Russia's irredentist claims on Alaska have provided fodder for comedians, but the stakes at the Trump-Putin meeting in the Last Frontier are no laughing matter. Despite the escalating mutual nuclear threats between Washington and Moscow, Trump's call for a Russia-Ukraine "land-swap" obviously means Kyiv being forced to accept Moscow's annexation of much of its territory in exchange for the return of other pieces its own territory illegally occupied by Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow sends drones to threaten NATO member Lithuania, which sits on the critical corridor to the Russian exclave (and tactical missile outpost) of Kalningrad. Germany has responded by sending troops to the Baltic country—its first post-war foreign deployment. Appeasement of aggression failed to win peace at Munich in 1938, and there's no reason to hope it will in Alaska today. But the difference is that the contending powers today have nuclear weapons. In Episode 291 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unflinching look.

A 68-year-old veteran opposition activist was arrested after displaying a sign reading "PUTIN HITLER" from the side of a prominent bridge over the Moskva River in the center of the Russian capital May 6. Grigory Saksonov, also known as Uncle Grisha, climbed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge holding the sign and clad in wetsuit before lowering himself into the water below with a rope. He was pulled out of the river by police and taken away in an ambulance. Saksonov, who has been arrested before in actions in support of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and had maintained a citizen's memorial on the bridge for slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, faces charges of "taking part in an unauthorized action" and "disobeying a police officer." (Novaya Gazeta)

April 20 has become a national day of celebration for the hedonistic cannabis subculture, but it has also long been marked by the radical right and Nazi-nostalgists around the world for unsavory reasons. It now emerges that Trump's Inauguration Day executive order declaring a state of emergency on the southern border also set a deadline of April 20 for a joint Pentagon-Homeland Security recommendation on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act. This has sparked much speculation that Trump will immediately do so, declaring martial law and consolidating a dictatorship... this weekend. How likely is this, and is the date a mere coincidence? In Episode 274 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down. 

In Episode 272 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the Israel-hosted "International Conference on Combatting anti-Semitism" that featured speakers from the European and American neo-fascist (and even anti-Semitic!) far right. The established phenomenon of paradoxical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism has now been joined by anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism. While Trump's 2019 executive order on anti-Semitism sought to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, the new posture would actually substitute the prior for the latter entirely as the ideology to be opposed, in all but name. Anti-Semitism is now acceptable as long as it is pro-Israel, fulfilling Zionist founder Theodore Herzl's 1895 prediction: "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies."

Speaking at an International Conference on Combating Antisemitism held in Jerusalem last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against "the fires of anti-Semitism" in Europe and blamed stateside campus protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza on "a systemic alliance between the ultra-progressive left and radical Islam."

The revised deal for US access to Ukraine's mineral wealth (with no security guarantees for Kyiv) collapsed in the unseemly Oval Office donnybrook, and European leaders now convene their own summit—faced with the prospect of supporting Ukraine without the US. But Hungary and Slovakia represent an authoritarian bloc that supports Ukraine's betrayal—and Romania could be next to defect to this Russia-aligned bloc. In Europe and America alike, elements of the "tankie" pseudo-left no longer even bother to hide their convergence with MAGA. In Episode 267 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a clean break at both the international and grassroots levels. Europe must realize that the Atlantic alliance is effectively dead, and there are no prospects of reviving it while Trump is in the White House; whether or not the rumors are true that he was recruited as a KGB agent in the '80s, he is on Putin's side. And progressives must repudiate pseudo-left misleaders who shill for Trump and and spread lies for Putin, and seek a new leadership that mobilizes to oppose them.

In Episode 263 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the moves by the unconstitutional Trump regime to consolidate a dictatorship over the United States—attempting to seize autocratic control over the bureaucracy, and (in a case of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism) weaponizing concern with anti-Semitism to suppress free speech while institutionalizing indifference to (and consciously enflaming) all other forms of racism. And this as Elon Musk (a private-sector oligarch given extra-legal power over government functions) tells a rally of the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland that Germany has "too much of a focus on past guilt." It took Hitler mere weeks to establish a dictatorship after coming to power, whereas with Mussolini it took some three years. We shall soon find out how long it will take in the United States—unless the country can find the wherewithal to resist.

The Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu, on Oct. 16 officially recognized the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union in 1944 as an act of genocide. The statement passed in the 101-seat body with 83 votes in favor and eight abstentions. The decision comes at a time of renewed focus on Russia's ongoing policies in Crimea, which the Riigikogu linked to Soviet-era atrocities. The statement