SPLC Investigation Finds American White Nationalist Group Tied to Kremlin Advocate with “Shady” Funding
Montgomery, Ala. — An investigation published by Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch today found that the influential U.S. white nationalist group The Right Stuff (TRS) has significant links to Charles Bausman, a notorious pro-Kremlin propagandist with “shady” funding and ties to a Russian oligarch.
The report — written by Senior Investigative Reporter Michael Edison Hayden — shows that an email address ending with a Russian domain name is referenced across the source code of a network of three extreme, far-right websites that primarily operate in the U.S. All three websites, Russia-Insider.com (Russia Insider), National-Justice.com (National Justice), and Truthtopowernews.com (Truth to Power News) have featured bylines by members of the TRS. These three sites traffic in political disinformation and denigrate Jewish people, women, non-white people, LGBTQ people and leftists. In some cases, the websites publish overlapping material, like when members of TRS announced the formation of a self-described political party in August 2020.
“We have seen the Trump administration downplay both white supremacy and Russia’s involvement in American affairs,” said Hayden. “This report shows that we ignore the reality of these issues at our own peril. The Right Stuff radicalized a State Department official. They helped plan and promote the Unite the Right rally that descended on Charlottesville in August 2017. If they are receiving material assistance from a foreign power, or people acting on behalf of a foreign power, it’s a major scandal.”
TRS has helped planned and promoted the United the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and has also promoted the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016 through podcasts and traffics in Holocaust denial and other antisemitic conspiracy theories. The group is also the same white nationalist organization for which U.S. State Department Official Matthew Q. Gebert covertly recruited members, as Hatewatch first reported in 2019.
White Nationalist and Holocaust denier Michael “Enoch” Peinovich founded TRS. Hatewatch had reached out to Peinovich’s lawyer for a comment about the report but did not receive a response.
