It is perfectly predictable and yet a sorry spectacle every time it happens: the great big bad Russia panic whenever, and that’s frequently nowadays, Western liberals and Centrists are losing their grip.

This time it’s the turn of France. With the far-right/right-populist National Rally (RN) under Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella succeeding at the polls as never before, French and other Western mainstream media are serving up the same stale old dish of fearmongering and, most importantly, blame shifting.

Russiagate, or really Russia Rage (as in Road Rage), and its many copies, have been with us since Hillary Clinton and her cult were incapable of facing the fact that she lost the 2016 US presidential election because she is a dreadful person with no redeeming graces – and unlike her naturally gifted if shifty and immoral husband, a catastrophically incompetent politician. And like every good form of insanity, Russia Rage is absolutely immune to both falsification and its own record of failure, even as a piece of demagoguery. We know that the only real scandal about “Russiagate” was that it was a hoax, the result of massive exaggeration, outright lying, and all-round manipulation by Democratic party operatives and their media allies. We also know that it did not even work on its own dishonest terms.

Russia Rage was, in American journalist Matt Taibbi’s words, an “epic disaster.” Indeed, if it had any political effect, then to ultimately help – not damage – its target, Donald Trump: Almost a decade after the inception of the “Russiagate” hoax, Trump is back, stronger than ever and set to capture the American presidency again. And this time, his organization and plans are much more elaborate and ambitious, and, just now, obliging conservative judges at the Supreme Court have also equipped him with almost perfect legal immunity.

The other thing that........

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