The other Ukraine scandal: US support for neo-Nazis fuels far-right terror at home

Aaron Maté speaks with Ben Norton about how a far-right US soldier arrested by the FBI for plotting domestic bomb attacks sought to join Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which was directly armed and advised by the American government.

Read Ben Norton’s report: “Bomb-plotting extremist American soldier tried to join US-backed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine“

Norton explains that this is “yet another example of what intelligence agencies refer to as ‘blowback.’ Blowback is where far-right forces that the CIA, the military, and other forces support abroad are then radicalizing and working with violent extremists here at home, who carry out domestic acts of terrorism.”

“So this should be a major scandal, similar to the acts of blowback of ISIS and other Salafi-jihadist extremists in Syria and Libya, who were empowered by the CIA and the US, and then carried out violent acts of domestic terrorism here or in Europe, very similar,” Norton continued.

“Of course the reason we don’t hear that is because this group that he wanted to join, the Azov battalion in Ukraine, just so happens to be backed by the US government, and fighting Russia.”