Russia has a very long and complex history. But at the time of this writing, its modern iteration is that of an oligarchic petro state. Meaning it makes the vast majority of its money from oil, minerals, coal, and mainly gas. After the fall of the USSR, it transitioned into a totalitarian dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kremlin. Becoming a state being run by around 100 extremely rich individuals, being the imperial oligarchs ruling it. Who got that morbidly wealthy via extracting the blood of the Earth so they could set fire to the biome for profit, and consolidated around one centralized "dictatorial" authority. With most to all of the president in name only (who's really a dictator) members of their cabinet composed of those oligarchs. Much of Russia is vast un-used tundra or barren land, with the vast majority of its populace being low income. Peasants if you will, with a weak middle class. But, like with all of the most corrupt countries, the majority of the Russian people don't want or comply with their country's way of doing things. Because there is a massive disconnect between what the people want, and what the oligarchic dark sorcerer wants, so the Kremlin still has to pretend it operates democratically. This is where propaganda comes in. To sway the hearts and minds of the people away from their own middle class interests, of government working primarily for them, into it working only for the interests of the morbidly rich. So everything there in modernity is still top down just as it was in the dark ages of queens and kings. Where back in the day if they didn't like you it was overtly off with your head in the town square and now if they don't like you it's having you disappear overtly. So what is the media like in Russia? Short of what is underground, all public Russian media is state sanctioned by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs, and only to benefit the oligarchs. So as a result, it's a 24/7 lie machine and is near complete 100% state sanctioned Kremlin propaganda. With zero journalistic oath, nearly complete lies and mind control from the top of the hierarchy down to seek lies and spread them, maximize harm, act on behalf of power structures to prevent their accountability, and are opaque in doing so. Making those who hate liberal democracy proud.
The problem with oligarchy is that it only represents less than .01% of the population. There by 99.9+% is not represented. And in the United States, because of 40+ years of Reganomic trickle down golden shower austerity measures doing their part to try and destroy the middle class, and thus democracy, we are left with the most massive lopsided distribution of wealth since the robber baron era and see the website www.lcurve.org ont ehr subject. So we're certainly better than Russia but have been heading towards its model. As a result, Russia has become a global leading edge hub of far right political and media influence throughout the world because the right wing's main role, throughout the world, is to protect extreme corrupt wealth hierarchy and is why we shit on it 85% of the time over the left so you're welcome. Every regressive - liar, extractor, and authoritarian, modern iterations of which are ultranationalists, white supremists, neo-natzis, regressive reactionaries,
propagandists, grifters, etc... end up adopting a very pro Russian style language, and Putin literally said that they are all welcome to immigrate to Russia as a haven from western liberality, progressivism, and freedom. Russian oligarchs have spent undaunting amounts of money, not on helping their own people, cause they don't care about their own people, let alone other countries' people, let alone indigenous people, but instead into intelligence work manipulating the global narrative. This goes for all authoritarian petro states - Saudi Arabia is basically no different. Which is reason 64,321 why we need to transition away from all fossil fuels because they have been the finance machines for dictatorships throughout the world.
Bipartisan corruption in Washington DC is nothing new. But no one does corruption like the Grand Old Party. They are the leading edge of it. When Richard Nixon's administration was in scandal and shambles leading to his resignation in the late 60's at the time the fairness doctrine was still in place, before the Republicans at the FCC killed it, thus he was forced out because the fourth estate did its job as a check on corrupt power. But in the 1970's, propagandist, sexual assaulter, and Jabba the Hutt style slug human Roger Ailes wrote a memo which was later to be rediscovered in Nixon's Presidential Library, which proposed how to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers. In this case, prejudices means "truth" and pro administration means "lies". So that in the future, after the fairness doctrine had been abolished under the osposis of "free speech"... sound familiar?, a future corrupt Nixon-esq president would not have a fourth estate doing its job against their corruption but instead be the opposite, a media ecosystem ecco chamber to constantly back up corruption and amplify their lies. Injecting a far-right slant to “gradually, subtly, slowly” inject “their philosophy in the news.” The network was, in the words of a news director who quit in protest, a “propaganda machine.”
Today, watching more than 15 minutes of Fox News will turn your brain to goo. If you're well loved, well traveled, and formally well educated or even a well educated autodidact it's extremely unlikely you'd have the great misfortune of doing that in the first place. But to the un-loved, untraveled, and uneducated and most of all weak willed and gullible it's hate fuel. As Rolling Stone says - "To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late-October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party - Roger Ailes. As a political consultant, which is really just a marketer, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. But an examination of his career reveals that Ailes used Fox News to pioneer a new form of political campaign – one that enabled the GOP to bypass skeptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion. The network, at its core, became a soundstage created to mimic the look and feel of
a news operation, cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism. The result became one of the most powerful political machines in American history. One that has played a leading role in defining regressive talking points and advancing the agenda of the far right." As for actual journalists? “Fuck ’em,” Ailes said. “It’s not a press conference – it’s a television show. Our television show. And the press has no business on the set.”
This is also the precise reason why we need middle class media over fascist oligarchic owned media which is fascistic propaganda heavy or American corporate media which is both sidesing and normalizing authoritarianism and is thus propaganda lite. In the United States, and this also applies to Oligarchic Murdoch owned media in parts of Europe and Australia, networks such as Sky, Fox, Brieghbart, Washington Times and although Andrew Breitbart was actually somewhat of a real journalist uncovering scandalous things about the Clintons and John Podesta for example, the more right wing, the more untruthful lying with every breath modern propaganda networks they have become with no journalistic integrity. And newer OAN, Newsmax, and "Truth" Social (really Lies Social) are even worse. Put them on the same level as Russia state media with nearly 100% lies and only some occasional micro cracks of truth. While The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, ABC, etc are better but are still very corporatist both sides between truth and lies Republican lite because they are also owned by slightly nicer members of the bourgeoisie, and even MSNBC which is the only legacy network that leans forward thinking which could be called MSDNC which is the most pro-middle class and thus pro-democracy, still is very 50/50 truth at best pro-corporate news which is not going to tell the full truth on things such as Isreal's genocide.
We know someone in New York who worked at Fox News doing graphics for the News Network and he said most employees there, while sometimes being treated well, while also for many of the “fasch plast” platinum blondes who had to deal with a toxic misogynist work environment, the majority of the employees knew the whole thing was not much different than the Onion. Which is a satirical comedic newspaper. Where, most of them, meaning those who literally work there, while appreciative of their job security, viewed it like a big joke machine selling only hate and fear, and did not think well of their audience. Who are primarily crusty old regressive people whose grown children want nothing to do with them cause they are so hard locked in their ways of sexism, racism, and xenophobia. With the on screen talking heads at Fox having zero journalistic integrity, not fighting the man, but instead working for the man. Knowing their lying for the money. The owners of the network also all know their business model is constant lies. As evidenced by Fox so called News paying out a $787.5 million dollar lawsuit to Dominion voting systems in 2023 for spreading lies, which they knew were lies cause fear gets ratings, about outcome determinative fraud in the 2020 election and not in a million years putting the Murdocs on the stand.
So the American right wing has spent nearly half a century putting forth little to no policies that do anything for the middle class, let alone the poor, but instead giving the already morbidly wealthy tax cuts at the expense of the
American people while building a right wing lie machine media empire to non stop lie to those same people. And today, some 70 million some red Americans are blanketed from morning, noon, and night with non-stop fascist propaganda that was constructed by the bourgeoisie godzillionars to distract them from the fact that they are getting robbed blind by those same bourgeoisie. Talk radio, TV news, Russian bot farms, Telegram, 1000 video channel and podcast new media grifters, and now Twitter with the stupid new name, are all there solely and exclusively to stack lies on top of lies. Where if you've not mainline the propaganda, you hear the dumbest obviously blatant things, such as “giga chad MS13 mexican rapists are coming for your trad wives” or “every shooter is not a fear based gun nut but are instead purple or blue hair transexuals”, or “kids are using litter boxes in school and haitian voodoo is eating our pets”, and can't believe you live in a country where your fellow countrymen can even remotely begin to think any of it is real.
So why is America so polarized today? Simple explanation. Because of the results of Roger Ailes style propagandistic media business model. Bring back the Fairness Doctrine.