Last weekend, Patriotic Alternative’s führer Mark Collett again took on the role of Moscow propagandist, hosting Evgeniy (Eugene), a spokesman for the Russian Brotherhood of Academists.
A fortnight previously this Russian student “Brotherhood” broadcast an interview with Elon Musk’s racist father Errol, who is touring Russia spouting Putin’s propaganda for the benefit of the international far right.
The Brotherhood of Academists is tiny and irrelevant inside Russia: even on Telegram – heartland of the pro-Moscow far right – it has fewer than 800 subscribers.
It celebrates Tsarism, with one of the Tsar’s last prime ministers Pyotr Stolypin as one of its historical heroes, and (unlike most of Putin’s fans) disparages Bolshevism. But its true role is as part of Moscow’s outreach to the Western far right.
Konstantin Malofeev, a sanctioned oligarch, is the Brotherhood’s main sponsor and the group is closely linked to his ultra-right television station Tsargrad, which is also subject to international sanctions.
The Brotherhood has hosted speakers such as Alexander Dugin, his late daughter Daria, and Pyotr Tolstoy, a journalist and broadcaster turned MP, who is one of the Putin regime’s leading propagandists.
Even by the standards of Russia’s far right, the Brotherhood of Academists has become especially crazed.
Information war
One of its main leaders is Nikita Izyumov, a former candidate for the New People Party.
This party was created by another wealthy businessman, Alexey Nechayev, as one of several fake opposition parties. Ironically, its main pitch is as a “liberal” rival to Putin’s party, supposedly supporting policies that attract younger Russians, such as less online censorship.
Its links to the Brotherhood of Academists (and via them to British nazis like Collett) might seem ideologically inconsistent. But that’s to misunderstand the nature of Russia’s information war.
It’s not about ideological consistency, it’s about propaganda. That propaganda will sometimes be disguised as a “liberal” and “moderate” stance, and then sometimes the same forces will fund and promote a genocidal, fascist stance aligned with nazis like Collett.
For example, Izyumov’s party at first took a “moderate” line against recognising Russian-backed separatist regions of the Ukraine as independent states, claiming they were hoping to pursue a “peaceful” resolution in Ukraine.
But Izyumov now takes the line that Russian forces in Ukraine should be “showing strength, toughness, and even cruelty in some places.”
In Collett’s case again, ideology is irrelevant. He’s looking for money and online subscriptions.
As well as training students for war, the main practical function of the Brotherhood is to seek out and bully even the mildest critics of Putin’s regime and to intimidate fellow students and academics who dare to express criticisms of the Ukraine invasion.
Hosting extremists
By hosting such extremists and front men for Russia’s covert agencies, Collett has put Patriotic Alternative itself in the firing line.
Several of his closest contacts internationally are part of the Russian Imperial Movement’s propaganda network among Western racists and fascists.
The superficial differences between the RIM and the Brotherhood of Academists (and Malofeev’s wider Tsargrad network) show the way Russian intelligence and propaganda agencies operate.
RIM has for over twenty years been the main channel between the Putin regime and the international racist and fascist movement. It’s openly far right, in the old-fashioned sense, whether hosting the pseudo-academic American racist Jared Taylor or funding terrorism via Scandinavian nazis in the Nordic Resistance Movement.
The Brotherhood and Tsargrad are different. They aspire to a “cooler” image and aim to attract a wider range of students and young Russians to the imperialist, “Eurasian” worldview typified by Dugin.
Networking with terrorists
In his enthusiasm for Putin, Collett has built ties to both groups. During the early days of PA he networked regularly with the Scandinavian nazis of NRM, who are now officially labelled as terrorist in several countries.
Now, the Home Office has banned the NRM’s Russian friends and sponsors, the Russian Imperial Movement, under the Terrorism Act. A ban on Collett’s increasingly deranged and militant PA may not be far behind.
