Part VIII- Russia Runs the US Secession Movements of California and Texas- Excerpt
Part VIII – Russia Harbors and Funds US Separatists and both California and Texas Secessionists
(Written and originally released in August of 2020, 6 months in advance of January 6th Capitol riot-- LFR)
We pick up with the continuing narrative that Russian Intelligence is steering elements of the potentially violent Alt-Right, with the intention of creating a Left vs Right chaos scenario not unlike the crisis which weakened the Weimar Republic of Germany in the aftermath of World War I. Back then, the conditions of demoralization, economic collapse and ungovernability created the circumstances in which a very tiny minority extremist party, Hitler's National Socialists, could carve out enough of a vote on a law and order platform that they were able to form a coalition government with Hitler as Chancellor. That, of course was a short-lived arrangement.
We have documented multiple interfaces between the Russian Intelligence services with Neo-Nazis and militias, both in the US and Europe. We have established that Putin's motivation is to restore Russian "greatness", as a "Revanchist" nationalist reaction to the destructive and draconian economic reforms imposed on Russia by the West after the Soviet Collapse, reforms which were known as "Shock Therapy", or the "Sachs Plan", named after Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs.
The context is recent news that the poisoning of Putin's leading voice of opposition, Alexei Navalny, was done with Soviet Era nerve agent, Novichuk, a weapon of choice in a long history of Russian assassinations of Putin's dangerous adversaries.
Prominent among Putin's alt-right "Zoo" are leaders of America's Secessionist movements and organizations that serve that end. Throughout the US, there are growing movements for state sovereignty, which intend to break from the Union as did the Confederate States of America. Many of these groups are racist, trying to hide their actual beliefs with appeals to renouncing federal taxes, regulation, and "intrusion into people's private lives." They are populistic and try to capitalize on political and cultural cynicism, railing against the abuses of the federal government. Their actual agenda is Social Darwinism, meaning their strongly held belief that the "unfit" are dragging the real doers down, and that the social safety net which maintains the standard of living of those "unfit" people is an unnecessary and unfair burden on those who do the most important work and make the most money.
Their belief in secession is rooted in a desire to throw the "unfit" overboard, by dismantling the role of the federal government. They are intrinsically racist, but not open about it, except as it pertains to racism against Muslims. There is little doubt that were Putin asset Donald Trump to launch a civil conflict to hold onto power after losing the election, these anti-government populists and right wing anarchists would take up arms against those forces in the government which stand against Trump's plans. At the very least, they would be a wild card in contributing to the chaos scenario which Putin is trying to bring to the US. That is why Putin openly supports them.
These Secessionist organizations have a track record of mass organizing and are not a small entity. They have succeeded in placing ballot initiatives for referendum in California and Texas and have come close elsewhere, where citizens can vote to secede and their state declare its independence from the United States.
For example, according to "Think Progress", the Texas Nationalist Movement is actually based in Moscow.
"For years, the Texas Nationalist Movement has cultivated ties in Russia, especially among those who’ve received financing directly from the Kremlin.
Now, as ThinkProgress discovered, one of the Texas-based secessionist group’s flags is actually hanging outright in Moscow — highlighting the ongoing questions surrounding their links overseas. Last week, Alexander Ionov posted a video to his Instagram page, which remains one of his preferred platforms for highlighting his ties to other groups. Ionov runs the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, a group that helps organize secession movements across the West, and which has received financing from the Kremlin in the past. In the video, the Texas Nationalist Movement’s flag can be seen hanging prominently in the office. The caption of the video read, “If your office doesn’t look like this, don’t even call me.”
You can also see the role of Putin crony Ionov over years in several operations against the US, as I had referenced in Part 1.
" The flag joins other items Ionov has previously hung in his office, including a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin personally thanking Ionov for his “work to strengthen friendship between peoples.” (Ionov has also been involved in raising money for Maria Butina, the convicted Russian agent who successfully infiltrated the National Rifle Association.)" It is also documented that Putin's crony Ionov and the Pro Putin Rodina Party directly fund the Texas Nationalist Movement.
"The Texas Nationalist Movement’s Nathan Smith has led multiple trips to Russia, building links with Ionov’s group along the way. Smith, for instance, represented the Texas Nationalist Movement at a secessionist conference in Moscow in 2016, just a few months before the U.S. presidential election. The website for the far-right Russian Rodina party — a party co-founded by sanctioned Russian official Dmitry Rogozin — even featured Smith on its website during one of his visits. (Other American representatives, including those supposedly backing California independence, also attended the 2016 conference.)
Texas Nationalist Movement officials later revealed that Ionov’s organization had helped fund the Texas group’s 2016 travels directly. In a December 2016 interview with KQED, Texas Nationalist Movement head Daniel Miller “declined to say how much money the Kremlin gave” to the Texas Nationalist Movement.
While the Texas Nationalist Movement built its links in Moscow, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) spent 2015-2017 specifically targeting those backing Texas secession, primarily via Facebook and Twitter. For instance, the IRA’s “Heart of Texas” Facebook page grew wildly popular on the platform: not only was it the largest Facebook page dedicated to Texas secession, but it at one point had more followers in 2016 than the official Texas GOP and Texas Democratic Facebook pages combined.
The “Heart of Texas” page claimed that it was collecting names of supporters to pass along to the Texas Nationalist Movement, although Texas Nationalist Movement members denied they ever collaborated with Russia.
Regardless, Ionov and his group aren’t the only Kremlin-funded movement with whom the Texas Nationalist Movement has cultivated links. In late 2014, according to The Telegraph, the Texas Nationalist Movement confirmed it had met with a representative from the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and announced that they had a “fundamental right” to self-determination. The separatists have received years of funding, arms, and direction from the Kremlin, acting as an effective proxy for Russian designs in breaking up Ukraine. They have also been accused of human rights atrocities along the way, none of which stopped the Texas Nationalist Movement from meeting with one of their representatives."
(Addendum, source from "Politico" June 2015)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/vladimir-putin-texas-secession-119288/
California's Secessionist movement is also quite large and also based in Moscow under the patronage of Alexander Ionov.
According to the Washington Post, Adam Taylor, 2/19/2017
(reprinted in San Francisco Gate Newspaper:
https://www.sfgate.com/…/He-s-the-founder-of-a-Californian-…
"Louis J. Marinelli is a man on a quixotic mission: to help California secede from the United States and become an independent country. Surprisingly, this quest has been going relatively well of late. Marinelli's group, Yes California, is attempting to collect 585,000 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Buoyed by California's already tense relationship with President Donald Trump, the campaign has received a large amount of press coverage and support over the past few months. But for the 30-year-old Yes California president, there remains one annoying problem: People keep asking him why he lives in Russia."Hands off California, Putin," a rival secessionist movement, the California National Party, tweeted in January. "We won't take orders from your puppet Moscow Marinelli". Marinelli has perhaps compounded the issue by making numerous appearances on Russian state media (approximately once a week, by his own estimation), at times offering a political viewpoint that seems to line up neatly with the Kremlin's. In late December, the Russian media gave widespread coverage to Martinelli as his group opened a "Californian Embassy" in Moscow."
(So, consider that the largest Secessionist group in the US succeeded in gathering 585,000 signatures of Californians who want to leave the United States, and that the organization which did that is based in Russia, and is financed by an intimate crony of Vladimir Putin. LFR)
(Wapo, con't) "It goes like this: Buffalo, New York-born Marinelli moved to California in 2006. A year later, he upped sticks and went to Saint Petersburg State University to study Russian. He lived "on and off" in Russia between 2007 and 2011, during which time he met his wife, a Russian citizen. The pair moved back to San Diego, but Marinelli's partner ran into problems with the U.S. immigration system." Marinelli's ties to Alexander Ionov are perhaps bigger conspiracy fodder. Ionov is the founder of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, a group that supports various secessionist movements around the world. Last September, he put on a Kremlin-sponsored event in Moscow for Western secessionists that Martinelli and other representatives of Yes California attended. Reached via email, Ionov said that about 30 percent of the funding for the event came from the Russian government. But he said none of that money was given to any U.S. groups, including Yes California.Simon Saradzhyan, the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that the Russian government probably wasn't taking the Yes California project very seriously, "if only because that chances that this movement can eventually win independence for that state are close to zero." But Saradzhyan also noted that Russia could well be interested in getting revenge on Washington for what it saw as U.S. support for Chechen separatism in the 1990s. Fiona Hill, a Russia expert with Brookings Institution, said in an email that historical Russian links to California added further intrigue to the situation. "Russia had a major early-19th century colony in California and there has been quite a lot of interest in promoting this from circle's close to the Kremlin," Hill said, pointing to Kremlin-connected oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his interest in Fort Ross, the former colony in what is now Sonoma County."
