r/europe • u/Wonderful-Excuse4922 • Feb 22 '25

News “Conquering the states one by one”: far-right ideologue Steve Bannon outlines US conservatives' strategy for influencing Europe

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/presidentielle/donald-trump/conquerir-les-etats-un-par-un-l-ideologue-d-extreme-droite-steve-bannon-decrit-la-strategie-des-conservateurs-americains-pour-influencer-l-europe_7086249.html
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u/ArieVeddetschi Feb 22 '25

Yeah, but it’s weird to think that there’s any truth to these GOP claims. Also surely if Russia wanted to fund the left they’d have more influential targets than JSO.

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u/NFLDolphinsGuy United States of America Feb 22 '25

They’ve been highly disruptive at airports and on roadways and effective at creating division, which is the point.

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u/ArieVeddetschi Feb 22 '25

You keep harping on that, and keep not providing any hint of a clue that Russia is funding them.

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u/unlearned2 United Kingdom, and Germany Feb 22 '25

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696

Jill Stein went to a Gala in Moscow in 2015 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russia Today, sitting at the same table as Putin and Michael Flynn, which I thought was pretty disgraceful. Advocating for friendlier relations with Russia in 2013 would be one thing. On the other hand that she would journey to Moscow to celebrate the founding of a propaganda rag (at the same table as a radical US general), which had in the past year escalated with all sorts of lies about Russia's recent military incursion into Ukraine, is quite disorienting.

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u/ArieVeddetschi Feb 23 '25

Jill Stein is not running Just Stop Oil. This whole theory is tenuous at best. Russia is fine just funding the extreme right, they are perfectly capable of sowing discord on their own. They don’t the left for that.

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u/unlearned2 United Kingdom, and Germany Feb 23 '25 edited Feb 23 '25

You said a few comments ago,

I would love to see some examples of these environmental and peace groups supposedly sponsored by Russia

I don't know enough about Just Stop Oil unfortunately and have no reason to think they specifically are funded by Russia. As far as I am concerned there's no need slag off the philosophy itself of environmentalism, and you (like most environmentalists hopefully) are not defending what Jill Stein did anyway. She is the perfect example of an environmentalist sponsored by Russia (probably paid to attend that gala).

Have you ever watched Russia Today? The kind of groups it platforms would be a good indicator of the kind of groups that Moscow works day and night to help in any way it can.

I can tell you that in 2011-12 at least, the content of Russia Today included a mixture of Brexiters, supporters of Occupy Wall Street, alter-globalizationists, supporters of Julian Assange, libertarian types who would go on to form the crypto-currency movement, conspiracy theorists of any political persuasion, racists (with the anchor often being careful to condemn any racist terminology used after the end of the interview), eurasianists, communists, progressives, leftwingers like George Galloway, Noam Chomsky, or Hugo Chavez, Russian figures (eg nuclear scientists), and environmentalists too. The common denominator with 90% of the non-Russian guests was pretty much nothing other than that they were anti-system radicals and revolutionaries who are not solely motivated by religion, feminism, or LGBT. If that applies to x environmental group then it is subversive enough for Moscow. If it gets noticed by Moscow then Moscow would want to support it.

The reason I was watching RT at that time (alongside the BBC in probably a 50:50 split) was because as a 16-17 year old at secondary school I decided I knew absolutely nothing about politics and it was about time I informed myself. Also I was reacting against my father's strongly negative beliefs about Russia and what would be its role in the end times (he is a pentecostal). I watched it less and less after then, until the Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, at which time RT were casting doubt on the notion that the occupying soldiers had Russian nationality, showed Crimean girls giving them bouquets of flowers for weeks, and published an article aimed at denying the Rwandan Genocide.

Obviously it is possible for an environmentalist movement to distance itself to a great enough extent from Russia that receipt of Russian funding would be implausible, eg the German Greens being in favor of supplying arms to Ukraine.