Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young Men by reaverfan

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Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young Men

POSTED BY: REAVERFAN
UPDATED: Thursday, August 30, 2018 19:58
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Thursday, August 30, 2018 12:19 PM

Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young Men
Fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, and motorcycle gangs serve as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries.

Deep in the forests of Slovakia, former Russian Spetsnaz commandos trained young men from a right-wing paramilitary group called the Slovak Conscripts. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, some of these freshly-minted paramilitaries went to fight with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine while others stayed at home to agitate against nato as a “terrorist organization.”

On the streets of the French city Marseille, Russian soccer hooligans sporting tattoos with the initials of Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU, brutally attacked English soccer fans in June 2016, sending dozens of bloodied fans to the hospital. Alexander Shprygin, an ultranationalist agitator and the head of the All-Russian Union of Supporters (a soccer fan club that he claims was established at the behest of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB), was arrested during the melee and deported from France.

In Budapest’s Fiumei Road Cemetery in May 2017, a Russian motorcycle gang carrying giant red flags displaying the Soviet hammer and sickle rode up to a World War II memorial. Somewhat incongruously, the tattooed bikers, accompanied by pinstriped Russian Embassy diplomats, disembarked from their motorcycles to lay red carnations in front of the memorial and then posted a video clip of it online.

It seems almost too strange to be true: fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, and motorcycle gangs serving as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries. It sounds more like an episode of The Americans with a dash of Mad Max and Fight Club mixed in. Yet this is exactly what is happening across Europe and North America as Russia’s intelligence services co-opt fringe radicals and angry young men to try to undermine Western democracies from within. And not just in the virtual world, but in real life.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/russia-is-co
-opting-angry-young-men/568741/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=2018-08-29T10%3A00%3A27&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_campaign=the-atlantic

We see it right here, every day.

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Thursday, August 30, 2018 2:33 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

More on that;

https://bit.ly/2ovfsah

"Russian intelligence has connections to right-wing hooligans in several European countries, Germany included. As I reported two years ago, there are detectable connections between Kremlin military intelligence, known as GRU, and football hooligans in Western Europe. Russia has forged ties to right-wing hooligans under the guise of sport solidarity, while some of Moscow’s violence-prone professional superfans, called ultras, are known GRU operatives.

Moreover, GRU, which has formed links with far-right activists across Europe, has been busy in Germany doing the same thing, as uncovered by the journalist Boris Reitschuster, who two years ago warned that Moscow was building secret cadres of German agents under the cover of sport. As Reitschuster explained, GRU employs Russian martial arts clubs to spot and assess potential recruits, to be used for future espionage and even attacks on German targets.

Is this what’s happening in Chemnitz this week? Gunter Pilz, a German academic specializing in the intersection of sport and extremism, explains that there is a real and growing problem here. “The new hooligan scene is quite clearly oriented to the right wing,” he stated regarding the Chemnitz debacle. “Unlike the hooligan scene in the 1980s, groups today are very well organized and networked,” Pilz explained, adding, “The scene is heavily dominated by Russian hooligans who organize martial arts events.” Some of them are proud of their part in the mayhem. Russian nationals have boasted about traveling to Chemnitz from Bavaria, arriving with baseball bats to help the right-wing protestors."

more at: https://bit.ly/2ovfsah

Kremlin's new brand of disruption, agitation and digital warfare here we go.

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Thursday, August 30, 2018 3:21 PM

REAVERFAN

When meddling in elections just isn't enough...

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Thursday, August 30, 2018 7:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

OH NOEZ!

The Russians hacked muh soccer club!

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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