ABSURDARAMA!

Tales of the Absurd in this Mad, Mad World

Russia sets up monitoring service to denounce “fake news”


The Absurd can occur anywhere, even in politics and foreign affairs. A striking example of the Absurd, of the kind that knocks you off your chair laughing, if not crying, has been provided recently by Russia, which has set up a website to denounce ” fake news” appearing in Western publications.

Russia is probably the greatest propogator of ” fake news” in the world, constantly spewing forth its propaganda and disinformation (now known as ” fake news”) through the government’s many media outlets, such at RT Television, and Russian newspapers which with very ferw exceptions are firmly dedicated to spreading the government’s propaganda.

Russian ” fake news” played an important part in the Russian intervention in the U.S. elections on November 8, 2016, and has been widely used as part of Russia’s efforts at subversion of Western democracies in Europe, and elsewhere.

The cynicism is matched, perhaps, only by Russia’s periodic demands that the U.S. or other Western countries comply with international law, which is more than ludicrous following the Russian invasion and annexation of the Ukraine’s Crimea, and its invasion and on-going occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of the eastern Ukraine.

So to counter charges that it is disseminating “fake news”, Russia is now denouncing what it considers ” fake news” from the West, with a “fake news” stamp superimposed on screen shots of headlines and stories it doesn’t like. The Russians don’t even bother to tell you why it is “fake news”, since that is hardly necessary at the level of mass propaganda at which they are working.

See

Joe Uchill, “Russia compiling list of ‘fake news’ by Western outlets,” The Hill, February 22, 2017 (01:21 PM EST).

Adam Robinson (BBC Monitoring), “Russia’s anti-fake news site mocked online,” BBC, February 23, 2017.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “Examples of publications, retranslating false information about Russia,” Press service/Publications and Refutations/Refutations/, February, 2017.

Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации, “Примеры публикаций, тиражирующих недостоверную информацию о России,” Пресс-служба/Публикации и опровержения/Опровержения/, February 22 (?), 2017. [Original Russian website.]

If there were any doubt, we can all be reassured that we are now living in “The Theater of the Absurd”.

The Moderator of the Absurd