Connecting the Dots: Russia and the So-Called Alt Right

Today, I listed to another really fascinating Factual Democracy Project talk on Russia’s connection to the alt-right.  Russia’s influence across Europe and the US in fomenting both the alt-left and the alt-right movements goes back a long way, but picked up after Putin’s return to power. The result speaks for itself, despite the strange bedfellows coming together between, say, the Christian right and alt-right. It comes down to marginalized populations looking for allies and the tactics that bring them together around a common enemy.

Bonus. Today, I also went to a movie screening organized by Green Cambridge, Fossil Fuel Somerville and some other usual suspects. We saw The Last Mountain, about the fight against mountaintop coal mining in West Virginia. Mountaintop mining is basically blasting the top off a mountain, literally, then removing a layer of coal, then blasting off another layer of coal, rinse and repeat. It’s a particularly damaging kind of coal mining to environments and nearby communities. And it’s still going on.