cfgaussian @ cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml

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3 yr. ago

I think that's fair. At the end of the day we can only guess at the intention from the information we have available.

Drama drives engagement. That's how streamers make money.

I mean he could have done that but as Putin said in the interview: it's pointless to try to engage in the propaganda war against the West's narrative on their own media turf. In essence with this interview Putin showed that he refuses to play the West's game. The reaction this interview got from the anti-Russia crowd shows just how much this strategy rattles and confuses them: half of them are screaming about how this was a big propaganda win for Putin and how Carlson needs to be sanctioned and banned, while the other half are busy gloating over how badly Putin failed at delivering effective propaganda to a western audience which has little interest or patience for this kind of long winded history-heavy lecture about a part of the world they already know and care very little about (though i'm sure going forward we're gonna see plenty short and snappily edited clips pop up of the parts of this interview that actually do appeal to western audiences).

Liberals would have been much more comfortable if Putin had simply repeated typical western reactionary talking points, they know how to respond to those and how to discredit anyone using them. Instead they have to go out of their way to twist what he said into anything threatening, we did have a few headlines claiming "Putin threatens WW3 in interview" but those are so far removed from what he actually said that they can't credibly back it up and most people who aren't completely brainwashed by the liberal media can see it, they can listen to his own words.

He needs to educate himself more, period. He has bad takes on a lot of topics...

As i explained in another response, i think there are two intentions at play here. One is what Carlson intended, which you are absolutely right about. The other is what Putin intended. After all he wouldn't have given this interview if he didn't think he could get something out of it, and garnering sympathy with the kind of pro-Russia reactionaries that watch Carlson is just not that useful. They have very little if any influence on foreign policy. And while he did give Tucker a few of the reactionary talking points he was looking for those were quite few and far between. This is not the kind of interview that western audiences respond well to, liberals and reactionaries alike. Westerners have a short attention span and little interest in talk of history or any kind of nuanced and lengthy responses. They want sound bites and "dunks", they want much more aggressive and simplistic rhetoric.

The way i read that is that Putin, not Carlson, meant it to appeal less to a Western and more to a global south (and Russian) audience. It's not so much how Tucker handled the interview but how Putin chose to engage.

I mean obviously Carlson indended it for a domestic conservative audience in the US, but frankly this is above their intellectual level and most of them are likely to check out after ten minutes of Putin not repeating their favorite talking points about Biden's dementia, liberals, LGBT and the globalists. I'm sure Carlson hoped for something different as well; something that would play better with his conservative base. You could see his frustration throughout the interview at Putin refusing to give him what he wanted and instead engaging in this long winded historical exposition.

So while it was definitely not the intention on Tucker's part, the objective result will be that this will reach more the audience in the global south than western reactionaries. And although Putin could easily have given him more of the reactionary red meat that he was looking for, i think he recognizes that it is pointless to pander to the western conservative audience since at the end of the day the political elites on both sides will continue to pursue the same aggressively anti-Russian course regardless how sympathetic the average chud is to Russia.

Instead he hijacked Tucker's platform and just did his usual thing which he knows plays well with the more historically literate and intellectually engaged Russian and Chinese audiences. This doesn't mean he didn't bring up any of the reactionary talking points Carlson was looking to get - after all, unfortunately that kind of talk also finds some appeal in the global south, and definitely in Russia - but in proportion to the amount of time he spent on history both recent and less so, i think a lot of Tucker's chud fans were pretty disappointed/bored.

As for the streamer thing, i think you've basically summed it up. I have nothing more to add.

Also, Hasan's reaction

Ugh...sorry but i tried listening to ten minutes of that and i immediately remembered why i stopped watching him. He is such a lib and his audience is even worse. It's like they have the attention span of a five year old and are physically allergic to learning history. No, Hasan, Putin is not spending 30 min giving you a history lecture because that history (at least the pre-21st century history) somehow directly justifies the actions he is taking, that is not the argument at all. He is doing it to give you context and educate you because you and most of your audience are historically illiterate ignorants with zero knowledge about the background of a region of the world where you now think you are qualified to comment on.

From Twitter, this post sums it up best:

"Westoids complaining about Putin's interview being too pedantic have an inflated sense of self-worth: they assume the interview is primarily designed to appeal to them. Little do they know the West has become so irrelevant that it's no longer even necessarily the chief intended audience for Putin's transmissions. For instance, many of Putin's statements go viral in China, generating hundreds of millions or even billions of views/impressions on sites like Weibo, vastly larger engagements than the entire population of most of the West combined. In the east, where the citizenry is learned, historically-literate, etc., Putin's longueurs are actually appreciated, dissected, and discussed. This is particularly the case in China, where the majority of people are not only history buffs, but have a sacred respect for history and tradition.

In the West, Putin's words may fall on deaf ears and be drowned out by illiterate popculture noise, but the West is no longer relevant to the world. In other places, Putin's words will reverberate, consummating their intended effects."

We are a free and democratic society (but we imprison journalists and whistleblowers).

We have free speech (but only if what you say conforms with the government approved narrative).

We are not at war with Russia (but anyone who gives Russia a platform to express their point of view is a traitor).

We help Ukraine protect freedom and democracy against Russian autocracy (but Ukraine has cancelled elections and Russia has not).

We want peace, Russia wants war (but we must not negotiate, we have to pump more weapons into the conflict and keep it going).

Orwell, racist sex pest and duplicitous snitch that he was, was really just projecting. In reality he was describing liberal democracy.

Another day, another banger from Caitlin Johnstone.

Excellent idea!

Agreed! This document deserves its own post, it is incredibly well researched and comprehensive.

Great summary. Though i would dispute the completeness of the "domestic genocides" category. Denmark pretty much instantly willingly submitted to Germany and actively collaborated in Nazi policies of extermination. As did Vichy France and significant portions of Belgium and the Netherlands, so much so that the Nazis formed entire SS divisions out of them. And of course Austria cannot claim to be innocent as the Anschluss had significant support among Austrians, as did the repression and extermination policies that followed.

Much more of Europe has blood on their hands for the crimes of fascism than just Germany. Like the war of extermination against the Soviet Union, fascism was a pan-European project, not an exclusively German (or Italian) one.

And Japan should be counted in that category of domestic genociders as well for their genocide of the Ainu people of Hokkaido. And they are still colonizing Okinawa.

Excellent research comrade! It's important to expose these imperialist networks and make it clear that they do not represent or champion the interests of LGBT people in the global south, in fact they do the exact opposite. They put LGBT people at risk in the global south when inevitably the people living there - who are not stupid despite what the racist West likes to think - see their real agenda and start to associate LGBT with western imperialist meddling. It is important for genuine, grassroots LGBT advocacy organizations to distance themselves from these nefarious western funded NGOs.

"Anti-zionism = anti-semitism" is not the novel gotcha you seem to think it is

I would go even further. The southern half of so-called "actual Spanish territory" is actually Andalusian territory. As for "actual Germany", there is no such thing, or if there is it's just Franconia, as Swabia and the Rhineland have their own distinct cultures. And "actual France" should not include Burgundy or Gascony. And East Germany should be its own thing again, this time permanently...because reunited Germany has been a disaster.

The point, now that Plan A - degrading or defeating Russia - has failed, is Plan B - degrade and subjugate Europe. In this respect it is safe to say they are succeeding at the moment. Germany is rapidly deindustrializing, entering into a deep recession while at the same time becoming more and more dependent on and controlled by the US. And as Germany goes so does the EU. The US needs this new colonial subordination of Europe to make up for its empire receding everywhere else in the world. It gets to stave off its own decline by cannibalizing the industry and economic base of Europe.

Initially they really deluded themselves into thinking they could defeat or at least severely degrade Russia. Instead all they managed to do is make Russia much, much stronger in all respects: militarily, economically and diplomatically.

The West all but admits the first two, and the only reason they still can't see the last is because they are stuck in their bubble where they think that the entire "international community" consists only of the West and its vassals.

He's an opportunist through and through, i'm sure he's hedged all his bets. Also there is a good chance he is still an asset of a certain faction in the US deep state. Not the one that controls Zelensky and is still all-in on continuing the war, but a rival faction that sees the bigger picture and is worried about the damage this quagmire is doing to the empire.

It's not news to us but it is news to the majority of the population here in the West who for decades have not been exposed to anything other than the lies of the liberal imperialist propaganda apparatus.

Enchanted with Bane of Counter-Revolutionaries