KREMLIN TAKES RUSSIA INSIDER TO THE WOOD SHED OVER SITE'S NEW "ANTI-SEMITIC" DIRECTION

It seems that the Kremlin is getting picky about the kind of support it gets from pro-Kremlin shills in the West, especially when it is dished up by someone who has "flipped over" into the "dark side" of hard-core, blanket anti-Semitism.

A couple of weeks ago, Russia Insider, a US-based site that claims 10 million views a month, decided that the Jews were the main obstacle facing Putin's Russia, and published an article entitled, "It's Time to Drop the Jew Taboo: It's making serious discussion of Russian geopolitics and history next to impossible." Written by the site's owner, Charles Bausmann, it essentially went with the idea, already common in many parts of the Alt-Right, that the Jews, as a people, are predisposed towards nefarious and malevolent behavior:

"The problem seems to arise when Jews get into positions of influence, i.e., when they join the dreaded 'elites.' Then, for some reason, regardless of their political sympathies or other particulars, they get up to no good - and something goes seriously wrong. Maybe the powerful Jewish institutions - the media, the banks, the movie studios, the music industry, etc, are in the hands of degenerates who demand bad behavior as the price of admission, and then enforce it. I really don't know, but obviously, the question begs for an examination, as the evidence suggests that much of human enterprise dominated and shaped by Jews is a bottomless pit of trouble with a peculiar penchant for mendacity and cynicism, hostility to Christianity and Christian values, and in geopolitics, a clear bloodlust."

The JQ is a tricky one, and should only ever be tackled from a perspective that is informed by deep scholarship, like that of Dr. Kevin MacDonald, fair-mindedness, and an emotionally neutral outlook. 

Once emotions become involved, it is extremely easy for anyone, even someone telling the absolute truth, to come across as a hate-filled bigot -- or to be presented as such. 

This is the pit into which sites like the Daily Stormer and The Right Stuff, who produce the Daily Shoah podcast, have fallen into. So far, Russia Insider has not fallen into those kinds of excesses, and has avoided the K-word and references to gas ovens, etc. But by presenting all Jews as a collective and strongly characterizing their behaviour in over-simplistic terms, it has lost a lot of nuance and subtlety in its approach.

Bausmann when the Kremlin thought he understood what they were doing.

This has already been noticed by the Kremlin, with Russia Today publishing an article to distance themselves from what they obviously see as Russia Insider's crude and possibly accelerating anti-Semitism. Written by Irish journalist Bryan MacDonald and titled, "Anti-Semitic tirade on western pro-Kremlin site betrays ignorance of Russia" the Russia Today article mounts a strong attack on Russia Insider:

"An outrageous anti-Semitic tirade on an American ‘pro-Russia’ blog-site proves that the inability to properly understand Russia often extends to westerners who think they are ‘supporting’ the country.

Since its inception, there have been numerous reasons to laugh at Russia Insider. There’s the way it brazenly steals content from professional news outlets and repackages it, with a twist. Not to mention the pseudo-messianic zeal of its founders, displayed in its initial fundraising videos. But it’s definitely not funny anymore...

we have a situation where a bunch of westerners are harming Russia by using the country’s name to promote an agenda which isn’t part of Russian discourse. And this is a phenomenon displayed in the behaviour of many zealots, who ‘support’ Russia as keyboard-warrior crusaders but don’t understand the place at all, in reality."

But while Russia Insider's recent anti-Semitic stance can be critiqued as politically naive and coming from what the article itself admits is only a partial understanding of the subject, the fact remains that there is a Jewish question to be answered. 

Bryan MacDonald's article ignores this by going to the other extreme, pretending that Russia is a multicultural paradise in which Jews always play a positive role. In this he apes the worst excesses of Soviet propaganda, rather than effectively critiquing Bausman's recent change of direction. 

"Anyway, rather than dwelling further on Bausman’s appalling spiel," Bryan MacDonald writes, "I’d rather think of figures such as the scientist Vitaly Ginzburg, the poet Osip Mandelstam, the novelist Boris Pasternak and the Chess master Alexander Khalifman. Not to mention contemporary public figures of Jewish descent like Vladimir Pozner, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Anzhelika Varum and Alexander Gordon. Who all add to the gaiety of the nation and do Russia some service. In contrast to Russia Insider’s pathetic attempt to hijack and attach Russian identity to its scandalous anti-Semitic slime."

The JQ is always tricky, but one thing is clear, a smart cookie like Vladimir Putin is not about to shackle himself to someone who is showing the first signs of developing an Andrew Anglin complex, even if his strategy in the Middle East is already deeply undermining the Jewish state.