Daily Archives: September 23, 2023

There was a brief, strange moment in 2015 when Russell Brand mattered in mainstream British politics. With an election looming, the opposition Labour Party was trailing in the polls against a coalition government that was the very definition of establishmentled by an Eton- and Oxford-educated prime minister in David Cameron and his Westminster- and Cambridge-educated deputy, Nick Clegg, now president of global affairs at Meta. So the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, went seeking the endorsement of Brand, the actor, comedian, and emerging online provocateur whose anti-corporatist screeds to his 9.5 million Twitter followers and 100,000 YouTube subscribers gave him the appearance of a power player. Miliband got Brands endorsement but lost the election.

Since then, Brands reach has exploded. His YouTube channel now has 6.6 million subscribers, his X account more than 11 million followers. But his anti-establishment message has morphed, from a broader, almost coherent response to the politics of fiscal austerity that shaped the UK after the 2008 financial crisis to a series of cultish, conspiracy-driven narratives that draw in Covid denialism, Russian disinformation, and the far-right-inspired Great Reset theory, united by the meta-conspiracy that the mainstreamthe eliteshave darker agendas based on control.

On Saturday, the UKs Channel Four aired an hour-long documentary in which several women accused Brand of rape and sexual assault. Before the broadcast, the comedian came out swinging. In a video on his YouTube channel, titled So, This Is Happening, Brand not only denied the accusations, but leveled some of his own: [It] makes me question, is there another agenda at play? he said.

One of Brands alleged victims, speaking on the BBC, called his statement insulting and laughable. But within the alt-media, there was a show of support from figures including Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer who is awaiting trial for rape and human trafficking in Romania, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, who now runs a conspiracy-inflected show on X, and Alex Jones, fined $1.5 billion for lies about the victims of a school shooting. Xs owner, Elon Musk, posted underneath Brands video: Of course. They dont like competitionreferring, apparently, to those same dark forces referenced by the comedian. The camaraderie between conspiracy theorists, the alt-right, and the manosphere, is grimly predictable. Their shared narrative is one of alienation from the mainstream, outsiderdom, and dark forces massing to thwart them. Opposite day, but with real consequences for people, as Marc Owen Jones, an expert on disinformation and social media at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, puts it.

Its also their audience strategy and the foundation of their business model. Conspiracy influencers are content producers. Moments that generate intense emotionseven if the content producer is, themself, the focus of the scandalare fantastic for engagement, and they feed the grim economics of the conspiracy business.

Brands YouTube channel is a compendium of contemporary bullshit. Covid lockdowns were exercises in social control. The US has biolabs in Ukraine; the Wests support for Ukraine is capitalist imperialism. Central bank digital currencies are the governments attempts to control your money. Evolving gender norms are causing a crisis in masculinity and declines in fertility. There are routine crossovers between Brands content and the wider conspiracy cinematic universe, with clips on his channels of conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Junior, far-right Hungarian president Viktor Orban, and Carlson, who recorded an interview with Brand in August.

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The Dark Economics of Russell Brand - WIRED

Charles Bausman, a 59-year-old American man who has lived in Russia on and off for the past three decades, founded the pro-Kremlin website Russia Insider in 2014 when he was living in Moscow. In the years following President Donald Trumps 2016 electoral win, Bausman began to use the site to promote an array of overtly fascist and antisemitic content. Upon moving from Moscow to the eastern Pennsylvanian city of Lancaster in 2018, Bausman involved himself in a plethora of right-wing causes. Then, after attending the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, he disappeared to Russia, leaving behind nearly $1 million worth of property.

There, Bausman has reemerged as a media commentator. In March, Bausman co-hosted multiple episodes of an online show with a man whom U.S. officials identified in a declassified intelligence report as at times acting on behalf of Russias Federal Security Service (FSB) to manipulate American public opinion, as Hatewatch previously reported.

Russia Insider has published speeches from Adolf Hitler justifying his 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, which resulted in the death of some 27 million Soviet people; excerpts from the dictators autobiographical screed Mein Kampf, which a Russian court declared extremist and banned in 2010; and the work of Nazi collaborators who waged war on the Eastern Front.

Beyond Nazi primary sources, the far-right groups and content that Bausman has involved himself with or promoted reflect a diverse array of far-right ideologies. Since 2018, Bausman has collaborated with or promoted Alex Jones, a prominent antigovernment conspiracy theorist and the founder of Infowars; the Rod of Iron Ministries, a gun-obsessed religious group; and the National Justice Party(NJP), a self-styled pro-Hitler political group with ties to The Right Stuff podcasting network.

Until now, reporters and researchers have typically pointed to a 6,000-word antisemitic diatribe from January 2018 called Its Time To Drop The Jew Taboo as Bausmans first foray into far-right extremism. In it, he lauded the alt-right, a term used in the mid-to-late 2010s by members of the movement, researchers and journalists to describe a coalitional approach to white supremacist organizing. Bausman commended the alt-rights intellectual heft and lavished praise onto several of the movements figureheads.

However, the materials that Hatewatch obtained and reviewed indicate that the pro-Kremlin propagandists involvement in the white nationalist movement dates back as early as fall 2016.

Hatewatch found that Bausman attended a 2016 conferencein Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Policy Institute (NPI), a now-defunct white nationalist think tank, in which attendees threw up Nazi salutes. Hatewatch also obtained leaked emails showing that Bausman sought to plan an event in Russia with members of NPI, including Richard Spencer, then the head of the group that organized the 2016 conference that Bausman attended.

Additionally, recent business filings and a series of blog posts with Bausmans byline on them shed additional light on his involvement with the National Justice Party, the pro-Hitler political party, which the pro-Kremlin propagandist has praised for their valuable contributions to political discussion.

Hatewatch reached out to Bausman over email. He did not respond. Hatewatch reached out to multiple current and former members of the National Justice Party, including Gregory Conte, Mike Peinovich and Joseph Jordan, over email or text message. They did not respond.

In this still from The Atlantics 2020 documentary White Noise, Richard Spencer, left, is seen with William H. Regnery II. (Daniel Lombroso/White Noise)

The emails that Hatewatch obtained reveal that Bausman sought to collaborate with members of NPI, including petitioning the groups reclusive late founder William H. Regnery IIto organize a multi-day conference in Moscow.

Hatewatch was able to verify the authenticity of the leaked material based on the fact that two sources recalled meeting Bausman at multiple white nationalist events during that time period, namely the 2016 conference and a subsequent summer 2017 conference organized by the self-styled race realist think tank American Renaissance.

The leaked materials indicate that Bausmans association with NPI began in late 2016, when he attended the groups annual conference in Washington, D.C. The event took place over the course of two days, beginning with a private dinner in northwest D.C. on the evening of Nov. 18 and culminating with a full day of speeches on Nov. 19 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center a few blocks away from the White House.

Luke OBrien, an investigative reporter who has written extensively about the far right, said in a phone conversation with Hatewatch that he met Bausman while checking in for the conference on Saturday, Nov. 19. OBrien recalled that after he introduced himself as press to NPI personnel, Bausman struck up a conversation with him.

He said, Im also with the press. He gave me his card. It was for Russia Insider, OBrien recalled in a conversation with Hatewatch.

He was there for networking purposes is what it felt like to me, OBrien said.

Bausman met with both Regnery and Spencer within the week after the 2016 conference. In a Nov. 27, 2016, email to NPI personnel, Bausman expressed his support to Spencer following blowback from some segments of the white nationalist movement and the mainstream media for a speech on the night of Nov. 19, when around a dozen people threw up Nazi salutes. Bausman referred to Spencers critics as wusses.

Later in the email thread, Bausman added, It was great to meet you and Bill [Regnery] and I will get back to you with some info on what we discussed.

Bausman soon followed up with NPI personnel via email. On the morning of Dec. 12, 2016, Regnery sent an email to Bausman with the subject line pan euro congress. The note appeared to follow a phone conversation between Regnery and Bausman.

Regnery announced that Bausman had located [a] young Russian of Ukrainian background who was brought up in the States but who lives in Moscow and [is] interested in being our legman [sic] to lubricate our meeting plans. Regnery went on to suggest a series of next steps, including proposing sending Spencer to Moscow for a week to begin making the rounds and inspecting likely venues. Though Regnery did not offer a timeline in the email regarding when such a trip would occur, he suggested September 2017 as a possible month for the event itself.

The email includes repeated references to NPIs attempt to hosta conference in Budapest in October 2014, which resulted in Hungarian authorities deporting multiple speakers, including Spencer. (In Spencers case, Hungarian authorities detained him on charges he failed to carry proper documents on his person, although others were turned away at the border.) To avoid such hurdles, Regnery suggests to have a marquee name that is indelibly associated with the Putin administration. However, the email chain does not make it readily apparent if Regnery had any specific figure in mind.

We can expect the few seconds of video of the upraised arms at the end of the fall meeting to be constantly looped by those who seek to vilify the conference, he continued, referring to footage showing attendees throwing up Hitler salutes at the November 2016 conference. Returning to the 2014 debacle in Hungary, Regnery added: Assuming we can avoid of a recurrence of this perception in Russia we need to concern ourselves with the demonization of the meeting elsewhere in Europe. We need to submerge the involvement of NPI in a handful of other Europe [sic] and Russian organizations.

Russia is the only European country in which a pan Europe Alt Right interest group can be launched, Regnery wrote.

NPIs event in Moscow did not come to fruition. However, Regnerys proposal mirrored a 2015 conference, hosted by the Russian ultra-nationalist party Rodina (Motherland), that drew a variety of far-right figuresfrom the United States and Europe, including American white nationalists Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson.

Spencer and Bausman crossed paths again at a July 2017 gatheringheld outside Nashville, Tennessee, by American Renaissance, an organization run by Taylor, where Bausman invited Spencer to team up with him on fundraising ideas.

Evan McLaren, NPIs former executive director who publicly disavowed white nationalism in April 2022, told Hatewatch in a message that he recalled meeting Bausman at the conference.

I dont remember how detailed his questions were, but he definitely took me aside and pumped me for information, McLaren said.

Greg Conte argues with police before a speech by Richard Spencer at Michigan State University on March 5, 2018, in East Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

In addition to Spencer and Regnery, Bausman also collaborated with Gregory Conte, NPIs former director of operations, Hatewatch found. Now one of the co-founders of the National Justice Party, Conte serves as a throughline between Bausmans early involvement in the alt-right and later collaboration with the pro-Hitler National Justice Party.

Russia Insiders archives indicate that in August 2016, Bausman shared an article from the reactionary blog Atavastic Intelligentsia, penned by Greg Ritter, a pseudonym Conte then used in the white supremacist movement. Conte, this time under his given name, contributed an article to Bausmans site that was tagged as Exclusive to Russia Insider on Dec. 1, 2018, a few months after he resigned from his position at NPI and other Spencer-affiliated properties.

Contes relationship with Bausman appeared to extend beyond contributing to his site, according to Bausmans own statements and ones from Contes former collaborators.

McLaren, the former white nationalist, told Hatewatch that he met with Conte and Bausman sometime between Dec. 26, 2019, and Jan. 5, 2020, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At the time, he said, Conte was deeply involved with Russia Insider.

I hadnt completely cut ties with Conte yet, and I let him know I was going to be stateside. Bausman really wanted to meet up. ... He wanted to recruit me to work on whatever projects they had going, and he was curious about dirt on Richard [Spencer], McLaren, who now lives in Europe, told Hatewatch in a message.

He didnt have any specific role in mind, at least not that he explained. He was just trying to involve me, McLaren added.

Furthermore, in a Nov. 4, 2021, article on a website called Lancaster Christian, Bausman described the former NPI director of operations as a good friend of many years for whom I have the highest personal esteem.

Hatewatch identified Bausman as the owner and operator of the Lancaster Christian website, where he is the sole contributor, through its review of internet records. Lancaster Christian shares an IP address with several other Bausman-associated web properties, including Russia Insider and its sister site, Russian Faith, indicating that the same person set up these sites.

Spencer, who worked with Conte until July 2018, confirmed the pairs longstanding friendship in a request for comment from Hatewatch.

Not a week would go by without some mention of Bausman from Conte, Spencer told Hatewatch.

Bausmans writings on his Lancaster Christian website and corporate documents filed on behalf of the NJP shed new light on the pro-Russia propagandists relationship with the white supremacist group.

Mike Peinovich from The Right Stuff speaks at a press conference on Oct. 19, 2017, at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Mike Peinovich, a white supremacist podcaster whose former associates have accused of running a cult, launched the NJP in summer of 2020. It featured a variety of speakers, including Conte, associates of Peinovichs The Right Stuff podcasting network, a former member of the longtime neo-Nazi group the National Alliance, and other prominent figures throughout the white power movement. At the time, Hatewatch reported that the event took place in what looks like a barn. Local news outlet Lancaster Online later identified Bausmans farmstead on Millersville Pike in Lancaster County as the location for the meetup in an expos published in October 2021.

My reason was that I believed that this group of guys, some of whom I knew personally to be of high integrity and brilliant intelligence, who had made hugely valuable contributions to political discussion in our country, and my publications, should be allowed to gather in a space and have a private meeting to discuss their whatever they want, Bausman said in the Nov. 4, 2021, articleon Lancaster Christian, in which he detailed his reasoning for allowing Peinovich and others to use the property.

Elsewhere in the same article, Bausman lauds Peinovich as famous for making good speeches.

Peinovich told The New York Timesin 2022 that the NJP went our own way with respect to Bausman. However, corporate records for the two LLCs associated with his organization, National Justice LLC and National Justice Party LLC, that Conte filed with the Maryland Secretary of State indicate that the organization continued to use the address of Bausmans farmstead on NJPs official records well into 2023.

The corporate documents that Conte filed on behalf of NJP include an application to create a National Justice LLC that Conte sent in on Dec. 7, 2021, and a trade name application registering National Justice Party LLC that Conte filed on June 9, 2022. A January 2022 reportfrom the local news outlet Lancaster Online indicated that Conte was also residing at the property for a time.

Conte used the address of Bausmans barn again in an article of amendment that he filed on Feb. 16 to transfer ownership of the National Justice LLC to Peinovich. Conte filed the document after publicly announcing his departure from the NJP in a 15-minute rambling audio clip that he published on the low-moderation app Telegram. In it, Conte accused NJP leadership of spending $10,000 of the groups funds to spend on cryptocurrency, as well as an ongoing pattern of behavior including secrecy, lies and deception. The recording closes with an inscrutable request in English and German to listeners to determine if theyre for or against the Fhrer.

Hatewatch reviewed archived Russia Insider posts, as well as materials related to Bausmans public appearances in Washington, D.C., New York and Moscow, in order to better understand his growing interest in the white nationalist movement in late 2016, as well as his subsequent turn toward far-right activism.

Hatewatch reached out to multiple people listed as speakers at two events focused on U.S.-Russia relations that Bausman appears to have attended in 2015, according to material on his Russia Insider website and other online archives. These events include the March 25-26, 2015, World Russia Forum, a once-annual gathering in Washington, D.C., organized by the Soviet-born nuclear physicist and Russia Insider contributor Edward Lozansky, and the March 27, 2015, Russia Forum New York, whose organizer, Elena Branson, has since been chargedby the U.S. government with acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of the Russian government.

A user under the name RI Staff announced in a now-deleted poston the Russia Insider website that Bausman would be speaking at the World Russia Forum on March 24, 2015, on a litany of subjects including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, climate change and drug trafficking. World Russia Forums official programdoes not even list Bausman by name and only includes his website among a handful of others during a 45-minute panel called Presentation of Alternative Sites. The same Russia Insider post does not mention Bausmans appearance at the Russian Forum New York.

Lozansky, who organized the annual World Russia Forum, confirmed to Hatewatch in an email that he brought Bausman to the 2015 event as part of a panel to discuss alternatives to mainstream media. He recalled that Bausman also attended a tree-planting ceremony in Moscow roughly a month later. The event commemorated the Allied victory in World War II.

While Lozansky was an early contributor to Russia Insider, dating back to the sites founding in 2014, the sites archives indicate that most of his contributions on the site between fall 2014 and spring 2017 consist of reposts from other media outlets. He said he wasnt sure why Bausman stopped reposting his articles and that he was unaware of Bausmans participation in the 2016 NPI event.

Lozansky said he didnt speak to Bausman for several years until he met him at a July 4 gathering of American expatriates in Moscow.

We spoke briefly, and he mentioned that RI is not doing well these days, thats about it, Lozansky said.

Russia Insiders pivot from sharing mainly material concerned with foreign policy and U.S.-Russia affairs to a solidly far-right propaganda outlet appears to have coincided with President Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign. By early 2016, Bausman began portraying Russia Insider less as a publication concerned with U.S.-Russia relations and more as another website within the broader sphere of alternative media. In a May 19, 2016, post called Russia Insider is Really a Mirror of the Trump/Sanders Phenomenon, Bausman depicted his site as countering neocon lies about Russia. Between July and October 2016, Russia Insider ran multiple articles portraying the growing alt-right movement and Trump as possible Russian allies.

At a 2016 speech in Moscow less than a month before he would attend the now-infamous NPI conference, Bausman described American politics as shifting as the result of unnamed activists.

The fact of the matter is the earth has shifted in America in a very fundamental way, Bausman said during that presentation in Moscow on Oct. 25, 2016.

The people who have realized how crazy the American system has become will not go home. They will not stop talking. If Hillary wins, she will have a big, big problem on her hands, he added.

This story is part 3 in a series. Read more about far-right propagandist Charles Bausman in part 1and part 2.

Photo illustration by SPLC

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Pro-Kremlin Propagandist Ties to White Nationalist Movement ... - Southern Poverty Law Center

Even when you do find yourself debating somebody with more extreme views, it is important to remember that todays adversaries can become tomorrows allies. Ideologues of all stripes like to claim that the people with whom they disagree suffer from some kind of moral or intellectual defect and conclude that they are a lost cause. But though few people acknowledge defeat in the middle of an argument, most do shift their worldview over time. Our job is to persuade, not to vilify, those who genuinely believe in the identity synthesis.

Sometimes, outspoken critics of the identity synthesis used to be its fervent proponents. Maurice Mitchell, a progressive activist who is now the national director of the Working Families Party, once believed that the core precepts of the identity synthesis could help him combat injustice. Today he worries about how its ideas are reshaping America, including some of the progressive organizations he knows intimately. As he writes in a recent article, Identity is too broad a container to predict ones politics or the validity of a particular position.

To avoid following the path charted by Mr. Weinstein, opponents of the identity synthesis need to be guided by a clear moral compass of their own. In my case, this compass consists of liberal values like political equality, individual freedom and collective self-determination. For others, it could consist of socialist conviction or Christian faith, of conservative principles or the precepts of Buddhism. But what all of us must share is a determination to build a better world.

The identity synthesis is a trap. If we collectively fall into it, there will be more, not less, zero-sum competition between different groups. But it is possible to oppose the identity trap without becoming a reactionary.

To build a better society, we must overcome the prejudices and enmities that have for so much of human history boxed us into the roles seemingly foreordained by our gender, our sexual orientation, or the color of our skin. It is time to fight, without shame or hesitation, for a future in which what we have in common truly comes to be more important than what divides us.

Yascha Mounk is the author of the forthcoming book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, from which this essay is adapted.

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Opinion | How to Argue Against Identity Politics Without Turning Into ... - The New York Times

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Anna Wintour: 'I just have to make sure things are being done right' - Financial Times

As recently as last week, in remarks to the Concerned Women of America Summit, Trump bragged about the anti-abortion record of his administration. Im also proud to be the most pro-life president in American history, he said. I was the first sitting president ever to attend the March for Life rally right here in Washington, D.C. The biggest thing, he emphasized, was his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who ruled to end the moral and constitutional atrocity known as Roe v. Wade.

Nobody thought that could be done, Trump said.

Whether or not Trump is personally opposed to abortion is immaterial. The truth, established by his record as president, is that he is as committed to outlawing abortion in the United States as any other conservative Republican.

There is no reason, then, to take seriously his remarks on Sunday, in an interview on NBCs Meet the Press, where he criticized strict abortion bans and tried to distance himself from the anti-abortion policies of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake, Trump said, taking aim at Gov. Ron DeSantiss decision to sign a six-week ban into law in Florida in April. Trump also rejected the 15-week federal ban pushed by his former vice president, Mike Pence, and promised to negotiate a compromise with Democrats on abortion. Both sides are going to like me, he said. Im going to come together with all groups, and were going to have something thats acceptable.

Trump is triangulating. He sees, correctly, that the Republican Party is now on the wrong side of the public on abortion. By rejecting a blanket ban and making a call for compromise with Democrats, Trump is trying to fashion himself as an abortion moderate, a strategy that also rests on his pre-political persona as a liberal New Yorker with a live-and-let-live attitude toward personal behavior.

There is a real chance this could work. In 2016, voters did not see Trump as a conservative figure on either abortion or gay rights, despite the fact that he was the standard-bearer for the party that wanted restrictions on both. It would be a version of the trick he pulled on Social Security and Medicare, where he posed as a defender of programs that have been in the cross-hairs of conservative Republicans since they were created.

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Opinion | Donald Trumps Abortion Shell Game - The New York Times