U.S. White Nationalist Group Linked to Pro-Kremlin Propagandist - 2020-10-06

U.S. White Nationalist Group Linked to Pro-Kremlin Propagandist October 6, 2020, Michael Edison Hayden, Southern Poverty Law Center

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All three websites feature bylines used by members of The Right Stuff, a white nationalist organization that helped plan and promote the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The Right Stuff is also the same white nationalist organization for which U.S. State Department Official Matthew Q. Gebert covertly recruited members, as Hatewatch first reported in 2019. At least two of the websites have published inflammatory, racist rhetoric in response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that have erupted across the U.S. in recent months. Members of The Right Stuff have also defended eruptions of far-right violence in response to civil unrest this year.

Russia-Insider.com (Russia Insider), National-Justice.com (National Justice) and Truthtopowernews.com (Truth to Power News) share the same account in Google Analytics, which is a tool the proprietors of those websites use to analyze traffic. The Russian email ID Hatewatch found, which ends with the domain "errand.ru," is buried near the bottom of each website's source code. Hatewatch attempted to contact the errand.ru email ID found in the source code of the three extremist websites on Sept. 15. The email Hatewatch sent did not bounce back, but no one responded. After Hatewatch sent the request for comment through Outlook, that email server registered the name of person behind it: Aleksandr Shatskih. Hatewatch reached out to Google for more details about who set up the shared analytics account, but the company did not respond.

The three extremist websites linked by the same Google Analytics account are also united thematically, though Russia Insider is more explicitly pro-Kremlin than the other two. All three websites traffic in disinformation. All three websites denigrate Jewish people, women, non-white people, LGBTQ people and leftists. In some cases, the websites publish overlapping material, like when members of The Right Stuff announced the formation of a self-described political party in August. The sites are also strikingly similar in their design, as evidenced by: Example 1, Example 2 and Example 3.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Michael Edison | last = Hayden | title = U.S. White Nationalist Group Linked to Pro-Kremlin Propagandist | url = https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/10/06/us-white-nationalist-group-linked-pro-kremlin-propagandist | work = Southern Poverty Law Center | date = October 6, 2020 | accessdate = October 6, 2020 }}