yasha.substack | When I launched Immigrants as a Weapon
back in September, I argued that America had done more to promote the
far-right around the world than any other country on earth. I wasn’t
exaggerating. America really is the biggest and most active player in
the field — the biggest by far.
Even a cursory look at modern
American history shows that promoting nationalism and backing far-right
emigre groups has been a major plank of American foreign policy going
back to the very end of World War II. This mixture of covert and overt
programs and initiatives was first deployed to fight the Soviet Union
and left-wing political movements but has over the years touched down
all over the globe — wherever America has some sort of geopolitical
interest, including modern capitalist states like Russia and China. One
of these nationalism weaponization initiatives — which targeted the USSR
for destabilization in the 70s and 80s — was how a Soviet kid like me ended up in San Francisco as a political refugee.
This
history is important. Without it, it’s impossible to understand the
mechanics of our reactionary foreign policy today — whether in China or
with our “strategic partner” Ukraine, a country that’s at the center of today’s impeachment show.
There are all sorts of possible entry points into this story. I guess I could go all the way back to America’s support for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks
in the Russian Civil War. But for now I’d like to start at the very end
of World War II — when this approach was just beginning to crystalize
as a distinct strategy inside America’s foreign policy apparatus.
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