reflectivepundit

One Picture Says More Than a Thousand Words

Mr. Putin and his Advisors in Monday (Feb 29^th) Meeting

Source: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: The first World Wide Web War Is a Double-Edged Sword

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, every generation has utilized well-established and often brand-new communication technologies.

In the last fifty years or so, the breakthrough of live TV coverage over long distances resulted in news coverage of dramatic events that the whole world could watch. The horrific assault on members of Israel’s national team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich was watched by an estimated audience of 500 million people around the world. The satellite coverage of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square catapulted CNN into a premier international all-news network. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Al Qaeda’s leadership boasted that the size of the global news audience had set a new record. Carefully orchestrated by the Pentagon, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was reported “live” by news teams embedded in military units.

And now, as Thomas L. Friedman writes in today’s column in the New York Times, people around the world watch “World War Wired — the first war in a totally interconnected world. This will be the Cossacks meet the World Wide Web.”

Friedman is right, individuals with smartphones capture the cruelty of war, upload images of horror and bravery on TikTok and other social media platforms, and make all of this available to people around the globe. The gatekeepers of traditional news organization or the censors of authoritarian regimes are being bypassed in the social media world.

But whereas the pure multitude of pictures and video clips captured by Ukrainians on their smartphones writes a new chapter in war reporting, the same platforms are available to professional propagandists. In the current conflict, Russian propagandists spin the news in both traditional and social media in carefully tailored narratives that counter the episodic images of smartphone photography. And the Ukrainian authorities may spin as well.

In sharp contrast, the uploaded images and sounds of smartphone owners present brutality and violence in multi millions of snippets in social media. It is a double-edged sword: raw and unfiltered images on the one hand and one the other hand a complete lack of contextual information that would allow  assessments of the snippets on the screen.

I have been told in the last several days repeatedly that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a “media war” or was asked whether that is the case.

The conflict is a real war on real land and in real airspace. In spite of the attention to the compelling images on TikTok and other social media platforms, I prefer the war coverage by the well-trained journalists of the best traditional news organizations. They provide the context that TikTok and YouTube do not.

The un-American former President and his Idol in Moscow

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Miffed about the lack of applause from Democrats during his 2018 State of the Union Address, then President Donald Trump complained,

“They [the Democrats] were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country that much.”

Un-American, treasonous, and unpatriotic. Serious charges against political opponents who sat on their hands during another Orwellian speech by the narcissistic liar-in-chief.

And now, after his idol Vladimir Putin has started his unholy war against neighboring Ukraine, the twice impeached former president showed once again that he is America’s most un-American and most unpatriotic actor. How else can one interpret Trump’s praise for strongman Putin whom he called a genius for invading a democratic country next to his Russian autocracy?

 What else can one make of Trump’s simultaneous attacks on the crisis-managing President Joe Biden who managed to pull all NATO countries together after his predecessor’s disastrous transatlantic politics. Worse, yet, the vast majority of Trump’s Republican Party is blindly following a self-obsessed emperor without clothes: no moral compass, no shame, no concern for the fate of this county and its long-time allies.

In Russia, Trump’s buddy Putin is for more than two decades in complete control because he achieved long ago what Trump and his party are trying to putting in place now: a rigged electoral system designed to return King Trump to the throne for another term and guarantee one party rule in Washington, D.C. and a bunch of states as well.

Imagine the unthinkable: Putin and Trump becoming ruling partners again—the would-be Czar and would-be King.

Perhaps, though, there may be a brewing threat to Putin’s power. The large number and the significant size of Russia’s peace movement in response to the war against Ukraine are not the norm in Putin’s Russia. Add to that the huge demonstrations in democracies around the globe. Even strongman like Orban and Erdogan are not siding with Putin.

The unexpected strong resistance by the Ukrainian military and by civilians does not bode well for Putin and his quest for the resurrection of a greater Russian empire. Surely not as long as NATO sticks to its coda that an attack on one member is an attack on all of NATO’s members.

The greatest problem right now may well be the uncertainty. Not only in Ukraine but in Europe and the whole world. Especially, in view of Putin’s explicit and implicit nuclear threats.

For Trump’s GOP Violence is “Political Discourse”

When it comes to violence, we know for a long time that Donald Trump is like the emperor without cloths: he does not hide his love of brutal force for the sake of his own power. He does not hide most of his illegal actions but describes and celebrates them in public. He is naked, when it comes to any shame. He is an empty vessel, when it comes to a moral compass.  

And now, the Republican Party, already on bended knees, has revealed its complete surrender to its fascist leader and his complete disregard of the legal anchor of this nation: The Republican National Committee censored their members Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger for participating in the congressional investigation of the January 6^th events. They charged the only two Republicans courageous enough to stand up for democracy for taking part in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

However incredible it is: One of the two major political parties in the oldest continuous democracy declared today openly that terrorist and insurgent violence is “legitimate political discourse” among “ordinary citizens.” Obviously, the leading GOP party hacks felt the urgent need to second Donald Trump’s promise to January 6^th terrorists, insurgents, and fellow-plotters in the White House and elsewhere that he might pardon them all, when back in power.

50 years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote about violent movements,

If goals are not achieved rapidly, the result will be not merely defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence into the whole body politic. …The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.

That’s exactly what we are experiencing now: When Trump and his MAGA movement failed to overturn the election and keep him in office on January 6^th, 2021, violence became part of body politic in America.

Neo-Nazis march now openly in American streets, display swastikas, and attack Jewish Americans. The violent Far Right and its organized groups have friends in high places claiming to provide security.

Violence as political discourse has no place in democracy. Embracing violence as is a giant step to fascism.

Especially, when it becomes the doctrine of a major political party.