Russian propagandists seize on Ferguson race riots

As the United States embarked on what is likely to be a long period of soul-searching over the race riots in Ferguson, Missouri, Russia has weighed in with some unsympathetic advice: put your own house in order before lecturing us on human rights.

Sparked by the killing of an unarmed African-American teenager by a white policeman, the violent unrest in Ferguson has exposed deep rifts in society and shattered any illusions of racial harmony in Barack Obama’s America. And Russia is relishing the upheaval in the country that presents itself as an exemplary democracy.

Russian state television news, after months of devoting prime time reporting to the battlefields of southeastern Ukraine, switched focus to Ferguson as the race riots escalated. Instead of images of Ukrainian troops attacking beleaguered pro-Moscow separatists in Donetsk, Russian audiences were treated to apocalyptic scenes of riot police, tear gas, vandalising and looting on the streets of the Missouri town.

For the most part Russian media has dwelt on the heavy- handed reaction of US police to the riots and the authorities’ failure to quell the unrest.

Ku Klux Klan

In a catchy headline this week Pravda.ru, a Russian news website, described Ferguson police as “the Ku Klux Klan dressed up as law enforcers”. Even though US media and social networks are controlled by the state, the report claimed, “it’s impossible to hide that the country is mortally ill with racism”.

Images of the violence gripping Ferguson may help distract, and even console, Russians about problems nearer to home – the economic slowdown, western sanctions and the fate of their fellow Slavs in conflict-torn Ukraine.

In a broader sense, Russian gloating over the troubles in the US represents an extension of the Kremlin’s increasingly direct geopolitical confrontation with the West.

"While trying to control the situation in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Ukraine, the US authorities turn out to be incapable of resolving a domestic conflict," said Andrei Klishas, a Russian senator who heads the constitutional legislation committee in the Federation Council, the parliament's upper house.

Klishas, who was singled out by the US and the European Union for individual sanctions after calling for a Russian military deployment in Ukraine this year, has a personal axe to grind with the West. Events in Ferguson serve to illustrate that mighty, judgmental America is not all it’s cracked up to be.

However, the US and EU economic sanctions against Russia are having a wider psychological impact, creating an “atmosphere in Russia of a country constantly under US pressure,” according to Dmitry Trenin, the director of the Moscow Carnegie Center.

“This will stimulate Russian patriotism and nationalism focused on the US as an external adversary,” he said.

Hypocrisy

For Russia, the police violence in Ferguson has provided an opportunity to expose what it sees as hypocrisy in American policy-making and tell its adversaries in Washington to back off.

Over the 14 years that Vladimir Putin has been Russia's paramount leader, the US has routinely condemned the Kremlin for its increasingly heavy- handed stifling of dissent.

Washington was particularly disapproving when Russian police cracked down on an anti- government protest in Moscow in 2012 after scuffles broke out in the crowd, followed by multiple arrests.

At least a dozen of those detained have since been handed hefty prison sentences for participating in mass riots and assaulting law enforcers.

To the fury of the Kremlin, the US once again took the side of the opposition at protests in Kiev’s Maidan this year that led to the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian president, and swept a new, pro-western government to power.

According to the Russian official narrative, the US has lent support to a bunch of usurpers in Ukraine who, while masquerading as democrats, have neglected the rights of minorities and wrought violent havoc in their country .

Systemic problems

As the unrest in Ferguson entered a 10th day this week, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a lengthy statement detailing “deep systemic problems” in America regarding the observance of human rights and democratic standards.

“While demanding that other countries guarantee freedom of speech and don’t suppress anti-government protests, the USA does not stand on ceremony with those in its own country who actively express discontent about the immoral discrimination of ‘second-class’ citizens,” it said.