"Useful idiot" is a specific historical term used by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov to describe the Soviets' naive, idealistic western communists and fellow travellers who thought they "had seen the future and it works". Its use is not pejorative, but impersonally historical and contextual. The shoe fits Dunn, which is why it fits him as well as it did his political ancestors--Lincoln Steffens, the Holodomor-hiding NY Times reporter Walter Duranty, the socialist activist Webbs, GB Shaw, the "don't fight the imperialist war!" 1939-41 CPUSA:
"“[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
The term "useful idiot" fits so well because Dunn has chosen to walk in his political ancestors' blood-soaked footsteps.
Ukraine, having no structured, institutionalized program of Tsarist (the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1903) and Bolshevik-style "active measures" program, has no team of "useful idiots" so inaccurately described by Mr. Dunn.
Dunn's myths are easy to demolish under evidentiary light:
"myth that Russia's invasion was unprovoked": Russia's imperial Ukraine erasure obsession is three centuries old, starting with Peter, and continued by Catherine, the Alexanders' and the Nicholases' language and media bans and Stalin's genocidal Holodomor. Its correlation with Ukrainian and western behavior is a very simple number: zero. Russia rapes Ukraine, including the systematic looting of its art treasures similar to the Nazis' Rape of Europa, and Dunn slut-Nazi--shames the rape victim for dressing provocatively and flirting with the richer, stronger guy across town.
"played as a pawn": Classic neo-imperial bigotry about Ukrainians as passive peasants with no agency subjugated by a corrupt and weak failed state. Tim Snyder's Yale course on youtube makes clear how this prejudice was inherited from both WWI and Nazi Germany and Tsarist Russia, Ukraine and its granary being absolutely central to the imperial ambitions of both. Being totally ahistorical, Dunn has no idea who he's parroting.
"powerful and violent faction, "powerful neo-Nazi militias"--The Ukronazi myth demolished by numbers. The hard right in Ukraine got 2% of the 2019 election's vote vs 25% in Italy, 45% in France, 13% in Germany, 15% in Spain, 20% in Sweden. If homegrown Nazis justify invasion, 45% LePen voting France should be at the head of the queue. Somehow, the only country in Europe with a serious Nazi problem voted 73% to elect its first Jewish president, which led Lavrov the Liar to repeat the classic anti-semitic trope that Jews can be Nazis and Hitler was part Jewish, making Jews responsible for their own genocide. This victim-blaming movie is a very old rerun.
Dunn is, of course, eternally silent on the genocidal rants of Russia’s leaders that long predate any of the phony "provocations" fabricated by the insidiously fraudulent Russian useful idiot Jacques Baud and refuted by the Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2022/05/22/how-accurate-is-jacques-bauds-analysis-of-the-war-in-ukraine/). Then he sends me useful idiocy by the Assad apologist Aaron Maté, who's appeared on tiki-torched Tucker's Putinist propaganda program. From his Wikipedia page:
"The Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees, an organization supportive of Bashar al-Assad, awarded Maté and The Grayzone its Serena Shim Award.[14] With regard to Maté's reporting on the Syrian Civil War, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue stated that, among the 28 social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations which it studied, Maté was the most prolific spreader of disinformation on topics related to the war, including use of chemical weapons....Maté had been accused of publishing anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian tropes related to the war in Ukraine."
They are both nothing more than 21st century versions of the Hitler handshaking Lindbergh and exiled Duke and Duchess Windsor and the "don't fight the Jews' war" Father Coughlin.
Here's the truth about Azov Battalion, numbering 900-2500 men out of 700000 under arms in Ukraine, and financed by a Ukrainian-Jewish billionaire, Igor Kolomoisky, from an Israeli-Russian expert who studies far right movements in the post-Soviet sphere:
"Vyacheslav Likhachev is a prominent historian and political scientist. He is a head of the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group and member of the expert council of the Center for Civil Liberties, who has been studying far-right radicalism. Likhachev has been running a hate crime monitoring program in Ukraine for fifteen years. For more than twenty years, he has studied xenophobia and far-right movements in the post-Soviet sphere and authored many books on Nazism and right-wing extremism, as well as research papers like “Right Far Radicals on Both Sides of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict”. He is an Israeli from Russia. He’s been actively involved in preserving Jewish historical and cultural heritage for many years. Now more than ever, he’s asked questions about Azov, a favorite and perhaps the only argument in Russian propaganda about neo-Nazism in Ukraine....In the cases discussed, it makes sense to limit the statement that Azov is one of the Ukrainian National Guard’s units, which has been protecting Mariupol and Azovstal.
So, the short answer to the question is no, Azov is not a neo-Nazi regiment. However, let’s take a closer look and go through the most popular questions.
Are all members of the regiment neo-Nazis?
Of course not. In the ranks of the National Guard, as well as in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there are no units created on ideological grounds.
The only possible ideology of the National Guard is the Disciplinary Statute. Which, by the way, enshrines the obligation to “respect human rights, honor and dignity” and “refrain from statements and actions that violate human rights or degrade human honor and dignity.”
Among the founders and fighters of Azov Battalion were individuals with far-right views and a neo-Nazi background. However, not all the battalion’s founders fit this description. Among the first Azov soldiers, for example, was a group of Automaidan activists, including several ethnic Jews (and at least one Israeli citizen). By the end of 2014, most far-right fighters left the regiment. The rest of the right-wing radicals who openly articulated their views were deliberately “cleansed” by the new regiment command in 2017. Since then, there have been no grounds for accusations that neo-Nazis serve in the Azov Regiment. (read the rest here: https://medium.com/the-ukrainian-view/is-azov-neo-nazi-an-expert-in-far-right-radicalism-answers-the-common-questions-7a48547b592b)
Where the real Nazis are: in Wagner PMC, whose skinhead founder, Dmitry Utkin, named it for Hitler's favorite composer, has SS tattoos just under his collar in this photo with Putin (https://euromaidanpress.com/2018/03/25/putin-may-soon-make-veterans-of-hybrid-wars-new-symbol-of-russias-future-shtepa-says/).
Reread the necrophiliac rape metaphor Putin used and then see if you can repeat your blame the rape victim thesis (from https://justsecurity.org):
"Then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev quoted in a conversation with an industry watchdog official – “Russian Prime Minister: Ukraine Has ‘No Industry, or State” (April 5, 2016)
There is “neither industry, nor a state there” in Ukraine. In 2013, there was “industry there, but there was no state even then.”
Russian economist and pundit Mikhail Khazin remarks – “They need to be partially eliminated” – YouTube video (December 27, 2016)
Ukraine has “several million people [not loyal to Russia]” who “need to be partially eliminated and partially squeezed out.”
“New Russia,” or the territories from Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye, and Dnepropetrovsk, “should be joined to the Russian regions, with full denazification, deukrainization.”
Russia should institute a “complete ban on Ukrainian fonts, Ukrainian texts, programs on [the] Ukrainian language, on teaching Ukrainian – ie completely.”
These implementations will cause a “surplus population – let the surplus population go to the [Russian] Far East.”
Former Putin aide Vladislav Surkov in Q&A – Surkov: “I’m Interested in Acting Against Reality” – Actual Comments website (February 26, 2020)
Surkov’s “vanity is forever satisfied by the fact that [he] put [his] hand and head into the building of a new Russian state.”
There is “no Ukraine,” although there is “Ukrainianism” – a “specific mental disorder. Surprisingly brought to the extreme degree passion for ethnography. Such bloody lore. Muddle instead of the state. There is borscht, Bandera, bandura. But there is no nation.”
Donbass “does not deserve such humiliation” of returning to Ukraine. Ukraine “does not deserve such honor.”
Putin – “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” – Kremlin (July 12, 2021)
The incorporation of “western Russian lands into the single state” was the product of “common faith, shared cultural traditions, and – I would like to emphasize it once again – language similarity.”
There is “no historical basis” for the “idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.”
Ukrainization was “often imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians.”
Modern Ukraine is “entirely the product of the Soviet era” shaped on the “lands of historical Russia.” Hence, Russia “was robbed.”
Ukraine’s leaders “began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united [Russia and Ukraine], and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.”
The “slogans, ideology, and blatant aggressive Russophobia” of “radical nationalist groups” have become “defining elements of state policy in Ukraine.”
Ukraine “peddle[s] Russophobia” and prefers to “exploit the image of the ‘victim of external aggression.’”
Russia and Ukraine together have “always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For [they] are one people.“
Medvedev op-ed – “Why Contacts with the Current Ukrainian Leadership are Meaningless” – Kommersant (October 11, 2021)
Ukrainian leaders are “people who do not have any stable self-identification. Who are they, what country are they citizens of, what is their historical identity, ethnic component, what gods do they pray to?”
There are “no fools to fight for Ukraine. And it is pointless for [Russia] to deal with vassals. Business must be done with the suzerain.”
Putin in press conference (February 8, 2022) and in official remarks (February 21, 2022) – An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent – Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy
“‘Like it or not, take it, my beauty’” references a “vulgar Russian rhyme about necrophiliac rape, implying an intention to inflict similar destruction on Ukraine and a view of Ukraine as a corpse.”
Modern Ukraine is considered to be “entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.”
Russia is “ready to show what real decommunization would mean for Ukraine.”
From Russian state TV, quoted in Newsweek:
"Henry Sardaryan, Dean at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) says that the former territories of the Russian empire and of the Soviet Union are "Russia's territories" that Moscow should unilaterally control," Davis wrote in a caption. Referring to the ex-Soviet states, Sardaryan told his fellow guests on Russian state TV: "This is our land, our territory of strategic interests."
"Everything that used to be part of the Russian empire and then part of the Soviet Union is the territory of Russia's strategic interests," the academic added.
"Let me remind you that our czars came to these lands several centuries ago," said Sardaryan. "It wasn't so that the U.S., Britain and Turkey could stick their nose in there, trying to provoke us or to force us to play by new rules, or creating new formats for dealing with them."
"Without any compromises, we shouldn't contend with anyone in these regions... There should be no other players for us to deal with. This is our territory."
"Maybe we can use the results of such an investigation as a reason to halt the war in Ukraine, once and for all"
--If Russia withdraws from Ukraine the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, it ceases to exist. Dunn ignores this asymmetry with false moral equivalence that's a perfect echo of "don't fight the imperialist (or Jews') war of 1939-41. Nine former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states + Denmark and Finland have just pledged at Ramstein to support Ukraine with all whatever equipment it takes to secure Ukraine's victory even if that means drawing down their own defenses. That's the only way to halt the war.
Dunn's generic bothsides-ism and moral equivalence are as illegitimate and inapplicable here as they were with respect to Germany and the USSR vs Poland in 1939 or in Nanjing in 1937-38. But Mr. Dunn’s hubris in thinking his de-escalation skill set from working in tech customer service can cancel Russian history and turn geopolitical conflict between irreconcilable opposites into a simple therapy problem is relentlessly impervious to evidence.
When Mr. Dunn advocates pulling the plug on aid to Ukraine, it’s like confronting an eighth grade recidivist active shooter in a school by advising the smaller fifth grade kid he’s shot and wounded to just surrender while telling the other kids they should not intervene to save the wounded kid. He says he’s on the side of peace while saying we should just act like the Uvalde police who stood around and did nothing because they were afraid of the shooter massacring the kids.
Zaluzhny knows the time for negotiation will come only after Ukraine splits the Russians' land bridge to Crimea, takes back its economically vital Sea of Azov ports, which will force the Russians out of Crimea. That’s what he meant by his "it’s not yet time" reference to Finland's Marshal Mannerheim moment. Before that moment the war cannot end with Ukraine as a viable state.
When you advocate that the West stop arming Ukraine and unconditional negotiations by the US over Ukraine's head before Zaluzhny’s Mannerheim moment, you are hoping for Ukrainian failure and Russian success, i.e., cheering for the rapist because you've deployed Russian useful idiot disinformation to brand the rape victims as a Nazi slut. In the USA he can hide behind the first amendment. Under the UK’s libel laws, an enterprising Ukrainian would make him pay for his lies.
