this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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You cannot be serious. You know Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, right? What do you think is happening here?
The only difference between Russian State media and our media, is that the western ruling class is savvy enough to launder their propaganda through privately owned media.
It's absolutely terrible that so many American media is owned by billionaires, but that's not all of western media, and it's still not the same as Russian state media.
I still don't get why so many people here are so desperate to defend the state-controlled media of a brutal dictatorship.
Russia is no more a "brutal dictatorship" than the US is, or the UK, or any number of other capitalist shithole countries that call themselves "democracies." Russian state media is no worse than, for example, the BBC or CNN. But more importantly, it does not have the global reach that the BBC and CNN have. The key thing that you're utterly failing to understand here is that Russia does not have the global hegemony that the US has (and NATO in general, though NATO is just a collection of vassal states subservient to US capital). Russian state media cannot begin to compete on the global stage with the overwhelming stranglehold that western media has over not only their own domestic populations but the rest of the world. We here in the west are not saturated day in and day out by Russian propaganda, but we absolutely are by western capital (which is synonymous with US state) propaganda. Pretending like this is an even playing field is absurd and it's why no one here is taking your whining about eBiL RuZzIaN media seriously. It's not about "defending" Russian media, it's about recognizing geopolitical reality.
Surely you must recognise how ridiculous that claim is.
Sure, Trump would love for it to be true, and he's certainly trying to, but even in the US, you can still publicly say this, while in Russia, you'd be headed for prison. Putin's political opponents frequently fall out of windows or catch some polonium poisoning.
These things are not the same, and pretending they are, makes you blind to how much worse they can still get. Russia is absolutely more of a brutal dictatorship than even the US, but especially than most European countries.
I'm not denying the toxic influence of money either, but that's still not comparable to the hold Putin has over his country and his media.
Hmm... I wonder what happened to the original leadership of BLM? And hey, what are Fred Hampton and Mark Clark up to these days? Has Gary Webb published any articles recently?
Oh believe me, I am well aware how bad they can get, you're just completely unaware of how bad they've already been. You believe all these lies about how terrible Russia is, looking at it only through the lens that western propagandists have carefully cultivated for you without realizing that every accusation they've levied on their enemies is a confession about what they themselves have been doing all along. You're as intellectually domesticated by US imperialist interests as any diehard Kremlin-supporting Russian citizen, only you have the benefit of being on the side that enjoys global hegemony without even understanding what that word means. You're all up in arms about the lies of the media of an enemy state without having even an ounce of self awareness about the lies of the media you're consuming, the very same media from which you think you've learned how uniquely bad the enemy's media is.
I don't even live in the US. I live in Europe, and I'm concerned about the freedom and safety of my fellow human beings, and I'm disgusted by how US imperial interests have suddenly decided to embrace Putin and is turning against Europe.
My side is not enjoying global hegemony. I only wish Europe asserted itself against wannabe hegemons like the US and Russia, but political leaders here are too cowardly for that.
I see American media increasingly parroting Putin's viewpoints, because of this American realignment, and that's what you're asking me to blindly accept? No, fuck that. You talk a lot about others being controlled by propaganda, but I don't see an ounce of self awareness in you.
Europe is part of the empire of usa
That's certainly what they want you to accept. What Putin wants you to believe. But this is clearly a case where US and European interests diverge. Trump wants to play nice with Putin while waging his economic war on Europe and the rest of the world, while Europe is trying to stop or slow Russian aggression. And degrading itself trying to keep Trump onboard.
It's a mess, but defending against aggression is still better than surrendering to it. Europe needs to learn to stand on its own feet.
The USA empire doesn't work by having individual governments enter secret conspiracies to obey the USA in favour of their own interests. The USA government and military are just stewards of the empire, the empire doesn't exist to benefit them.
Ultimately the majority of oligarchs whom the USA empire exists to serve are born in Europe, or they come from European dynasties that happen to live in the USA. It's simply a system of systemically and organically empowering those who benefit capital.
The EU, which has incredible sway over the politics of EEA nations, is explicitly an organisation that exists to create oligarchs out of capitalists. And who are the European capitalists? Are they staunch nationalists? No of course not, they're globalists with huge amounts of wealth tied up in USA stock exchanges. That means that with only one level of separation, the EU's explicit mission becomes an implicit mission to strengthen the USA empire's power over EEA nations.
I would recommend this video to you on the topic: https://youtu.be/J_4srRdIK4k It's recent and current, made by a person who supports social democracy, that is to say, he's not a socialist or a Marxist. He doesn't use marxist dialectics in his analysis but still comes to the same conclusions. I think you'll find him more agreeable. He presents clearly without making assumptions about prior knowledge, citing all his claims, as much as possible using Western sources.
The leaders in Europe are all financial capitalists who invested a lot of capital into US financial system. Even if European people face hunger tomorrow, their assets are secured at US banks. For this reason, they don't care whether they sign deals that are unfavorable to the European people.
We definitely should elect better leaders, that's for sure. These have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. It takes too much effort, and it's going way too slowly, but they can be moved. They've moved somewhat (not enough) on Ukraine, Gaza and even the environment, all due to popular pressure, but they need to move a lot further. People need to stop voting for the right wing idiots they keep electing.
You should definitely elect better leaders. If something is consensus in all so called "democracies", is that everyone thinks everyone else need to elect better leaders. The majority of the working people, which comprises the majority of population of most (pseudo-)democratic countries are mostly unsatisfied with their governments. This is occurs repeatedly and consistently in all liberal democracies, with a few exceptions. If there's something all liberal representative democracies look alike is that most people don't feel their interests are being represented by their government.
There's a reason why this happens in all capitalist societies. Note that it's not an individual issue and the reason is not lack of education and stupidity, as people often say, as even well educated individuals do bad voting decisions. This is a social and systemic issue and it's not a coincidence.
I won't tell you why, I want you to think about it. Then tell my why this happens.
You seem to endlessly fall back on this, have you noticed? Just raw Appeals to Personal Incredulity.
I always start out believing people are capable of critical thought and self awareness, until they prove otherwise. Plenty of that in this discussion, unfortunately.
Should I just accept that you're incapable of critical thought or grasping meaningful nuance?
Why do you reddit losers always talk like wannabe anime villains?
I guess that answers that.
You losers should really expand your list of rote thought terminating cliches, they get incredibly repetitive when you just use them over and over again.
If you really want to be sure you can see their profile and modlog show they're just rage baiting trolls.
Oh look at that, you're back to stalking me around
Please, go on. I'd love to hear more.
...or just accuse me of something I wasn't doing. You're definitely someone who approaches things in good faith, unlike the Russians.
Read the rest of the discussion. To me, you come across as part of a mob trying to defend Russian state media. And yes, arguing that all of western media, despite its freedom of the press, diversity of ownership and various degrees of editorial independence, is just as bad as Russian state media, is defending it.
I'm not arguing that all of western media is perfect; much of it is corrupt (especially in the US, but that is not all of the west). But not all of it is that bad. And even the corrupt ones frequently disagree with each other. That gives us access to much more diverse reporting than Russian state media provides.
I am aware that making sense of that diversity requires critical thought, which is in increasingly short supply in recent years.
Also note that the link you shared, of Trump flanked by billionaires, comes from western media.
And I'm saying that's a problem with your reading comprehension; not the content of my argument. Especially because I never defended Russian state media. I too think state media is bad. The difference between you and I is that I'm not fooled by the corporate proxy that is western media.
Again, go on...
And yet you seem to struggle to explain how it's so "diverse." What's diverse about it? Who are the non-corrupt Western sources? Please tell me, since I'm so stupid 😕
And that's only something you're reading into this. I'm well aware of the problems with western media. Some of them are notorious for their lies, many are corporate controlled, and especially in the US, refuse to even acknowledge anti corporate sentiment (see how US media struggled to make sense of Luigi Mangione, for example), but they're fairly transparent about it, and and sometimes they really are telling the truth.
With some critical thinking, you can actually discern the truth out of that, without having to resort to Russian state media's reports on the disastrous war Russia is waging.
This you?