Staying cozy inside the "Russophile media" whale
It's comfy and snug in there but maybe it's time to slither out?
By Riley Waggaman, a Moscow-based American writer & former RT “senior editor”
It’s time to address the elephant in the room: on a scale of 1-10, how handsome and wise is Vladimir Putin?
The liveliest intellects of our time have quarreled for decades over the correct answer to this pressing question, as if the fate of the world depends on how many flattering things you can say about Russia’s president.
As civilization as we know it continues to be fed through the woodchipper, Putin has shown himself to be a man of unequal clarity and common sense: he wants to use central banks to weed out global inequities and completely rebuild the global economy—what some have called “building back better”; he desires more COVID vaccinations and testing for everyone, everywhere; he is excited about adolescents becoming eligible to receive the disastrously unproven and unnecessary kid-version of Sputnik V and is looking forward to injecting toddlers.
But most impressive is Vladimir Putin’s demand for nationwide digital cattle tags, which will vastly improve public health and also severely checkmate NATO.
Putin has a blackbelt in parkour so he knows how to jump from one building to another while filming it on YouTube; what we are trying to say is that he is highly intelligent and crafty like a fox.
So when he supports digital cattle tags, you know it’s for a good reason. This is what the Russian people don’t understand as they thoughtlessly spread 2-dimensional hate speech about how QR codes are “unconstitutional” and “extremely retarded.”
For example, here is a poll from an unofficial Vladimir Putin page on VK.com that only has 10k followers:
360,000 individuals shared their views on nationwide digital cattle tags and only 20,000 voiced support. 91% of respondents oppose the use of QR codes in public places.
There are numerous polls on this issue showing nearly identical results.
Please take a moment and consider what is happening here.
These digital passes—which will be required for all aspects of normal life and will never go away once implemented—will radically change Russian society. We’re standing at a civilization-transforming crossroads. The overwhelming majority of Russians oppose these absurd and anti-human “health” IDs. Putin demands them.
Naturally, 99% of Incredulous Pro-Russia Experts With WordPress Blogs & Patreon Accounts have remained completely silent on this issue. In practical terms it simply does not exist in the English language, or any language really, aside from Russian—but obviously Russian speakers who live in Russia don’t know what they’re talking about and are just over-reacting. The most important thing right now is to show solidarity with Vladimir Putin, who is protecting Russian QR codes from NATO QR codes.
This naturally begs the question: what is the exact purpose of the so-called “Russophile media”? More and more we have no idea why it even exists, aside from giving the Kremlin lavish foot massages.
Please don’t take anything we just typed personally. We are not directing this at anyone in particular. We consider ourselves among the most guilty of mindless Russophile media crimes.
For many years we toiled to defend the honor of the Russian government, which is so often maligned by unbalanced Reuters wires and jerks on Twitter. Unfortunately there is simply no way to defend what the Russian government is currently doing to its own people and it would be wrong and depraved to accept rubles to pretend otherwise.
Things are getting weird
We said earlier that this internet article wasn’t directed at anyone in particular; that was a lie. Unfortunately we are going to need to provide an extreme example of just how bad Russophile Media has become. Show, don’t tell—very important in writing.
Dmitry Orlov is a good candidate because he’s very successful and well-known (so we can’t be accused of punching down), and also he blocks anyone who criticizes him—making him immune to criticism.
In mid-November Orlov penned what we consider to be the crème de la crème of Kremlin Fan Fiction. When you read this article, you realize Klaus Schwab’s impending cyber pandemic will be an act of mercy.
In “The Tripartite World Order and the Hybrid World War,” Orlov argues Russia and China are running circles around the West—which tried (but failed) to murder Russians with Big Pharma shots.
Before Orlov dives into COVID and the vaccines, he praises Russia’s alleged hybrid war strategy, the “Gerasimov Doctrine”—which doesn’t exist.
There is no Gerasimov Doctrine. The guy who coined the term even admitted that it doesn’t exist. It’s a 100% fake NATO meme. Tellingly, the Saker (via SouthFront)—where Orlov’s masterpiece was republished—reported in April 2019 that the Gerasimov Doctrine was “wholly made up” and used by Western media to “obscure” the “real work” being done to ensure Russia’s national security.
Maybe Orlov knows something we don’t. Maybe he has the inside scoop on Gerasimov and his doctrines. But as far as we can tell, he’s just regurgitating a fake NATO meme to make Russia sound cool and hybrid. Which is an odd thing to do.
On the vax issue, Orlov claims Russia protected itself from western clot-shots by developing Sputnik V, which has been “proven safe and effective and has been turned into a major profit center by being exported to 71 countries and earning Russia more export revenue than arms exports.”
Where to begin?
The talking points used to sell Sputnik V as a “time-tested” and “proven” drug are blatant fabrications.
Data suggests Sputnik V has no noticeable epidemiological benefit. In fact, there appears to be a close correlation between the increase in vaccination and the increase in morbidity and mortality from COVID in Russia.
There’s no VAERS in Russia and the government continues to withhold statistics on post-vaccination complications. So how can Orlov say with certainty that Sputnik V is safe? Especially when there is mounting evidence that the exact opposite is true.
Meanwhile, doctors and activists calling for greater transparency have been labeled “enemies of the people” by state media.
As for Sputnik V allegedly raking in more rubles than Russian arms exports: no, not quite.
It’s not even close.
Orlov is recycling Kremlin press releases boasting about all the countries that approved the Russian shot. What he doesn’t mention is that only a handful of these nations actually ended up using Sputnik V.
Then Orlov goes on to mock the Big Pharma clot-shots, noting how Pfizer and Moderna are far less effective than originally marketed. Western authorities are now “requiring everyone to get vaccinated again and again” he gleefully notes.
Yeah but… Russia is also making people get vaccinated again and again?
After promising lifelong immunity, Sputnik V’s head developer recently announced people should get a new booster shot every six months for the rest of their lives.
It’s the same scam, Orlov. It’s fairly obvious. And we didn’t even touch on the insane Sputnik-Pfizer links.
We’re talking about mind-blowing disregard for basic reality at a time when people really need to be discussing—openly and without non-stop lying—what is going on in Russia.
Inside the whale
We were recently thinking about what the heck is going on here—why so many otherwise intelligent people are shilling Russia’s totally unproven, useless and probably dangerous vaccine, and why so many have remained completely silent as the Russian government marches to the same Great Reset tune as the West. This deafening silence and denial—it’s genuinely weird.
Then we remembered an essay by George Orwell. It’s called Inside the Whale.
The essay has nothing to do with Russia and only mentions whales a few times. But he makes a very interesting observation about human nature. Namely, people love being cozy and hate being bothered by reality:
The creature that swallowed Jonah was a fish, and was so described in the Bible (Jonah i. 17), but children naturally confuse it with a whale, and this fragment of baby-talk is habitually carried into later life—a sign, perhaps, of the hold that the Jonah myth has upon our imaginations.
The fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cozy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him.
It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned spaced that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens.
A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale’s own movements would probably be imperceptible to you… Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility.
We really like this metaphor. We think it perfectly describes Russophile Media, which provides a cozy adult-sized womb for people to cheer the downfall of the West (which deserves to collapse, frankly) without having to think seriously about what is actually happening. What is actually happening is that everyone is totally fucked. Sorry for the curse word but seriously, people.
There they lie, comfy in their blubber blanket, totally oblivious to the fact that everything they purportedly stand against is happening in Russia. Or, if they are aware of this troubling reality, they simply choose to pretend it’s not so—or it’s even good. Who’s going to stop them? They’re cradled in yards and yards of the finest whale blubber.
Again, we are as guilty as the most guilty. But isn’t it time to leave the blubber-womb?
Orlov, Birdman (sorry, “The Saker”)—these guys are True Believers and we don’t expect anything from them. They’ve spent their whole lives insisting the Russian government is playing 50D chess against the Anglo-Zionists. They will go down with the ship. You don’t want to go down with that ship. It’s a very sad ship.
That’s all we wanted to say.
The onslaught of Russophile media of the kind you are talking about, Edward, came in early 2014. This was the time when The Saker came into prominence, but the real explosion came on the side of Runet, as Russians frequently call the Russian language Internet segment. This was the time when "out of thin air" dozens of resources suddenly sprung up - Politikus.ru, NewsFront, ANNA News, Antifashist.com, hundreds of YouTube channels and so on and so forth. This was the time of a movement that had a name of "Russian Spring" (Русская Весна), symbolizing a rebirth of the Russian spirit that faded after 1991. But the feast didn't last too long, first shadows of a doubt came on May 7th, 2014 after Putin met with then OSCE head and president of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter that, as most agree, delivered to Putin dossier that global powers kept on him and his family with detailed listing of bank accounts, assets and other things of interest. That's when Putin's rhetoric "we'll defend our compatriots in Donbass" quickly changed to "you shouldn't have that referendum" and when he asked for permission by Federation Council to use Russian troops in Ukraine to be revoked. You should watch that video of Putin-Burkhalter press conference, here is the link with no sound - just facial expressions and body language, https://youtu.be/WJGIa-rbGXk. After that moment the term "Putin flushed down the toilet" (Путин слил) came into existence, that Prigozhin trolls quickly responded to with "Cunning plan by Putin" (Хитрый план Путина or ХПП). There were many more events after, that shaped the Rusophile media inside of Russia and outside of it, but those resources that survived to this day have a definite, easily detectable propaganda slant and a state funding attached. This whole period and a segment of Russian and foreign media space requires a separate research, would be a very good topic for a doctoral thesis, I'm not aware of anything like that being done.
With this bit of history background the main thing where I agree with Edward is that ordinary people who remain in this media space of Russian patriotism model of 2014 are there primarily for comfort. It is so good to be in the world that could be easily understood and is black and white in nature. To the credit of Russian people I have to say that many, have snapped out of it, but awakening is a hard process. This is similar in a way to very large numbers of people in US still supporting Trump, but even here, in US, the tide is slowly changing,
On point, as always. It's clear Russia is in "lockstep" with the global agenda. But some people are so partisan it blinds them to all reality. Once you've renounced any and all political affiliation and can view everything from a completely neutral stance, it all becomes clear. Because then you are looking at global developments from the point of view as a human being living on this planet and we can see war being waged on humanity. Many that would proclaim to be on our side are only on our side due to partisan bias or because they've latched onto one particular facet of the agenda (i.e. vaccines) but their political identity is still intact. This politicalization of the soul is a mind-virus. For some people it comprises the majority of their identity. They are blind so of course they cannot see.