles of freedom, sovereignty, or any other aspect of the postwar international order.

His attention is drawn, instead, to strength and weakness, power and powerlessness. In that binary worldview, Putin (and by proxy Trump) is always strong, Putin’s enemies (and by proxy Trump’s enemies) are always weak. Good and bad, right and wrong, mean nothing. What matters is what can be done immediately to satiate the insatiable need.

Fascism is practical like that.

As Nathan Crick, author of Dewey and the New Age of Fascism, told me: The Nazis saw practical as “immediately practical and [it] served the most basic needs of life in a tangible and objective way. I need money, I need a home, I need cheap oil prices, I need coffee, I need a family, I need land. Fascism is practical because it basically steals all of this and redistributes it to the chosen people as if they made it themselves.

“It’s basic gangsterism, which is certainly practical.”

Bear this in mind as I tell you something I hope will make all of this make more sense. When I say “all of this,” I mean everything:

Putin’s theft of the Crimean peninsula; Trump’s business interests in Moscow; his run for president; the Kremlin’s cyberwar against Hillary Clinton; Trump’s extortion of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy; his first impeachment; the J6 insurrection; Trump’s second impeachment; and now the invasion of Ukraine and Trump sympathy for the invaders.

Instead of thinking about Trump as a real estate magnate, a reality-TV star, or a former president, it’s perhaps more accurate to think of him as a caporegime, or mafia captain. Putin is The Boss. That would suggest Trump, like Roman Abramovich, is one of Putin’s “oligarchs.”

Oligarchs are practical. After they steal money, they hide it.

In America.

The US financial system is one of the most secretive and least transparent in the world. Dirty money is often disguised in real estate deals. The problem is so bad in places like Manhattan that lawmakers are pushing for reform. Brad Hoylman, a New York state senator repping Manhattan, said Sunday of proposed transparency laws that:

“These oligarchs who have stolen money from the Russian people are propping up Putin in the meantime. That money needs to be exposed and returned rather than wage a war against the Ukrainian people.”

Dirty money is also funneled through shell companies linked to super PACs linked directly or indirectly to candidates for public office for the purpose of influencing electoral outcomes in the Kremlin’s favor. Such candidates, it’s widely believed true, including the former president.

“Russian money is unquestionably flowing into the US for political influence,” Anna Massoglia, the editorial and investigations manager at Open Secrets, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, told me. “There have also been instances in which Russian money flowed into US elections through shell companies as a part of illegal conduit schemes.” (The interview below is with Anna. She knows everything about this.)

Buying influence.

Buying a president.

“It’s basic gangsterism,” Nathan said. Which is practical.

Do we know concretely that Russian money is flowing into campaigns for public office in the US?

Russian money is unquestionably flowing into the US for political influence but the question of whether Russian money is flowing into campaigns for public office is more complex. Foreign nationals are barred from giving money to influence outcomes in US elections.

We have tracked political contributions from foreign agents who were hired to represent Russian interests in the US as well as contributions from associates of foreign oligarchs, which is generally permissible so long as they are not acting as proxies for Russian foreign nationals.

There have also been instances in which Russian money flowed into US elections through shell companies as a part of illegal conduit schemes.

So there is a circuitous paper trail from Russia to Washington. Along the way, the origins of the money are increasingly obscured?

Absolutely.

Russian foreign nationals seeking to influence US elections have a wide range of options through which they can funnel foreign money in support of candidates for public office – with little or no detection.

The 2020 election alone attracted more than $1 billion from shell companies and nonprofits that do not disclose their donors.

It would be nearly impossible to total up how much so-called “dark money,” routed through nonprofits that don't disclose their donors or shell companies, comes from Russian sources. Dark money lacks disclosure, making the source of funds untraceable.

This means foreign nationals are not only able to quietly steer money into swaying the outcome of US elections but they can potentially buy access to public officials, helping them push agendas in the states.

What's the Republican-Democrat ratio?

We can tell how much money from undisclosed sources goes to groups spending to support Democrats versus Republicans.

Traditionally, dark money benefitted Republican candidates more but the tables turned during the 2018 election cycle. Since then, we have seen dark money benefit groups backing Democrats more than Republicans but it still flows into groups on both sides of the aisle. It is still early in the election cycle so we are likely to see more money continue to pour in that may benefit one side over the other, though.

It's legal for lobbyists representing foreign clients, even Russian ones, to give donations so long as they aren't giving on behalf of that client.

But political contributions are a way for donors to curry influence. Giving significant sums of money could give a lobbyist representing a foreign client an advantage when they meet with elected officials.

Most lobbying firms have ended work with Russian clients at this point. As of today, the only entities still registered to actively represent Russian interests under the Foreign Agents Registration Act are LLCs that have been paid as part of Russia's propaganda campaigns.

Maffick LLC, a social media digital content company (that was labeled a “Russian state-backed entity” by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), registered as a foreign agent of Russia’s state-owned media agency in December. It has since terminated their contract, however.

The remaining entities registered as foreign agents of propaganda outlets connected to Russia are Reston Translator LLC, RM Broadcasting LLC, Ghebi LLC, and T&R Productions LLC but that may change if new restrictions are put in place since RT America shut down.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy once said, “I think Putin pays Trump.” Given what you know, how likely is that to be true?

There are multiple reported instances where Russian money has allegedly flowed into groups spending in support of Trump.

Lev Parnas – the former business associate of the former president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – was convicted on charges related to steering $325,000 from a Russian national through a shell company to a super PAC supporting Trump. Parnas' former business partner, Igor Fruman, pleaded guilty to soliciting money from a foreign national.

There are other examples as well.

Two Republican operatives were indicted last September on charges of allegedly funneling money from a Russian national to the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising committee.

This example is not as clear-cut but the NRA's ties to Russia were probed. The gun-rights group ultimately admitted to taking Russian money but claimed the money wasn’t used for political purposes.

This is particularly noteworthy since a report from Senate Finance Committee Democrats found that the NRA acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia in the leadup to Trump’s 2016 election. For context, the NRA spent more than $31 million boosting Trump in the 2016 election.

Any evidence of recipients knowing they’re getting Russian money?

I am not aware of any recent cases where we know the politicians were aware they were getting Russian money but we only know what has been disclosed, not what is happening behind the scenes.

A politician facing allegations of knowingly taking foreign contributions is US Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican from Nebraska. He’s accused of meeting with a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who prosecutors say funneled money through straw donors to him.

Federal campaign finance has a “straw donor” ban that makes it illegal to give money under someone else’s name. One example would be if an individual takes money from a foreign national, then passes it along to politicians, causing the individual’s name to be reported in campaign finance filings instead of the foreign national’s name.

Funds may also be routed through shell companies in some cases, meaning the companies’ name is reported in campaign finance filings rather than the name of who is actually funding the contribution.

This could hide contributions from foreign nationals who are legally barred from giving money to influence US elections.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

BuzzFeed cutting jobs, top editors leaving news division
By TALI ARBEL

FILE - The entrance to BuzzFeed in New York is seen on Nov. 19, 2020. In news announced Tuesday, March 22, 2022, BuzzFeed is reorienting and shrinking its news division as the digital media company best known for its lighthearted quizzes strives to increase its profitability. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

BuzzFeed is shrinking and shifting the focus of its Pulitzer prize-winning news division as the digital media company, best known for its lighthearted lists and quizzes, strives to increase its profitability.

The New York-based company is offering voluntary buyouts in its high-profile, 100-person newsroom and some top editors are leaving. They include Mark Schoofs, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, and deputy editor in chief Tom Namako, who announced a move to NBC News Digital on Tuesday. Ariel Kaminer, the executive editor for investigations, is also leaving.

BuzzFeed News is unprofitable but has won awards, including its first Pulitzer last year, and its staff has been regularly poached by traditional news organizations. BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenthal said about 35 people were eligible for the buyouts, but the company doesn’t expect all of them to take one.

Buyouts will be offered to news staffers on the investigations, inequality, politics and science teams, as BuzzFeed focuses more on big breaking news and lighter content.

“We’ve had freedom to chase wild, impossible stories,” tweeted Rosalind Adams, an investigative reporter at BuzzFeed News. “It’s a sad day to watch @BuzzFeedNews move away from valuing that work.”

Beyond the newsroom buyouts, the company also said it is cutting 1.7% of its staff. In a January filing with securities regulators, Buzzfeed said it had 1,524 U.S. and international employees, so the cuts would amount to roughly 25 people.

BuzzFeed’s shares have dropped more than 40% since the company went public in early December via what’s known as a SPAC, merging with a company that already trades, rather than an IPO.

The company had a solid year in 2021, it reported Tuesday in its earnings release. Its revenue rose 24% to $397.6 million, thanks to increases in e-commerce and ad revenue, and its profit more than doubled, to $25.9 million.

But it expects revenue to drop in the current quarter if it includes the acquisition of Complex Networks, a group of pop culture sites BuzzFeed acquired last year. The layoffs separate from the news division will come from BuzzFeed Video and the editorial side of Complex.

BuzzFeed also acquired HuffPost in early 2021, and laid off several dozen of its staffers shortly after.

On BuzzFeed’s earnings call Tuesday, CEO Jonah Peretti said the company is accelerating its investment in vertical video, the smartphone format used on the increasingly popular video sharing site TikTok.

As for the news division, it “will need to get smaller,” and “prioritize the areas of coverage our audience connects with most,” Peretti said in a memo to employees.

On the earnings call, he said that the company needs to make BuzzFeed News “a stronger financial contributor to the larger business,” and doing so will involve focusing on big breaking news, culture and entertainment, celebrities, and “life on the internet.”

Shares in Buzzfeed Inc. rose 32 cents, or 6.5%, to close Tuesday at $5.27.

How right-wingers embraced Russia's 'bizarre' conspiracy theory about Ukraine

Lindsay Beyerstein
March 22, 2022

A picture taken on June 27, 2014 shows Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow (AFP Photo/Yuri Kadobnov)

The conspiracy theory that Russia invaded Ukraine to stop Anthony Fauci from engineering the next Covid-19 has turned the US far-right against Ukraine and for Russia

The evolution of this bizarre fantasy can teach us a lot about how the US rightwing incubates and adapts Russian propaganda for domestic consumption.

Russia’s approach to propaganda has been likened to a firehose.

Its strategy is to spew countless narratives across a huge number of platforms without regard for internal coherence or even plausibility.

Then wait to see which catch on. Then build on those successes.

When Russia claimed to have captured secret US bioweapons labs in Ukraine, many observers assumed Russia had lifted the idea directly from American conspiracists. After all, Putin hadn’t said a word about biolabs ahead of his invasion of Ukraine.

However, the myth that the US is funding secret biolabs in Ukraine is part of a years-long Russian disinformation campaign.

These allegations are Russia’s latest attempt to smear a US program to help former Soviet republics.

The program began as an effort to eliminate stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union. It later transitioned into ongoing help with peaceful biological, veterinary and public health research.

In 2018, Russia baselessly accused the US of running a secret bioweapons lab in the former Soviet republic of Georgia based on the lab’s participation in the same entirely non-secret program.

Unlike the US and most other countries, Russia does have an active chemical and biological weapons program. It has been falsely accusing the US of having bioweapons for decades, a propaganda strategy that experts say is geared towards undermining the taboo against biological weapons.

If Russia can convince the rest of the world that the US is secretly making bioweapons under the guise of non-proliferation, it makes Russia seem less deviant by comparison.

Ukraine, the US, the United Nations, the European Union and non-proliferation groups are unanimous: Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program.

Biological weapons are of negligible military value, especially if your goal is to defend your own homeland against an invading army.

Ukraine’s entire military has a smaller budget than the NYPD. The idea that Ukraine would waste its limited defense dollars on bioweapons rather than missiles and jets doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Investigative tech journos Ben Collins and Kevin Collier excavated the digital prehistory of the biolab smear for NBC News.

The first known mention cropped up on the right-wing social media platform Gab in mid-February, 10 days before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

It received little traction at the time. However, on the day of the invasion, the number of references to Ukrainian biolabs jumped to hundreds, and kept climbing.

The big breakthrough came the following week when a QAnon-linked Twitter account called @WarClandestine shared the same graphic that had appeared on the original Gab post.

There’s clearly a feedback loop between Russian propaganda and its enablers on the US far-right.

On March 9, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed to have captured evidence of US-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson jumped on the story that very day. Two days later, Russia went to the United Nations to accuse the US of weaponizing migratory birds in Ukraine, hoarding deadly bat parasites that could fall into the hands of terrorists and trafficking in the blood of Slavs to make “ethnically-specific” biological weapons. Carlson used Russia’s presentation as a news hook, eliminating the crazy-sounding references to birds, bats and Slavs. Later Carlson falsely claimed that a US undersecretary had confirmed the existence of US-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine. In fact, she’d acknowledged that there are labs in Ukraine that may contain pathogens that shouldn’t fall into Russian hands. In fact, these labs are not secret and almost any scientific or medical laboratory that studies or tests for diseases could have pathogens we wouldn’t want the Russians getting ahold of, especially now that they’re reaching for any justification to frame Ukraine as a bioweapons producer.

Since Carlson is the agenda-setter for the US far-right, his pronouncements help to amplify and codify the key elements of the conspiracy theory.

Russia is keenly aware of what Carlson is doing. A leaked memo shows that the higher-ups in Russian state TV consider it essential to feature Carlson as much as possible.

Tucker Carlson whines about the media after Trump allows Biden transition: ‘The 2020 election was not fair’

Tucker Carlson whines about the media after Trump allows Biden transition: ‘The 2020 election was not fair’Tucker Carlson (Screengrab)


Lindsay Beyerstein covers legal affairs, health care and politics. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, she’s a judge for the Sidney Hillman Foundation. Find her @beyerstein.

It's science: Trump voters are dumb

Chauncey Devega, Salon
March 23, 2022

Two female Trump supporters (Screen cap).

The United States is experiencing an existential democracy crisis, with leading Republicans and millions of their voters and supporters either tacitly or explicitly embracing authoritarianism or fascism. Democrats, for the most part, have not responded with the urgency required to save America's democracy from the rising neofascist tide.

American society was founded on white settler colonialism, genocide and slavery. This unresolved "birth defect" at the foundation of the American democratic experiment meant that the country was racially exclusionary by design, from the founding well into the 20th century. At present, American politics is contoured by asymmetrical political polarization, in which Republicans have moved so far to the right that the party's most "moderate" members are far more extreme than the most "conservative" Democrats. This makes substantive compromise and bipartisanship in the interests of the common good and the American people almost impossible.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Trump supporters and Trump-loathers, increasingly do not live in the same neighborhoods or communities. In all, they largely do not socialize with each other, or have other forms of meaningful interpersonal relationships in day-to-day life.

To the degree that "race" is a proxy for political values and beliefs, the color line functions as a practical dividing line of partisan identity and voting. Religion is also a societal space that is divided by politics. For example, public opinion research shows that white right-wing evangelical Christians have increasingly embraced authoritarian views, conspiracy theories and other anti-democratic and antisocial values.

As the new Faith in America survey by Deseret News & Marist College highlights, the basic understanding of the role of religion in a secular democracy has become so polarized that 70% of Republicans believe that religion should influence a person's political values, where as only 28% of Democrats and 45% of independents share that view.

Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, also do not consume the same sources of information about news and politics. Conservatives now inhabit their own self-created media echo chamber, which functions as a type of lie-filled and toxic closed episteme and sealed-off universe. The creation of such an alternate reality is an important attribute of fascism, in which truth itself must be destroyed and replaced with fantasies and fictions in support of the leader and his movement.

America's struggle for democracy and freedom against authoritarianism is taking place on a biological level as well. Social psychologists and other researchers have shown that the brain structures of conservative-authoritarians are different than those of more liberal and progressive thinkers. The former are more fear-centered, emphasizing threats and dangers (negativity bias), intolerant of ambiguity and inclined to simple, binary solutions. Conservative-authoritarians are also strongly attracted to moral hierarchy and social dominance behavior.

Recent research by Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University, demonstrates that America's democracy crisis may be even more intractable than the above evidence suggests. In his recent article "Cognitive Sophistication, Religion, and the Trump Vote," which appeared in the January 2021 edition of Social Science Quarterly, Sherkat examined data from the 2018 General Social Survey and concluded that there are substantial negative differences between the thinking processes and cognition of white Trump voters, as shown in the 2016 presidential election, as compared to other voters who supported Hillary Clinton or another candidate, or who did not vote at all.

Sherkat observes that Trump support has been linked to religion and level of education, but until now not to "cognitive sophistication," which was found "to have a positive effect on voting, but a negative effect on choosing Trump." He notes that "philosophers and political elites have debated the potential effects of mass political participation" for generations, concerned "about the unsophisticated masses coming under the sway of a demagogue." In effect, this debate was always about the quality he calls cognitive sophistication, since citizens who lack it "may not be able to understand and access reliable and valid information about political issues and may be vulnerable to political propaganda":

Low levels of cognitive sophistication may lead people to embrace simple cognitive shortcuts, like stereotypes and prejudices that were amplified by the Trump campaign. Additionally, the simple linguistic style presented by Trump may have appealed to voters with limited education and cognitive sophistication. Beginning with [T.W.] Adorno's classic study of the authoritarian personality, empirical works have linked low levels of cognitive sophistication with right-wing orientations....

Trump's campaign may also have been more attractive to people with low cognitive sophistication and a preference for low-effort information processing because compared to other candidates Trump's speeches were given at a much lower reading level…. While much of the Trump campaign's rhetoric and orientation may have resonated with the poorly educated and cognitively unsophisticated, those overlapping groups are less likely to register to vote or to turn out in an election.

As part of his research, Sherkat evaluated the political decision-making and cognition of Trump's voters, using a 10-point vocabulary exam. In a guest essay at the website Down with Tyranny, he explains what this vocabulary test revealed about white Trump voters:
Overall, the model predicts that almost 73% of respondents who missed all 10 questions would vote for Trump (remember, that is controlling for education and the other factors), while about 51% who were average on the exam are expected to vote for Trump. Only 35% of people who had a perfect score on the exam are predicted to be Trump supporters.

Notably, this very strong, significant effect of verbal ability can be identified within educational groups. While non-college whites certainly turned out more heavily for Trump, the smart ones did not — only 38% of those with perfect scores are expected to go for Trump, and only 46% of non-college graduates who scored a standard deviation above the mean. The same is true for college graduates — low cognition college graduates were more likely to vote for Trump. ...

What is really depressing isn't just the poles of the vocabulary exam, it's the average. The mean and median of the scale is 6 — so half of white Americans missed 4 of the easy vocabulary questions.

Sherkat's research also explored how religion impacted support for Donald Trump among white voters: "This study confirms that white Americans with fundamentalist views of the Bible and those who embrace identifications with sectarian Protestant denominations tended to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election."

Belief that the Bible is the literal "word of God" also impacted Trump voting: "Viewing the Bible as a book of fables is also significantly predictive of vote choice, with secular beliefs reducing the odds of a Trump vote by 80 percent when compared to literalists, and reducing the odds of a Trump vote by 52 percent when compared to respondents who view the Bible as inspired by God."

In an email to Salon, Sherkat offered additional context and implication on the relationship between white Christianity, American neofascism and cognition:

The problem of the contemporary American fascist right is rooted in education and information. And this problem is not simply about attainment of some quantity of education, but of the quality and content of education, how that leads generations of white Christian Americans to process information about a wide range of issues. The segregation academies that proliferated in the mid-1960s and accelerated in the 1970s have taught millions of Americans a radically skewed version of American and world history and encouraged a continued segregated society. The homeschooling movement augmented this division, and further denigrated the value of knowledge.

White fundamentalist Christians have always segmented their communities from the rest of America, and even exert considerable control over public educational institutions, particularly in rural areas and in the states which embraced slavery. White fundamentalist Christians distrust mainstream social institutions like education and print media, and they actively seek to eliminate public education and to provide alternative sources of information. As a result, people who identify with and participate in white Christian denominations and who subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs have substantial intellectual deficits that make them easy marks for a wide variety of schemes — from financial fraud to conspiracy theories.

If you can't read the New York Times, you're going to believe whatever you hear on talk radio or on television. It's simply impossible for people with limited vocabularies and low levels of cognitive functioning to make sense of the complex realities of the political world. And we now have a population where for 55 years substantial fractions of white people have gone to private fundamentalist Christian schools that leave them both indoctrinated in Christian nationalism and ill-prepared to process any additional information. Worse, we now have over a million children in a given year who are homeschooled by parents who are uneducated white fundamentalists — and that total has been pretty constant for three decades since the homeschooling movement blossomed.

What does this mean for the present and future of American democracy in this time of crisis? Sherkat cited the "disturbing ... influence of anti-intellectualism on American public life," which lends "performative power to ignorant elites":
Spouting off obvious untruths is no longer a mark of shame, because even basic historical and contemporary truths are not recognized. We seem to have a stable set of about 30% of Americans, 35% of white Americans, who are oblivious to political realities and incapable and unwilling to come to terms with any of our key social problems. The increasing control over public education by right-wing fanatics is entrenching ignorance and intellectual laziness in future generations. It does not bode well for the future of American democracy.

Donald Trump and his movement did not create all these American authoritarians and aspiring fascists. Such people have long been a feature of American society. What Trump and his movement have accomplished in recent years is to empower and normalize a dangerous set of antisocial, anti-human, retrograde and anti-democratic values and beliefs.

Saving America's democracy will require a moral and political reckoning and acts of critical self-reflection on a nationwide scale about the American people's character and values, and about how their leaders and governing institutions have failed them.

Changes in laws and institutions are necessary. But on their own, such interventions will not stop the spread of fascism. A lasting remedy will demand that the country's political, cultural, and educational institutions be renewed, re-energized, and reimagined. The questions Americans must ask themselves are simple yet enormous: Who are we? What are we to become? How can we unite in defense of democracy, the common good and the general welfare? Without real answers to those questions, there will be no democratic renewal in the 21st century -- and fascism wins.