EYE ON THE MEDIA
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

Axel Springer’s bronze sculpture in Hamburg. Springer was the Henry Luce of German publishing, and held similarly firm pro-capitalist, reactionary views. Part of the articles of association of Axel Springer AG are the five socio-political preambles written by Axel Springer in 1967. These include allegiance to free market capitalism and sociopolitical integration with the United States.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has driven out of Russia many conservative and even fascist media operations from the U.S. and Europe; and on September 17th those media included Germany’s Axel Springer, which, according to Russia’s interfax, was on that day sold to Russia’s Artcom Media, in a deal whose details are not being publicly disclosed. But, included in the reported deal was Springer’s property, the Russian edition of the ultra-conservative FORBES magazine, which, in a recent article, portrays Putin as a “kleptocrat” and advises wealthy Russians to relocate promptly abroad in order to avoid an imminent planned coup that will bring him down. The U.S. wants to bring ‘democracy’ to Russia, to replace Putin’s government. The current approval rating for Putin in Russia is over 80%, but America’s aristocrats think they have a better idea: ‘democracy’ American-style, such as in today’s Ukraine. (The head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor even called that one “the most blatant coup in history.” The U.S. aristocracy just loves such ‘democracy.’)
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Bobinski was the Warsaw correspondent for the conservative Financial Times, from 1976 to 2000, and then an activist in the anti-abortion pro-corporate anti-Russian Polish Civic Platform Party. So he knows a thing or two about propaganda. But although it’s natural for Poles, who experienced both Nazism and Communism, to be wary of any influence from Russia or from Germany, what Bobinski views to be “propaganda” is selective for the anti-Russian side, and is not necessarily an opinion that will reflect broader European values. The only opponent that Panichi’s article cited to Bobinski’s view was someone with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, who challenged Bobinski’s view as being impractical — not as being wrong.
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The European Politico’s “About Us” page presents staff who are uniformly conservative or even fascist, a typical example being Executive Editor Matthew Kaminski: “Prior to joining POLITICO in January 2015, Matt was a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board in New York. He wrote editorials, opinion columns and features, mainly on international affairs. For the previous 15 years, Matt worked as journalist throughout Europe, starting as a ‘stringer’ in Kiev for the Financial Times and the Economist in 1994, writing stories from throughout the former Soviet Union.” They’re the type of people who ought to be running a propaganda-operation for a renewed Cold War, this time against Russia. And that’s precisely what they are doing.
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