Anything goes: how the Russian news became a postmodern game without rules

My libertarian / conservative friends complain about how the left tries to destroy truth as they seek to gain power. A valid complaint. It’s important to realize though that most of the world never had truth to begin with.

This should be a warning to idealistic leftists too. Don’t lie in pursuit of your Utopia, because many marauders and tyrannts are also lying. Truth telling and its related habits protect us.

http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/3736/political-steampunk-postmodern-game-mark-lipovetsky

Muskovy WAS THE MONGOL YOKE. They still are.

Good overview of history, except for when the article mentions: –“the rise of other Russian centers to the north, including Moscow.”–

There was no Russia then. There were Finno-Ugric Tribes, and Slavic ones, and others too. Muskovy rose to prominence AS A VASSAL STATE of the Golden Horde. They weren’t “under the Mongol yoke” as they like to claim. They WERE THE MONGOL YOKE. They still are.

Much of their history, including Czar Peter I’s deciding to call Muskovy and its conquests “RUSSIA” are best understood as their attempt to distance themselves from the Mongolian roots of their institutions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/09/maps-how-ukraine-became-ukraine/?tid=pm_world_pop

Do we realize that most of the mass murderers of the previous century have been trained in Russia?

Mao Tse Tung – trained in Russia
Kim il Sung – trained in Russia
Fidel Castro – trained in Russia
The Khmer Rouge – trained in Russia
Stalin – trained in Russia (and still worshipped today)
Of all the great mass murderers of recent history, I think only Hitler was not trained in Russia, though the Nazis did have material help from the Soviets from 1939-1941, including training on how to build concentration camps. (Something the Russians had long-since perfected.)

Curt on Russia

—The difference is that Americans are not intentionally deceitful – just ideologically optimistic, naive, and desperate to preserve borders, human rights, and capitalism as a means of focusing states on inward transformation instead of expansion, in order to prevent another world war. Russia is a low-trust, poor, corrupt society that cannot build a modern economy, where it seems almost impossible to imagine that people have positive intentions. The most murderous and evil people the world has ever known. And the greatest mistake we have made in the west was not leaving Patton to conquer russia and save us from the continuance of russian brutality, deceit, and murder.—

The Kremlin’s new “I’m a Russian Occupier” propaganda

You have to realize, all Russian propaganda has an audience in mind. They have propaganda for nationalists, communists, libertarians, upper class people, lower class people.
Most people will look at this video and consider it ridiculous, but it’s directed at lower class Russians. Internal propaganda. It’s making it easy for them to believe the things they want to believe.
Just like when Daniel McAdams says that the revolution in Ukraine was actually a CIA-orchestrated coup, they’re making it easy for libertarians to believe the things they want to believe.

***

A more historically accurate spoof:

Russians need a story.

The accumulated weight of Russia’s lies has to be pressing on something – there has to be a consequence to it.

For centuries they’ve valued strength above everything else, but they lie to achieve it, and because no one can trust anyone else, they are far weaker than their European neighbors. Maybe it’s time for them to understand the truth.

But to accept it, Russians need a moral exit. They need a way to feel good about themselves that isn’t a lie. They need to rediscover their own story. They need a new mythology.

But they’ve been lied to for so long: Russians are not ‘Rus’. They are not Kievan. They are Muscovites – Europeans, mostly – but their culture and institutions are Byzantine, Mongol, Tatar and Islamic. And that is an unappealing, uninspiring history.

This conflict may be truth’s conquest of strength. It will continue toward Moscow because truth and cooperation is stronger than strength exercised as savagery and corruption.

The faster Muskovites find their story and return to their roots, the less people will suffer.

The lies around Boris Nemtsov’s murder