“American fascism is entirely due to Russian operatives and trolls” is laughable because of how hard it glosses over the steps you have taken to ensure fascism in your own country.

I’m not American, and it’s not fascist thinking to point out the fact that Russia is literally running a fascist playbook to encourage aligned fascism globally.

Pointing that out isn’t meant to excuse the existence of fascists within the US; if anything, its about the idea that there are fascists to work with in every country, and they’re coordinating their efforts.

…m.wikipedia.org/…/International_Democracy_Union

The difference between the US and Russia is there are still people like the head of the FTC trying to curtail corporate power however they can. Russia only does it to enforce loyalty amongst its oligarchs.

This idea that Russia is both too weak to win a war against Ukraine but also strong enough to covertly topple the world’s foremost superpowers is honestly fascist thinking.

The too weak/strong argument is fallacious in this instance because the dimensions we’re comparing aren’t equivalent. A nation that heavily invests in intelligence and asymmetric warfare at the expense of conventional warfare capabilities will be strong in the former and weak in the latter. In Ukraine’s case, Russia thought they were strong in both and found out that they weren’t quite as capable as they had led themselves to believe. That’s why we’re seeing them ramp up the tactics as described in the article.

Once Trump pulls the plug on Ukraine’s funding and access to US intelligence systems, they’ll fall to Russia because they won’t have enough of either capability to win a war of attrition with a larger, richer state.