Why are so many here saying Russian propaganda is ok?

[NightWatcher]

Yes, it's another fucking Hartmann thread, but sweet Jeebus on a pogo stick, I didn't think it'd be so hard to get the point across. Russia is our enemy, folks. They attacked our election and played a huge role in installing trump as President. If that's fine with you, stop defending RT here, as you don't belong on a message board dedicated to electing Democratic candidates and forwarding Democratic Party ideals.

RT is state sanctioned and state run propaganda for Putin.

Not all propaganda will sound obvious. I do not expect every show on RT to say "America is yankee pig dog and Mother Russia is great". They use subtly crafted messages. Hell, even if they just don't cover certain stories, that itself is manipulation.

Thom Hartmann has a relationship with RT, I don't care what it is. Hartmann claims to exert 100% editorial control over the content of his show. Would you expect him to admit to running everything by Putin before it goes to air? If he is so separated from RT control why does he accept anything from them, be it money or airtime on their network?

He reads DU and mentions posts from DU on his radio show. Why doesn't he come on here and defend or explain himself. I enjoyed his show for years and finally left a few years ago. That decision was proven right after Russia ratfucked our election.

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[MFM008]

2. Whose Hartmann?

???

[HopeAgain]

3. I think Hartmann is used by RT to gain legitimacy

So that their other programming will be taken as legitimate as well. Probably nothing he says is pro-Russian (I haven't been listening). Kind of a sell out in my personal take.

[jberryhill]

9. +1

[maveric]

10. Thom

[thesquanderer]

16. I think "sell out" means something different if you could really use the job.

If some super successful artist (actor, musician, whatever) does something crappy just for the money, we call them a sell-out, but I think the underlying premise is that, they didn't need the money, so why betray their values/integrity?

But if someone isn't so well-known and so wealthy, maybe you cut someone some slack for doing what they can to earn a living.

And as far as we can see, Hartmann does not seem to be particularly pro-Russian in his work, even on RT. As I mentioned in another post, even if RT is using him for some viewpoint diversity credibility (as Fox used Alan Colmes), that doesn't mean that he's not worth listening to, if you find him informative/entertaining. Of course, if you're skeptical of something he says, don't take it at face value, research to see if it's true. But that's the case no matter where you hear something.

[HopeAgain]

18. Selling your song to Coca-Cola

Is something you do for the money. Legitimizing a purveyor of foreign propaganda? I don't know about that...

[thesquanderer]

24. So what do you think about Alan Colmes or other Dems who have regularly appeared on Fox?

Likewise legitimizing a purveyor of anti-Dem propaganda, who should be chastised/ignored?

(and yes, I know, Colmes has passed away.)

[HopeAgain]

27. I remember seeing Sally Kohn's TED Talk

trying to justify her role on Hannity and thinking:"no, you don't help them with the illusion of being balanced regardless of your motives, it just doesn't work that way."

Who should be ignored? Fox should be ignored until they truly move towards some level of balance.

[emulatorloo]

50. I hate to point this out, but as bad as Fox is, it isn't State TV from a hostile foreign government.

So it is sorta an apples to oranges comparison.

[thesquanderer]

52. No, but arguably Fox does *more* damage to the U.S.

I don't know that doing Putin's bidding is a whole lot worse than doing the Kochs' bidding.

[emulatorloo]

53. That's a good metaphor. But doesn't change the factual differences. Putin has invaded

Sovereign nations with Russia's military. The Murdochs have no military at their disposal as they aren't a country.

[brush]

62. Wait one minute. FOX is state TV for the repug party, has been for years.

[brush]

61. Come on. Did Putin make him an offer he couldn't refuse? He can get his show aired...

Last edited Fri Aug 11, 2017, 10:04 AM - Edit history (1)

on other outlets.

Russia is our adversary, has been since the Cold War days.

Now it's okay to cozy up with financial arrangements with them?

That's exactly what trump is being investigated on.

[thesquanderer]

74. re: "Now it's okay to cozy up with financial arrangements with them? "

Tons of American people and companies do business in and with Russia. Including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Apple, and Microsoft. How many are you going to boycott?

As for what Trump is being investigated on, well, a bunch of things. But it's not illegal for him to have taken money from Russia (at least before he was running for office). But it would have been illegal to take it and not report it, or to money-launder it through your real estate or casino businesses.

[brush]

75. Give it a rest. Progressives don't need to be helping legitimize Putin's propaganda network.

Hartman being on RT makes one question his judgment

I've heard the argument that he had complete editorial control but just him being on Putin's network gives it credibility, insinuates that maybe Putin and Russia aren't so bad (even though Putin has had how many people killed in the last year, how many anti-Hillary bots did he pay on social media to help trump, how much info did the Russians steal from the DNC and funnel to Wikileaks to further damage Hillary, and on and on to help trump steal the presidency?).

Do progressive media people really need to help this guy by lending their name to his network?

It's subtle infiltration of our airwaves, no Russia talking points need be spoken by the show hosts, just the fact that a certain show is on the network works for Putin (if Hartman is on RT, it and the Russians can't be that bad, right?).

BS, they've been our adversary/enemy since cold war days, and still are. Just because trump won't utter a single word of criticism of them doesn't mean we all fall for the Russian entrenchment that's getting it's tentacles into our media space. They just acquired a station in DC. They've got trump eating out of their hand, even giving them intel in the oval office. They want those sanctions lifted for access to the trillions that will bring and since trump can't lift the sanctions they deploy plan B — the Russians are out friends, they're on our airwaves, they have well known progressive hosts on their networks. Our president loves them. What's the problem?

Just disregard the ever increasing body count of Russians connected to campaign shenanigans who apparently had info that Putin didn't want available to Mueller.

[not fooled]

19. Your assessment

strikes me as being correct. He does not advocate for Putin, but on the other hand, in my opinion on his radio show he gives relatively light coverage to Russiagate. He doesn't spend much time reporting or analyzing developments in the Russia-dump investigation, especially compared to how hard he goes after the GOPee on other fronts. Don't have RT so haven't listened to that show but I'll bet it's more "error by omission" there too, in that he doesn't go hard after Putin there either.

But, I think he's a great progressive host with a brilliant mind and I never miss his radio show.

So, like many other things in life, not a perfect situation.

[uponit7771]

33. Right, its a great way to get credibility via proxy !! The "Hartman trust me" is a great way to hide

... other BS while keeping Hartman in the dark even if Hartman was 100% against the Russian Federation.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

44. More the fool him for getting in bed with Putin. Trump's gonna get jealous. . . .nt

[brush]

60. Agreed. It has to be the money because he certainly can get his show aired without using RT.

[DBoon]

4. RT would not hire him if it did not serve the purposes of the Russian state

that alone is reason to shun his program.

[thesquanderer]

11. As hiring Alan Colmes served Fox's purposes.

They wanted to be perceived as offering a variety of views.

That doesn't mean Alan Colmes didn't make good points or wasn't worth listening to, whether on his fox appearances or elsewhere.

[Progressive dog]

14. That's how I feel

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. Beats the hell out of me.

[underpants]

6. Me too

[leftstreet]

7. Because without Putin, the GOP wouldn't have cheated

Pay no attention to the voter suppression happening RIGHT NOW all across the country



I'm getting bored with all this

Hillary lost
Trump owes Russian bankers a lot of money

US media witch-hunted the Clintons for decades
US media legitimized Trump

RT (who practically NO ONE has even heard of) seems to be the LEAST of our problems right now

[guillaumeb]

8. Your argument assumes much and proves nothing. eom

[ms liberty]

43. This. n/t

[sheshe2]

12. Not a clue.

Russia is no friend of ours.

[Progressive dog]

13. They prefer Russian propaganda

to reality?

[Ligyron]

15. I think Thom uses them more than they use him.

I watch him on Democracy Now and not that often but I've never heard him say anything overtly in support of Russia or against the USA or Democracy. RT and the state uses liberals and Progressives to stir the pot here in the US is all, I think.

We're all smart enough here to see the difference.

[scheming daemons]

20. By appearing on their air, he legitimizes them

[maddiemom]

47. Good! A sane assessment.

[Kentonio]

17. Why do you imagine he'd feel any desire to defend or explain himself to you?

He clearly doesn't think there's an issue.

[emulatorloo]

49. Well for years I thought it was a bad career move, but of course its totally up to Thom to handle

his career. From just a marketing perspective, RT is a terrible brand. Has gotten an even worse image after this Russia/Trump mess.

[Kentonio]

56. True.

[emulatorloo]

57. He's a good egg

Too bad I'm not his manager

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Assignment of the week

[SalviaBlue]

22. Maybe he feels it would "validate the attacks as legitimate"

[Weekend Warrior]

23. Propaganda works best when a willing sell-out is willing to step in and give it legitimacy.

"Follow the money" is completely lost on some.

[murielm99]

25. K&R

[XRubicon]

26. Why are so many Russians here saying propaganda is ok?

FIFY

[mcar]

28. Cause Disney or something

See, Hartmann is a Democratic leader who totally doesn't get paid by RT so stop saying that. And anyone who doesn't support him will lead to the death of the Democratic party.

But it's completely OK for "progressives" to attack and trash Kamala Harris and Corey Booker because they aren't Democratic leaders like Thom is. Or something.

[Igel]

31. Yes, Russia is.

The leadership--not just Putin, but military and political leaders not appointed by Putin--have basically said that they want NATO dissolved and the US seriously crippled. They've reminded us in no uncertain terms that they could reduce the US to ashes using nuclear bombs. They've acted to subvert US interests and hurt US allies.

There's little doubt that they meddled in the US elections last fall, even if a lot of DUers think that somehow their real goal was to elect Trump because, well, Obama and because HRC. They wanted to weaken the US; Obama was not seen as likeable, nice, adroit, or especially friendly to Russia--and that was during the "reset" that he and HRC pushed. HRC they wanted gone; it was personal. Trump? Job 3. And for months there's more than enough evidence that Putin rather regrets it. (Stability is more important than a lot of things for Russians. And Trump's not providing stability.)

A lot of the "collusion" alleged dates back to before Trump was the frontrunner. There's little evidence that Russia was anything but a spoiler until very late in the game. The much vaunted "celebration" at Trump's victory could be as much an expression of surprise at their influence as an expression that they'd succeeded in their cunning and devious plan.

[world wide wally]

30. Who in the hell watches RT anyway?

I suggest they get a job, or a life, or something

[alp227]

40. same people who get their news from Infowars

or other shady online sources or random people on social media while rejecting the mainstream media, just to "feel woke".

[dreamland]

32. Russian bots working overtime

... to make convincing arguments. It's becoming easy for the Russian bots to manipulate the narrative and some of our members. Remember green party Stein efforts for a recount? How many DUers were manipulated into contributing to her cause? We need to see the big picture, folks. RT mixes in what we want to hear with what they want you to hear. Take their crap with grains of salt.

[Igel]

34. So what's the plan?

Yes, RT is propaganda. Not that most people have much of a clue as to how Soviet and Russian propaganda actually worked. They get their knowledge of agitprop and propaganda from spy thrillers.

They miss the point that much of Soviet propaganda was real news. It was just always oriented towards producing the attitude and views that they wanted. So if you look at how protests, environmental problems, police disputes, etc., etc., are covered by RT it's lurid but it's usually not wrong. The error is that they allow the listener to overgeneralize and assume that's *all* there is because good news is missing.

Similarly, any overture that's in Russia's favor by the US is shown. Negative things are editorialized as anti-Russian. Again, they print all the news that fits.

Another category is pointing out partial news. So if there's a report saying that drop out rates for African-Americans is some percentage and that this is down 20% over the last 15 years, they'd report the high drop out rates and contextualize them by pointing to, say, Russian rates. Or the rates for the top 1% of Americans. If the rate for Asian-American high school students is good, that would be ignored. If it's bad for Cambodian-Americans, that rate would be highlighted and instead of "Asian-Americans" they'd just say "these Asian-Americans"--a small difference easily overlooked, allowing the listener to think that the stats are for all Asian-Americans.

Then there's fake news. Utterly made up. RT doesn't do that much. It usually relies on others to devise the false news. Usually American sources if it's about the US. It's the "well, I just repeated it so I'm not really responsible for the content" kind of non-thinking that we hear often from propagandists.

RT used to be fairly often posted by some DUers. Not because it was pro-Russian. But because they liked highlighting the bad side of the US. A lot of people like partial news: Venezuela, for instance, got partial coverage. Most people sort of ignored it, but some people presented only good things in Venezuela or, if something was bad, a report (often false or partial) blaming somebody else. We still see that kind of thing. "US sanction are hurting Venezuela, bad US!" when the primary culprits are low oil prices and internal policies. But there is fake news.

So let's set up a Ministry of Truth to make sure that the government view of reality is all that's reported. The first Minister of Truth will be appointed by Trump. Enjoy that scenario. But it would be no better in principle under Obama or anybody else, because in a democracy different views get presented.

Maybe we ban all foreign reporting? Buh-bye, The Guardian. Le Figaro. Moscow Times and Informator go along with Russian TV24 and RT. But how do you do that? Cut the Internet? Bar newspapers from reporting what's in them? Make sure that cable can't broadcast them?

The solution isn't that. The solution is to get people intelligent enough not to fall for propaganda.

And personally, I'm not convinced on how big a role they played. They strike me as a scapegoat, all powerful enemy that we poor (D) couldn't defend again.

[bettyellen]

48. I saw them play quite a large role w leftists I know- constant links to RT on Facebook

As well as constant Tweeting amplifying their stories. On Twitter is was more bots than friends.... I think. But yeah it seemed to come out of no where about 18 months ago and suddenly that were all over the place.

I agree with everything else you said, but my experience in seeing it was different. It suppressed a great deal of support for Dems.

[bora13]

35. i like this description of the trump minions in general

"...Gorka speaks like a typical bloodthirsty fascist, narrow minded that hates life, people, and everything nice on this earth. Since Trump is in the oval office, so many creatures emerged from caves and came down off the trees to meet their Guru."

[virtualobserver]

36. Thom Hartmann is a witch, I tell ya'....a witch.

....and hunting season is in full swing.

[Flying Squirrel]

59. Amen to that. nt

[Honeycombe8]

37. I agree. nt

[Bradical79]

38. Most is one person

I've seen a handful of support, but one individual was bringing it up in every single thread they posted in, trying to force him into all conversations. It's an intentional effort to disrupt.

[FreepFryer]

39. Rec'ed for the Republic. (n/t)

[keithbvadu2]

41. Now that republicans love Mother Russia. "Russia is our friend"

Now that republicans love Mother Russia.

New republican meme - "Russia is our friend".

[FairWinds]

42. Thinking people need to oppose and expose ALL propaganda . .

not just that which comes from the designated enemy of the moment.

Again, I'll take RT over FOX, Clear Channel, Sinclair, etc. any day of the week.

[Sunlei]

45. there have always been lots of closet nazis happy to suck-up to state run propaganda media.

[SunSeeker]

46. K & R

[LovesPNW]

51. I'm generally a fan of Hartmann ...

But I despise the Russian dictatorship, and I do not trust Russian media more than I trust any other Russian mob organization ...

Thom is a good guy in a bad place ... He lost me going there ...

[bullimiami]

54. I don't care what network he is on. I find his shows too boring to suffer.

[kacekwl]

55. Defend himself from what?

I have yet to see any examples of Hartmann pushing Russian propaganda.

[unc70]

58. Is Thom still a member of DU?

I seem to remember that he was at one time.

[mopinko]

64. nothing this year.

i think it was a producer, anyway. posting show clips, not in conversations.

[unc70]

66. User ThomHartmann posted 8:38 tonight

Don't know who us posting under that account, but we're active tonight.

Does Thom get treated as a DU member under the rules?

[mopinko]

67. ah. i missed that there was no space.

i would guess yes and no. someone posts under that name, but it could almost be argued that it is spam. i could as easily argue for banning as protecting.

[JCanete]

63. This is fucking stupid. Its in fucking witch-hunt territory. You want to make a case, go just

slightly deeper than the connection. Make a case based upon his show. Show me how his rhetoric has altered to affect this arrangement. Show me fucking something.

Yes, concerns about whether money influences content are real and legitimate. They should be considered with Hartman and TYT, and lo, every fucking pundit on corporate media, which, unless you had your head up your ass throughout the whole election cycle, made Trump. CNN FOX, hell all of them, MADE trump a viable candidate, and over the last 30 years that's just their crowning act. And you are worried about people on RT like Thom who are actually talking about the corrupting influence of money on our system of government?

Does he have blind-spot with Russia? Is he avoiding a conflict with the people who keep his show running? I don't fucking know, and I can promise you that when I listen, I'll keep that in mind, particularly when he covers or does not cover news related to Russia. But if you are listening to MSNBC or CNN or reading NYT or Wapo WITHOUT taking into consideration their parent companies and their corporate and state ties, then you are either oblivious to it, or perfectly fine with propaganda.

[ProfessorPlum]

68. Excellent post. I agree 100%

If we are talking about the integrity of the owners of news outlets, then nothing said in or on any media is without suspicion. Caveat Listener, and that goes for everyone.

[phylny]

72. Exactly. n/t

[shanny]

78. Bravo!

And thank you.

[GulfCoast66]

65. Why in the world would Russia want to support a show aimed at the left

That regularly criticizes and attacks the Democratic Party of the left in the US for not being leftist enough?

Why would Russia support a show that regularly features and brings to national prominence in left circles a guest who will tear the Democratic party asunder?

Got me...

Just remember, the Russians are the best in the world at using well meaning people to achieve their goals without compromising the values of those people.

Have a nice evening.

[dembotoz]

69. And lefty radio options are???

Still crickets

[dansolo]

70. Earlier this week he was dismissing any Russian influence on the election

I usually listen to his show during lunchtime, and earlier this week he was talking about gerrymandering and voter supression, which are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed. But, he started the discussion by dismissing the Russians had any influence on the election. While I commend him for pointing out the significant systemic issues that put Democrats at a severe disadvantage electorally, when he parrots the points that benefit Putin, that is when I start to question his motives.

[phylny]

71. I wonder why so many are blasting Thom, who has been a mouthpiece for

Democratic ideals for years.

[Else You Are Mad]

76. The reason is..

That since Hillary lost, the Russians have been a convenient boogeyman for a certain group. It is easier to just blame everything that goes wrong in the party and the election on the Russians. To them, the Russians are to the left as the Muslims are to the right. Therefore, since Hartmann is on RT, he is persona non grata.

I am not saying that the Russians didn't try to interfere, but they are not as all powerful as some people think.

[AngryAmish]

73. Rachel Maddow is paid millions of dollars a year annually by Comcast.

[revmclaren]

77. Comcast hacked the DNC and colluded with trump

to give him the election? I thought that was Russia and ipso facto RT as it is Russian owned and run.

Guess you learn something new every day on DU...

[JCanete]

80. For the most part what kind of coverage did our major news outlets give to trump? How does a man

like him rise to potential candidacy without a ridiculous amount of willful ineptitude of reporting on the part of these corporate institutions? How is the biggest story for 2 weeks before the elections Comey's bullshit dredging up of the email scandal? To say it was Russia who got us Trump, and NOT our own media is like you just woke up yesterday and didn't live through the last year of "coverage."

[Corvo Bianco]

79. Putin is incredibly charming. And he's cunning enough that I have an otherwise intelligent

friend that now relies RT exclusively. Dangerous business. And if you believe Putin, you're no longer smart, ur an idiot.