This is Not Propaganda is a book that caught my eye a couple of years ago, and not just for its fantastical front cover. Pomertantsev is a Russian born expert in disinformation and online manipulation, based at London School of Economics. In this book, he explains how information has been weaponised and deployed to purposefully destabilise society. It’s one of those books that is shocking in its implications but understated in its tone – rainbows and unicorn notwithstanding.
We have entered a new age, the book suggests, where states create noise rather than specific propaganda messaging. It’s not about pitting one ideology against another. It’s not about presenting evidence or winning arguments. It’s about sowing confusion. Information overload and contradictory arguments sere to “disrupt, delay, confuse, subvert. There is no room for arguments: ideals are in and of themselves irrelevant.”
So Russian trolls might help to organsise a pro-Trump rally and an anti-Trump rally in the same town at the same time. Russian operatives have been known to run fake Black Lives Matter accounts. In other contexts they might use the ‘war on drugs’ as a lever, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or anti-semitism in others. Whether you agree or disagree with the positions taken is irrelevant. You say what you need to say to the people who need to hear it.
“First you have an information warfare aim, then you create an ideology to fit it,” writes Pomerantsev. “Whether the ideology is right or wrong is irrelevant; it just needs to serve a tactical function.”
In exploring the landscapes of misinformation and disinformation, Pomerantsev reports from a range of locations and talks to some big players. A chapter on the Philippines reflects on Rappler and Maria Ressa’s work (described in her words in the book How to Stand up to a Dictator.) We consider Syria and Islamic extremism, the role of Cambridge Analytica in Brexit and various other campaigns, the day-to-day workings of Russian troll factories. What was pioneered in Russia hasn’t stayed there either – more and more countries have information war operations, and the social media companies profit too much from them to do anything about it.
Another chapter considers Srdja Popovic, an organiser of the Serbian revolution who has spent many years training people in non-violent resistance. A few years on, it’s not just activists who have read his entertaining book Blueprint for Revolution and downloaded his training courses. Methods that challenged oppressive regimes in the early days of the internet no longer work, because there are huge teams of fake social media accounts purposefully undermining unity, amplifying extremism and muddying the waters.
Some of the most insightful sections of the book deal with Russia and Ukraine, including interludes that tell the author’s family history and their flight from Soviet persecution. Pomerantsev was born into a Russian-speaking family in Ukraine, later worked for a decade in Russia, and has a rich understanding of the region. The book pre-dates the 2022 assault on Ukraine, and shows how Putin’s actions serve propaganda functions at home. In the past, the author notes, propaganda supported military action. Now it’s often the other way round. Military actions support the propaganda messaging, and so much of Putin’s war-mongering is about avoiding revolution and dissent at home.
I finished This is Not Propaganda with a sense of powerlessness about where things stand, with truth so undervalued and such vast resources available to those with bad intentions. The book doesn’t offer much by way of solutions and ways forward, though Pomerantsev’s forthcoming book How to Win an Information War may have more to say on that. Despite the sombre themes, the book is highly readable and engaging. For anyone interested in the ongoing battle to not be a sucker on the internet, I’d recommend it.
- This is not Propaganda is available from Earthbound Books UK.
The Earthbound Report 
What would have been interesting would be a book that compares the overwhelming disinformation coming out of Western media including specifically from the US & UK and anything else from Russia or China. & given the Russian troll farm claims during the Trump election were conclusively debunked as well as the Pea tapes & Russiagate in general, if he has included this as evidence it pretty well says this book itself is an attempt at disinformation.
BTW your use of ‘Putin War mongering’ would seem you have also bought into the Anglo disinformation campaign as pretty well most what comes out of Western MSM & I would also academia has been co-opted. It would do well for you to get out of that bumble Jeremy & get the other side of the story.
That would be interesting, but it isn’t this book. Pomerantsev doesn’t set out to ‘debunk’ or decide who’s right. He’s looking at the idea of disinformation itself. Why global powers do it – including Western powers. How it works. What they hope to achieve.
Well it does have a long history & Chomsky touches on the ‘journalistic’ aspect with Manufacturing Consent as well.
Personally I’ve given up on Western MSM especially the Anglosphere, the only point to consume it is to see what they are lying about now.
Sure, but ‘they’ is far too broad here. There are good journalists and bad, just like there are good politicians and bad.
We are talking about MSM especially the Anglosphere. One needs only see the bias regarding Gaza to get a hint what they are doing in other areas like China, Russia or anyone else that doesn’t comply with US interests, or the Zionist lobby for that matter. Journalists actually doing their job have had to migrate to alternative media. That isn’t to say some journalists who still have MSM gigs cannot do good work but they are few and far between. Again Jeremy unless you get out of that bubble you won’t see how bad it has become.
BTW if anything the Palestinian & Ukrainian conflict has shown that many Western politicians aren’t worth the time of day while Clare Daly or Corbyn are exceptions to the rule. Even the European Greens have been co-opted.
Sure, but it isn’t an either/or between mainstream and non-mainstream media. For one thing, what’s now known as ‘MSM’ is very broad and it’s unfair to lump it all together as if it speaks with one voice.
And second, there are safeguards within traditional media organisations that aren’t present elsewhere – things like editorial guidelines and journalistic standards, fact-checking, balance, the right to reply. Alternative platforms often have no accountability, and we shouldn’t throw out what’s good about established journalism. It’s very hard to put back when it’s gone.
What we need is good journalism that holds power to account. That can be found in lots of places.
As for my own bubble, here’s a year-long project I did to investigate it and what I was missing:
Jeremy I’m on 12 hr night shift I’ll get back to this at the end of the swing
While it isn’t 100% & the degree of conformity will differ from country to country -in Australia for instance it’s pretty well 100% with even our public broadcasters having been co-opted- but I imagine the over reliance on Western newsfeeds,
“In South Africa, media reports have shown an overreliance on Western newswires; University of Johannesburg professor Mandla J. Radebe found that 80% of a sample of news articles from the region concerning the Ukrainian war were sourced from Western organizations such as Bloomberg and Reuters.”
corporate/financial cross ownership & hiring the sort of people who willingly toe the editorial line will ensure the sort of stories discussed are within a narrow window acceptable to Washington. I’m not sure if you are aware the CIA has form on feeding stories to journalists around the world & that can be as diverse as Germany & Zimbabwe that come to mind. Even going back to the Church Committee in the 70’s nothing has fundamentally changed so fine have a diverse MSM diet but that in itself won’t help in itself given the reach of the US.
To your second point I would imagine these journalistic standards often have as much weight as CSRD for the environment, nice tick the box measures that in reality don’t mean much. Having said that there is no blanket tick for alternative media with some of them either ideologically blinkered or themselves part of the Western propaganda network. Bellingcat is a good example of this. The method I used was find quality journalists that have credibility & have over time reported stories that often even the MSM will eventually admit to when it is either no longer relevant or too obvious to continuing avoiding.
Out of curiosity if your diverse media diet is doing a reasonable job of opposing positions you should be able to come up with at least two of these. The Ukrainian war from the Russian perspective, know about the OPCW whistle blower controversy, & why the Uyghur genocide Bad China is a crock of shit. You might also notice the common, good China news story with the tag ‘but at what cost?’ lol.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/29/i-fought-house-to-house-in-gaza-i-know-force-alone-wont-bring-peace
In October, the Guardian -would you consider it part of the “anglosphere”? published this. I was impressed and sent copies to my representatives in Congress.
Yes & you will also find that Bethan McKernan lifted passages from a NBCNews article pushing the Hamas rape propaganda. It also has a history of pushing CIA talking points from propaganda on Julian Assange to the usual Bad Russia & China talking points.
That is too bad. Were you able to get them to publish a letter pointing out their error? I recently notified the local daily paper here that it is disappointing to read opinion columns penned by people who are talk show hosts for Russian radio (this is true! it’s someone named Angie Wong, a syndicated columnist who also co-hosts The Final Countdown on Sputnik Global News. They printed the letter, to their credit! ; )
No, I wouldn’t bother as it has a long history of doing this. & while I’m not a regular consumer of RT & Sputnik they have had legit coverage by people like John Kiriakou & Chris hedges that have more credibility than many MSM journalists.
& since you are want to raise Angie Wong care to cite anything she has said that is suspect or do you reflectively want to censor anyone on Russian connected media?
“Truth is the first casualty of war”, as my journalism lecturer used to say, and it’s very difficult to know what really happened on the ground on October 7th. But to be fair to the Guardian, they have done actual investigative journalism to try and corroborate those stories. They didn’t take the IDF’s word for it and have tracked down eye-witness accounts and forensic evidence. That’s brave and difficult work by Bethan McKernan and others, and calling it ‘pushing propaganda’ is dimissing exactly the kind of fact-finding we desperately need more of.
I’d be interested in your definition of ‘MSM’, given that it doesn’t appear to include RT and Sputnik. Both are state-owned Russian media, and I wouldn’t have thought it gets more mainstream than that!
Oh dear. Fair to say? The thing is Jeremy while you are still in the bubble you have no idea whether this is journalism or propaganda.
BTW I was just like that I used to think if I watched & listened to Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC which I thought was pretty legit, I would get balanced reporting. It wasn’t until I got outside that that my eyes were opened on how bad it actually was. (BTW It has all those editorial & journalistic guidelines yet their Gazan reporting has even their own journalists protesting.)
If you were out you would find that it has been story after story on Gazan either debunked or retracted with highly suspect witnesses or lack of evidence from beheaded babies, cut off breasts or mass rapes. You just don’t get the push back on Western MSM like the Guardian which again has a history of pushing US interests from Assange to the Uighur genocide fake news..
& from the start I did say Western MSM which are various large traditional mass news media platforms either television, radio, magazines, and newspapers & their online variants, often with high levels of media concentration & corporate cross-ownership. And just because they aren’t Western I don’t automatically believe RT or Sputnik but I will give cred to individual reporters who have shown to be right from past stories.
LastIy I have found a tendency that many sincere concerned citizens usually concentrate their time on narrow topics whether it is the environment, human rights, global financial criminality, geopolitical/political science but don’t tend touch on all of them. So they don’t pick up on the big picture criminality & systems of power involved. Maybe that is why it doesn’t matter how many times the US & Western MSM lie about Kuwaiti incubator babies, WMD’s, Syrian government, chemical attacks, Libyan mass rape stories etc people think the latest iteration from these media platforms are legit.
I speak as a journalist married to a journalist. One of us works in the mainstream and one of us doesn’t, so I feel like I have a pretty good appreciation of why we need both. And one of the benefits of big media organisations is that they are able to fund robust investigative journalism, which is expensive and time consuming. The Guardian did that with the rape story. So did the New York Times, which spent two whole months trying to verify the facts.
This is the opposite of propaganda. Good journalism is about uncovering the truth, and the reality with this particular story is complex. There is good evidence that women were raped on October 7th. There is also no question that stories about this were exaggerated and in some cases falsified for political gain. It is thanks to good journalism that we can work out the difference.
That’s not a defense of every story they ever publish, or to say that they are free of bias. Neither do they have a monopoly on good journalism. That happens outside the mainstream too, including some absolutely heroic reporting by Palestinian freelancers right now. My point is that good journalism matters, and is found in a variety of places. Sweeping statements about how ‘western MSM lie’ is misguided.
Within a bubble everything looks fine and this is sop even for journalists who don’t or won’t get out of that bubble. Again we had the exact same media organizations peddling the same feed stories again and again and yet you don’t seem to bat an eyelid. What happened to the beheaded babies story? Hamas bunkers under hospitals turning out to have been built by the Israelis themselves. Now rape stories that even the Israeli police talk about not having evidence.
& it isn’t just on Gaza they do the exact same thing with any group or nation that opposes US interest. I bet you buy into the Uighur genocide fake news as well.
Tell you what, you think you have a pretty good idea of the state of these these media organizations & the veracity as a journalist of the standards & research on the rape story. I’ve always wanted to get someone like yourself who is 100% sincere & well meaning & in fact does great work in your area but with due respect is clueless on the bigger picture because you are still in that bubble, to go one on one with an alternative media journalist that has a history of debunking these sort of stories & has a better picture of the true state of of some of these platforms you think are doing a good job. Would you be up for that?
You’re making a whole pile of assumptions about my views here. I don’t for one minute think everything’s fine. You don’t know where I get my news. You don’t know my opinions about Russia or China or Gaza, and you haven’t asked. So do me a favour and don’t try to guess what I think, and I won’t make assumptions about you either.
You seem to be conflating a lot of things into your overarching narrative of MSM vs everyone else. The beheaded babies story is a good example. Those that have tried to get to the bottom of that story say that it came from one TV reporter, Nicole Zedek at the Israeli channel i24. It was her clip that went viral on social media (ie amplified by non-mainstream news) and it was repeated in a handful of other media outlets afterwards. Most news outlets waited for some kind of evidence, as it was very obviously a highly suspect allegation. No evidence was shown, and so they never reported it. Look it up – see if you can find any mention of it in the news outlets you’ve singled out for criticism here. A journalist at ABC, who you accuse of being propaganda merchants, got in trouble for calling the story bullshit on air. Your insistence that ‘western MSM lies’ really isn’t so simple.
But I’m not interested in picking over all the news stories that make you angry. This is my point: good journalism is found in a variety of places, both inside and outside the mainstream. The media landscape doesn’t break down into two simple boxes of MSM baddies and independent outsider goodies. I don’t think that is a particularly controversial or naive opinion.
After all, you seem to be forgetting that I am an alternative media journalist myself, and so I’d have no problem whatsoever sitting down with another one. I have the greatest respect for good journalists who get out and investigate things properly, wherever they choose to publish. But I have no idea what point you’d be trying to prove in setting up such a conversation.
Well I actually did ask & you never addressed it. On Russia, on China/Uighur, on whether you had heard the OPCW whistler blowers story that Western MSM have conspicuously avoided, showing how the US has co-opted a UN Chemical weapons organization, which is consistent with my line that is what they do. Did you ever hear of it? One of the journalists who had worked on it actually spoke at the UN. Not newsworthy?
& I think I can infer how you think from exactly your own words including ‘Putin warmongering’ to you going to bat for the Rape story that has been shredded with even Haaretz among others calling out the Zionist Zaka group, which is the main source of the rape propaganda repeated by the WMSM, including the NYT’s Jeffrey Gettleman and guardian’s Bethan McKernan, who couldn’t help her cut & past journalism. Maybe it’s worth another think. Aaron Mate is on Twitter just go down his feed or go to his site.
BTW the NYT’s has been one of the worst pro-war rags who consistently cheers on whatever the CIA or State Dept want it to say. Defending it is a red flag in itself.
Now true I might be a bit biased & triggered as our ABC continued to talk about the beheaded babies story well past its used by date as well as some of our other commercial news outlets as well as the obvious the biased language used Israelis get massacred while Palestinians just die. Have you noticed that Jeremy? Even when Biden mentioned it maybe it was just Australian media -which gets a lot of its content from newsfeed -never once pulled it up.& maybe when other journalists say it was being splashed across newspapers they were lying? I did see some politicians repeating which would have ended up on the TV so I just missed all the examples of journalists pulling that up?
& yes Tom Joyner got into trouble for calling it bullshit which it was as it is well known with even many ABC journalists protesting- its so obvious on the reporting & on the screens – that unlike doing BS Uighur genocide stories Gaza is way more obvious. But they have consistently been pushing US talking points for years now. We also have Antoinette Lattouf stood down? for sharing a post on a Human Rights Watch report about the Gaza war which now looks like a Zionist lobby hitjob. Which all supports my line which many other Australians who can think for themselves say that the ABC is now just another US propaganda platform – that is also influenced by the Zionist lobby -like the BBC NYT’s & the Guardian.
So no I don’t want to pick over every story but the Gaza Rape, Putin War mongering or maybe the Uighur genocide stories would be enough to illustrate how the Western MSM is pretty well a propaganda arm of the US & some help from its vassals like the UK. So its more than being not fine or expecting perfection but you are seriously out of touch if you don’t think there is fundamentally something wrong with a good part of Western MSM.
& my apology as coming across the way I have, I do especially get triggered when a journalist I respect looks like they have bought into these narratives when I naively expected them to know better. & I’m more than willing to be shown I’m wrong, & if you sat down with the guys -Mate- I have in mind I would be disappointed -& truly surprised- if they couldn’t change your mind. But up to you.
PS this also links to environmental policy as it goes to the political science aspect of who has the power in policy & media when it comes to who is actually in charge. It’s IMO pretty well impossible to address the environment by anyone, if those in power get to shape the narrative & act criminally in geopolitics as well the environment.
1) No, you can’t infer an entire worldview from a single word. He’s not the only one and the west is not without blame, but I’m quite comfortable describing Putin as a warmongerer. The fact that you say “Western MSM is pretty well a propaganda arm of the US” while speaking up for RT and Sputnik – literally propaganda arms of the Russian government – doesn’t inspire confidence in your understanding of propaganda. But there’s a good book you could read about that by Peter Pomerantsev.
2) I didn’t go in ‘to bat for the rape story’. I defended the specific journalist you were maligning by saying they were ‘pushing propaganda’, when what they were doing was investigative journalism, which is our best defence against propaganda. If you can’t tell the difference between these two things, I don’t want the enlightenment you claim. (By the way, Zionists hate McKernan and think she’s biased the other way)
3) I am an independent journalist, and so I don’t need to sit down with your favourite independent journalist to be convinced of the value of independent journalism. I am infuriated by the state of the media on a daily basis, but it’s not fair to lump all of western media into one big pot and write it off as lying. I’ve used your beheaded babies example to prove that point – some media outlets jumped on the story because it served the narrative. Many others didn’t. They never ran that story, or they published articles rebutting it. That’s certainly the case with the Guardian and the BBC, neither of which touched those claims with a bargepole. There are vast differences in standards across the media. To speak of one monolithic ‘western MSM’ is misguided and intellectually lazy.
Here’s the key point: Robust journalism is about the pursuit of truth, and we should support it wherever we find it. Putting aside your assumptions about my worldview, we can agree on that, don’t you think?
1. Well that is the narrative that has been spun & I did ask given your diverse media diet whether you have the gist of the opposing narrative that says if anything he is far from a war monger? & yes there is Russian propaganda but then again there is propaganda small p and big P & to tell the truth I don’t bother at all with mainline RT or Sputnik reporting but rather selected a few Western journalists who had cred & integrity who have worked on their platforms who corroborate with other alternative or once mainstream journalists which like those that called out Russigate for the BS it was while mainstream journalists not only ran that garbage but often attacked them as well. Then I go on what they say for instance was in Putin’s speeches, analysis & fact checking or the sort of things that Western Media almost always leaves out or lies about.
2. Oh please! From of a story that is falling apart as we speak? You are easy to impress & obviously have no idea of the history of the ‘investigative journalism’ that goes on there. Tell me did those investigative guidelines changed from the WMDs or Qaddafi Viagra mass rape, Uighur genocide, Assad gassed his people etc investigative journalism from the NYT’s? Well they got it wrong in the past but it’s always different this time. & Zionists are whackjobs unless a journalist is loudly cheering their genocide on even if they still push their propaganda on other stories they throw tantrums & is hardly a defense.
3. I’m not asking you to value independent journalism, just give you a chance to see with some alternative views on current large P Western propaganda being pushed like the Hamas Mass Rape, or the Bad Russia/China Uighur genocide or Russiagate/war monger Putin. Much of which once you get out of the bubble fails the sniff test(BTW if Pomerantsev thought the Russian clickbait farms had a serious impact on the election you blew your money or time); & that platforms like the NYTs have a history of doing it.
& rather than coming from a place of ignorance when talking about others being misguided and intellectually lazy (& I’m pretty sure Chomsky didn’t just pull Manufacturing Consent out of his ass) you could have a discussion how things like how having 6 corporations controlling 90% of the media in the US, Western corporate & financial & corporate elites having power concentration in many Western media outlets like the Murdocks, how even countries like South Africa get 80% of their news feeds from these related media outlets/corporations, and how the US hegemonic system controls many of these networks of power, could conceivable control enough of these platforms to have consistent narrative control for their propaganda needs.
So ofc I’m for robust journalism but when looking at the consistent narrative control – often to the ridiculous extent of identical headlines & talking points & BS mass rape stories- that suits US or related in that instance Zionist interests- it’s pretty clear to see that for the above Western MSM system we don’t have it even if you can get some rare voices doing real investigative journalism. But anyway up to you the mass rape story is falling apart, if you want to back your journalist cred on it, its all on you.
I haven’t ‘backed’ the mass rape story. I’ve said that you if you go around accusing genuine investigative journalists of touting propaganda, you’re undermining those working to establish what actually happened. Those investigations are ongoing, by the way, especially since mistakes were indeed made in some of the early reporting of that story. At this point I’d be sceptical of anyone who insists they know the truth of what happened on October 7th.
Chomsky, who is a smarter man than the both of us, has written for the New York Times, The Independent and the Guardian, as well as Alternet or Truthout. So I suspect he has a pretty nuanced view of the media and sees useful aspects to both mainstream and alternative sources.
But I see that we are coming from entirely different places on this and I think we’ve taken this conversation as far as its going to go. Good luck out there.
Wait what?
First I skipped something you said about the beheaded babies about the BBC & Guardian. Sorry to pop your bubble but the BBC did in fact run with it https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67065205 5 sec search & secondly just because the Guardian -or others for that matter- pulled itself up on one unfounded story doesn’t get it off the hook when it has a history of running many others including the rape story which if you bothered to look into the debunking would see it has as much weight as the beheaded babies stories. Again because you don’t take the time to go into push back of these propaganda narratives you are missing this. Don’t hold your breath on that one.
Next I’m far closer to Chomsky on this & more nuanced, as one can easily argue how US corporate Maunfactured consent combined elite corporate power concentration in the West can easily extend the system that works in the US to that US hegemonic system, let alone see how using Western news feed business model extends it elsewhere. While at the same time acknowledging investigative journalism still happens within that context in other areas. For example just because Russiagate & WMD’s propaganda was pushed by many Western media outlets doesn’t say in itself that it was 100% universal or that everything is propaganda about Putin or Saddam. Nonetheless there was still a herd mentality on both.
& you aren’t defending a bogus rape story but rather Bethan McKernan herself & investigative journalism, who just happened to lift passages from a NBCNews article pushing the Hamas rape propaganda – which when you scratch the surface fails even basic journalistic practices- while still waiting for more investigations when even the Israeli police say they isn’t evidence? Right……..
BTW I wonder since there was such a thing as Western MSM Cold War propaganda undermines that real investigative journalism existed during that period? Or that not every outlet published the same cold war story means it never happened?
Jeremy with due respect you do great work on he environment, I hope you stick just to it.
That’s not the beheaded babies story on the BBC. That is an article that contains the word ‘babies’, and contains the word ‘beheaded’, though not actually related. If you read the story, rather than relying on a 5 second search, you would know that.
This is kind of my problem – you’re so convinced that everyone is lying that you’re writing people off without looking at what they’re really saying. That puts you in a bubble too, one where MSM constantly lies, and nobody ever reports the real story.
We all need to challenge our own views, and I’m open to that. So I’ve followed you back on Twitter and I will see what you post there.
That’s good of you. I’m back on night shift so don’t tend to have much time for this but i hardly say I’m alone as there are many saying this doesn’t pass the pub test & as I’m getting both the propaganda & counter whereas it seems you only go fro the MSM, I’m hardly the one in the bubble.
& yes as the Novara Media clip I just posted is saying regarding those rapes they are indeed all lying apart from it being despicable for media outlets to be using the death & family of that Israeli woman as propaganda scoring points.
Btw I will have to go over this article as I recall one of their clips mentioning him & the babies claim. So while I was quick on that BBC piece & inferred he was talking about them as well, it would be strange that there was no connection from a claim Zion does in fact speak of while this but isn’t explicitly repeated with the BBC. So I will give you a technical point win but no cigar https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/11/beheaded-israeli-babies-settler-wipe-out-palestinian/
Actually its a bit odd don’t you think dude makes a claim babies beheaded a different reporter repeats it the BBC references the source about decapitated victims & also talking about babies killed. Why reference the source that said said babies beheaded but leave the direct claim out Jeremy?
A parting gift https://www.declassifieduk.org/for-western-media-israels-bombing-of-gaza-is-not-deadly/ should we nit pick it isn’t 100%
BTW this is more in line with what i remember of the early coverage. Maybe not all platforms did that but regardless many did. But just like the China bashing there is a definite consistency in WMSM https://youtu.be/KFtE9HMtiOc?si=-u2ujXkmo9Lp4sZt
That is interesting what you say about Sputnik. Had never heard of it, but The Final Countdown included a conservative and a liberal perspective, and might have been ok. To my understanding, however, Russian journalists do face significant disincentives from doing anything hard-hitting in their home country. Angie Wong’s Op-Ed’s title suggested that she would argue that Americans should have a chance to vote yea or nay for Trump in November. I thought there might be interesting reasons to defend that point of view, but she gave, instead, flimsy and biased ones. She said that Trump should be on the ballot because the issue of whether or not he had engaged in insurrection was ‘nonsense,’ and that he should be on the ballot because Biden’s approval rating was X 5, and because the cost of coffee was $6.00. I was saddened at the poor quality of the writing and wondered why a reputable Daily would publish partisan talking points, and that’s how I discovered her ties to a Moscow publication, which as you point out might not totally discredit her if it’s a respected news outlet in say, the UK. Am not an expert on any of this but if I were an editor, I would be happy if experts like you held me to account from time to time. Encourage the press to keep doing their best, and never sell out, no matter how discouraging the terrain. Bonne nuit!
From what I understand there are many critics of Putin in the media but tend to say he doesn’t go far enough. It would be important to understand Putin isn’t some sort of Czar but the head of a Russian establishment mindful of their interests & they do have their own military industrial complex & Pro-Russian oligarchs. So this is just another way to say is their corruption yes but Putin isn’t some arch villain with his finger in every pie. Journalists can be killed by other interest which if you didn’t know happens in the West as well.
Regarding Trump there are those even on the Left that say the Capital incursion wasn’t some coup attempt & it was overblown. I think he is trash but while the Dems can occasional throw a few good bones geopolitically they are both trash. & if weak reasoning was a justification to get someone de-platformed there would be few left in WMSM.
I have no first-hand knowledge of Putin. There are recordings of former president Trump telling election officials not to certify the vote after his loss, but it doesn’t sound to me as if he came up with the idea to storm the capitol. He should have condemned it, and instead seemed to enjoy it, but that’s not the same, Still, I think that having tried to overturn accurate election results should make one ineligible to run again, but was interested in hearing a contrary point of view. I would not be able to pronounce your views on Putin right or wrong. Have never been to Russia. I prefer Dostoevsky to Putin but have only read him in translation. Hope you have a good weekend.
I agree if that is what the laws say, & but you will also find both sides of politics use so many dirty tricks to suppress democracy in the US that it’s like two pigs flinging mud.
& on Putin he maybe corrupt financially & he may have his own form of corrupted form of ‘democracy’ – only different to the form of corruption in the US- but unlike many Western politicians he is competent & far from being a war monger as the Western rules based order hypocrites make out. & the only people who have a shred of credibility making criticisms of him are also the ones calling out the far worse behaviors of the US/West.
Interesting. Thank you.
edit# reflexively
..Recently read about a private school in the US where all students receive the limited info type of mobile phone, and are not allowed to have smart phones. The report suggested that this had salutary effects on students’ interactions with one another and their teachers. Having taught in an inner city school where students had smart phones, I know there are very few benefits and serious negatives, such as their amplifying effect on hallway brawls. We don’t need Facebook as much as it needs us. It’s been helpful to genocidal regimes, for goodness’ sake, and child exploitation. I mean, can’t we can just e-mail our pictures to our close friends, instead of uploading them to what is essentially a public venue and looking forward to the first like from the very most sedentary of our acquaintances? I think that we could solve many many problems by requiring our children to shelve their cell phones the minute they came home and, if we’re not going to be home, locating a reliable neighbor who is who will let our children come over to study or play outside under adult supervision until we will be back from work. We cannot blame social media or the manipulative state when we refuse to take back our attention and educate our children. We are to blame if we don’t!