Silicon Bites #67 - Mr Carlson Comes to Moscow to Amplify The Kremlin's Nuclear Terroristic Threats.

Edition No67 | 06-12-2024 - Love him or loath him, Tucker Carlson has a knack for sucking the oxygen out of the information space. He creates friction, he generates headlines, he grabs attention. “Nothing is what it seems” is the apparent philosophy behind his media persona. He is just asking the ‘difficult questions’ that nobody else wants to ask. Looking for alternative ideas and uncovering the deep state conspiracies that manipulate us and ruin our lives. The trouble is the overall framing of his work is deeply imbued with highly partisan and propagandistic narratives. He has a purpose, and it is itself deeply manipulative and aligned with oligarchic money interests. No wonder the Kremlin and Russian state TV love him. No wonder he has been called back to Moscow when they find themselves in a real pickle. ---------- SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's frontline towns. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras ---------- His persona perfectly matches the strategic purpose of networks like RT, whose strapline is “question everything”. The underlying message behind much of Russian propagandistic media is – "все не так однозначно" – or “It’s really not so simple”. Stoke division, yes. Divide and conquer – of course. But fundamentally, Russian propaganda is about denying your agency. Preventing you from uniting, collaborating and organising to resist the forceful expansion of its influence and interests. It does this by eroding trust, sowing division and enmity, and fostering the nihilistic idea of informational ambiguity. There is no truth or morality – it’s all relative. My opinion is just as valid as your facts. It’s complicated. Politics makes no difference. There are always two sides of each story, and both are lies in their own ways. But lies can be equated with truth. The aggressor with the victim. It’s cynical. It’s corrosive. It’s effective. Think Doublespeak from Orwell’s 1984. Black is white. Up is down. And Russia always lies. It shouldn’t work, but it does, and increasingly this approach has power in the era of weaponised social media algorithms, fragmented media, weak institutions, disenchantment with party politics and the decline of class identities. It’s the outer clothing of a regime that does not pursue ideology or morality of any kind, but a pure projection of power and material demands. Because those material demands are in the service of a small parasitic elite, with an extraction mentality; the result is always going to be negative. They are not grasping for power as an extension of their country’s or people’s interests, but for their own benefit. ---------- NEWS SOURCES: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tucker-carlson-russia-moscow-interview-sergei-lavrov-putin-b2658625.html https://www.politico.eu/article/tucker-carlson-sergey-lavrov-vladimir-putin/ https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/04/tucker-carlson-interviews-russian-fm-lavrov-in-moscow-a87222 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/tucker-carlson-warns-of-wwiii-but-russias-nuclear-threats-ring-hollow/ https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1985783/ https://stevenmoore.substack.com/p/tucker-carlsons-tourism-in-russia https://uacrisis.org/en/tucker-carlson-in-moscow-again https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tymofiy-mylovanov-1a13112_lavrov-through-tucker-carlson-delivers-activity-7270765240839979009-3w1c?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ----------