John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
Well, if you ever doubted the extreme bias that gets woven into the words of our mainline press, The Guardian offers, on the subject of Russia, a series of efforts about as subtle as a punch in the stomach. Its tone and determination to make a negative point, having nothing to do with journalism and certainly not editorial integrity, are in keeping with efforts made for a group of other favorite Guardian hobby-horses, most notably the never-ending campaign against the British Labour Party’s nonexistent anti-Semitism.
Propaganda posing as journalism is a disease which has infected the entire Western press and broadcasting, and at a time of America’s intense Russophobia and hyper-aggression in world affairs, it has been deliberately spread, almost resembling a form of germ warfare.
You see, the trouble is, for people not paying close attention or not having the background to judge, this stuff undoubtedly has a pernicious effect on Western public opinion. Just negative or suggestive headlines on a subject, day after day, have an effect for the casual reader of an advertising slogan or jingle repeated countless times on the radio or television. We know, by experience, that advertising works. After all, it’s pretty well the way America runs its elections for high office.
It is pernicious because the real driving force behind all the Russophobia involves the current terrible efforts of America’s power establishment to impose its will upon weaker states everywhere around the world. And I think it fair to characterize the effort as a contemporary, somewhat more-subtle form of fascism.
Now, often, not a mailed fist to the face as in the 1930s versions of fascism, but a false smile with an elbow to the gut or a leg sticking out to trip you or a bit of poisonous fare offered. Although America remains just as able to crush masses of lives in the crude fashion of 1930s Germany. A million corpses in Iraq and another half a million in Syria plus uncounted masses in many lesser places, from Gaza and Yemen to Libya, scream that truth to anyone who will bother to look.
The mainline press’s job is to keep you from looking or thinking.
“What to watch during the World Cup if you can't stand football
“Couldn’t care less about the action in Russia? Here is a top TV alternative to tune in to on each day of the group stage’
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jun/12/what-to-watch-on-tv-if-you-hate-the-world-cup#comments
Guardian, you are relentless in your prejudices.
This is just another attack on Russia and its World Cup, albeit thinly disguised as chummy advice.
Get over it.
Harboring such prejudice against a country and expressing it so many different ways borders on a mania.
And coming from you, who always are going on in your efforts to establish a liberal credibility about people who express this or that prejudice, from making fun of overweight people or not respecting women to regular screeds against fantasized anti-Semitism, the obvious prejudice is laughably hypocritical.
AFTERNOTE:
And the very next day after, here’s another fair-minded, name-calling article about the world Cup in The Guardian:
“Robbie Williams 'selling soul to dictator Putin' in World Cup gig
“Singer handing Russian leader PR coup by performing at opening ceremony, say critics”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/12/robbie-williams-selling-soul-to-dictator-putin-in-world-cup-gig
And readers may enjoy this previous record low point in Guardian journalism:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-pravda-atta/
