Russia Is Using Undercover Racists to Exploit Africa's Anti-Racist Political Revolt

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/prigozhin-is-using-afric-to-exploit-africas-anti-colonial-political-revolt

In the last two years Yevgeny Prigozhin, working through a series of cut-outs and front organizations, has partnered with a host of racist and fascist activists in Europe to stir up, of all things, purportedly anti-colonialist politics in sub-Saharan Africa.

The oligarch coyly referred to in the international media as “Putin’s chef” but identified by the U.S. and European governments as a well-heeled emissary of the Kremlin, Prigozhin has been here, there and everywhere, interfering in democratic elections and deploying his “Wagner” mercenary forces to fight in undeclared Russian wars all over the world. He’s been serially sanctioned by the Treasury Department, not least for his sponsorship of the social media component of Russia’s interference campaign in the 2016 U.S. presidential contest. And while active measures of his unnamed organization in a primarily Black continent have been engineered to whip up anti-Western and pro-Russian sentiment, they have bizarrely relied on a bevy of foreign extremists with long, documented histories of white supremacism, anti-Semitism, or both.

Among them are the managers of a network of far-right websites and magazines, members of Germany’s xenophobic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, a Belgian political activist mentored by a former Waffen SS member, and a pair of Swedes who’ve spent years promoting the myth of a white genocide.

All have variously appeared as “electoral observers,” editorial writers, TV show guests, panelists in roundtable meetings and speakers at conferences in Zimbabwe and South Africa, forming a key part of the Kremlin’s influence network in Africa. They work primarily through the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC), one of Prigozhin’s many front organizations.

*snip*

[hunter]

1. Russia is racist and homophobic central today...

... and they are doing their best to export it.

Many U.S.A. Republicans are receptive.