I wonder how far did Carlson’s soul went during the seconds after it.
Also, Hasan’s reaction
Ugh…sorry but i tried listening to ten minutes of that and i immediately remembered why i stopped watching him. He is such a lib and his audience is even worse. It’s like they have the attention span of a five year old and are physically allergic to learning history. No, Hasan, Putin is not spending 30 min giving you a history lecture because that history (at least the pre-21st century history) somehow directly justifies the actions he is taking, that is not the argument at all. He is doing it to give you context and educate you because you and most of your audience are historically illiterate ignorants with zero knowledge about the background of a region of the world where you now think you are qualified to comment on.
From Twitter, this post sums it up best:
"Westoids complaining about Putin’s interview being too pedantic have an inflated sense of self-worth: they assume the interview is primarily designed to appeal to them. Little do they know the West has become so irrelevant that it’s no longer even necessarily the chief intended audience for Putin’s transmissions. For instance, many of Putin’s statements go viral in China, generating hundreds of millions or even billions of views/impressions on sites like Weibo, vastly larger engagements than the entire population of most of the West combined. In the east, where the citizenry is learned, historically-literate, etc., Putin’s longueurs are actually appreciated, dissected, and discussed. This is particularly the case in China, where the majority of people are not only history buffs, but have a sacred respect for history and tradition.
In the West, Putin’s words may fall on deaf ears and be drowned out by illiterate popculture noise, but the West is no longer relevant to the world. In other places, Putin’s words will reverberate, consummating their intended effects."
hasan’s vid on this was so fucking bad. his takes on russia are atrocious in general. dude needs to educate himself more on the soviet union
He needs to educate himself more, period. He has bad takes on a lot of topics…
I’m surprised you guys even got to the takes every time I’ve tried to watch him he immediatly gets distracted by rehashing a 20 tweet slap fight at length and never even fucking talks about what the videos say they’re about.
he picks one message in his chat to digress about for 30 minutes and loses track of what he was even talking about or what his point was. It’s very easy to stun lock him with gish-gallop, and he can’t stop talking about meta-politics and who was right and who was wrong
Drama drives engagement. That’s how streamers make money.
I also disagree with the idea that this interview was directed at Chinese people rather than Trumpist folks. Lots of of US reactionaries have a positive opinion of Putin (often for reactionary reasons), but interviewing him as a show of “freedom of speech” gets bonus points for Republicans for “triggering the libs” who think he is the second coming of Hitler. But they’d also platform actual Hitler if given the chance.
But I need to enthusiastically agree that twitch reaction streamers like Hasan are unbearable to me. It might be a generational thing, but they seem like Gen Z’s version of late night show hosts: pretend to be intelligent and informative while also only serving to crack dumb jokes.
From the first couple of minutes of the react, I don’t see any reason anybody would gain anything from watching this with the extra hour and a half to just watching the original video. Right away gives an impression that he doesn’t give the whole political situation neither the thought nor the seriousness it requires, and that he doesn’t really understand what’s being said. And I say that as somebody who doesn’t really study much Russia.
It’s longer and worse, and a proletarian’s time is their source of life.
The way i read that is that Putin, not Carlson, meant it to appeal less to a Western and more to a global south (and Russian) audience. It’s not so much how Tucker handled the interview but how Putin chose to engage.
I mean obviously Carlson indended it for a domestic conservative audience in the US, but frankly this is above their intellectual level and most of them are likely to check out after ten minutes of Putin not repeating their favorite talking points about Biden’s dementia, liberals, LGBT and the globalists. I’m sure Carlson hoped for something different as well; something that would play better with his conservative base. You could see his frustration throughout the interview at Putin refusing to give him what he wanted and instead engaging in this long winded historical exposition.
So while it was definitely not the intention on Tucker’s part, the objective result will be that this will reach more the audience in the global south than western reactionaries. And although Putin could easily have given him more of the reactionary red meat that he was looking for, i think he recognizes that it is pointless to pander to the western conservative audience since at the end of the day the political elites on both sides will continue to pursue the same aggressively anti-Russian course regardless how sympathetic the average chud is to Russia.
Instead he hijacked Tucker’s platform and just did his usual thing which he knows plays well with the more historically literate and intellectually engaged Russian and Chinese audiences. This doesn’t mean he didn’t bring up any of the reactionary talking points Carlson was looking to get - after all, unfortunately that kind of talk also finds some appeal in the global south, and definitely in Russia - but in proportion to the amount of time he spent on history both recent and less so, i think a lot of Tucker’s chud fans were pretty disappointed/bored.
As for the streamer thing, i think you’ve basically summed it up. I have nothing more to add.
The American government has already been completely immobilized by flattering the dumbest people on earth with racist memes.
Seems like he knows this and is focusing on more fertile geopolitical ground.
obviously Carlson indended it for a domestic conservative audience in the US, but frankly this is above their intellectual level and most of them are likely to check out after ten minutes of Putin not repeating their favorite talking points about Biden’s dementia, liberals, LGBT and the globalists
Honestly I was surprised- because there is a lot to go on on these fronts (other than the LGBT, and to a lesser extent dementia issues of course).
Putin wouldn’t have had to lie. All he needed to do to toss some crumbs on Tucker’s table, would be to talk about the military-industrial complex and the deep state/“the blob.” He could have used the example of the (after the fact, publicly touted) blatant insubordination, stalling, and sabotage of Trump’s attempts to withdraw from the illegal occupation of Syria as an easy and blatant example that comes to mind. He could have described the neoliberal/neoconservative strategy and vision for the future, which is essentially the typical “globalist” schtick but with actual receipts and not smearing one ethnoreligious group.
I get why he still played so tame, and it was an interesting interview despite it. I suppose we’ll never quite know what could have come, out of what could have been, though- maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.
I mean he could have done that but as Putin said in the interview: it’s pointless to try to engage in the propaganda war against the West’s narrative on their own media turf. In essence with this interview Putin showed that he refuses to play the West’s game. The reaction this interview got from the anti-Russia crowd shows just how much this strategy rattles and confuses them: half of them are screaming about how this was a big propaganda win for Putin and how Carlson needs to be sanctioned and banned, while the other half are busy gloating over how badly Putin failed at delivering effective propaganda to a western audience which has little interest or patience for this kind of long winded history-heavy lecture about a part of the world they already know and care very little about (though i’m sure going forward we’re gonna see plenty short and snappily edited clips pop up of the parts of this interview that actually do appeal to western audiences).
Liberals would have been much more comfortable if Putin had simply repeated typical western reactionary talking points, they know how to respond to those and how to discredit anyone using them. Instead they have to go out of their way to twist what he said into anything threatening, we did have a few headlines claiming “Putin threatens WW3 in interview” but those are so far removed from what he actually said that they can’t credibly back it up and most people who aren’t completely brainwashed by the liberal media can see it, they can listen to his own words.
If the chuds were the target audience of the long form history lecture putin is not nearly as clever as people have made him out to be.
You want enormously racist memes with zero connection to reality that make up something for them to get mad at. If you try to actually explain sonething to them they’re gonna get mad at you. It’s literally “I don’t understand what you’re saying and I’m choosing to interpret that as disrespect.” That was supposed to be a joke but it’s the modern conservative movement smdustilled into one sentence.
I really really doubt he thought he was going to actually teach them anything.
It’s hilarious because if I told libs to watch the final epsiode ONLY of any show, it would rightfully be called out as ridiculous. Yet when it comes to real world historical context (not even getting into the morality of it), libs think the opposite.
Literally most series are like “last time on this show…”
Also yes, that’s to be expected from Hasan and his audience. He is not gonna make money without appealing to western chauvinism (although I have seen a few exceptions). It’s not stupidity, he is giving the audience what they want.
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Yep, when the question arises of whether libs are stupid or evil, they are stupid in the service of evil is the conclusion I have come to. They don’t want to learn anything that might make them reflect on anything counter to their self-interests.
They are also nationalists and American exceptionalists like trump supporters, it’s just they realize you should hide it.
Talk of “manufacturing” and “inventing” suggests an imposition over and against the individual’s will. I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. When we concede that the time horizon and scope of responsibility within which we all make our decisions varies, it becomes much easier to see how their choice could be smart and intelligent. The enlightened critic can plead that if we all agreed to denounce the status quo in unison we’d be immensely rewarded, but the average worker in the first world cannot be accused of naiveté for preferring to keep a low profile, particularly after being subject — very often by that same critic — to so many grim stories of murder and of punishment and of how any attempt at radical change always goes awry.
Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” (2022)
Oh this is perfect. I need to give this a thorough read. Thanks!
read “Brainwashing” also, Day wrote it a year prior to Masses, Elites, and Rebels which sort of builds on and revises it
Awesome TY. Will read both.
Isn’t it crazy how “this was our land for thousands of years until the Westoids broke their promises and ratfucked us out of it” reverberates so well in so much of the global south?
Must be a coincidence…
I have to disagree that Putin was speaking to Chinese citizens in the interview. He was speaking to the rightwing audience of Carlson, and general Western audiences.
This. I could see him speaking to an audience outside of the golden billion generally, but I doubt Tucker is as popular outside of burgerland than he is in it.
I’m not going to waste 2 hours watching this but have you seen Bilibili?
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Wp421R7aa/
The top 4 mirrors of the interview already racked up some 300k views combined in just 12 hours since they were published, and this is in the middle of Chinese New Year celebration so most people are busy with other stuff.
He at a number times invokes rightwing American talking points, it couldn’t be more obvious who he is speaking to.
He’s popular in Alberta!
No chance, he wouldn’t have opened with an hour of Russian and Ukrainian history if he intended to appeal to Western Chuds. He would have been ranting about globalists and LGBTQ+ and attacks on religion right off the bat.
Putin isn’t stupid and he knows how to speak to different audiences. It’s very obvious he doesn’t care what Western Chuds think anymore. Literally gives 0 shits.
I haven’t watched the interview yet but I am 90% sure it has to be targeted towards maga chuds.
I can’t think of a less effective strategy then trying to appeal to chuds with lengthy historical context.
Did he pause 30 seconds in to say one side was gay because otherwise they aren’t following.
As i explained in another response, i think there are two intentions at play here. One is what Carlson intended, which you are absolutely right about. The other is what Putin intended. After all he wouldn’t have given this interview if he didn’t think he could get something out of it, and garnering sympathy with the kind of pro-Russia reactionaries that watch Carlson is just not that useful. They have very little if any influence on foreign policy. And while he did give Tucker a few of the reactionary talking points he was looking for those were quite few and far between. This is not the kind of interview that western audiences respond well to, liberals and reactionaries alike. Westerners have a short attention span and little interest in talk of history or any kind of nuanced and lengthy responses. They want sound bites and “dunks”, they want much more aggressive and simplistic rhetoric.
Obviously it’s gonna be hard to tell what Putin might have intended. While I agree that Americans are stupid, in my experience people generally respond to clear and patient in depth explainers reagrdless. It’s just good to listen to. Americans are addicted of bombastic vitriol but avoiding is not necessarily a pivot towards non-western audiences.
If you look at the American frontrunners for presidents, they sound incredibly stupid and incoherent when they are not outright lying. While blue and red magas kiss their dear leaders feet regardless, people somewhat know deep down what they are. In comparison Putin talks like a normal human being while sounding wise and erudite in the face of being called a madman by mainstream western press. My view is that he didn’t target non-westerns specifically is all I am saying. This is different from my earlier claim of targeting maga chuds which I am walking back on.
I think that’s fair. At the end of the day we can only guess at the intention from the information we have available.
I have stupidly linked Hasan thinking of Hakim. Sorry about the mistake!
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A user with
tier State Department opinions commenting from an instance called Feddit.If you made this up, I’d call it too on the nose.
You may be missing the significance of using one specific thing as an example of a general thing.
Are we the vampires in this metaphor? That’s p cool
[fart noise]
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
