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      Cómo fue que cuentas rusas ayudaron a desmantelar la Marcha de las Mujeres

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      Linda Sarsour despertó el 23 de enero de 2017, entró a internet y sintió náuseas.El fin de semana anterior, había ido a Washington para estar al frente de la Marcha de las Mujeres, una movilización contra el entonces presidente Donald Trump que superó todas las expectativas. Las multitudes se habían congregado antes del amanecer y para cuando ella subió al escenario, se extendían a lo lejos.Más de cuatro millones de personas de todo Estados Unidos habían participado, según cálculos posteriores de los expertos, que decían que esta marcha era una de las protestas de un solo día más grandes en la historia del país.Pero luego algo cambió, al parecer de la noche a la mañana. Lo que ella vio en Twitter ese lunes fue un torrente de quejas centradas en ella. En sus 15 años de activista, en su mayoría defendiendo los derechos de las personas musulmanas, había enfrentado respuestas negativas, pero esto era de otra magnitud. Una pregunta comenzó a formarse en su mente: ¿realmente me odian tanto?Esa mañana, sucedían cosas que Sarsour no podía ni imaginarse.A casi 6500 kilómetros de distancia, organizaciones vinculadas con el gobierno ruso habían asignado equipos para actuar en contra de la Marcha de las Mujeres. En los escritorios de las anodinas oficinas de San Petersburgo, los redactores estaban probando mensajes en las redes sociales que criticaban el movimiento de la Marcha de las Mujeres, haciéndose pasar por estadounidenses comunes y corrientes.Publicaron mensajes como mujeres negras que criticaban el feminismo blanco, mujeres conservadoras que se sentían excluidas y hombres que se burlaban de las participantes como mujeres quejumbrosas de piernas peludas. Pero uno de los mensajes funcionó mejor con el público que cualquier otro.En él se destacaba un elemento de la Marcha de las Mujeres que, en principio, podría parecer un simple detalle: entre las cuatro copresidentas del evento estaba Sarsour, una activista palestinoestadounidense cuyo hiyab la señalaba como musulmana practicante.Linda Sarsour, una de las líderes de la Marcha de las Mujeres, en enero de 2017. A los pocos días, los troles rusos la atacaron en internet.Theo Wargo/Getty ImagesDurante los 18 meses siguientes, las fábricas rusas de troles y su servicio de inteligencia militar se esforzaron por desacreditar el movimiento mediante la difusión de relatos condenatorios, a menudo inventados, en torno a Sarsour, cuyo activismo la convirtió en un pararrayos para la base deTrump y también para algunos de sus más ardientes opositores.Ciento cincuenta y dos cuentas rusas distintas produjeron material sobre ella. Los archivos públicos de las cuentas de Twitter que se ha comprobado que son rusas contienen 2642 tuits sobre Sarsour, muchos de los cuales llegaron a grandes audiencias, según un análisis de Advance Democracy Inc., una organización sin fines de lucro y apartidista que realiza investigaciones y estudios de interés público.Muchas personas conocen la historia sobre cómo se fracturó el movimiento de la Marcha de las Mujeres, que dejó cicatrices perdurables en la izquierda estadounidense.Una coalición frágil al principio, entró en crisis por la asociación de sus copresidentas con Louis Farrakhan, el líder de la Nación del Islam, ampliamente condenado por sus declaraciones antisemitas. Cuando esto salió a la luz, los grupos progresistas se distanciaron de Sarsour y de las copresidentas de la marcha, Carmen Pérez, Tamika Mallory y Bob Bland, y algunos pidieron que dimitieran.Pero también hay una historia que no se ha contado, que solo apareció años después en la investigación académica, de cómo Rusia se insertó en este momento.Durante más de un siglo, Rusia y la Unión Soviética trataron de debilitar a sus adversarios en Occidente al avivar las tensiones raciales y étnicas. En la década de 1960, oficiales de la KGB con base en Estados Unidos pagaron a agentes para que pintaran esvásticas en las sinagogas y profanaran los cementerios judíos. Falsificaron cartas racistas, supuestamente de supremacistas blancos, a diplomáticos africanos.No inventaron estas divisiones sociales, Estados Unidos ya las tenía. Ladislav Bittman, quien trabajó para la policía secreta en Checoslovaquia antes de desertar a Estados Unidos, comparó los programas de desinformación soviéticos con un médico malvado que diagnostica con pericia las vulnerabilidades del paciente y las explota, “prolonga su enfermedad y lo acelera hasta una muerte prematura en lugar de curarlo”.Hace una década, el presidente de Rusia, Vladimir Putin, supervisó un renacimiento de estas tácticas, con el fin de socavar las democracias de todo el mundo desde las sombras.Las redes sociales proporcionaban ahora una forma fácil de alimentar las ideas en el discurso estadounidense, algo que, durante medio siglo, la KGB había luchado por hacer. Y el gobierno ruso canalizó secretamente más de 300 millones de dólares a partidos políticos en más de dos docenas de países en un esfuerzo por influir en sus políticas a favor de Moscú desde 2014, según una revisión de la inteligencia estadounidense hecha pública la semana pasada.El efecto que estas intrusiones tuvieron en la democracia estadounidense es una cuestión que nos acompañará durante años. Las redes sociales ya estaban amplificando los impulsos políticos de los estadounidenses, dejando tras de sí un rastro de comunidades dañadas. La confianza en las instituciones estaba disminuyendo y la rabia aumentaba en la vida pública. Estas cosas habrían sido ciertas aun sin la interferencia rusa.Pero rastrear las intrusiones rusas durante los meses que siguieron a esa primera Marcha de las Mujeres es ser testigo de un persistente esfuerzo por empeorarlas todas.Después de las elecciones de 2016, la operación de desinformación rusa de la Agencia de Investigación de Internet cambió el enfoque de Donald Trump y Hillary Clinton a objetivos más amplios de Estados Unidos.James Hill para The New York Times‘Refrigeradores y clavos’A principios de 2017, la operación de troleo se encontraba en su fase imperial y rebosaba confianza.Las cuentas de la Agencia de Investigación de Internet, una organización cuya sede se encuentra en San Petersburgo y es controlada por un aliado de Putin, se había ufanado de impulsar a Trump a la victoria. Ese año, el presupuesto del grupo casi se había duplicado, según comunicaciones internas hechas públicas por los fiscales estadounidenses. Pasó más de un año antes de que las plataformas de las redes sociales realizaran una amplia purga de cuentas de títeres respaldados por Rusia.Para los troles, era una hora clave.En estas condiciones propicias, sus objetivos pasaron de la política electoral a algo más general: la meta de agudizar las fisuras en la sociedad estadounidense, dijo Alex Iftimie, un exfiscal federal que trabajó en un caso de 2018 contra un administrador del Proyecto Lakhta, que supervisaba la Agencia de Investigación de Internet y otras operaciones de troleo ruso.“Ya no se trataba exclusivamente de Trump y Clinton”, dijo Iftimie, ahora socio de Morrison Foerster. “Era más profundo y más siniestro y más difuso en su enfoque de explotar las divisiones dentro de la sociedad en cualquier número de niveles diferentes”.Había una rutina: al llegar a su turno, los trabajadores escudriñaban los medios de comunicación de los márgenes ideológicos, de la extrema izquierda y de la extrema derecha, en busca de contenido extremo que pudieran publicar y amplificar en las plataformas, alimentando las opiniones extremas en las conversaciones principales.Artyom Baranov, quien trabajó en una de las filiales del Proyecto Lakhta de 2018 a 2020, concluyó que sus compañeros de trabajo eran, en su mayoría, personas que necesitaban el dinero, indiferentes a los temas sobre los que se les pedía que escribieran.“Si se les asignaba un texto sobre refrigeradores, escribían sobre refrigeradores, o, digamos, sobre clavos, escribían sobre clavos”, dijo Baranov, uno de un puñado de antiguos troles que han hablado públicamente sobre sus actividades. Pero en lugar de refrigeradores y clavos, era “Putin, Putin, luego Putin, y luego sobre Navalny”, en referencia a Alekséi Navalny, el líder de la oposición encarcelado.El trabajo no consistía en exponer argumentos, sino en provocar una reacción visceral y emocional, idealmente de “indignación”, explicó Baranov, psicoanalista de formación, a quien se le asignó escribir publicaciones en línea sobre política rusa. “La tarea es hacer una especie de explosión, causar controversia”, agregó.Cuando una publicación lograba enfurecer a un lector, dijo, un compañero de trabajo comentaba a veces, con satisfacción, Liberala razorvala. Un liberal fue destrozado. “No se trataba de discutir hechos o dar nuevos argumentos”, dijo. “Siempre es una forma de hurgar en los trapos sucios”.El feminismo era un objetivo obvio, porque se consideraba una “agenda occidental” y hostil a los valores tradicionales que representaba Rusia, dijo Baranov, quien habló de su trabajo con la esperanza de advertir a las personas de que fueran más escépticas con el material que hay en línea. Desde hace meses, las cuentas rusas que pretenden pertenecer a mujeres negras han estado investigando las divisiones raciales dentro del feminismo estadounidense:“El feminismo blanco parece ser la tendencia más estúpida del 2k16”“Mira cómo Muhammad Ali calla a una feminista blanca que critica su arrogancia”“No tengo tiempo para tu basura de feminista blanca”“Por qué las feministas negras no le deben su apoyo a Hillary Clinton”“UN POCO MÁS FUERTE PARA LAS FEMINISTAS BLANCAS DE ATRÁS”En enero de 2017, mientras se acercaba la Marcha de las Mujeres, probaron distintos enfoques con distintas audiencias, como lo habían hecho previo a las elecciones presidenciales de 2016. Publicaban como mujeres trans resentidas, mujeres pobres y mujeres contra el aborto. Desacreditaban a quienes marchaban por ser peones del multimillonario judío George Soros.Y se burlaron de las mujeres que planeaban participar, a menudo en términos crudamente sexuales. En coordinación, a partir del 19 de enero, 46 cuentas rusas lanzaron 459 sugerencias originales para #RenameMillionWomenMarch, un hashtag creado por un conductor de pódcast de derecha de Indiana:La Marcha de: ¿Por qué nadie me quiere?La marcha de las mujeres fuertes que se hacen las víctimas constantementeLa Marcha de la Solitaria Señora de los GatosEl campamento de los cólicosLa Convención de Mujeres BarbudasViejas rotas arengandoEl camino de las lágrimas liberalesEl festival de las perras de Coyote UglyMientras tanto, otra línea de mensajes más efectiva se desarrollaba.Sarsour recordó el abrumador torrente de ataques. “Imagínese que todos los días al levantarse son un monstruo”, dijo.Brad Ogbonna/Redux‘Fue como una avalancha’Como una de las cuatro copresidentas de la Marcha de las Mujeres, Sarsour llegó con un historial, y con carga.Sarsour, hija de un tendero palestinoestadounidense de Crown Heights, en Nueva York, se había convertido en la voz de los derechos de los musulmanes después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre. En 2015, cuando tenía 35 años, un perfil del New York Times la ungió —“una chica de Brooklyn con hiyab”— como algo raro: una potencial candidata araboestadounidense a un cargo de elección pública.En 2016, el senador Bernie Sanders la invitó a un evento de campaña, un sello de aprobación de uno de los progresistas más influyentes del país. Eso molestó a los políticos pro-Israel en Nueva York, que señalaron su apoyo al movimiento de boicot, desinversión y sanciones, que busca asegurar los derechos de los palestinos aislando a Israel. Los críticos del movimiento sostienen que amenaza la existencia de Israel.Rory Lancman, entonces concejal de la ciudad del barrio de Queens, recuerda su inquietud cada vez mayor cuando ella comenzó a aparecer con regularidad en los eventos en los que se apoyaban causas de izquierda no relacionadas con Israel, como los salarios justos, donde, en su opinión, “su verdadera agenda estaba tratando de casar una agenda antiisraelí con diferentes causas progresistas”.Para Lancman, demócrata, la noticia de que Sarsour era una de las líderes de la Marcha de las Mujeres le pareció “desgarrador —esa es la palabra—, que el antisemitismo se tolere y racionalice en espacios progresistas”.Eso era la política de siempre, y Sarsour estaba acostumbrada a ello: la larga disputa entre los demócratas sobre las implicaciones de criticar a Israel.Pero 48 horas después de la marcha, hubo un cambio de tono en línea, con el surgimiento de publicaciones que describían a Sarsour como una yihadista radical que se había infiltrado en el feminismo estadounidense. Sarsour lo recuerda muy bien, porque se despertó con un mensaje de texto preocupado de una amiga y fue en Twitter para descubrir que era tendencia.No todas las respuestas negativas fueron orgánicas. Esa semana, las cuentas rusas de amplificación comenzaron a circular publicaciones centradas en Sarsour, muchas de las cuales eran incendiarias y se basaban en falsedades, ya que afirmaban que era una islamista radical: “Una musulmana que odiaba a los judíos y estaba a favor del Estado Islámico y en contra de Estados Unidos”, a la que “se había visto mostrando el cartel del Estado Islámico”.Algunas de estas publicaciones fueron vistas por muchas personas. A las 7 p. m. del 21 de enero, una cuenta de la Agencia de Investigación de Internet identificada como @TEN_GOP, un supuesto estadounidense de derecha originario del sur del país, tuiteó que Sarsour estaba a favor de imponer sharía o ley islámica en Estados Unidos, haciendo eco de una popular teoría de la conspiración antimusulmana que Trump había ayudado a popularizar en la campaña.Este mensaje cobró impulso y acumuló 1686 respuestas, se retuiteó 8046 veces y obtuvo 6256 “me gusta”. Al día siguiente, casi de manera simultánea, un pequeño ejército de 1157 cuentas de derecha retomó la narrativa y publicó 1659 mensajes sobre el tema, según un análisis realizado por la empresa de análisis online Graphika en nombre del Times.Vladimir Barash, jefe científico de Graphika, dijo que el patrón de interferencia era “estratégicamente similar” a la actividad de los troles en las vastas protestas anti-Putin de 2011 y 2012, con cuentas falsas “tratando de secuestrar la conversación de manera similar, a veces con éxito”.“Hay algunas pruebas circunstanciales de que aprendieron en un contexto doméstico y luego trataron de replicar su éxito en un contexto extranjero”, dijo Barash.Las cosas estaban cambiando sobre el terreno en Nueva York. En la Asociación Árabe Estadounidense de Nueva York, la organización sin fines de lucro de defensa a los migrantes que Sarsour dirigía en Bay Ridge, comenzó a llegar una gran cantidad de correo de odio: tarjetas postales, reclamos escritos a mano en papel de cuaderno, su foto impresa y desfigurada con equis rojas.“Se trataba de un nivel totalmente nuevo, y se sentía extraño, porque venía de todo el país”, dijo Kayla Santosuosso, entonces subdirectora de la organización sin fines de lucro, que recuerda haber llevado el correo a Sarsour en cajas de zapatos. Sarsour, a quien preocupaba haberse convertido en “un lastre”, renunció a su puesto en febrero de ese año.Para la primavera, la respuesta contra Sarsour se había convertido en un espectáculo de política divisoria. “Era como una avalancha”, dijo. “Como si estuviera nadando en ella todos los días. Era como si nunca saliera de ella”.Cuando fue invitada a dar el discurso de graduación de la Facultad de Salud Pública de la Universidad de la Ciudad de Nueva York (CUNY, por su sigla en inglés), el furor comenzó con semanas de antelación. Llamó la atención del polemista de extrema derecha Milo Yiannopoulos, quien viajó a Nueva York para una protesta que atrajo, como escribió un reportero del Times, “una extraña mezcla, incluyendo judíos y sionistas de derecha, comentaristas como Pamela Geller y algunos miembros de la extrema derecha”.“Linda Sarsour es una bomba de relojería del horror progresista, amante de la sharia, que odia a los judíos”, dijo Yiannopoulos a la multitud.Sarsour recuerda el momento previo al discurso de graduación como particularmente estresante. A medida que se acercaba, tuvo visiones de una figura que salía de las sombras para matarla, “alguna pobre persona desquiciada que se consumía en los rincones oscuros de internet, que sería alimentada por el odio”.Las cuentas de los troles rusos formaron parte de ese clamor; desde más de un mes antes de su discurso, un puñado de cuentas de amplificación gestionadas por la mayor agencia de inteligencia militar de Rusia, el GRU, hicieron circular expresiones de indignación por su elección, a menudo con el hashtag #CancelSarsour.Cuando Yiannopoulos habló, @TEN_GOP tuiteó las frases más jugosas —la línea “bomba de relojería del horror progresista”— y acumuló 3954 retuits y 5967 likes.Pronunció su discurso de graduación sin incidentes. Después, parece ser que los troles esperaron que dijera o hiciera algo divisorio. Y eso sucedió a principios de julio cuando, envalentonada tras su aparición en la CUNY, exhortó a la audiencia musulmana fuera de Chicago a rebelarse contra las políticas injustas del gobierno, que describió como “la mejor forma de yihad”.En el islam, la palabra “yihad” puede denotar cualquier lucha virtuosa, pero en el contexto político estadounidense es inextricable del concepto de guerra santa. Un político más pragmático podría haber evitado utilizarla, pero Sarsour se sentía como la de antes. “Así es como soy en la vida real”, dijo. “Soy de Brooklyn y soy palestina. Es mi personalidad”.Para los troles rusos, era una oportunidad.La semana siguiente, las cuentas rusas aumentaron de manera considerable su volumen de mensajes sobre Sarsour y produjeron 184 publicaciones en un solo día, según Advance Democracy Inc.Una vez más, el público respondió: cuando @TEN_GOP tuiteó: “Linda Sarsour pide abiertamente a los musulmanes que hagan la yihad contra Trump, por favor, investiguen este asunto”, recibió 6222 retuits y 6549 me gusta. Las cuentas mantuvieron un intenso enfoque en ella durante el mes de julio, cuando produjeron 894 publicaciones durante el mes siguiente y continuaron hasta el otoño, descubrió el grupo.Y una vez más, la reacción se extendió por las redes sociales. Los manifestantes acamparon frente al restaurante de parrilla kosher donde su hermano, Mohammed, trabajaba como gerente, exigiendo que fuera despedido. Dejó el trabajo y, finalmente, Nueva York.Su madre abrió un paquete que le llegó por correo y gritó: era un extraño libro autopublicado, titulado A Jihad Grows in Brooklyn, que pretendía ser la autobiografía de Sarsour y estaba ilustrado con fotografías familiares.“Digo, imagínense que todos los días al levantarse son un monstruo”, comentó Sarsour”.Los grupos progresistas se distanciaron de Sarsour, a la izquierda, y de sus compañeras copresidentas de la marcha, Tamika Mallory y Carmen Pérez.Erin Scott/ReutersA la caza de fantasmasResulta enloquecedoramente difícil decir con certeza qué efecto han tenido las operaciones de influencia rusas en Estados Unidos, porque cuando se afianzaron se apoyaron en divisiones sociales reales. Una vez introducidas en el discurso estadounidense, el rastro ruso desaparece, como el agua que se ha añadido a una piscina.Esto crea un enigma para los especialistas en desinformación, muchos de los cuales dicen que se ha exagerado el impacto de las intervenciones rusas. Después de las elecciones presidenciales de 2016, culpar a Rusia de los resultados no deseados se convirtió en “la salida emocional”, dijo Thomas Rid, autor de Desinformación y guerra política: historia de un siglo de falsificaciones y engaños.“Te juegan una mala pasada”, dijo Rid, profesor de la Escuela de Estudios Internacionales Avanzados de la Universidad Johns Hopkins. “Te conviertes en un idiota útil si ignoras las operaciones de información eficaces. Pero también si la ensalzas contando una historia, si la haces más poderosa de lo que es. Es un truco”.Las divisiones al interior de la Macha de las Mujeres ya existían.Las discusiones intestinas sobre la identidad y el antisemitismo habían tensado al grupo desde sus primeros días, cuando una de sus organizadoras, Vanessa Wruble, quien es judía, fue expulsada después de lo que describió como tensas conversaciones con Pérez y Mallory sobre el papel de los judíos en el racismo estructural. Pérez y Mallory han rebatido esa versión.Y la incomodidad con Sarsour había disminuido el entusiasmo entre algunos progresistas judíos, dijo Rachel Timoner, la rabina principal de la Congregación Beth Elohim en Park Slope, Brooklyn.Recordó haber salido en defensa de Sarsour contra los ataques “racistas e islamófobos”, solo para descubrir, cada vez, que surgía una nueva tormenta de fuego, a menudo como resultado de algo inflamatorio y “en última instancia indefendible” que Sarsour había dicho.A medida que pasaban los meses, dijo la rabina Timoner, los judíos comenzaron a preguntarse si estaban siendo excluidos de los movimientos progresistas.En 2018, se desató una nueva crisis interna por la asistencia de Mallory al Día del Salvador, una reunión anual de la Nación del Islam encabezada por Farrakhan.Mallory creció en Harlem, donde muchos veían positivamente a la Nación del Islam y a su fundador, como cruzados contra la violencia urbana. La presionaron para que rechazara a Farrakhan, a lo que se negó, aunque dijo que no compartía sus posturas antisemitas. Después del asesinato del padre de su hijo, explicó: “Fueron las mujeres de la Nación del Islam quienes me apoyaron”.“Siempre las he llevado cerca de mi corazón por esa razón”, dijo.Después de eso, el tejido de la coalición se rompió, de manera lenta y dolorosa. Sarsour y Perez se mantuvieron al lado de Mallory, y en poco tiempo, los grupos progresistas comenzaron a distanciarse de las tres. Bajo una intensa presión para que dejaran de ser las líderes, Sarsour, Perez y una tercera copresidenta, Bland, lo hicieron en 2019, un movimiento que, según dicen, estaba planeado desde hace tiempo.Las cuentas rusas aumentaron su producción en torno a Farrakhan y las lideresas de la Marcha de las Mujeres esa primavera, con 10 a 20 publicaciones al día, pero no hay pruebas de que fueran un motor principal de la conversación.Más o menos en ese momento, perdemos de vista la mayoría de los mensajes rusos. En el verano de 2018, Twitter suspendió 3841 cuentas vinculadas a la Agencia de Investigación de Internet y conservó 10 millones de sus tuits para que pudieran ser estudiados por los investigadores. Unos meses después, la plataforma suspendió y guardó el trabajo de 414 cuentas producidas por el GRU, la agencia de inteligencia militar.Con ello, se silenció un coro de voces que, durante años, habían ayudado a dar forma a las conversaciones estadounidenses sobre Black Lives Matter, la investigación de Mueller y los jugadores de la NFL arrodillados durante el himno nacional. El registro de los mensajes en torno a la Marcha de las Mujeres también se rompe ahí, congelado en el tiempo.La explotación rusa de Sarsour como figura divisoria debe entenderse como parte de la historia de la Marcha de las Mujeres, dijo Shireen Mitchell, una analista de tecnología que ha estudiado la interferencia rusa en el discurso afroestadounidense en línea.Ella comentó que las campañas rusas eran expertas en sembrar ideas que fluían hacia el discurso principal, después de lo cual, agregó, podían “solo sentarse y esperar”.“Es la preparación de todo eso, empezando por el principio”, dijo Mitchell, fundadora de Stop Online Violence Against Women. “Si esos miles de tuits causan una división entre los grupos que importan, si abren y permiten esa división, ya no es una grieta. Se convierte en un valle”.Otros consideraron que el papel de Rusia era marginal y entraba en los límites de un debate estadounidense necesario.“Es una pena que Linda Sarsour haya dañado ese movimiento intentando inyectar en él ideas nocivas que no tenían razón de ser en la Marcha de las Mujeres”, dijo Lancman, el exconcejal. “Por desgracia”, añadió, los rusos “parecen muy adeptos a explotar esas fisuras”.La rabina Timoner sonaba triste, al recordar todo lo que había pasado. Las heridas que se abrieron entre los progresistas aquel año nunca han terminado de cicatrizar, dijo.“Hay mucho dolor judío aquí”, dijo. “Esos bots rusos estaban hurgando en ese dolor”.La Marcha de las Mujeres continuó bajo un nuevo liderazgo, pero durante los meses de controversia, muchas mujeres que habían sido impulsadas por la primera marcha se alejaron.“No puedo recordar todas las historias negativas, solo recuerdo que había muchas”, dijo Jennifer Taylor-Skinner, una mujer de Seattle que, después de la marcha de 2017, dejó su trabajo en Microsoft y fundó The Electorette, un pódcast orientado a las mujeres progresistas. Ella nunca ha recuperado ese sentimiento de unidad.“Solo de pensarlo, todavía me siento un poco desvinculada de cualquier movimiento central”, dijo. “Aquí se estaba formando una posible coalición que se ha roto”.Una réplicaSarsour, de 42 años, había regresado a su oficina en Bay Ridge la primavera pasada, cinco años después de la primera Marcha de las Mujeres, cuando se enteró, por un reportero, de que había sido víctima del gobierno ruso.En la actualidad, rara vez la invitan a las plataformas nacionales y, cuando lo hacen, suele haber protestas. El rumor que había en torno a ella como futura candidata política se ha calmado. Sabe cómo se la ve, como una figura polarizadora. Se ha adaptado a esta realidad, y se ve a sí misma más como una activista, en el molde de Angela Davis.“Nunca voy a conseguir un trabajo de verdad” en una organización sin fines de lucro o corporación importante, comentó. “Ese es el tipo de impacto que estas cosas tienen en nuestras vidas”.Los datos sobre los mensajes rusos relacionados con la Marcha de las Mujeres aparecieron por primera vez a finales del año pasado en una revista académica, donde Samantha R. Bradshaw, experta en desinformación de la American University, revisó la injerencia del Estado en los movimientos feministas.Ella y su coautora, Amélie Henle, descubrieron un patrón de mensajes por parte de influentes cuentas de amplificadores que buscaban desmovilizar el activismo de la sociedad civil, impulsando las críticas interseccionales al feminismo y atacando a los organizadoras.Los movimientos, sostiene Bradshaw, son estructuras frágiles, que a menudo no están preparadas para hacer frente a campañas de sabotaje con buenos recursos y respaldadas por el Estado, especialmente cuando se combinan con algoritmos que promueven contenidos negativos. Pero los movimientos sociales saludables son esenciales para las democracias, dijo.“No vamos a tener una esfera pública robusta si nadie quiere organizar protestas”, dijo.Sarsour no es una académica, pero lo entendió bastante bien.“Señor, ten piedad”, dijo, al echar un vistazo a las conclusiones de Bradshaw.Sarsour trató de entenderlo: todo ese tiempo, el gobierno ruso la tenía en la mira. Hacía tiempo que creía saber de dónde venían sus críticos: la derecha estadounidense y los partidarios de Israel. Nunca se le ocurrió que pudieran provenir de un gobierno extranjero.“Pensar que Rusia va a usarme es mucho más peligroso y siniestro”, comentó. “Me pregunto cómo se beneficia Rusia de aprovechar mi identidad para debilitar movimientos contra Trump en Estados Unidos, me parece”, hizo un pausa. “Es solo que… vaya”.Entender lo que hicieron los troles rusos no cambiaría su posición.Aun así, la ayudó a entender esa época de su vida, en la que había estado en el centro de una tormenta. No eran únicamente sus compatriotas los que la odiaban. No fueron solamente sus aliados los que la repudiaron. Eso había pasado. Pero no era toda la historia.Llamó a Mallory.“No estábamos locas”, dijo.Aaron Krolik More

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      Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The Democrat from Maryland has been delving into the rising threat of white nationalism and white supremacy for five years. He will lead the inquiry’s hearing on the subject on Tuesday.WASHINGTON — When Representative Jamie Raskin enters a Capitol Hill hearing room on Tuesday to lay out what the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has uncovered about the role of domestic extremists in the riot, it will be his latest — and potentially most important — step in a five-year effort to crush a dangerous movement.Long before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault, Mr. Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, had thrown himself into stamping out the rise of white nationalism and domestic extremism in America. He trained his focus on the issue after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago. Since then, he has held teach-ins, led a multipart House investigation that exposed the lackluster federal effort to confront the threat, released intelligence assessments indicating that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement and strategized about ways to crack down on paramilitary groups.Now, with millions of Americans expected to tune in, Mr. Raskin — along with Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida — is set to take a leading role in a hearing that promises to dig deeply into how far-right groups helped to orchestrate and carry out the Jan. 6 assault at the Capitol — and how they were brought together, incited and empowered by President Donald J. Trump.“Charlottesville was a rude awakening for the country,” Mr. Raskin, 59, said in an interview, rattling off a list of deadly hate crimes that had taken place in the years before the siege on the Capitol. “There is a real pattern of young, white men getting hyped up on racist provocation and incitement.”Tuesday’s session, set for 1 p.m., is expected to document how, after Mr. Trump’s many efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed, he and his allies turned to violent far-right extremist groups whose support Mr. Trump had long cultivated, who in turn began assembling a mob to pressure Congress to reject the will of the voters.Supporters of President Donald J. Trump at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“There were Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the QAnon network, Boogaloo Boys, militia men and other assorted extremist and religious cults that assembled under the banner of ‘Stop The Steal,’ ” Mr. Raskin said, referring to the movement that spread Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. “This was quite a coming-out party for a lot of extremist, antigovernment groups and white nationalist groups that had never worked together before.”It has long been known that the mob was energized by Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Dec. 19, 2020, in which he called for his supporters to come to Washington for a rally on Jan. 6 that would “be wild.” Mr. Raskin and Ms. Murphy plan to detail a clear “call and response” between the president and his extreme supporters.“There’s no doubt that Donald Trump’s tweet urging everyone to descend upon Washington for a wild protest on Jan. 6 succeeded in galvanizing and unifying the dangerous extremists of the country,” Mr. Raskin said.Mr. Raskin has hinted at disclosing evidence of more direct ties between Mr. Trump and far-right groups, though he has declined to preview any. The panel plans to detail known links between the political operative Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s, the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the extremist groups.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      An American’s Murky Path From Russian Propagandist to Jan. 6

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      Charles Bausman, a former financial executive who runs websites that promote far-right views, recorded footage in the Capitol for a Russian television producer. Soon after, he fled to Moscow as a “political refugee.”In security footage from Jan. 6, it is easy to overlook the thin man wearing a red Trump hat who filters into the U.S. Capitol Building to record the mayhem with his phone.He blends in with the mob, seemingly unexceptional by the chaotic standards of that day. But what he did afterward was far from routine.Within 24 hours, the man, Charles Bausman, gave his recordings and commentary to a Russian television producer for a propaganda video. He then decamped to Moscow, where, appearing on a far-right television network owned by a sanctioned oligarch, he recently accused American media of covering up for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.“We must understand that in the West,” Mr. Bausman told Russian viewers, “we are already in a situation of total lies.”For Mr. Bausman — an American alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Wesleyan University who speaks fluent Russian — it was the latest chapter in a strange odyssey. Once a financial executive who voted for President Barack Obama, he emerged in 2014 as a public critic of the left and of the United States, boosted by Russian state-sponsored organizations through speaking invitations, TV appearances and awards.Central to his transformation was a series of websites he created pushing anti-America, pro-Russia themes, as well as racist and homophobic messaging. Some of his posts have racked up millions of views, and his 5,000-word screed on “the Jewish problem” has been hailed by antisemites around the world and translated into multiple languages.Mr. Bausman’s path in some ways tracks a broader shift on the political right that embraces misinformation and sympathy toward Russia while tolerating an increasingly emboldened white nationalism. For its part, the Kremlin has sought to court conservatives in the United States and sow discord through a network of expats, collaborators and spies.People who have written for Mr. Bausman’s websites or promoted his work have come under scrutiny by American intelligence, and the founder of a pro-Russia forum that hosted him and others was charged in March with being an unregistered agent of Moscow.Mr. Bausman initially gained some prominence as a Russia apologist, but he has lowered his profile in recent years as he has espoused more extreme views. Yet he has been Zelig-like in exploiting cultural and political flash points, racing from cause to cause.After surfacing as a voluble defender of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, Mr. Bausman became an outspoken Trump supporter. With white nationalism on the rise, he threw himself into promoting it, relocating to rural Pennsylvania and hosting neo-Nazis at his property. He joined Republican protests against coronavirus restrictions and the 2020 election and most recently has reappeared in Russian media to criticize the West’s response to the war in Ukraine.Mr. Bausman attended a 2015 conference hosted by RT, a news channel tied to the Kremlin.Mikhail Voskresenskiy/Sputnik, via APKonstantin Malofeev, an influential oligarch indicted by the United States over alleged sanctions violations, said he had asked Mr. Bausman to appear on his television network because Mr. Bausman was one of the few Russian-speaking Americans willing to do it.“Who else is there to invite?” Mr. Malofeev asked.Mr. Bausman, 58, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No charges have been brought against him related to the events of Jan. 6, though he appears inside the Capitol in video clips introduced in court cases against others. When a Russian TV host referred to him as “a participant” in storming the Capitol, Mr. Bausman interrupted to say that the description could get him into trouble, and that he was a journalist.Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine WarHistory and Background: Here’s what to know about Russia and Ukraine’s relationship and the causes of the conflict.How the Battle Is Unfolding: Russian and Ukrainian forces are using a bevy of weapons as a deadly war of attrition grinds on in eastern Ukraine.Russia’s Brutal Strategy: An analysis of more than 1,000 photos found that Russia has used hundreds of weapons in Ukraine that are widely banned by international treaties.Outside Pressures: Governments, sports organizations and businesses are taking steps to punish Russia. Here are some of the sanctions adopted so far and a list of companies that have pulled out of the country.Stay Updated: To receive the latest updates on the war in your inbox, sign up here. The Times has also launched a Telegram channel to make its journalism more accessible around the world.But, on other occasions, he has described himself differently. Speaking on a white nationalist podcast in April, in which he attacked critics of Russia as “evil pedophile globalists” who control the “enslaved West,” he explained why he was back in Moscow:“I’m a political refugee here.”Connecticut to MoscowPresident Vladimir V. Putin had just invaded Crimea in 2014 when Mr. Bausman said he had an idea. He would create an alternative news source to counter what he called Western media’s “inaccurate, incomplete and unrealistically negative picture of Russia.”The website, Russia Insider, was directed at an English-speaking audience and offered stories like, “Putin to Obama: You’re Turning the U.S.A. Into a Godless Sewer,” and “Anti-Christian Pogrom Underway in Ukraine.” Content was often aggregated from other pro-Russia sources, including RT, the Kremlin-funded television network.The role of online agitator was not an obvious one for Mr. Bausman, who grew up in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Conn., attended prep school and went on to earn a history degree from Wesleyan and study business at Columbia. His experience with Russia dates to his childhood, when his father served as the Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press.Mr. Bausman with his father, who worked in Moscow for The Associated Press.As a college graduate in the late 1980s, he returned to Russia, and, with help from his father’s connections, worked briefly for NBC News. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Mr. Bausman found a new role: as a multilingual fixer for entrepreneurs scrambling to cash in on the emerging economy.A. Craig Copetas, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent who wrote a book about the post-Soviet business era, said Mr. Bausman worked with Russians who “were the forerunners of the oligarchs.”“Charlie speaks excellent Russian,” he said, “so he was a valuable asset — he was like the young American prince of Moscow.”Mr. Bausman’s early success was not to last. There are gaps in his résumé, and U.S. court records show that he filed for bankruptcy in 1999.A former business associate recalled Mr. Bausman’s father beseeching people to “help my son” with his career. This person — one of several who did not want to be identified because of Mr. Bausman’s ties to extremists — described him as “just this lost guy” who seemed to struggle professionally despite impressive qualifications. He worked a succession of Russian private equity jobs, never staying in any position longer than a few years.Mr. Bausman’s last role was with the agribusiness investor AVG Capital Partners. A 2012 company presentation, which listed him as director of investor relations, boasted of “strong partnerships” with Russian authorities and included a photo of Mr. Putin.The exact timing of Mr. Bausman’s switch to propagandist is murky, but two profiles on the Russian social media platform VK offer a clue. The first, from 2011, is a sparse page featuring a wan Mr. Bausman in a suit and a link to a group interested in tennis.In the second profile, from two years later, he looks tan and confident in an open-collared shirt. The VK groups he joined were strikingly radical, including a militant Russian Orthodox sect and another called the Internet Militia, whose goal echoed what would soon become Mr. Bausman’s focus: “to protect and defend our native information field” against American attack.Oligarch ConnectionsPublicly, Mr. Bausman turned to crowd funding to pay for Russia Insider. Behind the scenes, however, he was in contact with Mr. Malofeev, a promoter of Orthodox nationalist propaganda.Leaked emails made public in 2014 revealed Mr. Bausman corresponding with a Malofeev associate, saying “we published your Serbia info” and asking for money. In an email to Mr. Malofeev, the associate praised Mr. Bausman’s site as “pro-Russian” and noted that he “wants to cooperate.”Mr. Malofeev was backing another media project at the time with a similar agenda: Tsargrad TV, which he created with a former Fox News employee, John Hanick. Both Mr. Hanick and Mr. Malofeev were charged by the United States this year with violating sanctions imposed in 2014.Mr. Bausman has appeared on the television network of Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch indicted by the U.S. for alleged sanctions violations.Tatyana Makeyeva/ReutersIn an interview, Mr. Malofeev said he believed Mr. Bausman “has done a great job and that he is a very brave person,” but he denied they had “a financial relationship.”Mr. Bausman has always said he did not receive support from Russian authorities. But there is little doubt that his emergence as an American salesman of pro-Kremlin views was aided greatly by entities controlled by or tied to the Russian state.After Russia Insider went live, Mr. Bausman began appearing on RT and other Russian media, and a news crew from a major state-owned TV channel traveled to his parents’ home in Connecticut to film him discussing his new website. On Facebook, he boasted that “our traffic exploded after this aired.”He was invited to join panel discussions at another state-owned outlet, received an award in 2016 named after a pro-Russia journalist killed in Ukraine, and spoke at a Kremlin-sponsored youth conference in newly captured Crimea. He gave interviews to Russian Orthodox figures, speaking approvingly of Mr. Malofeev.In April 2016, Mr. Bausman’s work was promoted by a Russian website, RIA FAN, that has been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch indicted by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller. The website initially shared an address with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government “troll factory” accused of using fake social media accounts and online propaganda to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Russia analysts who have followed Mr. Bausman’s work say it has the hallmarks of a disinformation project. Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who researches Russian propaganda campaigns, said his messaging merged seamlessly with that of Mr. Putin’s government.“The initial purpose of his outlet was to muddle the truth in American circles about Crimea,” she said. “And then you see his outlet and others repurposed to support the Kremlin narrative about Syria, and then the 2016 U.S. elections.“It appears,” she said, “to be a classic Russian influence operation.”Hard-Right TurnWith Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Mr. Bausman’s media outlet began to promote more extreme views. In a celebratory post after the election, he struck a militant chord that shocked old friends.“Trump’s election is perhaps akin to Luther nailing his theses to the door, but now the demons are wakened, and they know they must fight or be killed, and as in the 16th century, they will not go quietly,” he wrote. “And there will be blood. Let us hope that it is the figurative, digital kind, and not the real, red, hot, sticky stuff.”A turning point came in January 2018, when Mr. Bausman posted a lengthy polemic, “It’s Time to Drop the Jew Taboo,” that was both an antisemitic manifesto and a call to action for the alt-right.“The evidence suggests that much of human enterprise dominated and shaped by Jews is a bottomless pit of trouble with a peculiar penchant for mendacity and cynicism, hostility to Christianity and Christian values, and in geopolitics, a clear bloodlust,” he wrote.It was welcomed by white nationalist figures like Richard Spencer, who called it “a major event.”Outside the far right, Mr. Bausman’s embrace of antisemitism was widely condemned. The U.S. State Department flagged it in a report on human-rights concerns in Russia, and the diatribe prompted a disavowal from RT.After the death in August 2018 of his mother, who left an estate valued at about $2.6 million, Mr. Bausman bought two properties in Lancaster, Pa., where his family had roots.His older sister, Mary-Fred Bausman-Watkins, said last year that her brother “was always short on money” and that their parents frequently helped him out, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has compiled several reports on his activities. Ms. Bausman-Watkins died in May.“They funded his whole life,” she told the center, “and then he inherited their money when they died, and they’re still funding his life.”The InsurrectionWhile living in Lancaster with his Russian wife and two young daughters, Mr. Bausman turned his attention to two new websites devoted largely to white nationalist content. Headlines included: “Out of Control Black Violence” and “Jewish Intellectuals Call on Gays to Perform Sex Acts in Front of Children.”Mr. Bausman concealed his ownership of one of these sites, National Justice, through a private registration, which The New York Times confirmed by reviewing data leaked last year from Epik, a web-hosting service favored by the far right. The site has the same name as a white nationalist organization and featured posts by one of its leaders, though it is not the group’s official site, according to its chairman, Michael Peinovich.In an interview, Mr. Peinovich said Mr. Bausman had hosted party members at his farmstead for an inaugural meeting in 2020 (a large event first reported by a local news outlet, LancasterOnline). But afterward, he said, his group “went our own way” because it did not agree with Mr. Bausman’s preoccupation with supporting Mr. Trump.Three days before Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Bausman allowed Rod of Iron Ministries, a gun-themed religious sect led by a son of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, to meet at his property, according to photos on social media. Members of the sect had been active in “Stop the Steal” rallies, some of which Mr. Bausman had also attended, and were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.On Facebook, Mr. Bausman posted an appeal for people to go to Washington “to support Trump.” At various points during the riot, Mr. Bausman can be seen inside the Capitol, often using his phone to record the chaos.Mr. Bausman, right, has said he entered the Capitol in the capacity of a journalist.via YouTubeAfterward, he returned to Lancaster and gave a lengthy interview for a video about the insurrection produced by Arkady Mamontov, a Russian television host known for splashy pro-Kremlin propaganda pieces. The video also included footage of Mr. Bausman outside his home that appears to have been filmed months earlier. Mr. Mamontov did not respond to a request for comment.In the video, Mr. Bausman suggested, without evidence, that federal agents had instigated the violence at the Capitol to “discredit Trump,” and he painted a dystopian, conspiratorial picture of American society. It is a theme that he has carried forward to more recent appearances on Mr. Malofeev’s television network, in which he has accused Western media of lying about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.It is not clear when Mr. Bausman left the U.S., but he was in Moscow for a TV appearance on the day of President Biden’s inauguration, two weeks after the insurrection at the Capitol. In the white nationalist podcast interview he gave in April from Russia, he said he had not been back home since.When asked by the host if he was still a Trump fan, Mr. Bausman said he was not, before adding with a laugh that there was one thing that could restore his loyalty.“When he pardons me for Jan. 6,” he said.Anton Troianovski More

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      France’s Marine Le Pen Is as Dangerous as Ever

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      TOULOUSE, France — In 2017, we thought we’d seen the worst French politics could offer.Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, had made it through to the second round of the country’s presidential elections. For the first time since 2002, a far-right figure was in the runoff to become president — and with considerably more support. When Ms. Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron, albeit with a worrying 34 percent share of the vote, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many hoped Ms. Le Pen, after falling at the final hurdle, would fade into obscurity.It was not to be. Ms. Le Pen never went away, instead biding her time and preparing for the next tilt at power. She now has more chance of winning it than ever: After taking 23 percent in the first round, she’s within eight points of Mr. Macron in the second, on April 24. She’s benefited from the presence of the even more hard-line Éric Zemmour, whose lurid reactionary persona made Ms. Le Pen seem, by contrast, more reasonable. Yet she’s also embarked on a comprehensive effort to soften her image, renaming her party, downplaying the harsher elements of her platform and presenting herself as a warm, even folksy woman who loves her cats.But no one should be fooled. At the head of a party that long housed Nazi collaborators, Ms. Le Pen is an authoritarian whose deeply racist and Islamophobic politics threaten to turn France into an outright illiberal state. She may pretend to be a regular politician, but she remains as dangerous as ever. For the good of minorities and France itself, she must not prevail.If Ms. Le Pen looks more mainstream now, it’s because the mainstream looks more like her. In the years running up to the last election, she ran on a hard-right platform, stoking antagonism toward immigrants and French Muslims under the guise of protecting public order. She especially targeted minorities, “to whom,” she said bitterly, “everything is due and to whom we give everything.” In response to her success in 2017, nearly every party on the political spectrum — centrist, traditional right wing and even socialist — used the talking points of her party, now named National Rally (formerly National Front).The tenor of political discussion, as a result, has shifted substantially to the right. There is now barely any space in French politics to advocate for French citizens who don’t look, behave, pray or eat the way “traditional” French people are supposed to — let alone to champion the rights of immigrants and refugees. In this environment, Ms. Le Pen can turn her attention to more everyday issues, such as rising energy bills and the cost of living, safe in the knowledge that on immigration, citizenship and “national identity,” she’s already won the argument.That success didn’t happen overnight. For more than 30 years now, French political debate has centered itself around issues of identity at the expense of more pressing topics such as health care, climate change, unemployment and poverty. The far right has led the way. Exploiting feelings of decline at the end of the 1960s — as France shed its colonial empire, lost the war in Algeria and submitted to American domination of Western Europe — the far right became a potent political force. It used its influence to defend its conception of French identity, evoking a thousand-year-old European Christian civilization threatened by North African Muslim immigration.This was the foundation upon which the National Front was created in 1972 by Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. As people from France’s former colonies migrated to the metropole, the party focused obsessively on the supposed dangers of immigration. Mr. Le Pen’s tone was often apocalyptic: “Tomorrow,” he infamously said in 1984, “immigrants will stay with you, eat your soup and sleep with your wife, your daughter or your son.” Such rancorous resentment found some sympathy in certain quarters of French society, where the homogenizing effects of globalization and the increased visibility of Islam among French-born citizens were held to be stripping France of its essential character.This antipathy took in many targets, among them French Jews. Mr. Le Pen was notorious for his antisemitic remarks — for which he was condemned by the courts multiple times — and the party created in his image trafficked in antisemitic ideas, tropes and images. Though Ms. Le Pen claimed to be moving past her father’s fixation on Jews, she continued to fan the flames — refusing in 2017 to accept France’s culpability for the Vichy regime’s role in the Holocaust and even, in a campaign poster this April, appearing to make a gesture associated with neo-Nazis. Capped by Mr. Zemmour’s open embrace of the Vichy regime, antisemitism has re-entered the political mainstream.Muslims have similarly borne the brunt of bigotry. Initially considered a threat from elsewhere — supposedly coming to France to deprive the native-born of jobs — Muslims have in recent decades been viewed as an internal threat. With the rise of Islamist terrorism, Muslims were seen to be practicing an inherently violent religion that required containment by public authorities. To be a Muslim was to be guilty until proved innocent.The past decade has taken this equation to a new level. The widespread fear now is not that a handful of people among nearly six million Muslims might pose a danger to public safety, but that all French Muslims by their very existence threaten the cultural identity of “traditional France.” It is, for some voters, an existential fear. In response, politicians have pushed measures to curb Islam’s purported infringement on French life, such as banning religious attire in public schools, full-face coverings in public spaces and burkinis on public beaches, and passing a bill that gives the state power to monitor Muslim religious observance and organizations.To justify such moves, politicians weaponized the liberal concept of laïcité — effectively state-backed secularism — to restrict freedom of religion and conscience in the interests of an anti-Muslim agenda. This process, crucially, has made it possible for Ms. Le Pen to turn from radical firebrand to reasonable truth-teller. But underneath the sheen of normalcy, the brutally racist ideology her party pioneered over the past 30 years is very much intact.Her manifesto, for example, promises to amend the Constitution to prohibit the settlement of a “a number of foreigners so large that it would change the composition and identity of the French people” — a rewording of the white-supremacist “Great Replacement” theory. She also plans to legally distinguish between “native-born French” and “others” for access to housing, employment and benefits, and allow citizenship only to people who have “earned it and assimilated.” Completing the picture, Ms. Le Pen has said she would ban the wearing of the head scarf in public spaces.In these promises as well as the company she keeps — she has associated with Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and Viktor Orban — Ms. Le Pen has made clear her intention to reshape France at home and abroad. Her administration would echo those in Brazil, India and other countries where a similar rightward slide has taken hold. For minorities, immigrants, dissidents and democracy itself, it would be a disaster. Though her momentum appears to have stalled in recent days, Ms. Le Pen is not going away, no matter what happens on Sunday. As a French Muslim citizen born and raised here, I fear for my country.And it is my country, as much as it is Ms. Le Pen’s or Mr. Macron’s. At a time when politicians and pundits are demanding Muslims “abide by republican values” if they want to be part of the country, it’s instructive that voters may elect a politician whose core ideology violates the values of liberty, equality and fraternity that France has long championed. In that irony lies the gap between what France could be and what it is.Rim-Sarah Alouane (@RimSarah) is a Ph.D. candidate and a researcher in comparative law at Toulouse 1 Capitole University in France. Her research focuses on civil liberties, constitutional law and human rights in Europe and North America.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Stay Woke. The Right Can Be Illiberal, Too.

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      Those of us who sustainedly criticize the excesses of the Great Awokening are often told that we’re making a mountain out of a molehill. That the real problem is censorship not from the left but from the right. That censorship from the left is largely a matter of pile-ons by anonymous Twitter denizens or college kids expressing themselves, while censorship from the right involves menacing officials dedicated to eliminating, for instance, discussion of race in schools.The characterization of the problem on the left strikes me as somewhere between uninformed and willfully blind. Yes, left-leaning students might demonstrate their free-speech intolerance within the cozy confines of their campuses, but one day they graduate into the real world and take that rehearsed intolerance with them. Superprogressive views may predominate in certain settings, but the presumption, held by too many, that their woke outlook doesn’t even warrant intellectual challenge in the public square is an extension of the broader “dis-enlightenment” I described back in October.That said, I’m genuinely open to the idea that censorship from the right is more of a problem than I have acknowledged. The truth may be, as it so often is, in the middle, and a legal case from the past week has made me think about it.Making sense of things requires synthesis, identifying what explains a lot rather than perceiving a buzzing chaos of people suddenly crazed, which is an implausible and even effort-light approach to things. In that vein, our problem today is illiberalism on both sides.We will salute, then, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker, who last week ruled, in a 74-page opinion, in favor of six professors at the University of Florida who were barred by school officials from acting as expert witnesses in cases challenging state policy on issues ranging from restrictive voting laws to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attempt to withhold funds from schools with mask mandates. (There are also recent reports that U.F. faculty members have been cautioned against using the words “critical” and “race” in the same sentence to describe the curriculums they teach, apparently to head off discussion of critical race theory and its effects on education in a way that might draw a backlash from state legislators or others in the Florida government.)Judge Walker analogized the actions of University of Florida officials to the removal in December of a statue commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre from the campus of the University of Hong Kong. He echoed the plaintiffs’ argument that “in an apparent act of vorauseilender Gehorsam,” or anticipatory obedience, “U.F. has bowed to perceived pressure from Florida’s political leaders and has sanctioned the unconstitutional suppression of ideas out of favor with Florida’s ruling party” — admonishing the defendants in a footnote that “if those in U.F.’s administration find this comparison upsetting, the solution is simple. Stop acting like your contemporaries in Hong Kong.”The judge summed up by noting that “the Supreme Court of the United States has long regarded teachers, from the primary grades to the university level, as critical to a healthy democracy.” He added, “Plaintiffs’ academic inquiry ‘is necessary to informed political debate’ and ‘is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,’” emphasizing that “when such critical inquiry is stifled, democracy suffers.”Let’s not forget, either, what happened to the schoolteacher Matthew Hawn last summer: He was fired by school administrators in Tennessee for leading classroom discussions with high school juniors and seniors (in a course called Contemporary Studies; it’s not as if this had been a chemistry lab) on concepts such as white privilege and implicit bias, not long after passage in the state of a ban on teaching critical race theory. As I’ve argued, ideas rooted in that theory do, in refracted form, make their way into how some schoolteachers teach, and it’s legitimate to question the extent of this. But that hardly justifies Hawn’s getting canned for things such as assigning a widely read article by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Hawn is pursuing an appeal of his dismissal, and if justice is on his side, he should win it.I’m not doing a 180 here or letting those I term the Elect off the hook. The illiberal tendency on the left is just as oppressive and requires equal pushback: The University of North Texas music professor Timothy Jackson, a founder of his school’s Center for Schenkerian Studies, studies the work of the German Jewish music theorist Heinrich Schenker, whose early-20th-century work figures prominently in music theory. In a 2019 speech to the Society for Music Theory, Philip Ewell, a Black music professor at Hunter College characterized Schenker as a racist and wrote in a 2020 article for Music Theory Online (a publication of the Society for Music Theory) that “Schenker’s racist views infected his music theoretical arguments,” that “there exists a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized” and that by extension, music theory and even the academic field of musicology are racialized, if not racist.In 2020, Jackson led the publication of an issue of The Journal of Schenkerian Studies dedicated to addressing Ewell’s case, publishing five articles defending Ewell’s case and 10 critiquing it. As The Times reported last year, Jackson was hardly gentle in his pushback, arguing that Ewell’s “denunciation of Schenker and Schenkerians may be seen as part and parcel of the much broader current of Black antisemitism” and partly attributing the dearth of Black classical musicians to fewer Black people who “grow up in homes where classical music is profoundly valued” and that fostering music education in public schools is the proper remedy.The result was, by today’s standards, predictable: Hundreds of students and scholars signed a letter condemning the issue. After an investigation, the university relieved Jackson of his supervision of the journal and, according to Times reporting, didn’t rule out further disciplinary action.The point here is less whether Jackson’s argument and the issue it appeared in were the quintessence of tact on race issues than whether he deserves to lose his career status and reputation because of them. Nor is the point whether Ewell’s argument was enlightened; one is (or should be) free to subscribe to it. Or not. My view is that while the field of musicology is correct, generally, in examining itself for remnants of racist bias, Ewell’s specific take is flawed.No, the point is that the through line between Jackson’s treatment at North Texas and the treatment of the Florida law professors is that instead of their views being addressed as one side of heated, complex debates, their views were squelched as unutterable heresies.Jackson has sued, and if justice is on his side, he should win. I could cite a great many cases similar to his.To many, I suspect, what happened to the University of Florida professors and to Hawn is more frightful than what happened to Jackson. However, that sentiment is a matter of one’s priorities, not a neutral conception of what justice consists of. Too many of us suppose that people should not be allowed to express opinions they deem unpleasant or dangerous and are given to demonizing those who have such opinions as threats to our moral order.On the right, even if you’re wary of critical race theory’s effect on the way many kids are taught, it is both backward and unnecessary to institutionalize the sense that discussing race at all is merely unwelcome pot stirring (and if that’s not what you mean, then you need to make it clear). On the left, illiberalism does not become insight just because some think they are speaking truth to power. Resistance to this kind of perspective is vital, no matter where it comes from on the political spectrum.Have feedback? Send a note to McWhorter-newsletter@nytimes.com.John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He hosts the podcast “Lexicon Valley” and is the author, most recently, of “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” More

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      in World Politics

      Understanding Racism in All Its Forms

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      Twenty years ago, Amnesty International’s “Racism and the Administration of Justice” report warned that “unchecked racism can lead to tragedy on a massive scale.” Last week, as we remembered George Floyd and pondered over the meaning of his death a year ago, another aspect of unchecked racism resurfaced. On May 21, just as a cautious ceasefire was beginning thousands of miles away between Israel and Hamas, Joseph Borgen, a Jewish man reportedly on his way to a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan, was attacked by demonstrators attending a pro-Palestine rally, one of whom has since been charged with a hate crime.

      The A-Word in the Arab World

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      The day after the attack, Borgen was interviewed by CNN anchor Don Lemon, where he said that he wanted to understand what made those who attacked him “act the way they did.” Prejudice, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes, all colors and cultures — as does violence. But the linchpin to unpacking the absurdity of this attack, of Muslim-on-Jew hate or Jew-on-Muslim hate, is understanding anti-Semitism and, through the drivers of that phenomenon, Islamophobia.

      Familiarity Breeds Contempt

      This attack, despicable as it was, should not surprise us given our understanding — or lack of it — of anti-Semitism, described as that “very light sleeper,” so easy to awaken. Such attacks are privileged acts of hate because the attackers consider their own particular cause to be exceptional and thus far from racist. Whether you are Jewish or Muslim, Arab or Israeli, the internet is a particularly convenient place to find vindication for what you think is the “truth.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      What we encounter online is a cacophony of privileged hatreds. Jeremy Rosen wrote in his blog recently that, “In the age of social media and mass communication, so many people only believe one propagandist side of the argument and make no effort to hear another point of view.” He writes of how this saddens him in the same way that jihadism has given Islam a bad name “when it is only the most primitive, insecure, and misled who think that way.” But as he rightly states, “these are the tools of the prejudiced.”

      When otherwise peaceful demonstrations manifest themselves in brutal attacks by individuals, verbal or physical, on a perceived “other,” it is racism, pure and simple. But when the perpetrators of such acts are themselves from minority communities, it kowtows to only one agenda — that of white supremacy — which has no sympathy with any of them. The murder of George Floyd and the ensuing public awakening among so many diverse communities — of color, of faith, of culture, of economic disparity, of difference — should be a cue for communities everywhere to reexamine their own attitudes and get their priorities right.

      In relation to Jews and Muslims, a navel-gazing complacency has largely ignored the bigger picture, which is the fight against systemic, institutional or structural racism. The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have reminded the world that all people of good conscience should be focused on this type of discrimination. However, the Middle East question continues to revolve around, perhaps fatalistically, over the relationship between Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, to the detriment of those communities themselves as well as that greater struggle for minorities — combating discrimination and all forms of racism within the societies they actually inhabit.

      Common Ground

      Can Jews and Muslims find common ground from the example of what the killing of George Floyd has taught us? It isn’t as though they have not had opportunities to focus on a more nuanced understanding of each “other.” Attempts in the past to do so have covered art, music, academic enquiry and dialogue. The British composer Roxanna Panufnik’s work, “Abraham,” for instance, is a beautiful musical example of bridge-building between religions that share the essential belief in one God.

      In 2008, “The Call for Peace, Dialogue and Understanding between Muslims and Jews,” an open letter with 40 Muslim signatories, highlighted how, “although many … only know of Muslim-Jewish relations through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there needs to be an awareness of other positive encounters at different stages of our history.”

      In 2004, I co-convened a remarkable initiative called Alif-Aleph with Dr. Richard Stone, a former chair of the UK-based Runnymede Commission on Islamophobia. The manifesto of that initiative remains relevant and ought to be revived in the context of George Floyd’s wider legacy. The initiative ambitiously aimed to create a new golden age in which Muslims and Jews in the diaspora would spread the example of working together to other communities, building on their mutually positive contributions to society. Living side by side in the West is a new situation that provides new opportunities.

      In practice, the initiative explored a unified purpose in addressing racism. Underlining it was “a common experience of having to address hostilities that derive from mistaken stereotypes of our religions and our cultures, leading to Islamophobia and Antisemitism.” It declared that those who wish to promote negative stereotypes of Muslims and Jews as people who hate each other will be recognized as extremists, because “What the world needs are Harmonisers, not Polarisers.”

      Violently attacking and verbally abusing an innocent person because of how you perceive a particular truth makes you anathema to that truth, makes you a hypocrite, a hater and a racist. It makes you as unjust as those you are trying to expose.

      So what made the attackers “act the way they did”? Don Lemon probably answered that question on his show when he earlier told fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo that “the issue is for people to understand their own implicit bias and racism. … There are different cultures in different places but that doesn’t change … what racism is.” That is the lesson the jury heard when convicting the racist killer of George Floyd. That is the lesson Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis must hear in their own search for a meaningful resolution of what divides them.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      GOP Candidate Leticia Remauro Under Fire for Saying ‘Heil Hitler’ at Virus Protest

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyG.O.P. Candidate Under Fire for Saying ‘Heil Hitler’ at Virus ProtestLeticia Remauro, who is running for Staten Island borough president, has apologized for making a “bad analogy.”Credit…Leticia Remauro, via TwitterJan. 12, 2021Updated 6:50 p.m. ETA Republican political operative who is running for Staten Island borough president apologized on Tuesday after she drew widespread condemnation for saying “Heil Hitler” during a protest against coronavirus restrictions.The politician, Leticia Remauro, made the remark as she was recording a video of herself during a protest on Dec. 2 outside Mac’s Public House, a tavern in Staten Island that has become a rallying point against virus restrictions. The video drew attention after it was sent to a reporter with NY1, who shared it on Twitter on Monday night.In the video, Ms. Remauro expresses support for Mac’s and other small businesses.She then pans to a line of officers outside the tavern, saying that she is there to “stand up for our right, the right to pay taxes so that we can pay the salaries of these good men and women, who yes are only doing their job, but not for nothing, sometimes you’ve got to say ‘Heil Hitler,’ not a good idea to send me here, we’re not going to do it.”Ms. Remauro has been involved in Staten Island politics for some 30 years. In 2000, she headed up the campaign of George W. Bush in New York, and her marketing firm was recently employed by the congressional campaign of Nicole Malliotakis, who unseated a Democrat in November with the help of President Trump.The video, which emerged on Monday, drew widespread outrage on social media from politicians and the public, with many people calling for Ms. Remauro to renounce her candidacy for borough president. Some people also called on Ms. Malliotakis to condemn Ms. Remauro’s words.In a post on Twitter on Tuesday, she said her words were a “VERY BAD ANALOGY likening the actions of the de Blasio & Cuomo against small businesses to those of a Nazi dictator.”In an emailed statement on Tuesday, Ms. Remauro said there was “never an appropriate comparison to be made” to Nazi Germany or Hitler.“What I said is not reflective of anything I feel or think about the horrors of the holocaust or the enduring trauma impacting survivors and subsequent generations, or the vital forever necessity of holocaust education,” Ms. Remauro said.Ms. Remauro lists herself on LinkedIn as the president and chief executive of the Von Agency, a marketing and public relations firm. According to data from the Federal Election Commission, Ms. Malliotakis’s congressional campaign paid the Von Agency $90,158.98 for media consulting from 2019 through 2020.Ms. Remauro’s partner at the Von Agency handled advertising on social media for the campaign, according to Ms. Malliotakis’s congressional office. Ms. Remauro also worked for six months on Ms. Malliotakis’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2017.Ms. Malliotakis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in her own post on Twitter, she condemned Ms. Remauro’s words as “shocking and wrong.”“At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across our city and especially on Staten Island, there is no excuse for such words being uttered,” she said.The Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group, reported a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2019, more than in any year since the group began keeping track four decades ago.The emergence of the video came days after a violent mob supporting Mr. Trump broke into the U.S. Capitol, drawing heightened scrutiny of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who were part of the riot and have supported the president. Photographs from last Wednesday’s riot show a man parading the Confederate flag through the Capitol, and another wearing a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Camp Auschwitz.” Social media posts from Ms. Remauro suggest she was present in Washington last week where people broke into the Capitol building. But she told The New York Post that she had been in her hotel room during the rioting and had not participated.In a tweet in September, Ms. Remauro said that “there will be no peaceful inauguration,” no matter the winner, and blamed Antifa.“This isn’t about getting rid of Trump its about bringing down America,” she said.According to her campaign biography, she served as a community liaison to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki, and worked on a diversity program for Goldman Sachs. She has also been the chair of the Staten Island Republican Party.In addition to running for borough president, Ms. Remauro was until recently the chair of the board of the Staten Island Hebrew Public Charter School, according to the school’s website. Jonathan Rosenberg, the president and chief executive of the school, said Ms. Remauro had offered her resignation on Monday night, and the school accepted it.She is also the secretary of the Staten Island Downtown Alliance, a business advocacy group.Ms. Remauro has posted several videos in recent months about the challenges businesses face because of the pandemic. In a video she posted on Facebook in December, she said, “I have no words except I don’t feel like I live in America anymore.”“I feel like we live in some other communist country,” Ms. Remauro said.Azi Paybarah contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in World Politics

      How Anti-Semitism Has Lost Any Connection With Reality

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      A Business Insider article by Oma Seddiq highlights the latest example of US President Donald Trump’s obsessive insistence on treating American Jews as citizens of Israel. Jewish voices have once again rebuked the president, though apparently to no avail. Seddiq’s article bears the title “’Textbook anti-Semitism’: American Jews condemn Trump for repeatedly telling them that Israel is ‘your country.’”

      No dictionary, not even a devil’s dictionary, can feel comfortable defining a term that describes a tradition with such horrific historical associations. But today’s post-Holocaust world of political marketing has so distorted all discourse relating to Israel that it is now impossible to disentangle three distinct concepts: ethnic identity, religion and national politics. Consequently, the meaning of anti-Semitic — now simply an all-purpose insult — changes according to the person using it.

      Despite Recent Attacks, Anti-Semitism in the US Remains Low

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      Typically, the reason for proffering the insult has nothing to do with ethnicity or theology. It’s always about politics. The insult has become so potent in political arguments that its meaning is reduced to whatever the polemical objective of the speaker happens to be.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Anti-Semitism:

      A label that points to an undefined trait or attitude possessed by anyone with opposing political views who appears to make general assumptions about anything related either to the Jewish people or the state of Israel.

      Contextual Note

      During a call with American Jewish leaders last week, Donald Trump has uttered this sentiment: “We really appreciate you, we love your country also and thank you very much.” This is problematic for several reasons. Beyond the fact that Trump sees all American Jews as citizens of another country, the “we” and the “you” he mentions are both dangerously ambiguous. “We” can be restrictive, indicating Trump himself, or inclusive, as in “we the people,” embracing the entire nation. In whose name is he speaking? Moreover, by referring to American Jews collectively as “you,” he both sets them apart and imposes a solidarity of political identity that is manifestly false.

      The Jewish strategist Sophie Ellman-Golan complained: “It’s really important that we separate out American Jews and Israel — we are not one in the same. It’s anti-Semitic to suggest that we are.” There may be an anti-Semitic strain to Trump’s worldview, but not here. On other occasions, Trump has shown sympathy for virulently anti-Semitic activists. Everyone remembers those “very fine people” in Charlottesville.

      Instead, Trump, who never tires of praising Israel, strives to appear radically pro-Semitic. The absurdity of his remarks demonstrates little more than the well-established fact that the president is incapable of understanding anything about any category of people, whether the factor of identity is permanent or temporary. Because some protesters in the streets are violent, Trump judges that all protesters are violent. And because the violence is directed against the contestable practices of existing institutions Trump identifies with, he accuses all protesters of sedition — a legal term that means rebellion against the state.

      Similarly, because Israel is officially a Jewish state, Trump believes all American Jews consider themselves citizens of Israel. What applies to one applies to the entire group. And because Trump invariably aligns his foreign policy with Israel’s, he sees no problem with what his critics call the trope of “dual loyalty.” Instead, he encourages it because it puts them in opposition to Trump’s opposition in the US, especially those who criticize his unconditional alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

      The real problem with the way anti-Semitism is bandied about in the media today is that the term has become a toxic brand that can be used against anyone, including those who are called “self-hating Jews.” This often simply means those who dare to critique Israel. In the US, even the Jewish Bernie Sanders has been suspected of anti-Semitism because he has distanced himself from Israel.

      When Jeremy Corbyn dared to deviate from British geopolitical orthodoxy, defenders of the idea of an inviolable alliance with Israel — even inside his party — branded him an anti-Semite. Much of the respectable media followed suit. They did so not after taking into account the complex intersection of religious belief, ethnic belonging and political loyalty, but only because it appeared to be the easiest way to demolish the left wing of the Labour Party.

      Historical Note

      Anti-Semitism is an undeniably shameful feature of Western history. Its roots date back to the rupture that marked the birth of Christianity — a religion that emerged from Judaism after the Romans crucified Jesus. From the time of St. Paul’s writings that established the major themes of the new theology, Christianity had to justify its break with the Judaic tradition even while acknowledging a very real historical continuity. Initially, Christians saw themselves as religious separatists with no reason to cultivate hatred for the Jews, especially after the Romans dispersed the Jews from their homeland in the Middle East and effectively dismantled all Jewish political infrastructure.

      The virulent anti-Semitism that culminated with Germany’s Third Reich developed rapidly in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, accelerating with the First Crusade, launched in 1095. The feudal system required the population, from yeomen to serfs, to accept their allegiance to the local nobility. Kings and princes ruled over expanses of territory federating multiple domains belonging to nobles. Those feudal kingdoms later evolved into nation-states.

      Jews had no place in a Christian feudal system founded on an agricultural economy. Christians regarded the Jews as a people that had self-excluded themselves from the Christian community. Jews had little choice but to group in cities where they were confined to ghettos, from which they could nevertheless provide some vital services to Christians, including moneylending.

      In the 11th century, England’s Norman King William the Conqueror provided a model for “managing” the Jews, mainly for the purpose of the royal military economy. Jews had the right to lend money at interest, whereas for Christians it was a sin. With no ordinary feudal ties, all Jews were deemed direct subjects of the king. This royal privilege eventually led to moments when a king, having profited from the financial facility offered by the Jews, could use an invented pretext to punish the Jewish community, confiscate their property and cancel their debts. It was a form of political opportunism that used anti-Semitic sentiment as a pretext for plunder.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Given the somber history that would follow — exclusion and exile, blood libels, forced conversion, ghettoization, pogroms in the 19th and 20th centuries — all of it leading up to Hitler’s audacious “final solution,” the term “anti-Semitism” should always be taken seriously. It has played an active role in the evolution of modern nations in the Western world. But today, for purely political and sometimes basely electoral reasons, people have taken to using it as a facile insult to brand their opponents with an intention that everyone reflexively recognizes as shameful.

      Because the label has changed from a historically accurate description of horrendously calculated and brutally executed actions to what has become today a vague suspicion of a lack of suitable deference to Israel, the term anti-Semitism has literally lost any connection with reality. Calling Trump an anti-Semite illustrates the absurdity of the trend. The Donald’s delight in making unjustified pronouncements about American Jews doesn’t stem from anti-Semitism. It’s just that he’s a narcissist, utterly insensitive to the reality of others.

      In contrast, this past week offered an example of what has now become standard dog-whistle anti-Semitism coming from the American right. In a discussion on Fox News of violence in American cities, Newt Gingrich singled out the Democratic donor, George Soros, as the unique cause of the breakdown of law and order. Soros has long been a preferred target of anti-Semites because he finances liberal causes. Gingrich knows that and so does Fox News. Embarrassed and wishing to avoid the accusation of complicity, the Fox News hosts shut Gingrich down for such an obvious anti-Semitic trope.

      Anti-Semitism exists among the population, probably far more on the right than the left. Modern governments can no longer have recourse to it as official policy, but ordinary citizens and individual politicians can resonate to its xenophobic appeal. The term itself has thus become an abused and abusive rhetorical weapon used by all kinds of polemicists. And, for the moment, the media appears far too timid to attempt deconstructing that rhetoric.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.  More