Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right you guys, introducing Dave DeCamp.
He's been writing some stuff for us very recently here at antiwar.com.
And yeah, so first of all, welcome to the show.
How are you doing Dave?
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, happy to have you here.
What a ridiculous Russiagate article.
You might have thought the Russiagate thing and all the fake articles might come to an end with the Mueller report and all that, but nope.
Instead, this headline reads, NBC claims Russians plan to give African Americans combat training.
Let me guess, the John Birch Society?
You went and found some American Opinion magazine from 1955?
Something like that, is that right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, NBC News, huh?
Yeah, NBC News.
This came out May 20th, so last week.
All right, so I guess take us through their claims.
Yeah, so basically, their headline reads, Russian documents reveal desire to sow racial discord and violence in the U.S.
And right in the beginning, in the third paragraph of the article, it says the documents were obtained through the Dossier Center, which they describe as a London-based investigative project funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
And then the next sentence is, NBC News has not independently verified the material.
So, right there, they're off on the foot that they're citing documents that they haven't verified.
I like how they say, but forensic analysis by the same guys that gave it to us appears to substantiate it.
So, yeah, that's pretty good.
Yeah, so first off, where this information is coming from, the Dossier Center, Khodorkovsky, he used to be the richest man in Russia in 2003.
He's a billionaire from Russia, and he was arrested for fraud sometime around that.
And then Putin pardoned him eventually, and part of their agreement was that he was going to leave the country or face further charges and go back to jail.
I think he lived in Switzerland for a little while, but he's living in England now, and this is an investigative journalism company.
And his net worth now is about $500 million, so he has some reasons to be mad at Putin and the people that are in the Kremlin now.
You know, what I like about this story is that on top of the thinness of the sourcing here is the thinness of the claim, especially compared to the headline and some of the more radical accusations about what they were planning.
It doesn't seem like they have too much of a plan in there anywhere.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'll get into the claims now.
So basically, they claimed that it was communications between Russians that were indicted by Robert Mueller in 2018.
And so the claims were that they were going to recruit African Americans, transport them to camps in Africa for combat prep, training, and sabotage.
And then they would be sent back to America to foment violence and work to establish a pan-African state in the South.
Did they not throw in Black Lives Matter?
I mean, it seems like as long as you're going for it.
Yeah.
No, they actually didn't.
They didn't name Black Lives Matter, but they said that they would target incarcerated African Americans with experience in organized crime groups, as well as members of a radical black movement for participation in civil disobedience actions.
That's funny.
I wonder how many right-wingers read this and said, I finally believe in Russiagate now.
Yeah, right?
No, I'm sorry.
So go ahead.
Yeah, so those are the claims.
So those are pretty big claims, because the Russian that they named, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that was indicted in 2018 by Mueller, that was the Internet Research Agency.
You remember all that?
They were accused of interfering in the election through Facebook ads and advertisements.
Right.
So that was the indictment.
That's what they were accused of.
It's never been in a court of law.
It never will be.
But anyway, so it's a big jump to go from Facebook ads and advertisements to combat training, trying to start a war, a civil war in America.
Well, what's funny, of course, is the guy that runs the IRA here, I mean, the accusations here, they don't seem to fit at all.
First of all, even they call him, I mean, this is so funny, and you point this out and you're right up here about how they call this guy Prigozhin or whatever from the research agency, Putin's chef, like, you know, Jimmy Two Times or whatever, you know, like it's his mobster nickname.
And it means he goes around with a butcher knife doing things to people or something.
But no, it just means that he ate at his restaurant a couple of times.
That's all it means.
So now this guy, yeah, as you're saying, before this, the accusations were he bought some Facebook ads.
Now he's got an operation or he's proposing or is a part of some operation to recruit American blacks, take them to Africa to teach them how to shoot.
But so, I mean, in this article, do they claim that there are any details about how this was even supposed to work or anything?
Well, the article says that the plan that were very light on details.
Well, there's no indication that the plan, which is light on details, was ever put into action.
So they don't get into more detail than that.
So in other words, whatever they were shown, it was just enough to report that somebody said something like this.
Yeah.
So but the funny part is, is that Prigozhin, Putin's chef, who is the one that's named, he's not even one of the Russians named as sending or receiving these communications, as they call it.
It's just people that are linked to him.
Oh, really?
Okay.
So, yeah, it's not much of a fraud.
And by what way are they linked to him?
Who is it that supposedly did this then?
So the two Russians that they named that sent the communication, one of them was a, works for the Internet Research Agency and was indicted in 2018.
And then, and then it names Russian businessman Mikhail Potepkin.
So they described him as a Russian businessman.
And then I looked into him a little more and he's a business partner of Anna Bogusheva.
She was indicted and she worked for the IRA in 2014 for like two or three months as a translator.
So, but she was indicted as part of the Mueller, previous Mueller indictment?
Yes.
Even though she hadn't worked there for at least two years by the time 2016 rolled around?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
The whole thing is all made up, so I don't expect much consistency in it or anything.
So that's fine.
Yeah.
It's one of the, those things like you start pulling out a loose thread and it just falls apart.
Yeah.
It makes a great headline for those who want to believe.
So, oh my God, they're sowing racial discontent.
You know, in other words, there was nothing else to complain about until the Russians brought in their secret mind control Facebook program.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, you know, as we can remember, you know, the run up to the 2016 election, it was a pretty crazy time politically in America, obviously.
And yeah, NBC just likes to blame it on Russian interference and a couple of Facebook ads.
Yeah.
Boy, those, those Facebook ads really radicalized me.
I know that.
Yeah.
Hang on just one sec for me.
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So anyway, yeah, now, oh, it's funny, even NBC article at the end says that, you know, yeah, back in the day there were some black communists in the early 20th century, you know, a hundred years ago who believed in the Soviet Union, you know, in the time right after the revolution and went to the Soviet Union.
They proposed forming a quote, black belt nation in the South.
Geez, NBC, is this something we need to be worried about today?
A communist, blacks, nationalist, secessionist state somewhere in the South?
And the Russians are behind it all, huh?
The Soviets even, I bet, you know?
Sorry, I'm just, I'm just commentating on your interview now.
But there was that lady Joy, Joy something or other from MSNBC was the one who was repeatedly calling Russia the Soviet Union and calling them communists.
Oh my God, the communists are taking over our electoral process and all this stuff.
As though the last 30 years hadn't happened.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyways.
One quote that they threw in and I thought was funny from Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence.
He wrote a book called The Red Web.
This is his quote.
They come up with pitches, some of them very ambitious.
They discuss many possible ideas and then send the pitches to the Kremlin to be authorized or rejected.
It's their modus operandi.
And then nothing, nothing to back up that claim.
They just quote this guy, you know?
And I looked into him a little more.
The Red Web, it's a book about like a surveillance state in Russia.
But yeah, they just throw these quotes in to scare people.
Yeah, in other words, he's an exile.
Might as well be from the Iraqi National Congress with an axe to grind, obviously.
And then as you're saying, yeah, he's just talking about, oh, you know how they do it.
He didn't say in this case, he knows that's how it was done or anything like that.
He just wanted, he would have you believe that Putin goes over these proposals and, you know, very well could authorize something like that to happen.
And then, of course, it would happen if Putin said so.
You know, this is exactly what, you know, the American black civil rights protesters would do, is go and sign up with a foreign power to then do what?
I don't know, march on downtown Waco and take it over, I guess.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so let me ask you this.
Did you see much discussion of this article?
Because it did, as I was saying in the introduction there, it kind of came out a little too late for all this.
And I know some of the Democrats are trying to still run with the Russia thing for a little while here.
But, yeah, it seems so ridiculous and so insulting and all that kind of thing that maybe there would be a little bit of a reaction against it.
Or, I mean, for that matter, maybe it fits with some confirmation bias so much that some people really championed it or anything, you know?
You know, I didn't really see much about it because I was looking around.
Also, I like a lot of people who have been really good on Russiagate, like Aaron Maté and Jimmy Doors and stuff.
I didn't see them post or do any videos on it.
And, yeah, I didn't really see it come out in many places, maybe because it was so ridiculous.
Yeah.
I mean, the thing is, the fact that they would, never mind the exiles and those, you know, Khodorkovsky and these others with the axe to grind, but that NBC would go ahead and run with this after so many of these have fallen apart.
So many of theirs, even.
And after the Mueller report came out and said, yeah, huh, kind of that whole scare, really, two and a half year, almost three year scare and two year investigation.
Yeah, no, it was really nothing there.
But they're still going to come out with stuff like this.
And then they're going to cite some old first Red Scare, like Wilson years, original Red Scare stuff, in order to try to bolster the point.
And they got to be kidding.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah, they're still.
And I mean, all this Russia, even after the Mueller report came out, you know, no collusion.
You see, I'm sure you saw that Daily Beast article about Tulsi Gabbard.
Yeah.
Well, go ahead and tell that story for people who didn't see it.
Yes.
So I think the headline, it was something like Tulsi Gabbard campaign donations are Russia files, whatever, whatever that means.
And they go on to like cite three examples of donors to her campaign.
And I just remember two.
One was Stephen Cohen.
Right.
He's a professor of Russian history.
And.
And is the spouse of the editor of The Nation or at least former, I think maybe she just resigned, but very acceptable mainstream American within the three by five index card of allowable opinion on most things.
You know, so in other words, he, as you just said, yeah, he's some professor.
What of it doesn't mean anything.
Yeah.
And then one of the other donors was that worked for our key worker.
He put out his occupation and he worked for Lee Camp's show.
I forget what it's called.
Redacted tonight.
And, you know, that's those are American journalists living in America.
Donating to a candidate.
They just have, you know, it's not it's just such a ridiculous claim.
And it's only three examples.
And it's all because she promotes diplomacy over war, because she meets with Assad and, you know, stuff like that.
Yep.
There was another attack in the Daily Beast against her for, you know, some guy who raised money for her, you know, also said something stupid on Facebook one time or something.
So now she's responsible for that.
You know, she's already got a run and scare.
They haven't even started yet.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the lowest form of criticism that is just attacking the people that support her.
Although, you know, I don't know, man.
I did notice that Matt Taibbi wrote a thing really attacking those Daily Beast guys or attacking their take.
He should have made a little more personal, I think.
But, you know, there's seems like in this day and age, there could be a little bit more accountability for those guys.
All right.
Well, anyway, listen, I should stop wasting your time on everybody's Monday off here Memorial Day.
But I appreciate you joining me to help, you know, highlight this one more piece of ridiculous anti-Russia propaganda for this season here.
Why not?
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, you too, Dave.
Everybody, that's Dave DeCamp.
He's been writing for us at Antiwar.com.
Check him out.
News.
Antiwar.com.
Writing with Jason also on the blog and in the articles section and all the sections.
Check him out at Antiwar.com.
Appreciate it.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at LibertarianInstitute.org, at ScottHorton.org, Antiwar.com and Reddit.com slash Scott Horton Show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at FoolsErrand.us.
