Originally published at: Anticipated intelligence report on RTs influence campaigns - Boing Boing
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What is baffling–the repression of dissent, control of the media, the xtian nationalism, the homophobia? The gangsterish looting of national resources for the enrichment of a few?
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Patriots gladly share Russian propaganda while complaining about NPR being state run media. The cognitive dissonance on the right is mind boggling.
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As a Cold War kid, the baffling part for me was how readily and completely adherents of “the party of Reagan” embraced the state propaganda of an “Evil Empire” even when it was is clearly labeled as such. They didn’t even blink.
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When I was a kid my father, uncle and grandfather were all evangelical preachers. At my grandfather’s church there was an older WWII vet who would get up nearly every Sunday to rant about how the USA was constantly on the verge of becoming the USSR (I’m pretty sure one of his rants was the first time I heard the term “USSR”). Normally he was a lovely old gentleman who always had lemon drop candies for us kids, but when he was preachin’… HOLY SHIT, did this guy hate Russia. There was no greater evil on earth among the evangelicals in the 80s than Russia.
On top of that, New York City was essentially rebuilt Sodom & Gamorrah or Babylon to them and a grifting, shady real estate developer from there was automatically one of the most evil humans they could conceive of. Not only that, but trump was a well-known and deeply despised figure by that point based on personality alone.
I still don’t know that if that man or my equally-emphatic gradfather were still alive in 2016 if they would have voted for trump or not. 99% sure my father did. I fantasize about reviving my grandfather to tell him about the current state of things out of context; it would probably kill him all over again.
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It baffles me how the American right came to love and respect Russia for how it governs.
I can explain this.
The modern “American right” is full-on neo-fascist authoritarians. The modern world is too complex & confusing for them, and they desperately want & need some big-daddy figure to tell them what to do, what to think, and who to hate. Look at their complete idolization of “alpha males”, people who think they win arguments by yelling the loudest, and every “might makes right” grifter that shows up.
They’re willing to accept literally any imposition on their own personal freedom, so long as it a) hurts people they don’t like at least as much and b) tells them who to blame for their own failures & weaknesses.
End results don’t matter. Long-term impacts don’t matter. Blatant self-destruction doesn’t matter.
They just want to be told they’re safe & better than other people.
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… because Russia isn’t atheist and Communist anymore — Reaganites cared about Christianity and capitalism, not good and evil
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absolutely! my boring story, is that when Seattle got a ‘sister city’ inside the soviet union, oh about 1972ish, it funded a few of their high schools to add a Russian language program. Which, mostly out of a effort to break out of the usual, i signed up for. Within a month my parents had two very republican neighbors pounding at the door asking if they knew their son was a commie!! So… yes, that the very same personalities could now embrace Putin’s Russia (admittedly a somewhat different sort of Russia) is an old head scratcher indeed.
my father confused them a bit by asking them “don’t we need loyal American spies who can understand the Russian language?” (no spy i)
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I had some friends on the left who became fond of RT when it first came out, but part of that seemed to grow out of the paranoia of the 9/11 conspiracy movement-- like anyone offering an alternative to the Bush/Cheney worldview seemed A-OK to them; it wasn’t critical thinking it was more knee-jerk reaction, and thankfully they eventually gave up on it (except one who became full-blown MAGA.)
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It baffles me how the American right came to love and respect Russia for how it governs.
It’s actually quite simple. The American right is now completely within the cult-like thrall of Trump. Whatever he says is their infalliable gospel. Analogies to 1984 are clichéd at this point, but they’re accurate. Just like the Party’s sudden, inexplicable switch to being at war with Eastasia, and having always been at war with Eastasia, is unquestioned, so too are Trump’s changes to the Republican ideology. Trump likes Russia and he likes Putin; therefore, Republicans are commanded to, and uncritically do, suddenly like Russia and like Putin.
Why does Trump like Putin so much? Who knows. Maybe he admires his autocracy. Maybe he wants to make sure he has clout in order to continue business dealings there. Probably both. But the American right seems primed to gleefully accept this sudden shift in Republican geopolitics because Putin’s Russia is Christian, “traditional” in terms of gender and social norms, and the people in power are homogeneously white, and all of this is enforced by the state. It’s what they want to happen here, as well.
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“Biden will make up anything to deflect from Hunter’s laptop and steal the election from Trump. He’s obviously making up all this RT stuff to keep the truth from his libtard followers” —> expected Xweets from Elon or other right-wing doofuses.
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My in-laws - now deceased - decided that the BBC was too right-wing and partizan, and so stopped watching it and took to watching RT instead. They were prey to every conspiracy theory going. Their bookshelves were filled with books that my wife and I didn’t care to even pick up. My MIL was convinced that electricity pylons were part of some kind of conspiracy. “Don’t you like having electricity?” we used to tease her. Part of all this may have been their descent into Altzheimers and dementia - first my FIL and then my MIL, who came to live near us when she was on her own.
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Oh no, it’s really quite simple to explain: ALL their accusations are confessions. All of them.
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“Mr Talliard, we’ve been activated!”
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A timeless classic…
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