Liberals trying to blame Russia for Charlottesville need a reality check

This past weekend, a bunch of American neo-Nazis took to the streets of Charlottesville, waving tiki torches and shouting “Heil Trump” and other such inanities.

One of them drove a car into a group of counter-protesters and killed a 32 year-old woman.

It is hardly news that the US, like many other nations, is still battling its history. In America’s case, it’s the contested history of slavery and the Civil War.

Nazi marches aren’t something that started happening this weekend. They have been happening for decades. White supremacism is not some new phenomenon popped up with the rise of Donald Trump. The extent to which Trump has encouraged, enabled and emboldened this latest batch of white supremacist morons is the subject of a debate I won’t get into.

Either way, it’s undeniable that race relations are in the toilet and Trump is hardly the only one to blame.

No sooner than the dust had settled in Virginia and the neo-Nazis tucked themselves into bed in their mom’s basements, did another kind of idiot emerge. This time on Twitter.

Of course. It was the #BlameRussia brigade. You see, apparently the state of race relations in America is actually Russia’s fault — or at least, if not Russia’s fault entirely, Vladimir Putin’s omnipresent hand can be seen hovering nefariously over Charlottesville making it all worse.

It’s odd that white liberals who claim to be such staunch allies to causes like Black Lives Matter are more than willing to downplay homegrown American racism and the actions of bonafide Nazis if it presents them with the opportunity to needle Russia just a little bit more.

Exhibit A. Molly McKew.

McKew is a lobbyist who advised former Georgian President Saakashvili and former Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat. The former is now a stateless fugitive — and the latter is in prison. Perhaps they should have sought their advice elsewhere.

As you can see, Molly wants everyone to “have a conversation” about how what happened in Charlottesville is linked to “Russian influence” and “Russian operations” in the United States. Just imagine how deluded you would have to be, to see what happened in Virginia, and to have your first thought be: Russia!

In fairness, she also believe the Russian government are “running ops” in her Twitter mentions.

Exhibit B. Louise Mensch

Sadly, Molly was not alone. Noted Twitter lunatic and troll Louise Mensch naturally shared her opinion.

Remember: Mensch is the same woman who, despite zero Russia experience or expertise, believes that Putin had Andrew Breitbart murdered to pave the way for Steve Bannon, that Twitter is in cahoots with the Kremlin and that misspelled hashtags are Russian active measures. These theories appear to spring forth from the depths of her mind and nowhere else.

The level of paranoia and projection out of these people is phenomenal.

In Charlottesville, Louise didn’t see a sick white supremacist Nazi kill an innocent woman. She saw “Russian active measures” that “murdered a US citizen”.

Actually, Louise, a US citizen murdered a US citizen. One of them just happened to be a Nazi. Russia had nothing to do with it.

Molly and Louise were joined by a long list of the usual suspects in linking Russia to Charlottesville on Twitter.

In a way, I feel sorry for them. Are they so desperate to believe their country is pure and righteous, that they just can’t quite believe or accept that it isn’t? Desperate enough to believe that Russia is an all-powerful nation controlling everything from Twitter hashtags to protests over statues in Virginia?

People who buy into their theory on Charlottesville like to point out that some of the Nazi marchers were shouting “Russia is our friend” as they walked.

But this is as nonsensical as all the rest of what they were shouting.

If you’re yelling “Heil Trump” and “Russia is our friend” at the same time, you’ve clearly got a very strange understanding of history, Nazism and Russia.

The vast, vast majority of Nazis deaths during World War 2 happened on the Eastern Front. You know, where 27 million Soviets died fighting Nazism in a victory they still celebrate every single year.

Even more nonsensical is the American Nazis’ apparent support for Muslims like Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov — whose Islamist regime in Chechnya is enabled, for various complicated reasons, by their hero, Putin.

The fact that some of them were shouting “Russia is our friend” means nothing — because these are know-nothing degenerates, who use their warped ideology and skewed version of history and geopolitics as an excuse to take to the streets and kill people.

As for the claim that Russian influence is driving these miscreants out into the streets with their tiki torches? Give us all a break.

You know who you sound like? You sound like the perfect equivalent to the kind of Russians who blame the CIA for every pothole or protest in Russia.

Making excuses for the faults and failures of your own country by blaming another with this frequency won’t make them go away.

If Russia sees what is happening in the United States and does seek in some way to exploit it or benefit from the fact that its geopolitical adversary looks like it might implode, well, it’s nothing more than the United States would do. In fact, it is exactly what the US does all around the world every single day, seeking to disrupt societies where there is potential geopolitical benefit.

The fact that prominent figures are downplaying the actions of white supremacists in Charlottesville by offloading some of the blame to a foreign power is as idiotic as it is repulsive.

It’s even worse than the usual knee-jerk reaction of “This isn’t who we are as a nation” …or “These aren’t the values America was founded on”.

Actually, they are exactly the values America was founded on — and maybe the fact that you can’t seem to fully accept that has something to do with why things like this keep happening in places like Virginian and Ferguson.

Sorry liberal America, these are all-American Nazis. Homegrown to the bone.

I know that hurts to admit. But the sooner you stop trying to pretend otherwise, the sooner you’ll be able to do something about it.