Russia today, tomorrow the world
The Kremlin’s news network has gained a global following with a quixotic blend of news and conspiracy.
Shaun Walker - 20 September 2010
The 11 September attacks in New York were an inside job; the South Korean warship torpedoed in March was not sunk by North Korea, but probably by Japan or the US; and the world is run by the secretive Bilderberg Group, who pursue a “New World Order”. Not the lonely ravings of a conspiracy-minded blogger, but all opinions aired recently on a satellite channel beamed into millions of American homes.
With its slick graphics, smiling young news-anchors, and round-the-clock coverage, RT is like any other news channel. But there is one major difference, aside from the content: RT, which stands for Russia Today, is paid for by the Kremlin. The channel launched in 2005, broadcasting news mainly about Russia on various satellite packages around the world.
You might remember a provocative ad campaign across London last year, with posters showing pictures of Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asking, “Who poses the bigger nuclear threat?”
In the US, ads were run on screens inside New York taxis, and the channel even broadcast live on big screens in Times Square. This year, RT went even further in its attempts to infiltrate the US, when a new arm of the channel, RT America, began broadcasting from Washington DC several hours a day, exclusively for a US audience. The focus is not Russia, but America itself, and the radical opinions of some of its guests have been raising eyebrows.
Last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a well-respected US organisation that tracks hate groups and extremists in the United States, published a report about Russia Today. The group did not label the channel itself extremist, but said it gives undue airtime to conspiracy theorists and extremists. “Its slickly packaged stories suggest that a legitimate debate is under way in the United States about who perpetrated the 11 September terrorist attacks, for instance, and about President Obama’s eligibility for high office.”
Tags: Russia Today
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October 10th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I’m glad someone’s finally covering Russia Today. I’ve been wondering about them and their relation to American conspiracy culture since I first became aware of both RT and the Larouche movement. I discovered both these things around the same time. Despite the fact that I’d been into conspiracy research for several years, somehow Lyndon Larouche had flown under my radar until about 2 years ago.
I became aware of the Larouche movement when I started noticing pro-Russian and pro-Federalist sentiments in the writings of Alex Jones regular Webster Tarpley. Those versed in mainstream conspiracy cultural will, no doubt, recognize that these views are somewhat out of place in a milieu that is traditionally anti-big government and anti-Communist. After looking into Tarpley, I discovered that both he and William Engdahl, came from the something called the Larouche Movement, founded by Lyndon Larouche a former Trotskite turned pro-FDR conspiracy theorists.
Even though I actually agree with some of Larouche’s criticism of global politics, and appreciate the presence of a voice that isn’t coming from the same monolithic libertarian angel, I am nonetheless, frequently given pause by the consistent pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, anti-British agenda exhibited by Lyndon and his followers. This article, attacking RT, comes from a British publication, a fact that will surely not be missed by the Larouchers, who perceive the world as a Manichean ballet between themselves and the British Empire. Of course there’s a very good chance that Western Oligarchs are indeed lining against Russia and China, if they can’t draw these nations into a singular world economic/political order.
Nonetheless, the enmity of Western Globalist, rotten as they are, doesn’t wash clean the myriad sins of Putin’s Russia or Red China. These nations are, in many ways, as much as it pains me to admit it, even worse than Western Globalist interests. That’s why we have to watch Russia today’s fostering of anti-government conspiracy theorists with an objective eye, ever bit as much as we must scrutinize the mainstream media.
I’m relatively convinced that Larouche is no longer an adhered of actual classical Marixism, with it’s state atheiocracy and materialist philosophy, however that matters very little since modern Russia has also distanced itself from classical Marxism too. There is even the argument made by many that the later years of the cold war were hardly about the conflicting ideologies of Communism and Capitalism but really nothing more than a power struggle between competing super powers. China too, is only Marxist in so much as it is totalitarian, but in many ways it is an extremely capitalist state.
RT might be providing a podium to both libertarian and Larouche critics of U.S foreign policy in an attempt to delay a geo-political checkmate on the part of the West. Though we should long to see the down fall of the globalists we must be careful not to take our eyes off players like Russia, China, Korea and any real Islamic terrorists out there.