How I Became a Putin Troll
by Holger Eekhof
First, let me be clear. I am not a Putin Troll. I am a Europa Troll.
Now, as to how I got here…
Politics has always been my hobby. I studied political science back in the 1990’s under noted Professor Hans W. Maull, a member of the Trilateral Commission at the University of Trier. Later on, I became active in the Christian Democratic (CDU) party, which certainly did not predestine me to become a pro-Russian activist. As a loyal CDU operative, I was expected to be firmly anchored in the “Western” camp.
Unfortunately, this so-called “Western camp” and those iconic “Western values” are no longer existent here in the West. Those “values,” if they ever existed, have drastically eroded since the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the mere mention of them is an absurdity, for they are simply no longer existent, no longer present.
The most obvious example of this “absurdity” is a rumor Europeans cling to in a fabulously fond way — liberty being above all tenets the beacon our Lord alias partner the USA beckons us with. As we see, the faux democracy has led American and thus all of Europe into bondage — and thereby a masquerade of freedom. And so, this reality became so perverse for me, that I could no longer be silent as a learned representative of Western values. From my personal doorstep, the following event helped chart my new course.
Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, as a matter of coincidence, manifested in a clear (to me) revelation that Georgia bore the sole blame for the war. This was also clear to every citizen in Tbilisi. And even to any member of the ENM. But how then could such a distortion of reality come through our media? This was and is the question that guides me. I am about solutions, and here is the only one I see.
Those who have gathered around Saakashvili and who have benefited from corruption through their anti-corruption system, they have bought their impunity to the “West” by making an absolutely senseless war. This war was a deliberate and intentional lie from the start, and not only through the so-called Mainstream Media. For the perpetrators, all of them, Russia was evil, and the facts did not matter anymore.
The Georgian people and their historical ties with Russia became the game of geopolitical arrogance. Georgian soldiers were sacrificed to maintain the legitimacy of NATO. A legitimation which has been more than questioned by Russia’s approach to Europe. The United States’ rule instrument was simply the source of erosion, and a Saakashvili was sold enough to send his soldiers to death for demonstration purposes-in the service of the master.
At this point, I almost turned the page. From a transatlantic and a globalist to a European.
Chapter IX: Actors in the Epopee
“People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don’t want to learn it themselves.”
If the civil war afire in the East of Ukraine had happened a thousand years ago the children of the Kievan Rus’ would have gathered around a campfire to sing the Byliny[28] or Stariny about the heroes saving them from an uncertain fate. Those forms of epic poems from the 9th century AD took on all too familiar themes I’ve witnessed via my friends and colleagues in the Donbass. The crisis exacted on the people of Ukraine by outside forces really should be required through an oral history, the injustice and the heroic energy buried in Novorossiya. In my mind’s eye, there is planted themes that Byliny singers might have sung. A mother bidding a son farewell, a fighter saddling his horse or departing over the wall of some great medieval city, the epic journey begun and even exchanging taunts with an enemy appears in my consciousness — blood brothers and living and dead heroes. For those unfamiliar with the structure of these Slavic poems, ‘older’ heroes in the songs resembled mythological figures, while the younger heroes more closely resembled normal human beings. As the fates would have it, there are modern bogatyr[29] in this story too. The first person who comes to mind when I think of the heroes of the Donbass, Russell “Texas” Bonner Bentley is an American writer and volunteer soldier who traveled on his own from Texas to serve in the Novorossiyan Armed Forces (NAF). While Russell may not resemble either of the three most famous bogatyrs, Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, and Alyosha Popovich, the adventurous side of Bentley, Graham Phillips, and people like photojournalists Patrick Lancaster do remind me of other ancient heroes. Talking with these friends for background for this book, “Texas” mentioning Baldr, the Norse hero who is most famous for his demise, rather than his earthly deeds. It is right here the roles foreign agents played in the Donbass fight takes on a rather epic tone. While Bentley, Phillips, and others may not fit the classic “hero” frame West of Donetsk, I know the people there do hold them up as icons. In this way, they occupy locally the same pedestals Motorola and Givi did, and will surely be found worthy of their own Byliny. I find it ironic that “Texas” would mention his the “son of Thor” as a childhood hero. So many people in the Donbass acquaint him and these others with “good,” as is the case of Baldr. And it’s rather epic to me too, that the death of Baldr was sung as the harbinger of Ragnarök, an apocalyptic moment where the fates converge into a kind of “Twilight of the Gods.” Many of us prophesied that the Ukraine Civil War would lead to some mutually shared destruction of our world shuld Putin not prevail on reason somehow.
While it’s true the exploits of these westerners are not so well-known outside Ukraine and Russia, it’s also clear that in Ukraine they represent a kind of omen. Bentley, Phillips, commanders Motorola and Givi, and unsung heroes like their slain comrade Ruslan Shchedrov, callsign “Filin (owl) are characters in a would be a Greek tragedy. As I watched the special Phillips did of Filin’s wedding, and then learned a sniper’s bullet took his life recently, a hundred more such sad stories flooded my mind. How many mourn with the families these brave people? While certainly there are morning families on both sides of this conflict, the pointed lack of coverage of this war by BBC and others guaranteed a coalition of dissent would form. It is from these instances of injustice and untruth that Putin’s “Kremlin Troll” forces were empowered to take on a multi-trillion-dollar media empire. The focused negative attention onto Donetsk and toward the Russian side of this crisis, helped produce and different and even more powerful emotional response. Creating martyrs and then disrespecting them is just idiotic PR in my book. It is this dumb strategy and mindset the anti-Russia cabal clings to somehow. The notion anything can silence the cries of outrage and pain of victims for long. This brings me to the real epic heroes in every conflict of the human spirit, the unsung fighters Reuters or TIME can never seem to find.
One of Putin’s most powerful soldiers is a relatively unsung Kremlin hero named Jeffrey Silverman, a former US Army weapons specialist who became a sort of castaway in the Republic of Georgia. Our paths first began to intertwine after I had left Russia Inside and when I began writing editorial and research for New Eastern Outlook in July 2015. Since that time, I have had more social media communications with Silverman, than with any other single “agent” of pro-Russian support. This is due in large part to Silverman’s unmatched ability to transform thought and research into useful information. His story, like that of my Amazon troll buddy Eric Anderson, is wrought with fascinating details, adventure, and even dangerous exchanges with the world of spy spooks, etc. I’ll give my further assessment on Silverman farther along, but who better to frame his contribution to the Putin plan than the man who always says he “rides-with-the-fox-and-runs-with-the hounds!”
28
29