I'll never use the term 'Moscow Mitch' – and you shouldn't either

As a leftist millennial I’d normally be the first person to take a Twitter dunk on an odious Republican politician. But when #MoscowMitch went viral, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

For those who don’t spend most of their days on social media, “Moscow Mitch” is a label coined in response to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s intransigence on passing election security legislation in response to concerns of Russian meddling. It started out as a Twitter hashtag, but has now become ubiquitous, being deployed by protesters in Kentucky as well as by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself.

While I couldn’t agree more with the liberal rage at McConnell — the bills in question include no-brainer proposals, like funding audits and ballot paper trails — I’m repelled by the language through which it’s been expressed.

That’s because “Moscow Mitch” is adding fuel to the fire of a disturbing but increasingly popular notion: that the problem with America is the influence of a foreign adversary, rather than our own domestic social, political, and economic structures. In the long-run, the expedient attacks on Republicans as Russian stooges will only weaken progressives’ own agendas.

Concerns about Russian meddling in US elections go all the way back to the earliest days of the Trump administration. While it seems likely that Putin’s vile, right-wing government did interfere in the 2016 election, the actual impact of this interference is murky (countries regularly seek opportunities to influence foreign elections — the US itself has done this many times), as is the coordination of the Trump administration with such efforts.

But instead of limiting finger-pointing at Russia to the obvious places — like social media giants taking Kremlin funds and the Trump administration’s attempts to obstruct Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — liberals have engaged in xenophobic overreach.

Along with #MoscowMitch’s baseless suggestion that the Kentucky Senator is a Russian agent, “Resistance” Twitter accounts and liberal pundits alike have used Russophobia to bash other Republican politicians: #RedSquareRand baselessly accuses the Kentucky Senator of taking Russian funds in exchange for opposing the election security bills, and #LeningradLindsey puzzlingly suggests that the South Carolinian rammed through a draconian asylum bill as part of a…Soviet plot?

And it’s not just Republicans: after grilling Senator Kamala Harris on her prosecutorial record in last week’s Democratic debates, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was called out by liberal commentators, like the New York Times’ Wajahat Ali, as enabling “Russian bots” — never mind that a similar critique of Harris had been published in The Times’ own pages earlier this year. Accusations of Russians sowing “racial discord” have similarly muddied otherwise erstwhile progressive support for racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter.

Shockingly, it’s now become normal for liberals to assume that if a politician does something bad — or even acknowledges the existence of something bad in American society, or in a Democratic politician — Russia must be responsible. And that has dire consequences for our politics.

For one, lazily citing Russia in response to Republican policymaking masks the real incentives behind it, making such efforts even harder for progressives to stop.

Take the election security bills. As The New Republic’s Alex Pareene pointed out in a recent essay, Republicans have long benefited from the control secretaries of state — many of whom are Republicans — hold over electoral procedures. In taming the chaos and subjecting it to consistent national standards, McConnell fears that a partisan advantage necessary for Republican dominance could be lost. Moreover, Republicans have natural reason to fear such legislation would curb the dominance of big money in politics.

The logical response from progressives should be calling out the domestic, right-wing billionaires who have poured large sums into fighting campaign finance reform and election oversight. But instead, we get Joe Scarborough harping on about “Moscow Mitch,” while the Koch Brothers gleefully escape the spotlight.

Over-relying on Russophobia has even more dangerous consequences for liberals: it could actually boost the prospects of Republicans. By framing the conservative agenda of money in politics, draconian immigration policies, and white nationalism as one imported from Russia, it subsumes issues that are deeply rooted into the fabric of American society to an aggressive foreign policy — hardly a liberal cause. And particularly as necessary debates over issues like mass incarceration and systemic racism are being dismissed as discord sowed by Russians, liberals make themselves ever more vulnerable to Republicans who rattle sabers at Putin with one hand while supporting billionaires and racists with the other.

Indeed, this has already begun. Liberals have exhibited a bizarre fascination with Republican foreign policy hawks, like former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, former National Security Adviser H R McMaster, and former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. George Conway, who made his name working with right-wing hitmen Matt Drudge and David Brock against the Clintons in the 1990s, is now applauded as a hero of “the Resistance.” Even my father, a red diaper baby and lifelong liberal, has become an ardent defender of New York Times climate change denier and immigration opponent Bret Stephens.

These are the types of figures liberals have, rightly, loathed for years, thanks to their consistent right-wing politics. But nowadays they’ve become progressive folk heroes simply for stating their concerns about Russian electoral interference. While that is no doubt an issue that must be addressed, this embarrassingly low bar for liberal approval is corrosive to the progressive agenda.

Liberals would do well to remember how Ronald Reagan, the destroyer of progressive worlds and leader of America’s historic shift to the political right, took and held power: by appealing to Russophobia. It may seem cute to photoshop McConnell into a KGB uniform, but, from the purging of labor militants in the late 1940s’s to Hubert Humphrey’s support for the Vietnam War in 1968, there is a dangerous precedent for Cold War nationalism wreaking havoc on the progressive agenda. If liberals do not dial back the Russia-baiting, they may enable a future racist, white nationalist, Republican president who just happens to support sanctions on Moscow.

Right-wing, conservative politics is as American as apple pie. While Scarborough may call McConnell “un-American,” he, and the wider Republican agenda, is supported by social tendencies with deep roots in this country: capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia. The most important Republican backers are not Vladimir Putin and his cabal of oligarchs, but American billionaires like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family, and Sheldon Adelson.

To defeat them, and the conservative policies they yield, liberals need to focus on the enemy within this country. That is a winning strategy for the left. But appealing to nationalism—even against a repugnant foreign government—is winning terrain for the right.

Aaron Freedman is a freelance writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter at @freedaaron