Once upon a time, attacks on the press were physical. The printer’s type cases were tossed on the floor. The printing press was thrown in the river. The preacher’s church, mimeo machine and all, was burned by the KKK. Books were seized and burned. These attackers had something in common. They were fascist terrorists out to block the distribution of contrary opinions.
Now the attacks are electronic.
For the past several weeks, Independent Political Report has been subject to Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, nominally coming from Communist China and Serbia. In a DDOS attack, bots or masses of human operators are used to bombard the target site with download requests, the requests coming in at a high enough rate that no one else can reach the site or the site’s servers go down.
We have been the victim of multiple DDOS attacks, enough to swamp our servers. We moved to CloudFlare. Until we did tuning, the DDOS attacks were still able to bring our site down.
We do not know why we are under attack. To the best of my knowledge, these attacks have never before struck Independent Political Report or its predecessor, Third Party Watch. We are providing coverage of third party Presidential campaigns in an unusually heated Presidential election year. There are people who vigorously oppose any of our third parties running a Presidential candidate this year. These people plausibly see our newspaper as a threat.
The only obvious precedent for the current level of invective, claims that the election of Trump will lead to a dictatorship or that Biden is senile, is the election of 1860. In that year, Douglas ran for President, saying that the election of Lincoln would lead to civil war. As it turned out, Douglas was right. Lincoln won. The War of the Slaveholder’s Rebellion followed.
Jim and Nuna are equally wrong about Russia/Ukraine. Bipolar black and white views of the world and international conflicts are rarely anything close to accurate. Reality is much more complex, messy, and ambiguous.
The article/op is equally silly. The fact that the ddos attacks originated in or were routed through China and Serbia doesn’t tell us anything about what motivated them, whether they were government ordered or connected or not, whether they had anything to do with fascism or terrorism or even politics at all. IPR could have been collateral damage, not an intended target. It could have been kids trolling for lulz. Maybe someone didn’t like their comment not being posted and hired hackers to take revenge on site ownership. It could have been because some one made a typo in a Chinese pinyin keyboard. Etc.
Firstly, why are we now necroposting an article from January with the a single comment from March?
Secondly, “state capitalism” is communism.
“Half of its one hundred largest companies are majority state owned and another 10 percent are 10% – 49% state owned.” That is communism.
“Only 40% of its largest companies have less than 10% state ownership (not necessarily zero).” That is communism.
Thirdly, the statements “Russia is clearly fascist. Its economic system has nothing to do with it.” and “Fascists characteristically care nothing for individual liberty, are contemptuous of the weak, and believe they are surrounded by enemies, both internal and external, which leads them to conclude that life requires permanent warfare.” are clearly contradictory.
Russia is far more individualist and libertarian than most other countries and in particular every western country, including the US.
Individual liberties include economic liberty of the individual: an individual is free to move capital out of Russia to hostile nations like the US, but not vice versa – and no, it obviously isn’t Russia preventing an influx of foreign capital, it is the nazi “Ukraine” supporting evil west that does not allow individuals to move their own money as they see fit.
Russia is not contemptuous of the weak, unlike western countries, including the US. Elderly and disabled are much better looked after. Those with birth defects are allowed to be born, instead of being murdered in the womb as in the Godless west. Children are not allowed to be groomed, molested and abused, as they are in the Godless west where the state actively tries to sexualize children. Private charities, including religious, community and neighborhood charities, are common, instead of the government stealing individual’s money to redistribute as it sees fit like in the Godless west.
Russia is surrounded by enemies thanks to the west: endless color revolutions in Russia’s neighbors to topple democratically elected government in favor of pro-western ones, endless eastward expansion of NATO against all prior agreements. Endless assassinations and attempted assassination of those calling out the west over this.
Russia has never sought perpetual warfare, the west has. Russia has been very careful – far too careful – to ensure no possible civilians were injured, that civil infrastructure was not damaged, that the civil economy was not crippled. Meanwhile nazi “Ukraine” has done everything to attack Russian civilians including those they claim are “Ukrainian”: deliberately bombing Cathedrals and Monasteries during Christmas and Easter Mass, burning down hospitals and schools with patients and children inside them, crucifying and burning alive priests for propaganda videos, blowing up gas and oil pipelines, shooting down civilian airplanes, etc.
And what has the US done? Praise them for it, reward them with billions of dollars, give them weapons with which to continue their terrorism, accuse Russia of every atrocity “Ukraine” commits, pressure “Ukraine” to drop peace negotiations and violate ceasefire agreements.
Clearly Russia is not fascist; nazi “Ukraine” and its western cronies, including the US, are. To call Russia fascist is to invert reality.
And given that Russia is fighting banderite (i.e. fascist) “Ukraine”, and that Serbia fought ustashe (i.e. fascist) Croatia, such inversion of reality is all the more transparent and insulting.
Stop perpetuating fascist propaganda, because doing so makes you a fascist!
China prefers Trump because Biden has not only kept Trump’s tariffs, he has added more, and has also sworn that he would militarily stop China from invading Taiwan. Trump has indicated any US aid to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack was conditional upon Taiwan paying protection money, hinting that the form of those protection payments might need to come in the form of relocating semiconductor manufacturing into the US. Relocating those facilities to the US would mean the US would experience less disruption in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, and so would be less likely to interfere with such an invasion. China doesn’t like Trump but, by comparison, Trump is much softer on China than the Democrats and they do prefer him.
China is State Capitalist. Half of its one hundred largest companies are majority state owned and another 10 percent are 10% – 49% state owned. Only 40% of its largest companies have less than 10% state ownership (not necessarily zero). The stated intention of the Chinese government is to grow to the point where it will redistribute more wealth, “common prosperity”. That goal is always somewhere in the future. Under Xi it is said to be sometime between 2035 and 2050. If it ever gets there, then it will be State Socialist.
Russia is clearly fascist. Its economic system has nothing to do with it. Fascists are nothing more than pragmatic when it comes to economics. Fascism is authoritarian nationalism. Fascists believe that their individual identity is inseparable from a national myth. The role of the state is to interpret the collective will of the nation, so the highest obligation of the members of the nation is to be subordinate to the state. The state’s leader is given authoritarian power to enforce the nation’s will, as he interprets it. Fascists characteristically care nothing for individual liberty, are contemptuous of the weak, and believe they are surrounded by enemies, both internal and external, which leads them to conclude that life requires permanent warfare.
Some fascist quotes and slogans:
Blood and soil – NAZI slogan (Extended version: People are bound together by blood and bound to the soil of the nation.)
Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and heroism (Mussolini/Gentile)
Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of peace (Mussolini/Gentile)
War unites a nation through the shedding of blood (Gentile)
Our myth is the greatness of the nation. (Mussolini)
The growth of empire is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. (Gentile)
Keep those quotes in mind when thinking about how Putin has talked about the Ukraine invasion. It’s not just him. A sufficient number of Russian people have bought into it. Listen to how this guy talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZYtPQlmwTo
China is clearly for the Democrats. I don’t think your description of Russia is accurate. The market economy is robust, and in many ways less state controlled than in the west. I wouldn’t call Russia fascist.
Attackers from Serbia are probably proxies for the Putin regime in Russia. Both they and the CCP regime in China, I believe, want Trump to win the U.S. election, because they see him as less interventionist than Harris.
Especially in the case of Russia, Trump has made strong statements indicating he would favor withholding aid to Ukraine’s government and pressuring it to make peace. Probably these regimes have come to the conclusion that suppressing the alternative party vote will tend to help Trump more than hurt him, thus the attacks.
I think it’s fair to call Putin’s and Xi’s regimes fascist, as they both feature highly authoritarian political systems that allow private ownership and market activity, but only under tight State control.
How are you certain that fascists are behind these cyber attacks? From the locations you indicated the attacks originate from I’m not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.