Follow the Truth

There is a marketing agency in Vilnius called Truth.  I like their email address: hello@truth.lt.  They appear to do a lot of advertising, or rather marketing work for local companies with some nice looking logos, or rather branding, that is a cut above other such efforts I have seen in Vilnius.  I don't know how much truth there is in it, but I imagine much more than will be Donald Trump's new social media platform.

It may not be the death of irony, as George Takei jokes, but the title should give everyone pause.  "Truth" was the banner head of the Soviet Union propaganda machine, although they called it Pravda, the name of the state newspaper.  Trump doesn't make much effort to disguise his sources. 

Interesting that Donald chooses to launch his new political organ on the eve of the Virginia governor election, a little more than a week away.  The conservative candidate is a staunch Trump ally, although Youngkin has tried to distance himself in the final stretch, much to the Donald's chagrin.  If the Republican candidate wins, you can bet Trump will take all the credit.  If he loses, well, the election was rigged.

It's become an all too convenient refrain.  Even here in Lithuania, the losing faction in the last parliamentary election continues to claim the polls were skewed and that they should still be in power.  The leader of the party has been acting like a prime minister in exile, refusing to take part in the parliament, mostly because he can't stand the idea it is currently ruled by women.  There is little doubt he was behind the mini-insurrection we witnessed at the tail end of summer, but so far the parliamentary commission investigating the protest has been unable to make a definitive connection.  

However, some members of his party had enough of all this deceit in the wake of this unruly protest, and left to form their own faction.  One wishes that would be the case with Republicans, but they seem bound at the hip to Trump as long as he retains control of the base of the party.

What got me is how House Republicans couldn't even vote to have Steve Bannon criminally charged with contempt, in fear they would run afoul of their electorate.  Only 9 Republicans were willing to break ranks and join the Democrats in issuing formal charges against Bannon after he defied his subpoena to bear testimony before the January 6 investigation.  They were quickly admonished for their lack of fealty to the Party of Trump.  What makes this ironic is that Trump himself cut ties with Bannon shortly into his administration, when the dark lord of campaign strategists became too toxic even for his tastes.  All though, Trump did pardon Bannon on his last day in office, despite no formal charges having yet been brought against him.

Bannon had tried to stir up trouble in Europe after leaving the Trump White House.  It's been mixed results.  Hungary and Poland very definitely appear to be headed in the wrong direction, but attempts to create a popular uprising in Germany failed in the last parliamentary election with the reactionary political parties doing poorly, or at least not as well as they expected.  That would have been a major coup for the religious conservative populists.

Part of the problem is that COVID effectively shut down the borders, not just to waves of refugees that inundated the EU a few years back, but to travel in general, making it difficult to keep immigration a political issue.  Still, efforts persist, like the Belarusian attempt to flood the Lithuanian and Polish borders with refugees they fly in from Greece and Iraq.  Lithuania and Poland petitioned the EU for money to help fortify their borders, only to be rebuffed.  If they erect new fences, it will be on their own euro dime.  The EU simply doesn't see this as an issue, at least not yet, and most EU citizens appear to agree.

Plus, Europeans are more circumspect of these far right populist movements.  Nazi Germany and other Fascist regimes remain a recent memory.  It was only in 1975 that dictatorship ended in Spain with the death of Franco, and King Juan Carlos initiated a transition toward democracy.  Portugal and Greece similarly began their transformation toward democracy that year.  This was a major turning point in Europe, as it opened the door for EU ascension of these countries, greatly expanding the original European Community.  

Of course, some view the EU today as a dictatorship.  Hungary has become a darling of American conservative pundits for defying EU policy.  Recently, Poland also chose to impose harsh laws against abortion and gay marriage that go against EU law.  Both countries are in danger of losing substantial EU subsidies as a result.  But, these countries were headed in this direction long before Steve Bannon reared his ugly head on the continent.  

The driving force behind these conspiratorial regimes is Russia.  The Kremlin has been trying to drive a wedge in the EU ever since Putin consolidated power in himself in the early 2000s.  He uses a wide array of methods to support and underwrite political parties that are favorable toward Russia, including here in Lithuania.  The Farmers and Green Union appears to be one such party.  It rose to prominence in the 2016 parliamentary elections after holding only one seat in the previous session.  Their meteoric rise was largely due to the immense popularity of one man, Saulius Skvernelis, a former police chief, who fit the law and order theme that was pervading the country at the time.  Quite a number of former police chiefs won political office that year.  This was a dark omen as Lithuania had drifted into autocracy during the interwar years after gaining independence from Tsarist Russia.  The Kremlin still sees the Baltic countries and much of Eastern Europe as being in its sphere of influence, and quite actively tries to influence elections in these countries.  Fortunately, Lithuanians regained their senses in 2020.

This should have been a red flag in 2015 when Trump became a prominent candidate in the Republican primaries.  Russia was actively looking to test its influence in the US, and Trump was essentially their candidate.  With the help of Cambridge Analytica and other political consulting firms, the Kremlin was able to draw on a vast array of social media connections to specifically target key states and effectively turn the election in his favor, if just barely.  They even went so far as to lure a shadow candidate, Jill Stein, whose sole purpose was to steal a few votes away from Hillary, which proved costly in key Midwestern states.  This was the focus of The Mueller Investigation, which so enraged Trump throughout the first half of his administration.

Truth was not on Trump's side and he knew it, but of course that didn't stop him from trying to bend the truth in his favor, especially when Mueller did not present any criminal charges specifically against him.  Trump claimed he had been exonerated, totally, even if he had never been under investigation in  the first place.  His Attorney General, Jeff Sessions at the time, made sure of that, although he received no thanks for his gallant efforts.  Trump was furious that the investigation went as far as it did, resulting in criminal convictions against several persons in his administration, including  the notorious former General Mike Flynn, also pictured at the notorious dinner table with Putin.  Trump pardoned all of those found guilty as a result of the Mueller Investigation.

Flynn and Bannon are both tied to the January 6 rally.  Like so many who supported Trump, they wanted to stage a coup that would keep him in office.  Flynn didn't mince his words on the subject, yet for some odd reason the military has not taken any action against him or his brother, who many feel purposely held back National Guard support for the Capitol Police trying to keep the protesters at bay that day.   One hopes that the 1/6 investigation will be able to find conclusive evidence of this attempt to stage a January Revolution and keep Biden from assuming office two weeks later.  Yes, shades of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Ironically, it was this revolution that led to Lithuania and the other Baltic countries gaining their independence in 1918.  With Russia fighting its own internecine war, The Baltics could forge their own identities, which they tried to do between 1918 and 1940.  However, the rise of Fascism to the West and the consolidation of the Soviet Union to the East meant they had no chance of retaining their independence.  Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia fell to the Soviet Union in 1940, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, then briefly under German occupation before finally being annexed by the USSR in 1944.

Lithuania's post-Soviet independence (31 years) has surpassed that of their interwar independence (22 years), but still feels very fragile.  While Putin has formally recognized these countries' independence, he has never visited them, and has thrown doubt on their independence at various times in the press.  Worse, he has managed to find Lithuanian agent provocateurs within the country to sow these seeds of doubt.

The US appears to be at a similar breaking point.  If Trump and his allies cannot wrest the nation back from the Democrats, then they will seek to break it up.  We are already seeing the strains in Texas and Florida, where the two state governors are openly defying the president at every turn, not just in response to COVID, but also immigration, abortion and a wide variety of other issues including school curriculum, where the so-called critical race theory has been banned.  If you are wondering what that is, I wrote about it before.  The next step is secession if the Republicans are unable to regain control of Congress next year, as they believe they are capable of doing.

You begin to realize just how fragile democracy is and that you should never take it for granted.  While it is funny to tease Trump in social media for his ludicrous ramblings, there are many who will "Follow the Truth," as he calls it, and join him on his new social media platform. The one thing he has proven remarkably successful at is branding, or re-branding in this case.  I wouldn't be surprised if Putin suggested the title himself.  

The Party of Trump, aka GOP, has become more nuanced, using dog whistles to get its message across, hoping to attract less critical attention, but the media has done a pretty good job of ferreting Youngkin out.  I just hope Virginians take note, as persons like these see democracy as a means to an end.  Get elected then impose an autocratic government that greatly limits public participation while retaining the veneer of democracy, as has been the case in many so-called red states.  Turning Virginia "Red" would once again give the Republicans a "Solid South," and we all know what happened last time this happened.