The volume of vitriol poured on American journalist Tucker Carlson by Western media and politicians was something to behold.
Carlson traveled to Moscow to conduct an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The interview consisted of a full uncut exchange involving dozens of questions that lasted for more than two hours. It was aired on Carlson’s website and other social media platforms.
In the hours leading up to the interview, the former Fox News host was pummeled by the political and media establishment in the United States and Europe. Their reaction was nasty and hysterical. Carlson was denounced as a “traitor” and a “useful idiot”. There were calls for him to be arrested on returning to the U.S. and also to be banned from traveling to the European Union.
A telling reaction, too, was that after the interview was published, the Western media and politicians tended to ignore the event as if it did not happen.
Ironically, though, despite the concerted effort to suppress it, the interview has exploded with eager public viewing around the world. Within hours of airing, the interview had been seen by an estimated 100 million people. It will continue to gather millions of more viewers over the coming weeks.
An amusing aside is the scale of viewer figures far eclipses those of the Western media outlets that were vilifying Carlson over his encounter with Putin. Yet these marginal media outlets (one can hardly call them “mainstream” any longer due to their diminishing audience ratings) presume to deem what the majority of people should or should not watch. They include the likes of CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, and so on. Presstitutes all, as American writer Gerald Celente inimitably labeled them.
There are several conclusions to draw. One is the insidious malign control – or at least attempted control – of communication, views, and narrative by Western states and their media.
It should be a journalistic duty to engage with different parties and perspectives. Carlson did that with Putin and as a result, the Western establishment unleashed a torrent of scorn on him, vigorously trying to discredit the interview before people even had a chance to view it and make up their own minds. That speaks volumes about the real lack of free speech and independent journalism that the West pretends to uphold.
Secondly, the huge worldwide interest among ordinary people in what President Putin had to say shows that there is a keen appreciation for hearing a different perspective from the one that the Western governments and media have been monopolizing. This is especially true regarding the war in Ukraine.
The fact that Carlson’s interview attracted so much interest despite the knee-jerk attempts to denigrate it in advance only demonstrates how much popular contempt there is for the Western official media and its self-importance.
Another lesson to draw is the desperation of the Western establishment to prevent any understanding among the public about the conflict in Ukraine: the historical background, the causes of the war, the true nature of the Kiev regime and its NeoNazi composition, the bigger geopolitical agenda of the United States and its European vassals trying to project Western hegemonic ambitions on the world, and more.
All these complex issues require a deep and lengthy discussion based on historical facts. Western media and politicians are incapable of providing such communication contrary to their conceited pretensions. They serve power and propaganda, not the public interest.
Washington, its European clients, and their servile media have distorted the conflict in Ukraine as a facile bogeyman story about alleged Russian aggression. Putin has been smeared as a dictator and “new Hitler” figure (how disgraceful and absurd!). Of course, such fabulation plays well for the Western militarism that drives American capitalism. It is also grist for the mill of Western politicians who are ideologically blinded by Russophobia. And yet the Western media dare to disparage Russia’s “twisted arguments”.
In his interview with Carlson, Putin presented at length a cogent historical account of how notions of Ukrainian nationalism have been cynically fabricated by Western powers for destabilizing Russia.
The war that the West claims began in February 2022 with a “Russian invasion” was started at least as far back as 2014 with the CIA-backed coup in Kiev that installed a NeoNazi regime.
The Western politicians and media are in total denial of this background as well as the treachery of NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders. How can such media even pretend to provide any informative perspective on the current conflict? The cognitive dissonance with reality is astounding.
Many people around the world including in the United States will agree with Putin’s view or find it paused for further thought. On hearing the proper historical context of the conflict in Ukraine, more people will understand the reality of a proxy war instigated by the United States and its NATO allies, not for the ostensible defense of Ukrainian democracy (that doesn’t exist) but for the strategic defeat of Russia. That bigger imperialist agenda has been extant for decades, albeit tacitly so, stemming from the Cold War following World War Two and for the past 33 years since the supposed end of the Cold War in 1991.
The Western states and their media can deprecate Russia’s perspective as much as they like but there is such a thing as historical truth. Most people around the world, including informed American scholars like John Mearsheimer, diplomats like Jack Matlock, and commentators like Jeffrey Sachs, know that the conflict in Ukraine has a much greater dimension than the Western propagandistic media would try to purvey.
There is such a thing as the ring of truth. Most people, even those who have been formerly benighted by misinformation, generally appreciate a version of history that accords with the facts and rational analysis.
Western politicians and media cannot deliver such an edifying account because they have systematically lied about and distorted the causes of conflict in Ukraine and more generally on the relations between the West and Russia.
Putin went a long way towards setting the record straight in his interview with Tucker Carlson this week. It was by no means the first time that the Russian leader had done so. For those who follow the Ukraine conflict outside of the confines of Western media propaganda, what Putin said would have been quite familiar.
The powerful effect of Carlson’s interview is that he succeeded in bringing an important perspective to a wider American and Western audience who regrettably have been up to now badly misinformed by Western media.
Already, growing numbers of American and European citizens have become wary and critical of the futile war in Ukraine and the relentless allocation of public money to prop up a corrupt regime in Kiev.
Carlson deserves immense credit for having the courage and integrity to seek out a perspective that sheds light not just on why there is a bloody conflict in Ukraine but also on the corruption that is endemic in the Western states: the illusions of independent journalism, free speech, and promoting democracy.
Sooner or later, people will realize that the United States and its European vassals are nothing but rogue states whose imperialist crimes know no bounds. The Western media corporate machine plays a vital part in the cover-up of imperial crimes, not just in Ukraine, but also currently in Syria, Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, and beyond. Any lifting of the veil on this naked Western despotism must be shut down immediately. Hence the furious reaction to Carlson’s interview.
But it’s too late. The truth is out. The escaping truth will have inevitable political and historical consequences.
In regard just to Ukraine, the U.S.-led NATO proxy war is no longer tenable. Elitist Western regimes must be – and will be – held to account for the fueling of this war and the vast squandering and theft of public money to pursue their secretive imperialist interests.
