There’ll be those in the comments quick with a quip, here, of course: “You think that’s bad? Try watching RTE!”
On Russian state TV, they discuss not only what it would take to destroy the United States, but also how many Ukrainians have to be massacred. One lawmaker came up with a figure: 2 million. No one in the studio blinked or objected—including the host, who is himself a Duma member. pic.twitter.com/dqywGStxax
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) May 30, 2022
There are, however, important differences:
First, and most importantly, however bad RTE, or BBC, or whoever your media bugbear du jour is, you’ll struggle to find them openly calling for nuclear war, or the extermination of undesirable elements. Ironically, for a country that claims to be fighting Nazis, there haven’t been any examples of this kind of broadcasting in Europe since the Reich Broadcasting Corporation went off the air in 1945. We live in a country where we, not unreasonably, complain about media bias on issues we care about. The Russians live in a country where their state media urges the Government to nuke New York. And yet, some people will still call NATO the “warmongers” here.
Second, if you live in the west, you have choice: I watch a lot of TV – mainly sports, and so on – but I don’t recall the last time I switched on RTE News, or one of their current affairs shows. Apparently, Claire Byrne Live is off the air this week, which means that… I’ll not really notice. In the west, we have some choice. If yours truly watches news, for example, it’s mainly Sky News or GB News. The Russians have no choice. You watch the lunatic ranting about genocide and nuclear missiles, or you switch it off and read a book, I guess.
So no, it’s not really like media bias in the west, as real a problem as that is.
Now, to the substance.
It’s very easy to say that this kind of thing is empty, bellicose rhetoric, designed to cheer up a Russian people who can’t have failed to notice that the special military operation to dislodge a few “nazis” in Ukraine is taking a lot longer, and costing a lot more lives, than they’d been led to believe. “If the Americans push us too hard, they’ll regret it” is a simple bit of cope, goes the thinking.
The problem here is that there are countless examples in history of countries talking themselves into dumb decisions. Look no further, for example, than the history of lockdown and restrictions in our own country: It became a feedback loop where media hysteria fed public desire for more restrictions fed some politician deciding that going to the beach by yourself should be a crime worthy of arrest.
Is it really hard to imagine a Russian public, fed on a diet of this nonsense, increasingly demanding the nuclear option? Maybe not a full-scale attack on New York, but a “warning shot” detonation somewhere to show the feckless Americans what Mother Russia is capable of? I would suggest that, as casualties rise, and more American weapons arrive in Ukraine, the pressure for such a demo might build. And once that happens, we’re all, really, dependent on the good judgment and restraint of…. Joe Biden. Lord help us.
You would like to think, of course, that there’s a core level of rationality remaining, somewhere in the Kremlin. President Putin will, by now, have divined that the full annexation of Ukraine is an impossibility. He lacks the troops for it in the first instance, and in the second, the war has gone on so long, and become so bitter, that even a full occupation of Ukraine in the event of military victory would likely spurn continuous resistance, and swallow up oceans of Russia’s already-pressed budget – as well as drawing sanctions out indefinitely.
But does that rationality exist? This war has resulted in a clear stepping up of Russian propaganda to its domestic audience, but that propaganda is not new. It’s been going on for years, with the Russians fed on a diet of ideas about their own uniqueness, invincibility, and essentialness to the world. How does the average Russian react to the dawning realisation that the invincible Russian Army… isn’t that impressive? The pressure to prove that Russia can never be beaten will start to mount, and, in the face of defeat, or disappointment, crazy decisions can be made. Look at UK Labour electing Jeremy Corbyn their leader, if you want evidence of that.
We haven’t covered the war here much in recent weeks because, well, not much has happened, and what has happened is covered in depth by other outlets. The Russians have made some progress in recent weeks, but it’s been slow, and necessitated overwhelming force. How long they can keep that up for is anybody’s guess, but I suspect there’s an inverse relationship between Russian confidence on the battlefield, and the number of times Russian TV fantasises about genocide. This stuff should be taken much more seriously than it is being taken, if you ask me.