The Main Stream Media (™) is undoubtedly propagandistic and follows a sinister agenda on account of globalist sponsors (or something). According to Russell, anyway. But can you really trust alternative or new media sources for independent news reporting? Take a leaf out of Russell’s book and carefully vet your media sources for bias, and then select only the most biased ones available!
Welcome! You awakening consumers of news media. You know that the traditional corporate lame-stream-media can not be trusted because they’re in thrall to their advertisers. That’s why Russell Brand is so keen to appear on Fox News; you wouldn’t find them platforming lies from someone just because that person was one of their biggest sponsors! But before you get too excited by the toxic pillow promo code being touted by your favorite late-night news entertainer, consider Russell Brand’s sincerely held belief in the independence and lack of bias in news sources by watching this here video of his from February 1st, 2023, titled “Oh SH*T, Zelensky Really Just Said That?!”.
This is my second post of three on this video, the first one being an examination of how Russell’s apparent socialist conscious is a masquerade behind which sits his grubby capitalism. The third one will look at the vile conspiracy theory he is peddling, while this one will focus on his sources' reliability, quality, and independence.
He cites four sources, one of which is a Washington Post column by their foreign affairs correspondent, Ishaan Tharoor, about apparent business enthusiasm for post-war reconstruction in Ukraine expressed at a World Economic Forum breakfast in Davos (non-paywall here). The story reads like some kind of weird report from the society pages - talk of “hot tickets” and who’s-whos. But it’s useful for Russell because it places Zelinsky in the company of hated globalists, the WEF (cue scary music, add plenty of reverb). Of course, Russell would usually decry such a source as not-to-be-trusted, mainstream, corporate media, but the piece is convenient for Russell’s narrative, so today, it gets a pass. So far, so topsy-turvy.
The other three citations were for semi-coherent screeds against Western investment in Ukraine, presented as news, and authored by one Ben Norton.
Ben will be the primary focus of this post, but before we go too far, I want to preface it with a look at Russell’s thoughts on media bias.
During his recent appearance on HBO’s late-night talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher”, Russell was pushed to justify his opinions that MSNBC’s bias for the US Democratic Party is equivalant to the recently exposed support given by Fox News to the Republican party. In defending his position, Russell declared, “I’ve been on that MSNBC, mate — it was propagandist nut-crackery on there.” Strong words! And presumably representative of Russell’s distaste for propagandistic media.
Thing is, his comment was in relation to his appearance on a show called Morning Joe in 2013 (reenacted here). I’ve looked into that show; its eponymous host is Joe Scarborough, a holdover from MSNBC's days as an openly right leaning medium. He is a former Republican congressman and erstwhile good friend of Donald Trump, who he frequently hosted on the show as a candidate during the 2015/16 Republican primaries, drawing criticism for their chummy relationship. He only left the Republican Party in 2017 (four years after Russell’s appearance) and even today considers himself an independent.
Yet despite the show’s apparent immersion in Republican culture at the time, Russell will have you believe it revealed the depth of MSNBC’s liberal bias and support for the DNC. Hosted by a Republican politician who went on to provide free advertising for Trump’s run for president?
Of course, it wasn’t! It was an embellishment made by Russell to try and give some authenticity to his prejudices against MSNBC, even as the reality of his experience would directly contradict them. In fact, writing in the Guardian at the time, Russell’s stated objection was “in spite of the show's stated left-leaning inclination, the frequency they were actually broadcasting was the shrill, white noise of dumb current affairs”. So not “propagandist nut-crackery”, then? No! Russell’s complaint appeared to be that the show failed to live up to its “stated left-leaning inclination”. He actually found it to be insufficiently propagandistic nut-crackery.
(By the way, really can’t let that Guardian piece by Russell go without commenting on his misogyny; “Many of my casual transactions with daft blondes go viral – I put penicillin on me Frosties”. So the show host is a “daft blond” who we’re happy to sexualize while equating her - by use of the word “transactions”- to a sex worker. And as a source of venereal disease as well, a slander with a long and ugly history? But still, at least Russell flags it as a misogynistic joke, so that’s OK, then! Remember, kids; you too can call a woman a “syphilitic whore” so long as it’s in jest! Try it today, with your mum.)
So Russell’s calling Morning Joe “propagandist nut-crackery” is just a bit of embellishment for dramatic effect. Who could criticize Russell for that? Why, we only need to look to Russell’s YouTube video of November 21st, 2021, “Paid Millions To LIE??” Is THIS Why MSM Is DYING??!”, to understand how Russell treats media figures who embellish facts for dramatic effect. In this video, Russell presents his take on MSNBC anchor Brian Williams’ fall from grace. Williams was found to have embellished a story by claiming that, while reporting on the US war on Iraq, a helicopter he was a passenger in had been hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade.
This is a prime example of one of the most boring spectacles in American journalism- the pearl-clutching, handwringing, superciliously pompous “we’ve failed to live up to our journalistic standards!” non-scandal that periodically wracks the liberal media establishment. MSNBC supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, even running a countdown clock tracking Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum that Sadam leave the country. I’ve not detected an apology for that stance in the intervening two decades. Similarly, they employed both Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson - where’s the contrition for releasing those hell-hounds into our mortal plane? But some guy doing a job where 90% of the qualification is having nice hair and teeth tells a minor porky - a self-aggrandizing, trivial embellishment - on late-night telly? That’s a full-on five-alarm fire, multi-news-cycle exercise in self-flagellation, complete with much wailing and gnashing of very white teeth. And while Williams is forced to wear sack-cloth and eat ashes (but what about his teeth!?), the National Enquirer is paying to “capture and kill” a presidential candidate’s extramarital porn-star dalliances, the New York Post is publishing Hunter’s Laptop stories with fake by-lines because not even their rat-f*ck journalists are willing to put their names on them, and both Fox News and OAN knowingly spread election lies that contributed to the Jan 6th attack on congress.
But that doesn’t stop Russell from taking extraordinary relish in mocking Williams by - oh, god no - putting on one of his silly voices. Argh! Not again! This is sooooo cringe, beyond embarrassing. He’s squawking like some deranged parrot-based advertising mascot for chocolate eggs or breakfast cereal.
It’s so bad that time dilates, and my field of vision shrinks so that it is almost entirely filled with the screen in front of me; only a narrow band of peripheral vision remains through which I can perceive time’s relentless march. Nations fall, empires rise, civilizations crumble. Armies advance as glaciers retreat. Continents drift, and seas rise. Russell is now screeching some obscenity in his faux Brian Williams voice that he somehow “f*cked” the Berlin Wall “with the tip of my d*ck” - my god, this is stultifying bad.
Beyond the screen, the place where my house once stood is now a small island, barren and devoid of resource, but it is the only place on this polluted earth where what remains of the human race can live without falling victim to the deadly diseases that wrack the rest of the planet. Diseases that their ancestors could easily prevent with a simple vaccine - or even just a crude horse dewormer. Here there is no need for guile or intellect, no tools to be built or manipulated. The large, calorie-hungry human brain is more of a hindrance than a help. Instead, natural selection has whittled down the cranium of humanity's descendants - sacrificing useless intellect for the streamlined aerodynamics that lends speed and maneuverability when hunting the marine prey that our heirs now subsist on.
Russell’s Brian Williams is now flying a helicopter with “the tip of my d*ck” and is “batting down missiles with the tip of my d*ck” - my god, will this never end? Seal-like, our descendants bask happily on the white island sands. Perhaps one aspect of their humanity remains; one of them breaks wind, triggering its companions to bark and applaud in a manner reminiscent of human laughter.
Russell is winding down now with a final Brian Williams caused hurricane Katrina “with the tip of my d*ck”. The world snaps back, and I am once again in my kitchen in front of my laptop. As the nightmarish, yet strangely appealing, vision of humanity’s future fades from my mind, I know that even in that poor, simple, much-denuded state, our crude seal-like inheritors would see Russell Brand doing one of his silly voices and think, “By god, this is f*cking cringe!”.
Russell signs off from the video by asking, “Is mainstream media over? Are the mad spasms and crazy stories and polemicizing lies we see the death rattle of a dying beast?”. He further speculates, “Is new media like this channel … the future?”
OK, rather a long-winded digression from me, but what are we to make of this? Brian Williams's exaggerations and embellishments are the symptom of a dying media and are to be mocked. What, then, of Russell’s embellishments about his experiences of media bias on MSNBC? Russell aspires to be the successor to the mainstream media and what he perceives as its “mad spasms” and “polemicizing”, but is he guilty of the same? As we return to the topic at hand - the quality and impartiality of Russell’s sources - let us keep these positions in mind.
We return, then, to Ben Norton, the author of three of Russell’s four cited sources in his February 1 video. Some regard Ben as an acolyte of Max Blumenthal, a figure who has guested on Russell’s videos several times to promote Russian propaganda in support of their invasion of Ukraine.
Max is the son of long-time Clinton family confidant Sidney Blumenthal and started off his career in journalism as a fairly run of the mill democratic party partisan - his first book “Republican Gomorrah” sought to catalog the fall of the republican party to extremist forces (by 2009 standards) and earned him the title of “NYT Best Selling Author” in perpetuity after landing a spot on the NYT Best Sellers’ List. His 2013 effort “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” was a little less well received, with its clumsy attempts to equate the Israeli state to Nazi Germany and such charming chapter titles as “How to Kill Goyim and Influence People”, going so far as to use the term “Judeo-Nazism” - yikes! It earned backlash even from fellow left-leaning Israel critical voices, as demonstrated by the response of his colleague at The Nation, Eric Alterman, who characterized it as “The ‘I hate Israel’ Handbook”.
It wasn’t all negative though; he received positive reviews from former KKK boss David Duke’s website. One other person who, thanks to WikiLeaks, we know liked the book was a one Mrs. H.R. Clinton of Chappaquiddick, NY, who responded to proud father Sid’s emailed sharing of the transcript with “ Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”. A fact that caused some of Mrs. Clinton’s detractors to accuse Max of being “Hilary’s Israel-Hating Secret Advisor”. Lol.
At the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Max was writing extensively for Salon and Nation. His initial approach to the war was pro-rebel, anti-President Assad. In 2013, for example, he interviewed refugees in a Jordanian camp, claiming “there was not one person I spoke to in Zaatari [refugee camp] who did not demand US military intervention at the earliest possible moment.” and “The only criticisms I heard about US intervention were directed at Obama for dithering and telegraphing his punches.”.
This all changed in December 2015 after an all-expenses paid trip to Russia to attend a gala dinner - hosted by Vladimir Putin, no less - marking the 10th anniversary of Russia Today, the state-run propaganda network. Upon his return to the US, Max attempted to delete his previously anti-Assad writings before shifting to a markedly pro-Assad (or “Assadist”) position. He then went on to found the Greyzone Project as part of the left-wing Alternet news website. This switch has led some to label Max as Putin’s “useful idiot”. The extent of this idiocy can be seen in the run-up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine when Max conducted an embarrassingly softball interview with Russian UN ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy where he allowed his guest to push regime talking points and propaganda while denying the impending invasion without challenge. Not a good look for someone posing as an independent journalist, and pretty humiliating when Russia invaded nine days later, despite the ambassador’s assertions. This all contributes to the Greyzone’s reputation as “Infowars for Leftists”, complete with all the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that that implies.
It was at Salon that Ben likely fell under Max’s thrall. In 2014 Ben had been establishing himself as an internet journalist with insight into the Syrian Rebels. He had built up a network of connections within Syria and published a series of blog posts based on their reports. On the back of this, he landed a job with Salon in October 2015. The tone of his reporting rapidly changed as he went through a nearly identical Damascene conversion as Blumenthal’s at exactly the same time. Within two months of joining Salon, Ben sought to purge the internet of his previously pro-rebel, anti-Assad writings. He joined Max’s Greyzone Project at its inception. Ben’s former sources and friends were left scratching their heads and mourning his betrayal.
The Greyzone is now renowned as a propaganda outlet, peddling a pro-Putin position on Russia and Ukraine, a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine, and a pro-CCP stance on China, with a special focus on downplaying or denying repression of the Uyghur population.
Ben may be the chief driver behind the outlet’s China position. He is a member of the advisory group of the “Friends of Socialist China”, which describes itself as “a platform based on supporting the People’s Republic of China and promoting understanding of Chinese socialism” and which, along with the Grayzone, acts as a node in a network of some of the most notorious alt-imperialist and pro-authoritarian platforms on the internet. Would you trust someone with such stated aims as presenting unbiased journalism?
Ben had less success influencing the Greyzone’s reporting on COVID and public health measures which is more aligned to Max’s anti-vax, COVID skeptic positions. This was speculated as being the reason for Ben’s departure from the Greyzone in January 2022, triggering their fellow vile tankie, BadEmpenada, to label the schism “The Sino-Soviet Split of Our Age”, an ironic in-joke reference to Norton’s perceived allegiance to China and Blumenthal's to Russia. (Note - I will not link to any of BadEmpenada’s output).
Striding out by himself, Ben established his own blog, sorry!, independent news site, “Multipolirista”, which has been described as “The Greyzone for Incels”. The name is an apparent reference to the concept of “Multipolarity” in geopolitics, an idea popular with those who aim for distribution of global power from what they see as the USA mono-pole to other countries (i.e., Russia or China). The “-ista” suffix not only denotes advocacy of the concept but also alludes to its use in naming Latin American socialist revolutionaries, such as Mexico’s Zapatistas and Nicaragua's Sandinistas, and perhaps Ben’s own status as a resident in Latin America (I believe he lives in Nicaragua). It certainly does not reflect a multipolar approach to the site’s content, which is decidedly unipolar in terms of its alt-imperialist, pro-China content. The list of Top Stories at the time of writing?
- China & Russia pledge ‘changes not seen in 100 years’: Xi & Putin take aim at US dollar hegemony
- Geopolitical game changer: China’s Iran-Saudi peace deal is big blow to petrodollar and US economic hegemony
- How China’s ‘high-tech socialism’ challenges the West’s ‘neoliberal trap’
- Xi blasts US ‘containment, encirclement’ of China, Foreign Ministry slams ‘hysterical neo-McCarthyism’
- US ambassador lectures China ‘threat’: ‘We’re the leader in this region (Asia)’
- The rise of US dollar imperialism, and why it failed
- Ukraine conflict ‘caused by Europeans’ love of war, hegemony’, says Malaysia’s ex leader
- China report excoriates ‘US hegemony’, war crimes, CIA coups, 400 foreign interventions.
No “propagandist nut-crackery” here, then?
But Ben’s loyalties aren’t exclusively to China; he is still an old-school tankie. The term originally was applied to Western lefties who supported the USSR sending tanks to crush the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, whose leaders Ben has sought to portray as fascists akin to the wartime collaborationist government of Miklos Horthy.
This is laughable when you consider that the actual leader of the uprising, Imre Nagy, fought on the side of the Reds in Russia during the communist revolution, was persecuted for being a communist in pre-WW2 Hungary, causing him to flee to the USSR, where he spent the war as an informant for the Soviet secret police, before becoming a prominent minister in post-war communist Hungary, overseeing redistribution of land to the peasants and the expulsion of Hungarian Germans. Ben is a Textbook tankie.
So, yeah, Ben is willing to create a revisionist history when it aligns with his agenda - might just qualify as “propagandist nut-crackery”?
Norton recently rebranded Multipolarista as “Geopolitical Economy”, presumably being unable to sustain the irony of the multipolar name supporting such uni-polar content. Maybe Norton wants to distance himself from a concept closely linked to a one-sided political agenda. However, I’m not sure using the term “Geopolitical” in the title is such a good idea for a Putin apologist, as it is somewhat reminiscent of “Putin’s Brain” Alexsandr Dugin’s definitive work “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia”.
You might think his own struggles with branding and rebranding would give Norton some sympathy toward a Ukrainian government agency undergoing a name change, but instead, he sneered: “The Ukraine Recovery Conference … had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. [Previously] the group … were referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).” Wow! What a scandal - an organizational name change. I wonder if there is anything that happened in Ukraine in 2022 that might have triggered a change in priorities from “reform” to “recovery”? Something like, maybe, a full-scale invasion from the world’s second most powerful military? Perhaps we will never know.
Russell references three of Ben’s articles, two from the newly rebranded Geopolitical Economy site and the other from the Scheer Post - actually that one is just a rebadging of the same story already published on Geopolitical Economy. The Scheer Post is an alt-media news site founded by old-school leftist US journalist Robert Scheer and very much the stamping ground of another Russell Brand collaborator, Chris Hedges. Hedges appeared on Brand’s Under The Skin podcast in April 2022 and his YouTube/Rumble videos in February and March of this year (2023), pushing Putin's apologia. The later video is also hosted on Hedges’ list of published content on Scheer Post.
Hedges used to host a show on Russia Today (RT) until the channel shut down after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Hedges has sought to contrast his treatment by RT with that of the New York Times, as follows “My public denunciation of the invasion of Ukraine was treated very differently by RT America than my public denunciation of the Iraq war was treated by my former employer, the New York Times”. Hedges' treatment by the NYT was a reprimand in 2003 for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality," which he made during a college graduation speech that saw him booed off the stage. This reprimand so affected Hedges that he felt compelled to resign immediately from the Times… er, two and a half years and 31 published articles later in 2005.
But let’s see what Russia Today had to deal with by looking at Hedges’ position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in March 2022 via this Salon article, “War is the greatest evil: Russia was baited into this crime — but that's no excuse”. Hmmm. That headline is not exactly an unequivocal condemnation. Maybe we’ll find something more forthright in the body of the text, which starts as follows…
“Preemptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime.” - Yeah, I think we can all get behind that. I mean, there might be technical definitions of a war crime or something, but we can probably all agree with the sentiment.
“It does not matter if the war is launched on the basis of lies and fabrications, as was the case in Iraq,” OK, fair enough, I guess. Thought we were talking about Ukraine, though.
“... or because of the breaking of a series of agreements with Russia, including the promise by Washington not to extend NATO” There we go!
So the war is caused by NATO, not Russia! No wonder his RT handlers didn’t feel the need to push back on his reporting. Unless perhaps to tell him to tone it down a bit, don’t want to make it too obvious now, do we?
By the way, Hedges’ assertion of a “series of agreements” not to extend NATO? That’s a straight-up lie - one might even say a “polemicizing lie” - that has already been abandoned by most tankies. There was no written or legal agreement limiting NATO expansion. Most tankies have even given up arguing that there was some kind of unwritten agreement on NATO expansion, as if the world of international relations works on the principles of “pinkie-promise”.
“Shall we have one of those big signing ceremonies, where we each sign three copies of the agreement with a different pen each time in front of the world’s news cameras?”
“Nah, let’s keep this one between ourselves; it’ll be ‘our little secret’!”
But “provocation” is very much in the eye of the beholder, so I guess Putin could feel provoked about pretty much anything he wants. Thing is, though, one of the consequences of having an empire and then not having an empire anymore is that you lose the “right” to dictate the actions of your former vassal states. The UK learned this with the Suez crisis when the US told them to wind their necks in and let Egypt manage its own affairs. Every time the UK tried to criticize Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, all he had to do was dismiss them for their white settler colonialism, and no one could really argue that he didn’t have a point! Britain’s mess over the Northern Ireland border caused by Brexit could be resolved if the Republic of Ireland would simply exit the European Union too. Would we tolerate a British government that forcefully insisted that Ireland leave the EU? What if they invaded Ireland to force such a departure?
Hedges’ article continues into a lurid and somewhat ghoulish recounting of his time as a war correspondent, complete with “Legs blown off. Heads imploded into a bloody, pulpy mass. Gaping holes in stomachs. Pools of blood. Cries of the dying, sometimes for their mothers. And the smell. The smell of death. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots.” - Lovely, nearly put me off me taramasalata. It reads a little bit like the parody “Tony Parseholes” from the UK’s Viz toilet humour comic - a satire of Daily Mail columnist Tony Parsons, whose in-memoriams are presented as phoned-in, overly melodramatic, full of filler and entirely half-arsed.
Still, maybe the denouement at the end of his article will be a devastating takedown of Russian aggression. Let’s see…”The dangerous and sadly predictable provocation of Russia — whose nuclear arsenal places the sword of Damocles above our heads — by expanding NATO”. That’s a “no” on criticizing Russia's aggression, then..
“This provocation… does not, however, excuse the invasion of Ukraine. Yes, the Russians were baited. But they reacted by pulling the trigger”. Almost there! But not quite.
It’s a pattern that’s all too familiar, we saw it with Russell’s pal Yanis Varoufakis, who appeared on Russell’s channel to spout almost exactly the same line “Yes, Putin bad, but he was provoked!”.
What’s the issue? They said “Putin bad”, what more do you want?
In regular criminal law, provocation is not a complete defense, but it does mitigate culpability. In their telling, Russia is the beaten spouse, backed into a corner by her abuser, with no recourse but to grab the nearest weapon and lash out. It just so happens to be the same line peddled by Putin, so I guess it qualifies as “propagandistic nut-crakery”.
But is it polemicizing lies? You’ll remember that this is the term that Russell used to describe MSNBC’s Brian Williams and his helicopter-based mendacity. Russell places the term in context of the supposed death of mainstream media. Without wanting to put words in his mouth, Russell likely means that the mainstream media is using lies and arguing for positions rather than impartially reporting facts (technically speaking, “polemicizing” implies an angry and forceful one-sided argument, deriving from the Greek for “of war”).
Can we detect any polemicizing or one-sided angry arguments from Russell’s sources?
We’ve already heard Hedges’ lies about fictional agreements on Nato expansion, and Russell lying about his MSNBC appearance to justify his polemic, but let’s return to Ben Norton who, in the article with the snappy headline “West prepares to plunder post-war Ukraine with neoliberal shock therapy: privatization, deregulation, slashing worker protections” makes the following claim:
“While Soviet Ukraine had thrived as a centre of the USSR’s heavy industry…Post-Soviet Ukraine has been devastated by persistent economic crises and rampant and systematic corruption. It has consistently had smaller incomes and a lower standard of living even compared to neighboring post-socialist countries, including Russia.”
Fun fact, the “Shock Therapy” that Ben refers to in the headline was pioneered by Russell’s favorite nutty professor, Jeffery Sachs, who I’ve previously written about here. Further fun fact, Prof Sachs has used the supposedly poor performance of Ukraine’s economy, which did not receive his shock therapy in the ‘90s, to support the “success” of his approach by comparison with the apparently booming economy of neighboring post-socialist country, Poland, which did get the Sachs treatment: “Shock Therapy in Poland: Perspectives of Five Years” by Jeffery Sachs.
According to Ben, Ukraine’s unshocked economy compares poorly to neighboring countries who did get the neo-liberal shock treatment - Poland and Russia - and yet this is in his argument against shock therapy. Surely if he wants to argue against Western investment in Ukraine, he’d be better suited to show how successful the economy had been without Western investment, not to neg on it.
But he can’t help himself; he simply must try to use Ukraine’s poor economic performance as a sign of their inferiority to the glorious Russian motherland, but it backfires somewhat. And I’m increasingly of the opinion that Ben is not the sharpest tool in messers Putin & Xi’s toolbox of useful idiots.
But what about his assertion that the Ukrainian Soviet economy and standard of living prospered compared to Russia? Let’s look at Gross Domestic Product, a common measure of economic performance that is frequently linked to standard of living, in the years running up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991:
(Source, World Bank)
Thriving, with only 40% of the per capita GDP of Russia?
But how have they faired since the collapse of the USSR? Let’s index both countries to their 1998 GDP per capita and plot them thus…
So, despite being “devastated by persistent economic crises and rampant and systematic corruption”, as Ben insists, the Ukrainian economy appears to be outperforming Russia’s, with economic growth more than tripling to 330% over the Soviet era, while Russia is at a paltry 180%.
Not to mention that the idea of a superior Russian standard of living seems at odds with reports of Russian troops looting from Ukraine basic household goods and appliances like washing machines and toilets, mind you, based on Putin’s own liberation of a washing machine from Germany as the berlin wall crumbled, maybe it’s a cultural thing.
Of course, what Ben fails to realize is that if he wants to start d*ck measuring countries based on economic performance and standards of living, Russia and his beloved socialist China are going to fall miserably short of pretty much any of the “neo-liberal” western countries on the list, not to mention those petro-states in the middle and the tax-havens on the fringes. Ben might be further offended to know that China’s GDP was on a par with Ukraine’s up until 2008, and, you never know, Ukraine might have been able to keep up had it not been for the 2014 invasion.
 |
| Source: World Bank |
So, not above creating a lie to push a one-sided argument. A polemicizing lie?
What about the following on Ukraine’s president? “[Zelinsky’s] speech sounded less like the words of a stateman [sic] and more like an advertisement by a used car salesman – except he is not selling cars; he is selling his country to foreign mega-corporations.”
Sound like unbiased reporting of facts to you?
So, yeah, dumb as he may be, it certainly sounds as though Ben is polemicizing: non-sequitur arguments, and downright lies, presented in bad faith to advance his angry agenda.
Something else of interest, one of Norton’s articles cited by Russell is coauthored by one Jake Kallio, a supposed writer, and anti-war activist based in Canada. His Geopolitical Economy bio reveals only three articles “US and UK undermining Bosnian democracy with sectarian electoral law changes”, 2022-09-29, the source cited by Russell “West prepares to plunder post-war Ukraine with neoliberal shock therapy: privatization, deregulation, slashing worker protections” 2022-07-28, and “While fueling Ukraine proxy war, NATO and EU are militarizing the Balkans” 2022-04-27. Not a huge output for a journalist or writer.
And not a huge output elsewhere, either. A quick Google search reveals the same three posts, republished in different outlets. However, it did throw up a Twitter account in Jake Kallio’s name, set to private - a weird choice for a journalist, writer, and activist, who might otherwise be expected to court publicity and engage with potential sources.
What is super charming about this account, though, is the profile picture featuring a headshot of the militant extreme-left terrorist Ulrike Meinhoff, founder of the Red Army Faction terrorist group (known eponymously as the Badder Meinhoff group).
She sought to exonerate the German people and excuse their role in the extermination of six million Jews on the grounds that they were not acting on racist, antisemitic motives but rather believed they were killing “Money-Jews” (that is to say capitalists), which she thought excusable. Meinhoff made those comments while giving evidence at the trial of Horst Mahler, then a fellow member of the Red Army Faction, now a neo-Nazi politician . Treading the well-worn path from far left to far right. Sound familiar, Russell?
What have we learned, then, about Russell’s beliefs on media independence and bias?
Russell asserts that Western mainstream media is propaganda and polemic. He seeks to paint the most banal and milquetoast network tv news as sinister propaganda. He is willing to lie about his experiences to make this point, yet he characterizes trivial lies made off-air by a teleprompter news reader as evidence of the polemical bias of the entirety of Western mainstream media.
Despite those concerns, in Russell’s topsy-turvy world, when selecting his own guests and news sources, he seeks out individuals who are the very epitome of the propaganda and polemicizing that he claims to decry: with their sketchy relationships to authoritarian regimes and propaganda outlets; flip-flopping their positions on command - assigning past writings to the Orwellian memory hole; openly stating their desire to promote regimes; publishing lies and slandering freedom fighters to support their authoritarian masters.
But what do you think?
Is Russell a topsy-turvy contrarian who is guilty of everything he accuses his perceived enemies of? Or is he merely antagonistically back-to-front in ascribing to others the same patterns of behavior that he exhibits? Is this a subconscious admission of Brand’s own failures? Or is it a projection of his shortcomings onto his enemies? And is Russell Brand a hollow shill under the thrall of sinister influences? Or is he an empty vessel filled with hate and lies by foreign agents?
Actually, that sounds a bit too much like a conspiracy theory to me and we’re saving the conspiracy theories for the next installment: Russell’s Topsy-Turvy World, Part 3: Russell’s Confederacy of Dunces. So stay tuned for that, but whatever else you do, be sure to “Like, Comment, and Subscribe”. Cling-a-ding-ding!
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