The Right’s Insane Brains on Ukraine
One of the great untold stories about the American Experience is the rise and fall of people who shouldn’t be allowed to play in dangerous events. Documenting this year’s crazies might serve to warn future generations of the folly of fools rushing toward a humanitarian disaster.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has provided them with endless opportunities for inappropriate behavior, ranging from Congresscritters creating content for Kremlin propagandists to the evangelists standing at the Polish border trying to convert refugees who might be inclined to hear their message if they offered to help with the basic necessities of life, like a place to sleep and food for their children.
I’ll start with the easy stuff, like the hypocrisy of Representatives who hours earlier voted against more aid to Ukraine standing before TV cameras and demanding the President “do something.”
North Carolina Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn is now a star of Russian TV propaganda with clips of a recent speech being repeated regularly throughout the day.
“Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug,” Cawthorn, who is running for reelection in November, told supporters earlier this month in an appearance in Asheville, North Carolina. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
Following Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had a few things to say, namely, repeated claims that Ukraine is certain to lose to Putin. In arguing against aid to Ukraine, she says both sides are at fault, the Ukraine government only exists because of Obama, and Biden along with an assertion that Pelosi and Romney have financial interests in the country.
Speaking of financial interests, the Congresswoman bought $15,000 in defense and energy stocks *two days* before Russian forces invaded Ukraine. The day before the invasion here’s what she was saying on Twitter:
Of course, some of the hostility toward Ukraine by Republicans is left over from Trump impeachment Version One, where the former President unsuccessfully tried to leverage already appropriated aid to recruit Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. I believe the words were “do me a little favor,” which is mafia-speak for “or else” if the person in question refuses to go along.
Since Ukraine wouldn’t play nice with Trump, Dear Leader’s supporters have taken to calling he country names. Back in those days, a standard Republican talking point was that Ukraine was incredibly corrupt, “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet,” according to Rep. Jim Jordan.
Enough with these Capitol Hill toadies. The real action is in Poland, where 300,000 refugees a day are escaping from the war.
The group behind the above is Awakening Europe, and they're celebrating the 'harvest' of people that they're recruiting. Nevermind that Ukraine is an overwhelmingly Christian country, the children are considered choice targets because they’re likely Catholic (or Orthodox), and we all know what a Marxist the Pope is (Just kidding, but that’s what evangelists say).
Then there’s the story of former Washington State Rep. Matt Shea, accused of domestic terrorism, working to secure adoptions for Ukrainian children in Poland. This is really bizarre.
Shea distributed a manifesto for right-wing activists to seize power and proposed a new Christian state in America's Pacific northwest. Shea was found by a House-commissioned investigation to have planned and participated in domestic terrorism and booted from office.
He’s plopped down in a small Polish town, partnered with a mysterious nonprofit no one can track down, offering no provenance and claims any concerns are just Russian disinformation. He says he’s there to facilitate the adoption of 62 Ukrainian children to the United States.
From the Seattle Times:
But international agencies say, with the chaos and confusion of war, now is not an appropriate time for international adoptions from Ukraine. And Shea’s presence, and the lack of information surrounding the American group he’s with, has raised concerns among some residents of Kazimierz Dolny, the small Polish town where the children are staying at a hotel-guesthouse.
“I asked him many times, ‘What are you going to do with these children?’ and he told me that it’s not my business,'” Weronika Ziarnicka, an aide to the mayor of Kazimierz Dolny, said of Shea. “I got the feeling in my gut that something’s wrong with this guy; he didn’t want to tell me his last name.”
Shea is working with Paweł Chojecki, leader of the 11 November Movement, a small, far-right political party. Via RangeMedia:
In a report “Never Again” produced documenting xenophobia and Sinophobia in Poland surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, Chojecki’s name comes up at least a dozen times on discrete dates throughout 2020, sowing the conspiracy that Covid is an intentional biological attack. In one passage, “Never Again” documents a long diatribe Chojecki posted to his YouTube channel in which he claimed “the World Health Organisation has infected the whole world” and that not only have communists taken over the United Nations, “The UN was precisely created with the participation of Russian and Chinese communists.” The section concludes with “Wherever you look – whether at the Health Organisation or at the Polish military academy, there are communist spies everywhere.”
Chojecki is also vehemently anti-Catholic — uncommon in a country that is over 90% Roman Catholic and less than .5% Protestant — but to Pankowski, that’s of secondary importance. “Chojecki has been publicly extremely offensive towards Catholics,” he says, “but the main issue from the point of view of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is not his religious beliefs but his right-wing extremist political propaganda activities.”
Shea and Chojecki met in person in 2018, at the 60th Anniversary of the far-right John Birch Society.
The townspeople in Kazimierz Dolny have their own suspicions, one of which is that the children are part of a human trafficking effort.
Weronika Ziarnicka, an aide to the mayor told the Seattle Times:
“I asked him many times, ‘What are you going to do with these children?’ and he told me that it’s not my business," Ziarnicka said of Shea. “I got the feeling in my gut that something’s wrong with this guy; he didn’t want to tell me his last name.”
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com