Russia & the West.

Pt. VI: Gas Pipe Dreams Holy Media Crusade

Some thoughts after reading another analytical piece on Russia: there are some repetitive motives which I’ve noticed in the Western Russia discourse. I’m on my tourist trip to Veliky Novgorod now, so I’ve decided to publish a quick update on one of this ‘cornerstones’.

“Russian media and Western media are actually the same.” This statement is positioned in Western media as part of the Russian conspiracy to brainwash naive Westerners, blur the lines between truth and lies, etc. Let’s assume that’s true, i.e. Russian media and hordes of Kremlin trolls want to fool people in the West. The idea that Russians at home have already been zombified by state propaganda is too obvious to even mention. Thus, Western media just calls a spade a spade and any argument by a Russian (or a poor infected Westerner) that undermines the overall knight-in-shining-armour picture can be dismissed without any arguments – s/he is either a troll, zombie or a trombie. Imho Russian media doesn’t do this trick [to such an extent] – but even if it does – it’s just a part of the bigger Russian propaganda machine, remember? What did you expect?

It’s a trope in Western media when it claims it’s the exact opposite of Russian media – it lets the other side have a voice in a discussion and doesn’t try to make a scarecrow or scapegoat out of the entity holding different/opposing views. There are no exceptions to this rule, are there?