Welcome to Pushback. I'm Erin Mate. There is a scandal about Ukraine dominating the front pages right now, but there's another one that no one is talking about.

And joining me to discuss it is my colleague at the Gray Zone, Ben Norton, here at the Pushback Set. Welcome, Ben.

Glad to be here, thanks.

So you have a new article about the arrest

of a member of the US Armed Forces. He was plotting to attack a media outlet and also

attack Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic presidential candidate, but also buried in this, and which

is not getting very much attention, and which you flag in your latest piece for for the gray zone is that he was planning to go to Ukraine to fight with the azoff battalion which is a neo-Nazi

militia that has been supported by the u.s can you explain yeah well this is a really shocking story

and you know the the corporate media angle has been an extremist far-right member of the U.S. military,

an active duty soldier in the army is planning bomb attacks, targeting an unnamed news outlet

and democratic politicians, specifically Better O'Rourke.

And that's a huge scandal, and it should be, right?

At the same time, though, this is also 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. 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.

So let's unpack this here.

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