While Russia invades Ukraine, the Anonymous Comrades Collective stands with Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. The topic of this report, however, does not. Despite being a Ukrainian born in Kyiv and son of Ukrainian diplomats, this person has been a pro-Kremlin propagandist for years. At the same time he worked hand-in-hand with big-time American neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer promoting the fascist Alt-Right agenda as a prolific author for Spencer's website "Altright.com" under the alias "Vincent Law." This is our report.
"Vincent Law"
The pseudonymous "Vincent Law" was a prolific writer for the now-defunct blog Altright.com, the website for American neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer's AltRight Corporation. Writing over three hundred posts for the blog, "Vincent Law" covered the bread-and-butter topics of the Alt-Right, like promotion of xenophobic anti-immigration policies and negative commentary on perceived liberal western politics. One fairly typical article by "Vincent Law" was "Trump Delivers Righteous Smackdown Of Negro Felon League" in which he wrote, "Trump calling those negroes [sic] 'sons of bitches' was a step in the right direction I think we can all admit," and "America is not their nation, it was built by the White man for the White man and they rightly feel little attachment to it, despite all that the nation has given to them. "
Many of these articles featured political commentary on Russia, such as "Russia Needs To Finally Become Russian," in which the author complained about "Russia's liberal intelligentsia" and a perceived westernization, arguing for Russian nationalism. In "Massive Victory Day Marches In Russia; A Meet-Up With Russia’s Alt-Right," "Vincent Law" described meeting up with various right-wing groups in Russia.
But a great portion of "Vincent Law"s writing pertained to the American Alt-Right, especially in the wind-up to the so-called "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and its aftermath. On August 13, 2017, the day after the event, "Vincent Law" posted "Charlottesville Was A Turning Point For White People In America," in which he wrote: "Ultimately, this was a victory for us. Our movement will be emboldened by Charlottesville. The ‘Unite the Right’ rally legitimized our struggle. This is the beginning of the White Civil Rights movement" and claimed that the media was "trying to spin this rally as a KKK rally or a Neo-Nazi rally," which it, in fact, actually was.
In one blog post titled "Daniel Borden Did Literally Nothing Wrong" he argued that Daniel Borden, one of the racist attackers involved in the beating of Deandre Harris, an African-American man, during the event, was a "political casualty." "Vincent Law"'s take on the events that took place differed from official accounts. He wrote:
Deandre Harris, 20, is the supposed victim. Like Blacks are famous world over for doing, he and his buddies decided to attack a White man while he was alone and had his guard down. They swarmed him, armed with weapons and threw him to the ground. This was when Daniel Borden- the man with a plan- and his group swooped in, broke up the traditional African religious ceremony and saved their comrade. Once Deandre Harris was dropped like a bag of dirt, he was allowed to scamper off with his tail between his legs by Daniel’s crew, tears streaming down his face and mumbling, “fuk u, cracka” as he desperately tried to pull his pants up in anticipation of his interview with gullible liberals TV reporters.
In reality, Borden along with six other assailants surrounded and beat Deandre Harris, causing significant injury. Borden was convicted and sentenced to nearly four years in prison for his participation in the assault.
Also noted in the short author biography blurb that closed each article, "Vincent Law" was a user of "Hatreon," the defunct right-wing fund raising site. On his Hatreon page he made clear his racist, antisemitic position, writing that he wanted to be a "full-time hate machine.":
I am the managing editor and main contributor to Altright.com. The idea behind the site was to create an *actual* Alt-Right news and commentary site. Not Breitbart, not Infowars, but actually a site promoting healthy White Identity without the Israel worship or conspiratard crap. But we can only bring a couple of people on part-time. I don't want to do this part-time, I want to be a full-time hate machine. Support my writing if you like it and I'll write more.
"Vincent Law"'s pieces in Altright.com were crudely bigoted, written in a style comparable to supermarket tabloids rather than serious intellectual discourse. In one article commenting on the the Harvey Weinstein scandal "Vincent Law" focused on antisemitic tropes rather than address the real issue of sexual harassment by men in power writing:
More than likely, Weinstein pissed off someone and now he is being fed to the wolves. Everyone in Hollywood has dirty laundry. It’s easy now to scapegoat just one degenerate jew in the hopes of the goyim not noticing the massive hive of degenerate jews at the heart of hollywood.
Oh, apologies by the way. Is my rhetoric over the top and anti-semitic? Does it go too far?
Well if anything, it doesn’t go far enough.
In addition to writing for Altright.com, "Vincent Law" also wrote for an earlier website, "Atavistic Intelligentsia" (atavisticintelligentsia.com), which was his own personal blog. He introduced himself thusly:
I’m just a (not so) humble immigrant from the FSU ["Former Soviet Union"], Ukraine to be precise. I came over when I was two. I have lived up and down the eastern seaboard in nice bougie places, rubbing shoulders with the sophistos and in a couple not so nice places, where I was part of the poor melatonin-free minority that hadn’t yet joined the exodus to the suburbs. My golova has always been filled with ridiculous ideas for as long as I can remember. This is partially because I am the son of a former diplomat, (which means I spent part of my childhood driving in a car with dip plates) and partially because I have been having an identity crisis for almost my entire life.
I have Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Cossack ancestry. I look like a member of the Hitler youth. And finally, my name is utterly unpronounceable in any anglo-saxon language. Assimilation was a tough ride. I spent 19 years in the US, 14 of them actively pursuing US citizenship. People often joke that I would have better luck sneaking into the US illegally and waiting for an amnesty. (Th-thanks, Obama?) My disenchantment with Burgerstan stems not only from my (unsuccessful) process of cultural assimilation, but my travails with getting my citizenship, the constant barrage of newspeak I am subjected to while serving my time at the Cathedral, and finally the war in my homeland.
These topics are near and dear to me. And this is what Atavistic Intelligentsia will discuss with you, dear reader. Maybe one day, we can be something more, a malenki movement of sorts. But with no droogies to play with, its a one man show for now.
While "Vincent Law" claimed to have been born in Ukraine, a country that is now being subjected to Russian aggression in their war of choice, he expressed strong support for Russian nationalism. In the article "Russian Separatism" "Vincent Law" wrote:
Russia is a powder keg of ethnicities. The only thing that holds it together is centralization of power and a strong domestic intelligence network. Some malchiks want to break up the country, based on a strange mix of separatism ideals and European liberal values. While they aren’t a big movement yet, we should definitely keep an eye on them and not let them steal a march on us.
"Vincent Law" began his career as a right-wing, racist propagandist in 2014 and his true identity went uncovered for several years. However, thanks to a tip from a particularly keen-eyed comrade, his online persona would soon crack.
"How to Hide Your Online Presence: Part 1"
One of the blog posts "Vincent Law" wrote on his "Atavistic Intelligentsia" website was entitled "How to Hide Your Online Presence: Part 1." While this post is no longer available to read and has not been archived, we can safely assume that "Vincent Law" did not heed his own advice. Conducting a search of historical WHOIS records of the domains associated with "Vincent Law"'s "Atavistic Intelligentsia" website (atavisticintelligentsia.us) we found one was registered to a "Vincent Law" whose contact address led to a Georgetown University townhouse in Washington, D.C. The registrant's contact phone number, while now belonging to another person, was once associated with an "Oleg V***********" of Chevy Chase, Maryland, relatives of whom were "Bogdan P******" and "Maya P*****," according to a reverse phone number search. The significance of these details will become apparent further along.
In December 2017 Brendan O'Connor of SplinterNews.com reported on a Maryland-based technology recruitment firm called Sutton Whitfield LLC that they found to have in their employ Gregory Conte as an "equal opportunity officer." Gregory Conte, alias "Greg Ritter," was also the full-time director of operations for Richard Spencer's National Policy Institute (NPI), a white-supremacist think tank. Conte was present with Spencer at the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville and his involvement with Spencer and the white nationalist movement is deep. Conte owned 49 percent of Sutton Whitfield LLC while the company's CEO and President Manjit Singh, owned the remaining 51 percent. Interestingly, a review of Singh's other businesses revealed one inactive Chevy Chase, Maryland limited liability company, Data and Accounting Services LLC, in which a certain Bogdan Polishchuk was listed as one of the officers. Since the registrant contact phone number for "atavisticintelligentsia.us" led to a possible connected partial name "Bogdan P******" this person warranted a closer look. Notably, Greg Conte also wrote for the "atavisticintelligentsia.us" site and appeared as co-host in it's accompanying "Red Dawn" podcast.
Another interesting aspect is that "Vincent Law" once noted on a blog post how the National Policy Institute used "proxy corporations" in order to mask their true purpose and book events. In a follow-up report of one NPI conference meeting in November 2017 he wrote:
NPI was this weekend. It began on Sunday and didn’t get very far. It was shut down almost immediately. This was after the Ronald Reagan building had also refused to host the event, after initially agreeing to, citing security concerns.
Now, for the second venue, NPI had cleverly masked itself through a proxy corporation and sold it as a corporate event. The owner, who was there, started to put two and two together as the event started to gain steam and immediately decided to pull the plug.
So was "Data and Accounting Services LLC" one of these proxy corporations that "Vincent Law" wrote about? That is a story for another day. It's interesting that it was incorporated on November 19th, 2017, the same day at the NPI conference.
Bogdan Olegovich Polishchuk, son of former diplomats, was born in Kyiv but raised in the United States since the age of two. He attended the St. Alban's School in Washington, D.C. before attending Georgetown University, from which he graduated the Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2016. Following graduation he undertook further schooling in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he also advertised his services at an English tutor.
Polishchuk began writing his blog "Atavistic Intelligentsia" in October of 2014, while still attending Georgetown University, which correlates to the contact address of the domain "atavisticintelligentsia.us" in historical DNS records leading to a Georgetown University townhouse. The phone number he used was associated with his parents, who lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland during this time. It was during this time that Polishchuk cultivated a particularly vicious racism. In 2015 he wrote a blog post entitled "What to Do With Dylann Storm Roof?" in which he wrote: "… if ever there were a string of events that could awaken an Identitarianism of sorts in America, it would be here, right now, in the aftermath of Ferguson, Baltimore and now Charleston, SC."
Not surprisingly, Polishchuk's enormous sense of privilege and entitlement was keenly on display in these posts. In "I Have to Graduate" Polishchuk complained about "bespectacled ochkariks" daring to require a certain number of credits to graduate and writing "I've had to fight with niggers in [schools] my whole life. I’ve been spoon-fed jewish lies by my teachers ever since I could read that book about the boy, the grasshopper and the giant peach." He further wrote:
My life has been one long, masters class in tuning out. Tuning out my annoying Jewish 1st grade teacher, my 2nd grade annoying Jewish teacher, my mid-western god-fearing “y’all is smart, kind and good” 4th grade teacher, my 5th grade NAACP ambassador, and etc etc. ad nauseum until college. In high school, I refined it into an art form. “The art of tuning out.” I would deliberately not drink coffee or tea or whatever so I could sleep/or zone out with ease. You really don’t have to pay attention in class to get good grades in it, I discovered. Just find an autist who takes copious notes and photocopy them.
“Go to college,” they tell you. There you’ll find life-long friends, actually enjoy what you are studying, start planning your career, and find the girl you will one day marry.
Nah.
Just think of it as daycare for adults. The only upside is being able to drink. Oh yeah, and get ready to taste the diversity (and keeeep onnn tasting it ’till you die).
Polishchuk's sense of entitlement and extensive racism makes it unsurprising that he was also a huge misogynist, writing such pieces as "Banging Caucasus Girls" in which he wrote: "The benefits of banging a Caucasus girl are ephemeral. Mostly its a dare bang. You get a thrill from being a modern day vag-Crusader, and the satisfaction that you bagged a rare girl indeed." It is also unsurprising that Polishchuk, as "Vincent Law," also wrote for the "Pick Up Artist" ("PUA") site "Return of Kings" from 2014 to 2015. In one of these pieces, "What Type Of Guy Gets Falsely Accused of Rape?", Polishchuck described himself as "oozing with charisma and natural game" when relating a tale on how a woman was "begging" him to "take her." Polishchuck, as "Vincent Law," noted elsewhere that he was a devotee of Daryush "Roosh" Valizadeh, the creator of the "Return of Kings" website, and that he had read everything he had written.
It was likely while in St. Petersburg that Polishchuk started writing for Russia Insider, a "crowdsourced news site" run by pro-Kremlin propagandist Charles Bausman and which has ties to American neo-Nazi organizations. As reported by Haaretz, Russia Insider was originally launched in order to attack Ukraine by accusing Ukrainian authorities of fascism and anti-Semitism, even while it frequently features antisemitic content today. Bausman has been accused of receiving funding from pro-Putin oligarchs.
Among Polishchuk's earliest posts at Altright.com was a cross-post with Russia Insider entitled "How Useless Is NATO? So Useless That Four NATO Members Would Pick Russia to Defend Them If Attacked." This was posted on Altright.com on February 21, 2017, but was originally posted (as noted in the article) on Russia Insider two days earlier attributed to "RI Staff." Furthermore, between August 4, 2016 and February 28, 2017 ten articles were posted on Russia Insider with the byline "Vincent DeLarge." One of the articles, "Russia's New Conservative Allies in the US: The 'Alt-Right' Phenomenon," was the only article "Favorited" by "Vincent Law"'s Disqus profile.
Polishchuk also found time to self-publish a novel, a "Sci-Fi adventure story, with lurid action scenes and even a femme fatale that you can really sink your teeth into. (You know what I mean.)" We actually don't know what he meant, but he described his book thusly:
Inspired in no small part by the birth of the Alt-Right and the internet proto-culture that spawned it… The year is 2034. A city of wandering Nihilo’s, crumbling palaces, and augmented reality, the Revenant City-State of St. Petersburg has become Jak’s and many other Nihilo’s ark amid the flood. Crushing boredom, atomized loneliness and a creeping sense of impending doom are all Jak remembers of his old home in the UFR. It has been 6 years since then, since Jak joined the last great exile wave out of the Post-First. But even here in the far flung reaches of Eastern Europe, storm clouds are gathering, brought on by a westerly wind and threatening to topple the precarious Revenant City system. A prank gone wrong on a small corner of the vast SHAK Net throws Jak into the dangerous world of augmented super soldiers, Moscovite intelligence agents, and Caliphate harvesters on the streets of St. Petersburg. Although he doesn’t know it yet, Jak is now part of a titanic struggle of which he finds himself an unwilling pawn. Manipulated, hunted and with nowhere left to run to, Jak will have to make his move and make it fast if he wants to make it out of St. Petersburg alive.
And thus "Vincent Law" joined the ranks of the numerous white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have self-published shitty science-fiction novels. It sounds truly cringe-inducing.
Propagandist for the Kremlin
Despite being a Ukrainian born in Kyiv to parents who are former Ukrainian diplomats, Bogdan Polishchuk has been a prolific pro-Kremlin propagandist. The last instance we have seen of Polishchuk was a March 2018 interview on the Russian state-sponsored news site Sputnik News in which he was described as the "deputy editor of the Russia Insider news website." The article was entitled "West is Intent on Portraying Russia as a Hitlerian State." In it Polishchuk states: "…every single Western country is intent on portraying Russia as, you know, this Hitlerian state or something like that" and argued that western media was unfairly "demonizing" anything Russian, using the case of the poisoning of Sergei and his daughter Yulia Skripal as an example. However, there is strong evidence that the poisoning was an attempt by Russian intelligence services to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer who had defected.
Polishchuk also contributed to Russia's disinformation campaign regarding Ukraine on Altright.com. Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, United States intelligence officials stated that they expected Russia to create a "false flag" incident to create a pretext for invading Ukraine. That is, they expected that Russia would manufacture an incident to provide an excuse for them, giving them a justification for the invasion. Russian disinformation campaigns ramped up activity prior to the attack on Ukraine. This was no surprise to intelligence officials since Russia had been laying groundwork for a pretext to invade Ukraine for years. Polishchuk, writing as "Vincent Law" on Altright.com contributed to this groundwork, an example of which was the blog post titled "Russia Stands Poised On The Brink Of A Coup" in July 2017. In this post he wrote:
Ukraine is gearing up for war. Leaks from anti-Kiev military officers still in the Ukrainian army talk about a massive concentration of armor and artillery on the eastern front. Meanwhile, Ukraine is increasing its propaganda efforts to justify war with Russia internally and externally. In other words, the country is getting ready to fulfill its historic mission: to become inglorious cannon fodder for ZOG in the next edition of “DrangnachOsten.”
Furthermore, he predicted:
It is very likely that the ruling regime in Kiev (Ukraine) will start a major provocation in Donbass in the next month or so. The scale of this provocation will be large, very large. This provocation should be sufficiently large that Russia feels obligated to respond. To put it even more bluntly, the Kiev regime will be ready to commit atrocities to get Russia to openly enter into the conflict in the East. The regime in Kiev has exhausted all means of staying in power otherwise: there are clashes now with the neo-Nazi muscle that they used in the EuroMaiden who now demand more power, Ukraine’s economy is in disarray, its reserve funds are dwindling, and it’s being nudged relentlessly towards confrontation with Russia by the US and NATO. War with Russia vindicates Kiev’s propaganda and allows them to sign off all their sins and failures, it may even allow them to cling on to power a bit longer, steal a bit more and prepare an escape route to the West where they can receive their Nobel Peace Prizes or something similar. Come to think of it, it also vindicates all the US/NATO propaganda and justifies their belligerent policy (and aggressive military spending) towards Russia. The only potential obstacle here is Trump and his small team of “isolationists”.
This falls into line with Russian state media's attempts to paint Putin's invasion as a "denazification" of Ukraine. Sputnik News made the case that Russia was "planning to free Ukraine from neo-Nazis, their supporters, and their ideology." While it is true that neo-Nazi organizations in Ukraine, like Azov Battalion, exist and are problematic, the pretext of "de-Nazifying" Ukraine is absurd, especially since the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy is himself Jewish. Polishchuk, while being a key supporter of neo-Nazis in America was also part of the Russian state's propaganda machine that set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine.
Additionally, in comments on the "Vincent Law" article "Ukraine Is About To Experience Yet Another Maidan" from four years ago Polishchuk wrote that he had met with members of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which had sent fighters to Ukraine's Donbas region. According to the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) The Russian Imperial Movement is an extreme-right, white supremacist militant organization based in St. Petersburg, Russia. From 2014-2016 RIM trained and equipped foreign fighters for the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where members of the group’s Imperial Legion fought alongside pro-Russian separatists. The United States Department of State has designated RIM as a terrorist organization "that provides paramilitary-style training to neo-Nazis and white supremacists."
Слава Україні!
Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed thus far in the Russian invasion and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. The Ukrainian-born and American educated Bogdan Polishchuk has contributed to Putin's territorial ambitions while at the same time playing a key role in the formation of the American neo-Nazi "Alt-Right" movement. Taking advantage of a liberal education in some of the most expensive schools in America did nothing to liberalize Polishchuk. He only grew more hateful. His mother grieves for the people of Ukraine and urges people on her Facebook page to support Ukraine defense. We can only think that Bogdan Polishchuk is deeply satisfied in the part he played bringing this invasion to his home country.
A big thanks goes out to @oneforeachofyou on Twitter for their contributions to this report.