Big Eck's big show

November 16, 2017 7:21 AM

Alex Salmond is the ex-leader of the Scottish National Party who lost his Westminster seat at the last election. He has recently launched The Alex Salmond Show on RT. This has been criticized by many other politicians and journalists (many of whom have actually appeared on the channel) but is seen by others as a voice against a pro-nationalist mainstream media. His first main guest was deposed Catalan president, Carlos Puigdemont, You can watch the episode on youtube.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (14 comments total)

How very unsurprising it is that Salmond's first topic on his Russian state TV programme is Catalonian independence, a subject near to Putin's heart e.g. Catalan independence: EU experts detect rise in pro-Kremlin false claims">Catalan Independence: EU Experts Detect Rise in Pro-Kremlin False Claims (Guardian).

Useful idiot.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:11 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

Choosing to work for and/or with RT in 2017 is reprehensible, however, there's a case to be made that media concentration in some countries had the effect of silencing voices either by design (I'm sure there's a "those bastards from Newsnet" everywhere) or as a side-effect (because not everyone can just move to Bigcityngton to pursue a career in media and broadcasting), and RT takes full advantage of it, particularly if Putin has an angle (I mean, I'm sure Putin isn't itching to give a voice to the north and interior of Portugal).
posted by lmfsilva at 8:50 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I’m with the others. That weegingerdug article sums up my feelings on this.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 9:21 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

A nationalism that gladly allies itself with forces that don't even make the pretense of standing up for human rights and individual liberties is very much not the sort of nationalism you want to have.
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:15 AM on November 16, 2017 [13 favorites]

If the US or UK began funding a radio station and explicitly sought out voices looking to destabilize Russia or China by hiring advocates for Dagestan or Chechnya in Russia, or the Uyghurs or Tibetans in China, there would rightly be MASSIVE pushback from those countries for interfering in their internal domestic affairs. And they'd be right.

Russia's rebel constituents are much less happy, and much better armed than, say, the Catalans. We could cause tremendous domestic headaches for Putin if we tried. Perhaps we should; it might get them to back the heck up.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:41 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

a voice against a pro-nationalist mainstream media

Huh? Is Scottish nationalism not nationalism? Is Catalonian nationalism not nationalism?
posted by Sys Rq at 11:28 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

leotrotsky: So how many dead Russians do you think will be enough for them to 'back off' so suitably chastened that they never do anything bad again? That's really what you're talking about when you talk about US support for armed separatists.

Now, IIRC groups like The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya exist. So, the US absolutely has been supporting separatist groups within Russia. And what it got the Russians to do is is crack down on NGOs.

Because it seems to me, going by what happens when Americans are killed, implementing the "Killing Russians" policy being advocated in some quarters is quite unlikely to make Russia back down.
posted by Grimgrin at 11:29 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

If the US or UK began funding a radio station and explicitly sought out voices looking to destabilize Russia or China by hiring advocates for Dagestan or Chechnya in Russia, or the Uyghurs or Tibetans in China, there would rightly be MASSIVE pushback from those countries for interfering in their internal domestic affairs. And they'd be right.

Well...
posted by Sys Rq at 11:33 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

a voice against a pro-nationalist mainstream media

Huh? Is Scottish nationalism not nationalism? Is Catalonian nationalism not nationalism?

my mistake, should have been pro-Unionist
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:12 PM on November 16, 2017

The fact that, really, none of us are talking about the show are itself- merely it’s broadcaster- is part of the problem of choosing RT. As I understand it, Salmond’s programme is make under full editorial control of his own production company and RT can take it or leave it. Personally I am willing to buy that assertion as truth: RT achieves a lot of its persuasive power not by hitting its audience over the head with Putin talking points - but by showing that they are the broadcasting under rather the same terms as the BBC.

But I’m not so sure that the lure of getting on broadcast TV is worth choosing such a distracting collaborator. Salmond would have been better off following the likes of Phantom Power - and just uploading his programme on YouTube. Bigger audience that way too these days.
posted by rongorongo at 3:34 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm horrified that he's done this. Homophobic, misogynist, Islamophobic kleptocracies which are keen on blasphemy laws and enthusiastic funders of European fascism are not fit bedfellows for any progressive civic nationalist movement. What Russia does to its own secessionists makes the Spanish riot police look positively cuddly by comparison, so this is also deeply hypocritical.
posted by Flitcraft at 4:37 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hey, Sys Rq?

You left out Radio Free Asia & Radio y Televisión Martí in the "needling China &/or Russia" stakes. Not to mention others like Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa working elsewhere…
posted by Pinback at 12:40 AM on November 17, 2017

Interesting counterpoint to the outrage, here:

"It really is almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of the shrieking fit the decision has produced. Addled old Lords with criminal convictions for violently and drunkenly assaulting Her Majesty’s police have with an audacious lack of self-awareness decried the immorality of one of HM’s advisors going on TV to talk about stuff, and one Lib Dem MSP has even gone so far as to raise a Holyrood motion demanding that the state interferes with the lawful employment choices of a private citizen.
We imagine that RT will be beside itself with joy at the avalanche of publicity the UK press and political sphere is giving it. We’d be amazed if the hysterical brouhaha didn’t double or treble the audience figures that Salmond could otherwise have expected.
It’s just that it’s all a little, well, sudden.

Nobody disputes that RT is an arm of the Russian government – which in the interests of accuracy it perhaps needs to be pointed out is a democratically-elected one, as is the Russian presidency.

And nobody disputes that the Russian government are pretty bad guys. Russia has some draconian anti-gay laws and media (unlike Scotland, where homosexuality was legalised as long ago as 1980), and has been implicated in the murders of a number of journalists and other dissenters – all things which could never happen in the UK.......

Because even though the government of every nation on Earth has rivers of innocent blood on its hands, and even though RT is a station which operates freely and legally in the UK and is available without restriction to anyone with a TV licence (Freeview channel 234, Sky 512), and even though politicians and ministers of every UK party regularly appear on it, it’s completely different in his case."
posted by stevedawg at 4:45 AM on November 17, 2017

It isn't an interesting counterpoint. It's a sad exercise in whataboutery from Wings, trying to make out that a country which is the very opposite of everything the Yes movement has been working towards for an independent Scotland is somehow a totally fine bedfellow. How dare we criticise a fascist and racist supporting kleptocracy because all nations are bad. This is not what I want for an independent Scotland, if it's what you want and are fine with, then we need to part ways.
posted by Flitcraft at 7:44 AM on November 17, 2017 [4 favorites]