{"id":2843,"date":"2006-07-11T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-12T06:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/11\/promoting-russian-democracy-by-financing-fascists\/"},"modified":"2006-07-11T23:17:30","modified_gmt":"2006-07-12T06:17:30","slug":"promoting-russian-democracy-by-financing-fascists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/11\/promoting-russian-democracy-by-financing-fascists\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting Russian “Democracy” — By Financing Fascists"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an update to <\/font>my Wednesday column<\/font><\/a> on the “Other Russia” <\/font>conference<\/font><\/a> of anti-Putin Russian activists being held in St. Petersburg in the run-up to the G-8 summit, I note that the issue of U.S. government funding and the presence of the <\/font>neo-fascist National Bolsheviks<\/font><\/a> has already come up. The Washington Post<\/em> <\/font>reports<\/font><\/a>:<\/font><\/p>\n

“The conference was partly underwritten by the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, federally funded organization that promotes democracy world-wide. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOur main hope is that it will help promote Russian civil society,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 said Carl Gershman, the endowment’s president. Asked about the controversial presence of National Bolsheviks leader Eduard Limonov<\/font><\/em><\/a>, Gershman said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe overwhelming majority of people here are people with long-standing democratic credentials and if they can be here, that’s the best guideline I can follow.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122”<\/font><\/em><\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

The guidelines followed by Gershman and the NED have nothing to do with “democratic credentials,” and everything to do with who can be manipulated to serve the purposes of U.S. foreign policy. Limonov and the National Bolsheviks join a long list of similar sock puppets, including Ahmed Chalabi<\/font><\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <\/font>Iraqi National Congress<\/font><\/a> and the Nicaraguan <\/font>contras<\/font><\/a>, who enlisted as servants of the Empire. <\/font><\/p>\n

U.S. tax dollars funding a platform for Russian neo-fascists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and all in the name of “democracy promotion”! In the Bizarro World<\/font><\/a> of the Bush administration, all things are possible \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/font><\/font> <\/font>\u00c2\u00a0<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/font>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an update to my Wednesday column on the “Other Russia” conference of anti-Putin Russian activists being held in St. Petersburg in the run-up to the G-8 summit, I note that the issue of U.S. government funding and the presence of the neo-fascist National Bolsheviks has already come up. The Washington Post reports: “The conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2843"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}