Igor Panarin's Doomsday Tea Party

By Nick Baumann
MotherJones
Thu November 5, 2009

For more than a decade Dr. Igor Panarin, a Russian academic, has been predicting that sometime around 2010 the United States will collapse, splintering into separate states, some of them controlled by foreign powers. Outside of Russia, no one's put much stock in his crackpot and stereotype-based theories—until now, that is. Who are the newest members of the Igor Panarin fan club? Tea partiers who’ve rallied against the Obama administration's policies and blasted the president for pushing a "socialist" agenda. And he's especially big among tea party activists in Texas, who have hosted Panarin and promoted his work.

In Russia, Panarin, who hosts a weekly radio show, is considered a mainstream expert on the United States. Like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Panarin used to work for the KGB. He clearly has the support of the Kremlin, for he heads the school that trains Russia's diplomats. And since the election of Barack Obama last November, Panarin has found a new audience in America among far right activists, many of whom believe Obama is destroying the country.

According to Panarin, the US will collapse within the next year because of its economic problems and deep racial and ethnic divisions. He changes the details from year to year, but here's the general gist: the South, "with its Hispanics," Panarin says, will break away from the union and merge or ally with Mexico. The rest of America will split into several other countries, some becoming the protectorates of other major powers. Alaska, naturally, will go to Russia. The Chinese will take over the West Coast. (Why? Panarin points out that most Californians' laptops are made in China and that the West has a "growing Chinese population.") "Five of the poorer central states, with their large Native American populations, and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong," will compose two other countries, he explained in Moscow last year. The Northeast, he says, will fall under the sway of "global capital and finance" based in London—an idea, no doubt, that appeals to those tea partiers who worry about nefarious international forces exerting influence over the US economy.

(More here.)

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