A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
While the public opinion is manipulated both in the US and in Russia, the methods and outcomes are vastly different. For a diligent study of the US media manipulation I highly recommend Chomsky's book "Understanding Power" [2]. You may disagree with his opinions, but they are still worthy of consideration because Chomsky backs up each observation with a verifiable reference, to the point where all of the references combined make an entire separate book of equal volume. If you don't like Chomsky's answers, you will at least appreciate the questions he's trying to tackle.
I haven't read the headline book yet [1], but it has the potential to shed some light on how things are done over in Russia. Between the two works, I hope, one can gain actual knowledge of the methods of the public opinion manipulation. The kind of knowledge to replace both the blind faith in the media and it's twin brother - the entirely counterproductive nihilistic disregard of all news.
[1] "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible", Peter Pomerantsev http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Is-True-Everything-Possible/dp...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-Indispensible-Chom...
He defended them saying that what we said about the Kh R was Western propaganda, etc. Years later, when the truth became undeniable, he defended his actions saying, but well, I couldn't very well know they were so bad and since I didn't have the data, I was still right. Yet, at the time, there we all kinds of information coming out from Kampuchea, all pointing to it being a disaster --even the Vietnamese were utterly alarmed.
So, you really have to be careful with him.
"A Finnish inquiry commission concludes that 1 million or fewer people died in the Pol Pot period. The commission documented that at least several thousand of those were because of direct military battles with Vietnam. Part of the discrepancy in death figures comes from those who fail to account for the decrease in births that inevitably happens when a population is lacking adequate food and fighting a war. These missed births get counted as deaths in population projections that assume the birth rate did not change."
"The United States war in Southeast Asia killed 600,000 people in Cambodia according to the Finnish Inquiry Commission. The total U.S.-caused deaths in Indochina run into the millions."
"By 1975, an estimated 10 percent of the Kampuchean population -- 600,000 -- had already died as a result of the Vietnam War. Those 600,000 deaths were caused by U.S. efforts to track down Vietnamese communists. According to the Peter Jennings documentary "The Killing Fields", Cambodia specifically absorbed 500,000 tons of U.S. bombs in the early 1970s."
"The U.S.-instigated war -- and the bombings in particular -- also caused the creation of 2 million refugees, who flooded the cities. The cities then came to depend on the U.S. food aid to live because of the war and the inefficiency of the right-wing Lon Nol regime."
"Hence, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge seized power from Lon Nol in 1975 in the worst possible situation: The people were starving, Kampuchea was the poorest country in the world and one-third of its people were refugees."
"Executions and other deaths"
"The Boston Globe coverage of Pol Pot's death contained this characterization of the Khmer Rouge: "When the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital on April 17, 1975 to establish their agrarian society, they chased out city dwellers at gunpoint, killed anyone suspected of being an intellectual, forced millions into labor camps, and demanded that children inform on their parents. People were often arrested simply for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language. Money and private property were abolished, schools and temples were shuttered, and medicine and food became scarce. During a nearly four-year reign, as many as 2 million people died of starvation, execution illness or overwork."
"Pol Pot did execute between 75,000 and 150,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Most of those executions took place in the context of war between Vietnam and Cambodia.Vietnam invaded in 1978 and threw the Khmer Rouge out of power.The famous skull-pile pictures from Kampuchea come from a policy especially aimed at the Vietnamese.Serious famine followed again after the final Vietnamese invasion of December 1978, and by the time international aid started it was too late for many. A total of 2 million, or 30 percent of the population, died in the 1970s from the U.S. war, the Pol Pot period and Vietnamese invasions."
"The United States aided the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, because they were enemies of U.S. foes, the Vietnamese, who had invaded and ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979."
I tried to google for it, but found nothing very tangible. Incidentally, many of the references to such a supposed Finnish government commission are made by sites (for instance globalresearch.ca) that are currently also repeating Kremlin view about Ukraine.
It appears rather strange that a "Finnish Government inquiry" would only be published by someone called Zed Books in London.
Even if he was wrong about his stance on KhR, how does that affect validity of the book? The book cites all of its sources and makes its conclusions in broad daylight, so it's entirely possible to have a productive discussion about the contents and the arguments being made, without discuss the person making those arguments.
All you have to do is listen the population. When you have thousands of escapees and refugees recounting the same horrible things, it's not a sinister "propaganda plot".
I've heard the stories from actual escapees who still have nightmares from when they trudged though unknown jungle for months not knowing if they'd see another day, not less make it out free. Decomposing bodies, where you might see a cow, in previous times, so in all kinds of places, you din't know who might turn you in, hunger, dispossession, etc.
- Nayirah testimony leading up to the 1st Iraq war [1]
- Numerous refugees testimonies leading up to the 2nd Iraq war (WMD, torture reports, etc)
- Torrent of testimonies from Ukraine in recent months, e.g. [2]
- I heard there is plenty of made-up material coming from Palestine
You can see how giving much credence to a single-sourced report is not just un-epistemological, but also plain dangerous in that it can easily make bad situation worse.
It's a very interesting question - how do we judge credibility of such reports? Clearly you can't take them at face value, but there must be things we can do. Obviously the best is a number of investigations by multiple independent people on site, but that's not always possible. One thing that comes to mind is interviewing all of the refugees and collating their accounts, as it could give a lot of data - people make errors, but if they all make the same errors it can point to manipulated accounts.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29
[2] http://news.yahoo.com/russian-tv-sparks-outrage-ukraine-chil...
People don't travel through jungle, losing members along the way, for propaganda. Like I said, these weren't a few dozen people. It was thousands. People who ignored this can only be described as ideologues. It's kind of the same way some people in the West didn't want to believe gulags existed.
He cannot explain, for example, the success of pro-immigration politics. He might argue that immigration is a tool used by the powerful to lower the cost of labor, but to do so is to completely ignore that it has been the left that has been the main driver of immigration and multiculturalism.
Similarly, he can't explain the success of the pro-Israel lobby in the US. He views the US as propping up a right wing regime in Israel for its own benefit. But again, this ignores the complete cooperation of the mainstream left in the US in this process.
The only way you can believe in Chomsky's worldview is if you think that literally everyone in mainstream US politics, and most of the left outside of the mainstream, have been co-opted into promoting an agenda which is absolutely unrelated (and often opposed to) to their stated agenda. It is a viewpoint that vastly exaggerates the importance of money and political power, and ignores the power of ideology.
Nevertheless, the list of techniques and examples of media manipulation that he has painstakingly documented in his book is valuable in its own right. You don't have to agree with all or even most of Chomsky to give due consideration to some of his work.
If all that happened was that a "prominent news anchor reviewed the coming events as if they were part of a film script, musing on how best to entertain the audience and questioning who that week’s enemy should be" then this doesn't sound too different from what probably happens in some US news rooms as well.
I have no trouble believing that Russian TV is a propaganda machine and projects like the World Press Freedom Index [1] tend to agree. But this seems like a very weak article to make this point.
" Many have wondered why the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out a torrent of such preposterous claims that few people take seriously.
They know it will not be believed abroad. The purpose is not that it is believed.
The purpose of disinformation was is to destroy trust in all media. Create a space where nobody believes in anything.
Then, when people brag that they don't believe the Kremlin propaganda, but also they don't believe "the other propaganda" that is published by media in countries where there is a free press, the information war has been won.
If you think that Western media (for purposes of translation: let's take for example DW or BBC) is as unreliable as Russia Today, you are not above the information war. You are its casualty. "
And seeing the preposterous claims about persecution of ethnic Russians where I live, contra reality of ethnic Russian people I know, and how some people still keep reminding how also the Western TV channels and papers are part of a propaganda machine... he has a strong point.
It has worked for their domestic audience, to great effect, and to a good degree internationally.
Just look at Putin's approval ratings.
Remember that Bill Clinton, for all his failures, is probably still the most loved US President. Why? Because things were good while he was in charge.
Look at this Russian economic data: https://www.quandl.com/c/russia/russia-economy-data
For better or worse, for all Putin's perceived downsides, Russia is better off than it's ever been. Sanctions and all. In fact, most economists are projecting a 5% reduction in GDP due to sanctions. That will put them at 2013 levels of prosperity, which is still way, way above where they were only a decade ago, never mind in 2000.
Others are horrified by seeing the chasm between Russian propaganda and actual reality - for instance regarding the supposed persecution of Russians here, taking away children from families, etc - and also the chasm between their own views and views of their families who are living in Russia under full coverage of government-induced media bombardment about Kiev Nazis etc.
And yet another group - quite large in fact - is careful to not say anything at all, if possible.
There's one interesting thing, though: the Russian vocabulary has been amended with the term Nazism. In the past, Russian language and any Soviet/Russian source would always speak of fascism (фашизм) and never Nazism (нацизм). This was apparently because Nazi is short for National Socialist, and that was a little bit too close to International Socialist, which was officially good. But now they actually say "Nazi". That is new.
Having avoided traditional American news sources for a long time (10+ years), whenever I get a glimpse of it now (especially cable news sources), I always got the sense that this is exactly how American news is produced.
Poor Russia, the first country to put a man in space, now reduced to copying propaganda machines!
The man in space flew on a rocket initially designed in Nazi Germany.
If you don't believe me, just google what different TV channels or online magazines said about obama care. Some praised it to the high heavens, others made it out to be the antichrist. If Obama really controlled all "his" media, that should have gone a lot better...
The propaganda "machines" in Nazi-Germany, soviet union, and today in Russia or North Korea differ in one important point from western media reporting: The government's narrative is the only narrative.
The content was undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect to some extent, though I suspect the news production scenes were among the more documentary aspects of the film. Amazingly, they cast real Los Angeles local news anchors in the film (who happily consented to be in it!)
I'm also a consumer of what I would call serious, non-mainstream news sources: NPR, New York Times, Hacker News. But next time I was at the gym and caught the local news on one of the hanging big screen tvs, I saw it in a completely different light. Just as the film depicted.
It's not propaganda in the way described here. But I found it pretty shocking and unsettling.
During one of their demonstrations a comedy/satire show dressed up an actor as a "Russian" journalist from "Russia Today", a news caster/online magazine financed by the Russian state.
The Pegida participants were very willing to talk to him. They said that western media is all corrupt and unfree, and that Russia Today is a "welcome" and more honest alternative.
Which is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.
RT, BBC, Al Jazeera are official state propaganda machines, but that doesn't mean ALL they say is propaganda. As a matter of personal opinion on many subjects (not directly connected with the Russian government) RT is more honest than the big international media outlets (that cant afford to alienate the western governments, big advertisers or powerful interest groups).
Straight from Putin's mouth...
A known mafia boss (Delyan Peevski) has control of over 50% of the newspapers and 80% of the distribution of all newspapers through another company.
All the attorney generals of Bulgaria have been obviously corrupt, having dinners with prominent mafia bosses on yachts, etc. Everything in the judiciary system is made corrupt by design. All forms of opposition are crushed in infancy either by propaganda, intimidation or infiltrating the opposing organization and breaking it from the inside.
It's HELL. We don't know what to do. When we think the situation can't be any more dire, another, greater scandal is already looming. It's depressing and crushing.
The free press index lists Russia quite a bit behind Bulgaria or Romania...
Estonia in particular seems to be doing the best, better than Ireland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Swiztzerland.
But if the RSF metrics are to believed, all the Baltics seem to perform significantly better than countries like Spain, the UK, France, the US or Italy...
Sure, they're biased, but that doesn't mean they are always outright lying -- at least not more than American media.
The idea of a unbiased news is a pipedream. I'm fully aware that German public television was intentionally created in a way that would supposedly protect it from the government's influence, but that doesn't mean they succeeded.
The "Lügenpresse" chants are asinine, of course. It's not anyone's fault media isn't trustworthy, we were just wrong to think that it could ever be made to be unbiased, considering how biased the source material always is.
I think the only safe way to consume information is to keep its origin in mind. I distrust RT and CNN equally -- but if they both share the same details in a story, there's likely some truth to it.
> Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation
RT does quite a bit more than that.
In Russia there are less alternatives to state media.
CNN, sure, I would not trust them, too.
English RT and English Al Jazeera are international channels, like BBC World.
That said, some of the programming on RT is pretty similar in nature to what you'd find on, say, Arirang TV (an English South Korean channel). I.e. less (political) propaganda and more good old (commercial) PR.
If I'd have to say anything good about RT versus other international news channels, it's their coverage of the protests in Turkey. Even in Germany (where Turkey is seen as no more foreign than Greece or Italy and a significant share of the population has ties to Turkey) the protests were at best a footnote of the regular news reporting. RT on the other hand would have reporters right in the middle of it, getting teargassed and documenting the different motivations for the various groups involved.
Oh, and of course our media was extremely supportive of the rebellion in Syria despite the growing influence of Islamist groups. Until they decided to change directions completely when ISIS/ISIL showed up. And now they refer to them (supposedly objectively!) as "terror militia IS".
Frankly, calling anything a "terror militia" while pretending to be objective is pretty damn insulting. It completely discards any notion of them having any motives or being in fact humans. It's how you talk about an enemy in your propaganda when you're at war, it's not how you cover a news story.
Calling German media "Lügenpresse" is silly, but not because it's outrageously inaccurate. It's silly because all media is inadvertently lying. You can't just present the "facts" because they're inconsistent, disjointed and confusing (because they're not only incomplete, but also always subjective). But as soon as you start to create a narrative, you're simplifying the facts and introducing a biased perspective. Yet you have to create narratives to make the news relateable and interesting to your audience (and stakeholders).
What's the alternative? I don't think there is one. Blogging and "YouTube journalism" is a start, but it's already been subverted at this point. It's no more difficult to feed misleading or biased information via individual "citizen reporters" than it is to influence corporate/national media. I guess correct attribution would go a long way, but now that "official" news programmes directly copy YouTube videos and online articles seem to be more about editorialising than citing the actual sources, I don't see that happening -- no party (other than the audience) would benefit from more accountability in the news, sadly.
I did not imply that. English and German RT is propaganda for foreign viewers.
> RT on the other hand would have reporters right in the middle of it, getting teargassed and documenting the different motivations for the various groups involved.
I don't think being teargassed makes good reporting.
> Islamist groups. ... "terror militia IS
These are different groups.
> It's silly because all media is inadvertently lying
Wrong.
> What's the alternative?
Definitely Rt is no alternative. They don't even try to sort through the facts.
Russia was in opposition to the Iraq War, destabilizing Libya, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and toppling Assad in Syria. Putin was never cryptic that Ukraine was a "red line" and now we're all shocked at that outcome.
Now we've got ISIS, have given up toppling Assad, troops headed back to Iraq, 'advisors' going to Ukraine and Putin is getting the grand tour in Cairo.
Arguably, Putin was looking out for western interests more than the clowns running the show for the last 14 years.
The western governments also didn't want to topple Assad. But they also can't be opposed to deposing him, because that would contradict all democratic values: Assad and his father are mass murderers who rule their country dictatorily in a reign of terror.
Regime change was never a goal in Libya. If at any point Gaddafi had just stopped shelling civilian settlements, the bombardment would have been stopped, and the rebels wouldn't have had a snow flake's chance in hell of deposing him. The UN resolution was followed to the letter. Gaddafi's stupidity is a whole different matter.
Western media isn't corrupt and unfree, or is more honest? Citation required.
Yes, RT is a propaganda organ, just like much of the western media (corporate or otherwise). But at least on RT, I get to see alternative viewpoints of western concerns. You'll never see someone like a Chomsky on NBC/CBS/ABC/Fox/CNN - at least alternatives get a microphone on RT.
In western media, I get to see alternatives to non-Western propaganda organs.
Here's RT covering Syria/Lebanon in 2012. Way more objective than anything you'll ever see on US networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho_m0HRa9c#t=1076
And also, more accurate - if you'd been watching CNN, they'd have been telling you Assad's days were numbered.
Those news agencies are explicitly biased. Their sole goal in news reporting isn't profit or appeasing shareholders, but pushing their narrative of world events. Pushing their countries' ideology out onto the world. That's their only reason for existing. They don't care about profit or integrity in the slightest. If you think that's the same as a for-profit company, you're incredibly deluded.
The lesser of two evils is a real thing, life isn't black or white. Just because I jaywalked yesterday and committed a crime doesn't mean I'm the same as a meth dealer. The equivalence is beyond naive.
If CNN cared about integrity nobody would be working there anymore.
That you see this as an absolute black/white, good/evil and a strawman speaks to your ideology, not mine.
I don't need to, to know that it's a state-run news agency looking to push their narrative out into the world. They don't even try to hide it. That's quite literally their sole reason for existing. Do they have good articles from time to time? I don't know, probably or they wouldn't be as successful as they are. But I'm not going to find out. I try to minimize the bias in getting my news, not expose myself to as much of it as possible. That's like forcing myself to read nazi propaganda because they might make a valid point in the second paragraph of chapter 23. In the end, it's still rubbish.
And how are any of the the above concerns baseless?
Media cartels, whether Western or otherwise, are organized in a hierarchy, wherein editors review and cull the content of their subordinate journalists. Such an arrangement results in a militaristic concentration of power which can be exploited to control discourse locally, regionally, nationally, or, globally.
Frankly---and this may ruffle some feathers here---rather than questioning the Putin régime’s influence on Russian media, the West should be collectively asking why Israel-partisan Jews have such disproportionate influence in Western media. If Germans who are concerned with the effects of mass migration are being targeted for satire by Western media, why isn't Israel receiving the same biting criticism for recently sterilizing and deporting its black population? Why can some peoples express their national concerns democratically without being painted as pariahs, while other peoples are mocked and ridiculed by an self-titled "impartial" media.
Many here spare themselves exposure to the hypocrisies of Western/global media by directing their free time toward coding. Personally, the parade of Jewish "experts" who harangued the West's airwaves over the necessary WMD war in Iraq long ago convinced me of the corrupt nature of Western, and possibly, every organized media.
What you don't seem to understand is that our media is "controlled" by a free market. There are tons of online magazines which share your world view. The audience can choose these outlets. If news media with these world views were popular enough, they would get their own TV channels, and the money from advertising and subscription would enable them to reach even more people. But they suck. The vast majority disagrees with their views, "logic" and "solutions". That's why they are called "fringe" media.
What you don't seem to understand is that you're arguing against yourself.
On one hand you decry the increasingly mainstream "Russia Today"'s alleged partiality. On the other hand, you use an appeal to economics to dismiss Western media's pro-Israel partiality. In other words, the manipulation of discourse by Israel-partisan Jews is excused via free market economics, yet, Russia's national media outlet---created by way of the market with Russia's wealth---is dismissed via appeals to ethics... ethics which Western media itself fails to practice.
Gentile-controlled media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Russia Today can no longer be dismissed as "fringe". Indeed, the West may be just one more WMD-war away from a widespread loss of trust in Western, Israel-first media.
The mainstream media, like all people, has the accusation of "racism" hanging over their heads so they are unable to speak freely on topics like immigration (see [0] for a deconstruction of the concept of racism). I know that the mainstream media in the UK, for example, publish some controversial materials on immigration and culture. But these are always from the perspective of "we're doing immigration wrong". All the mainstream right is allowed to say is that immigrants need to assimilate better. And they are only really allowed to say this about Muslims. They can't say it about Africans outside the context of Islam. And they can't say that assimilation is impossible, or that immigration is not worth the effort.
I don't believe that the Russian press in general is more free than the Western press, but the person you are referring to is correct in that the Russian press is able to say things about immigration that the Western press can't.
[0] http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti...
There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some complete idiot into office.
And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the extreme right (and then they say they didn't).
The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate candidates is not the media's fault.
As I said, the mainstream only allows a very narrow discourse on immigration, which Pegida don't seem to fall under.
You characterize this act as a fair way to expose the incompetence of would be politicians. I disagree. It's actually highly unfair, and I think any unbiased person can see that. Why did they pretend to be from RT instead of just asking Pegida their opinions about RT? I don't think Pegida would have given a different answer in either case. The real reason was to make Pegida look stupid. "Look, they can't even tell a real reporter from a fake one". Whatever you think about Pegida's views on freedom of the press and RT, they should be judged on their merits and not in the context of a stupid stunt.
As to what Pegida said, as I said before, I disagree but I see where they are coming from. They have a justified view that the Western press is not free when it comes to some issues. That they lack knowledge of RT and are uncritical of RT, is a minor issue.
The "narrow" discussion of immigration is more due to the limited options which have any reasonable chance of getting public support. As we've seen, the majority disagrees with Pegida. Only a fringe portion of the German public wants to break the constitution to tighten immigration. And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.
>And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.
Well that's a very subjective matter. I see a lot of junk "knowledge" touted by pro immigration groups on this topic. For example, in most European countries immigrants commit more crimes. But there is a lot of obfuscation on this topic, and it's easy to get a smart sounding person to obfuscate the fact that the conditional probability of someone committing a crime given that they are an immigrant (see [0] for an example).
[0] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-26/davidsonrefugee/273222...
In Germany "patriotism" is still a touchy subject although we seem to be becoming less uncomfortable with the concept. This is a process that takes time, but there has been a clear progression over the recent decades, especially thanks to our economical endurance and, of course, football.
Likewise, "islamisation" is an overloaded term. Taken literally it just means an increasing cultural dominance of Islam. In practice, for many it's primarily a racial issue dating back to the "Gastarbeiter" fallacy several decades ago -- in fact, quite a few of the (mostly elderly) "concerned citizens" willing to explain their motivation name the uncontrolled influx of Turkish people.
There are at least three factors at play here: asylum seekers, actual first generation immigrants and "unassimilated" n-th generation immigrants.
The asylum seekers are mostly legitimate. Some of them would love to return to their country (but can't due to war / ethnic tensions), some of them would love to stay and become German citizens. Neither of them is generally allowed to seek employment and both of them continually face the risk of getting deported at a moment's notice. Both of them are portrayed as "parasites" by right-wing groups as well as some vocal members and sub-groups of PEGIDA. They also aren't exclusively or even predominantly Arabic muslisms (most are neither), contrary to what anti-asylum groups would have you believe.
The first-generation immigrants generally come to Europe because they want to live and work here. They are frequently well-educated and interested in adopting the local language and culture. Unsurprisingly that doesn't mean they want to abandon their heritage completely. Contrary to public opinion, they generally don't "bring their unfit family over who claim social benefits without ever having paid into the system". There are immigrants who abuse social benefits, but there are far more non-immigrants who do the same. Additionally, immigrants face discrimination when seeking employment or trying to establish a business; frequently any credentials are dismissed entirely, too, so they are nearly always classified as "uneducated" regardless of their actual background.
The n-th generation immigrants sometimes cause problems, frequently they do not. There is arguably a large number of adolescent or young adult criminals who are at odds with social norms (e.g. being misogynists and prone to violence). But the underlying issues are actually more complex than that.
When Germany first tried to raise immigration we did it because we needed a large number of mostly unskilled workers and Germans weren't willing to take the jobs for various reasons (my opinion on this matter is irrelevant). For economical reasons, many of the immigrants came from Turkey and the Middle East. They largely saw this as a chance to improve their situation and that of their family.
However we considered them not immigrants but "Gastarbeiter" (guest workers). The implication was that they were invited temporarily and expected to leave eventually. Because we only considered them "guests" (who eventually outstayed their welcome), we didn't come up with any plans to make sure they would integrate into society, learn the language and take our values to heart. Somehow this still worked out, generally speaking.
For some, however, it didn't work out. The first-generation immigrants would often be working low-income jobs, barely enough to sustain their family here while sending money to their relatives back "home". Like most people who have undergone hardships, they would often spoil their children (especially boys, if their culture was already strictly patriarchal). Their children, however, would face discrimination outside their "kind": to the other kids they'd just be immigrants, not "real" Germans. At the same time, when visiting their relatives, they would find that their "home country" would be entirely alien to them, they'd be foreigners in both places, nowhere at home. Add in the common other factors for youth criminality and you end up where we are today.
Sure, that's a gross oversimplification and the criminal "immigrant" youth of today is often not just in their second generation but in their third or forth, but the basic sequence of events is frequently no different.
But even disregarding the "why", what are we supposed to do with n-th generation "immigrants" we don't like? It's naive to believe that deportation is even remotely possible or sensible. They're Germans, not just "guests". They've often lived in Germany all their live and at best spent a few vacations in their "home" country. They're our problem and it is cowardly to pretend they're not.
But rehabilitation is of course a far more boring and unappealing answer than deportation.
Yes, Islamism is a problem. We need to watch certain Muslim sects very closely. Yes, youth crime is a problem. We need to take better care of our youth and protect them from becoming criminals.
But PEGIDA is no more of an answer than "Hooligans against Salafists". It's strengthening the true parasites: nationalist right-wing groups. We don't need fearmongering and chest-thumping, we need intelligent solutions. And as long as we don't have those solutions, we need to find them.
/rant
The US of A invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because somewhat a modern propaganda machine convinced Americans that because 21 guys coming from a friendly dictatorship nation decided to kill themselves in planes, they needed to invade another different country with probably the biggest oil reserves today.
Of course the modern propaganda machine tried very hard to convince people that controlling the oil was not the important part. That more than 5000 Americans and a million Iraqis died and more than a trillion dollars was spent because of "freedom".
Remember "war on terror" propaganda?
Remember weapons of mass destruction invention?
Remember Osama Bin Laden that appeared and disappeared as was needed and then died when needed(and nobody independent saw the body before being buried in secret in the Ocean).
Sure do. It was largely spun by a single entity which wasn't state-owned (Fox News). And it was criticized by other agencies for doing so (MSNBC, CNN, Hell the Dailyshow made it their mission).
Let's see RussiaToday's competitors (do they have any?) criticize RussiaToday for defending the Ukraine situation. The entire organization would probably end up in a ditch somewhere, having died in a fatal plane crash.
Sorry, but as much as you want to equate the two, they are not remotely the same. To hold the belief that they are means the person lacks critical thought.
> FOR a time, at least, Mr. Pomerantsev, now 37, seems also to have been at home in the raucous world of middlebrow Russian television, making films about gold-digging women (hunting men known as “Forbeses” — as in the Forbes list of the wealthy), ruthless gangsters and sinister cults.
From the sounds of it, he never even worked on news programs, just producing TV shows and movies. And this is someone the NY Times considers an 'expert' to 'uncover' the Russian propaganda machine?
While you want to talk propaganda, how about maybe bringing up the fact that this guy is a Brit. He lives in London, and his family moved away from the Soviet Union before it broke up. How about you talk about the fact he wrote a book, is obviously trying to drum up sales by virtue of the fact he's writing about propaganda while he was himself personally involved in low-brow TV shows.
Yet this makes it to the NY Times and front page of HN by virtue of? It's like getting a producer of real housewives of whatever to talk about US coverage of the Iraq war...
tl;dr - this guy produced shows about:
> making films about gold-digging women (hunting men known as “Forbeses” — as in the Forbes list of the wealthy), ruthless gangsters and sinister cults.
What does he know about propaganda... And HN is eating this up, talking about Russian propaganda like this article had something to say.
Adam Curtis' short documentary shown during Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe program – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM
(emphasis mine)
How often are we going to repeat this point?
Okay, as slowly and clearly as I can:
"Two wrongs don't make a right."
Just because the US does bad thing X, doesn't mean we can't talk about another country doing bad thing X.
Please, for the love of baby Jesus and his family. Please. Please.
I won't even top it off with a "the country's people are not the same as its government," or anything like it. I just beg of you, please, please stop using this line of reasoning.
I'm so exhausted of seeing it. It wears me down.
PS: GP has a point, he sketches the context. Fine. "Russia is not the only one, also US." Okay, it's true. But when you say "don't talk about Russia, because US!" then no. No, no, no, no. No.
EDIT: Can't reply to "rational-future", so I'll say it here: No, not at all. The opposite. As I said: "GP has a point". My problem is here:
> Furthermore, people should be concerned with their own country's criminality, not hypocritically pointing the finger at official enemies like Russia.
This is wrong. Telling people to shut up because their government / countrymen / ... does the same thing. Sure, call them out for being hypocrites. But even hypocrites have a right to speak. So, yeah: do talk about the US. Sure. Give me context. As long as you leave all the room for the original discussion.
To answer your question, just because something is "wrong" doesn't mean something can't be more "wrong". Just because I jaywalked yesteday doesn't mean I'm on the same level as a meth dealer, for example.
Life isn't black and white, it's shades of grey. Something can be much darker than another thing. And it's OK to point that out. As is the case here. The U.S media certainly isn't up to snuff, but the situation in Russia and other state-owned news agenicies are absolutely horrible by comparison. There may be poverty in the U.S but that doesn't mean it's on the same level as in a country like Ethiopia.
As much as the Russian defenders want to equate the two, they are NOT comparable.
It's only hypocritical if you don't also point the finger at your own flaws. Which people in this forum do. A lot.
Besides, not everyone agrees anymore with the notion that they must "have a country". What's my country? I have double nationality, and I live in an union of 28 countries. Lots of us work and live moving from country to country. And I feel more at home with some people here than with the average citizen of my city.
I still hold a soft spot for the place I grew up in, but I don't consider myself tied to it. It's not mine, nor do I belong to it.
EDIT: My ignorance was showing. Thanks, Atropos.
The superiority of western media over what is available from Russia or similar countries is not in the honesty and quality of any single media outfit, but in the plurality of media voices.
In the west, there are so many channels, shows, magazines and online sites, financed by completely different means, often pulling in different political directions, that most attempts at disinformation are discovered sooner rather than later.
We in the west are far more brainwashed than we think...
We never really know the truth. I can tell you what I ate this morning, and I can tell you that the sky is blue (maybe blue-greyish today).
The point is that too many people believe what they see on CNN, and assume it's the absolute truth. People base their world view upon curated news without questioning anything.
Here's a great interview by Larry King on his Ora TV network (re-broadcast online by RT): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv2f6ZZmx4A
In it, Stephen Cohen (the guest) makes the point that there's little debate in the western media these days. Either you agree, or you agree more. No one questions anything anymore.
Russians will tell you everything is a lie not because everything in Russia IS a lie (some things are, some aren't - much like over here), but because it's part of Russian culture, their outlook on the world, to be cynical and critical of everything.
One poster brought up that RT is trying to discredit everything, but that's not really correct. Russians question everything, it's a part of slavic culture, hell my 92 year old Ukrainian grandfather who's been here his whole life shares that outlook.
We in the west though have been transformed into gullible sheep, who question nothing we're told because we are comfortable working our 9-5 (more like 7-6) job to pay off our credit cards and debt, while watching shitty TV shows and never finding the motivation to ever learn about anything...
Find me a US news outlet which, say, criticizes the preposterous influence of Saudi and Israeli intelligence services on the US political process (say, for example, the invasion of Iraq and the demonization of Syria and Iran), and I will say we have a freer news organization in the US. Or, for example, the fact that the US organized a coup against a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and put Joe Biden's son in charge of an oil company there: kind of like a corrupt oligarchy would. Meanwhile, if I want to read about this, Russia Today, despite being Russian propaganda, actually accurately reports on the subject. Which is why people welcome RT as a useful news outlet, and laugh at CNN as US propaganda.
As for "no dissenting media, conquering foreign territory, tolerating extreme corruption etc" -I can't tell which country you're talking about. Whenever I hear some slavophobe ranting about the Russians, it seems some peculiar case of projection.
I do see a few groups of people trying to do something different, but they get stomped upon quicker than when I was a kid(in the 70's).
Yes, I know the Machine would breakdown if we didn't put so much into our energy into conforming to society, but just the amount of conformity we currently have is troubling. I'm being vague because I could go on for pages with examples. No, I don't see quite the same level of conformity online, but that herd mentality still seems to win? I've noticed even on HN there are some people who don't post honest alternative views like they used too? I'm not talking arguing just for the sake of arguing either, but I want to hear(within reason) the dissenters too. I can't because they get blurred out so quickly?
I am not a good writer, and having a hard time conveying what I am seeing. I just see people living lives they don't really want, or striving for a life they think they want. Some doing Horrid things in order to get ahead, and when they do get ahead legally--they still do Horrid things in order to stay ahead.(I see this absolute greed in so many families during probate/Trust proceedings. I see well off family members essentially putting brothers and sisters on the streets--over money. I don't get it? They rationalize, and just because it's legal--They proceed?) And some are so distraught chasing the good life they are brought to killing themselfs for something they think they want?
Again--I'm not a good writer, and lost focus, but just the level of conformity to get that perfect mate, house, perfect health, and job seems like it might backfire? I think media plays a huge role in conforming society. Maybe because Russian media is so obvious, it is having the opposite effect, while American media influence is so vague, we fall into their trap in the end? Yes, I know we have the most money, but are we happy?
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/02/12/world/europe/ap-e...
[2] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/12/u-s-drops-49th...
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
https://www.peaceproject.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/...
Experienced investigative journalist John Pilger looks at and questions (among other things) the British medias role as a dumb mouthpiece for the government leading up to and during the invasion of Iraq.
EDIT: link has been fixed
Will fix it now!
Although the Luddites would have you think it's a novel problem, news never where unbiased in the first place. Sure, good journalistic self-control can go a long way in preserving the original information, but that information in itself is biased already.
There's another analogy about processed food and processed information here, but it's still a matter of where you can source what you can consume. Buying local means you'll have to abstain from foreign material, which I don't think is an option for many when it comes to news.
When it comes to Ukraine there's so much doubtfulness in the accuracy of everything because both sides are so contradictory. I don't think it is that simple to just trust one side's story