{"id":6184,"date":"2015-06-24T08:14:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T13:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=6184"},"modified":"2015-06-24T08:14:41","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T13:14:41","slug":"putins-plot-to-get-texas-to-secede","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/24\/putins-plot-to-get-texas-to-secede\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s Plot to Get Texas to Secede"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ttx\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For Moscow’s right-wingers, payback means teaming up with a band of Texas secessionists.<\/strong>
\nBy CASEY MICHEL <\/strong><\/p>\n

Nathan Smith, who styles himself the \u201cforeign minister\u201d for the Texas Nationalist Movement, appeared last Spring at a far-right confab in St. Petersburg, Russia. Despite roaming around in his cowboy hat, Smith managed to keep a low-key presence at the conference, which was dominated by fascists and neo-Nazis railing against Western decadence. But at least one Russian newspaper, Vzglyad, caught up with the American, noted that TNM is \u201chardly a marginal group,\u201dand quoted Smith liberally on the excellent prospects for a partial breakup of the United States. Smith declared that the Texas National Movement has 250,000 supporters\u2014including all the Texans currently serving in the U.S. Army\u2014and they all \u201cidentify themselves first and foremost as Texans\u201d but are being forced to remain Americans. The United States, he added, \u201cis not a democracy, but a dictatorship.\u201d The Kremlin\u2019s famed troll farms took the interview and ran with it, with dozens of bots instantly tweeting about a \u201cFree Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Russians, this was delicious payback. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union two decades ago, many Russians have come to blame the United States for their plight; a seething resentment over U.S. culpability in the loss of Russian national power is one of the reasons Vladimir Putin is so popular. It has only worsened since the United States has led an international effort to isolate and sanction Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine. Thus, over the past 15 months there has been a sudden, bizarro uptick of Russian interest in and around the American Southwest, most notably Texas, where secessionist sentiment never seems to entirely die out (TNM\u2019s predecessor group, the \u201cRepublic of Texas,\u201d disbanded after secessionist militants took hostages in 1997). In a rehash of the Soviet Union\u2019s fate, numerous Russian voices have taken to envisioning an American break-up, E Pluribus Unum in inverse\u2014out of one, many.<\/p>\n

Nor is Texas the lone region for which Russia has cast secessionist support since the Crimean seizure. Venice, Scotland, Catalonia\u2014the Russian media have voiced fervent support for secession in all these Western allies. (Of course, Moscow\u2019s mantra\u2014secession for thee, but not for me\u2014means you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find any Russian official offering support for Siberian, Tatar, or Chechen independence.) \u201cSince the destabilization of the West is on Russia\u2019s agenda, they may try to reach out to the U.S. separatists,\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>Anton Shekhovtsov, a researcher on Moscow\u2019s links to far-right movements in Europe, told me. Russia wants a \u201cdeepening of social divisions in the American society, destabilizing the internal political life.\u201d And certain Texans, rather than running from the taint of an authoritarian backing, have reciprocated.<\/p>\n

As a political tack, none of this is completely new. Nearly a century ago, British codebreakers presented the American ambassador with a decrypted cable that came to be known as the Zimmermann Telegram, helping to cajole a recalcitrant United States into the Great War. And understandably so: In the deciphered text, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann alerted the Mexican government that, should the U.S. enter the war, \u201cwe shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer her lost territory of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona.\u201d President Woodrow Wilson\u2019s pledge to forgo war evaporated overnight.<\/p>\n

Just a few months ago, a cousin of the Zimmermann Telegram was delivered by a Russian government official, directed squarely at an American government once more waffling about military intervention in the European theater. The speaker of Chechnya\u2019s parliament, Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, warned that should the U.S. increase its supply of arms to Kyiv, \u201cwe will begin delivery of new weapons to Mexico\u201d and \u201cresume debate on the legal status of the territories annexed by the United States, which are now the U.S. states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.\u201d As to the putative destination for the weapons, Abdurakhmanov cited unspecified \u201cguerrillas.\u201d (Sealing his screed, Abdurakhmanov inexplicably cited Joe Biden as the creator of the current Ukrainian government.)<\/p>\n

If his comment existed in a vacuum, Abdurakhmanov\u2019s histrionics could be laughed off, another sign of Moscow\u2019s ferment sapping logical discourse. Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear just how high up these propaganda efforts go in the Kremlin. But it can hardly be an accident that last December, in the midst of the ruble\u2019s parlous plummet, Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at putative Western hypocrisy. \u201cAs soon as they succeed in putting [our bear] on a chain, they will rip out his teeth and his claws,\u201d the president growled. \u201cWe have heard many times from officials that it\u2019s unfair that Siberia, with its immeasurable wealth, belongs entirely to Russia. Unfair, how do you like that? And grabbing Texas from Mexico was fair!\u201d No matter that the U.S. never wrested Texas from Mexico. No matter that such annexation took place under the 19th-century aegis of expansion and empire. The parallels, to Putin, are too good to pass up.<\/p>\n

Russian state media, of course, took the Crimea-as-Texas analogy and sprinted off with it. According to Sputnik, the ballot-by-bayonet \u201creferendum\u201d in Crimea saw its historical precedent in Texas. \u201cIf one accepts the current status of Texas despite its controversial origin story, then they are more than obliged to recognize the future status of Crimea,\u201d the outlet wrote. Again, if you overlook the reality that land grabs and forced annexations exist in a Victorian firmament, rather than a post-modern international order, then, sure, a faded parallel can emerge, but only if you squint past the prior 170 years of statecraft.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at\u00a0Politico<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

For Moscow’s right-wingers, payback means teaming up with a band of Texas secessionists. By CASEY MICHEL Nathan Smith, who styles himself the \u201cforeign minister\u201d for the Texas Nationalist Movement, appeared last Spring at a far-right confab in St. Petersburg, Russia. Despite roaming around in his cowboy hat, Smith managed to keep a low-key presence at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}