Topic: RT news propaganda news station yes or no? (Read 330 times)

First I would like to note that my freedom of movement is not restricted.
My passport allows to enter without a visa almost every country I would conceivably want to visit.
I wouldn't swap it to Ukrainian for any reason, especially since I believe their honeymoon with EU will be short.
I wouldn't reject Israeli one in addition to it, but I wouldn't replace it with one and our governments are OK with having the two.
If I cannot enter UK without a visa, that's not largerly a fault of my government.
If we would admit UK citizens without a visa, we might have a problem, and same for them.

Second, you are right about the blanket. That is part of the thinking that goes into contradicting Washington consensus.
And in your example, of course Washington will try to prop up said extremists, sending money, instructors, hiring PR
and journalists to portray the thugs as "freedom fighters" (real life examples abundant).

I don't consider my freedom of speech restricted either: I can go to bookshop and buy a book about Putin's "exploits" and discuss
them with peers and so on. I can speak freely about "identity politics": whether I am pro- or anti-LGBT etc and not get
hysterical shit from lefties and Social Justice Warriors. The 2nd is more important to me than the 1st.

Whether I support "murderous dictators" or not is not the point here.

What I am trying to popularize is: it's not like the West got suddenly ill, lost immunity and murderous dictators sprang up
everywhere like mushrooms after a rain. (But it will get well!)
It's more like the project is failed, and we need another one.
And Trump and Putin need to be reckoned with, whether you like them or not. They are symptoms, and you cannot treat
the disease by removing it's symptoms.
Let's hope the project's administrators will just "shoot their German sheepdogs" and not try to flood Berlin underground,
bringing everything and everyone down with them.
I am hinting at another project, that officially ended in May 1945.

Books suppressed despite the 1st amendment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcHRaxN-u5U

Well, I guess that's a psychological aspect to this whole debate. A matter of perspective if you will. One can make assumptions and form an opinion about something and anything looking from the outside in, but more often than less the ground reality is a lot different.

Example :
Give freedom of speech > Extremists form a cult > Extremists become anarchists > Start a domestic war: Real-life case of ISIS, Taliban, Hizbul Mujahideen etc etc

While in an authoritarian world with some form of prohibition in right to movement, freedom of speech, right to form communities and right to protest could, at least in theory, provide a thin blanket of a sense of security.

Now it's a whole different discussion about what the authority does behind this thin blanket that has been essentially put over the eyes of the people. It becomes a matter of choosing the lesser evil.

Of course, I do not subscribe to the notion of authoritarian rule but I think I understand the motives behind the choice of many Russians to live happily with the way things are currently. However, note the part where I said its a matter of perspective, here I am still looking from the outside in and assuming what the people might be thinking.

I didn't mention any ex-USSR countries.
Forgive me my imperial thinking. Here is full list: Kazakhstan (born there), Uzbekistan and Georgia (as a child), Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova.
RT is not my only source. I talked to refugees from Donbass in trains (they also know everything from RT?) and I talked to people of Crimea.
In the past, I lived with people from Poland and Ukraine in London's squats.
Actually RT is not a source at all, I know everything they are going to say from other sources.
Al-Jazeera would have more information.
To have an opinion, the least you have to do is to compare propaganda with it's counter-propaganda.

Do I have to go there to have an opinion about it? To be fair, Ukraine and Syria were not in your list of visited places either.

I don't know everything. I do know enough about authoritarian regimes and the climate of fear and propaganda they tend to rely on so that I don't fall for RT bullshit.

We don't fear terrorists.
Out of Ukrainians, we fear a small number (70000 by Internal Ukrainian Minister Avakov's estimate) who are trained mercenaries hired
from prisons and so on, infused with extreme neonazi ideology. They do exist, and are feared also by current government of Ukraine.
They murdered and burned people in Odessa alive.
When have you last been there? or in Syria? you seem to know everything.

That's one of the most basic tools authoritarian (or aspiring) regimes use. I'm quite certain you're fully aware of that so not sure why you keep asking.

Escalate the fear of enemies, real or perceived, and you can get away with all sorts of repressive measures. The West is Putin's favorite enemy, as well as terrorists, which is kind of a flexible category. Ukrainians too I guess.

I personally like RT news (much better than the crap american news shows). I think there is a lot more truth on RT news than the common news stations focusing on the cat that can swim or race bating and class warfare that most american news networks focus on. IDK much about Putin and whehter or not RT news is biased towards that but at least comparing it to here in the US it seems like a much more open minded news network

My question was how one can be frightened into thinking in a certain way.
We were really frightened by US and allies' actions. Why shouldn't we?
But how can you frighten someone to think falsely? (i.e. contrary to your way of thinking).

I didn't live in a Mukhosransk, rather a small cozy shtetl. I returned there.
I was in Finland, France, Netherland (twice), Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and (after leaving UK) twice in Israel and twice in Thailand.
I also read a lot of books. Made a lot of observations. A lot of thinking.
If this led me to "support a murderous dictator", then maybe there is something in it.
Time will tell.

The former KGB agent thought himself into this wealth.
Not everyone can do that.

I don't have exceptionalism. I'm a big fan of certain basic freedoms, such as freedom of movement and freedom of speech. I can understand why someone would want to forfeit those freedoms in exchange of some real or perceived safety, even though it seems weird to me. I had a similar mindset until I left my Podunk shithole and had a chance to live in a few different countries. It's interesting that you have a nearly opposite view after having spent time abroad.


This is contradicted by how the Russian government portrays its involvement in Syria and Ukraine and the fact that the population seems to buy it.

To the 1st part of your statement: I personally lived in UK for 5 years and I think the place is run by dangerous psychos.
Does that prove anything to anyone? And which place is not run by psychos?
Regarding your friends: all our neighbouring artists from now-EU, ex-USSR are earning money here and badmouthing us. That's nothing new.

To the 2nd: I already mentioned that all info on Putin is in the printed press (glossy mags etc) and in the bookshops + public libraries.
So I don't understand your point about "media hushed" - which media?

Russia is so misrepresented that you try to fight a ghost, a Frankenstein.
Whereas we were always subservient to West, looked up at West, so we know West fairly well (and many of us still live there).

I didn't mean the person whom you call "a murderous dictator" is paying me money.
I meant that life in Russia (where I am) is much safer than in London, where I lived for 5 years. If I lived in Moscow, probably it would be the same story,
but with less comfort obviously due to overcrowding.
And I meant that life here has a future. So rather than "business" I should have written "vital interests".
Biden was sitting in Ukraine's president seat after they have overthrown elected president.
I mean that literally, that he physically sat as a ritual of accepting a new colony to establish external government.
So you better still think that I'm brainwashed/frightened. And I am, a bit, see below.
I hope one day the Trump (pun and definite article intentional) will wake you up.
Only your exceptionalism prevents you from realizing that in another country, another culture people have the right to think differently.

frightened into thinking how can one be frightened into thinking, if he is not living some 1984 nightmare? We aren't

But Yugoslavia, Lybia, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Viet Nam do frighten us. Why not?

What does this have to do with Biden?

I do appreciate the bit of honesty about business interests. That would explain why you support a murderous dictator. I doubt that this is the case for most Russians though. They're either brainwashed or frightened into thinking that Putin represents their best interests.

I've had artist friends who play in Russian cities and events regularly and if I were to quote them then it'd be something like 'that place is run by power hungry goons' of course I've never been to Russia and any opinion I have of them and their political situation is just from news outlets and publications.
About a couple of months ago I read this article : https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/gykvey/why-is-the-russian-mafia-vor-v-zakone-so-powerful-putin-trump This really gives you an idea why even the media is hushed up about Putin's exploit. They're either scared or removed from the equation.

rt is like any other media outlet the propaganda of those that fund them, that might be in russia the elite putin and the russian banks but its not different for the american media, they are also bigotted and behave the way their payment master tells them to or even do that voluntarily, without any force or demands

It is normal for a politician to be the subject of criticism.

You don’t have to bash Putin if you agree with his policies, however you are naive if you think there is no major opposition to his policies. The amount of public protests and public opposition to Putin suggests everyone agrees with him.

I know everything about that. It's in the bookshops. It's in the printed press. So what?
Do I want foreign billionaires like Joe Biden in president's chair? Hell no.
My business interests align more frequently with Putin and not with Biden or Nuland.

P.S. speaking decent English often correlates with being pro-West, but there are notable exceptions. Like Limonov.

Is no one in Russia really curious as to how a former KGB agent became a multi-billionaire? Has RT (or other Kremlin media) ever published anything about the wealth of Russian top officials?

Tell you what, he doesn't even care about stupid forms of criticism. Unless you are Khodorkovsky who wants to squeeze the budget dry and to lobby laws allowing to drain capital straight to Cyprus.
He (oh blasphemy!) cares about Navalny much less than Navalny's supporters think, and Sobchak Junior sat in his lap when she was little.

You want us to bash Putin, that is quite understandable. But we don't obey you.

Russia isn’t run by a bunch of liberal idiots, it is run by Putin who is to the right and doesn’t care about political correctness. He also doesn’t care if you say stupid things as long as you are not criticizing him.

Look at the amount of criticism of Putin, real criticism about major issues. You just don’t see it in the press. Look at the number of anti-Putin protests— they simply don’t happen. Compare that to the US. There is a lot of dissent in the US, even to presidents that win reelection and these people are not arrested or otherwise harmed.