The political and social roots of the Democratic Party’s anti-Russia hysteria
13 May 2017
The crisis surrounding the firing of FBI Director James Comey has been seized on by the Democratic Party and much of the media to escalate their anti-Russian campaign.
While denouncing Trump for supposedly colluding with the Kremlin, they all but ignore the administration’s escalating assault on immigrants and its ongoing drive to destroy Medicaid, slash health care for millions of workers, lift corporate regulations and hand big business and the rich an immense tax windfall.
The Democrats choose to focus not on these attacks, but rather on a McCarthyite-style witch-hunt against Russia with anti-communist undertones. In the process, the Democrats have adopted the traditional language of the extreme right.
In its lead editorial Friday, headlined “The Trump-Russia Nexus,” the New York Times lays out its case that Trump maintains an “unusually extensive network of relationships with a major foreign power,” i.e., Russia. It demands “a thorough investigation of whether and how Russia interfered in the election and through whom.”
The Times ’ “network of relationships” turns out to be little more than a series of business connections and contacts between Trump family members and associates and Russian interests, which are hardly unique for the American corporate-financial oligarchy and can be viewed as inherently sinister only if one starts from the premise that all things Russian are evil.
The list includes Trump business ties with Russian nationals, a speech by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in Moscow, a meeting between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador to the US, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s business dealings…