<p><a href="https://www.rbc.ru/politics/07/01/2021/5ff70df99a794761a8d26ac2">Maria Zakharova</a>, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that while the siege is “an internal affair," it's important to point out that the “electoral system of the U.S. is archaic." </p><p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=3588469511233785&id=100002123135703">Konstantin Koschev</a>, head of the International Affairs Committee of the Federal Council, the upper chamber of Russian Parliament, proclaimed “the end of the celebration of democracy." </p><p>Russian media have been eager to take up these points. </p><p>For years, the pro-Kremlin media has exalted stability as the core virtue of Putin's “sovereign democracy" – a term coined by Putin. </p><p>As <a href="https://behrend.psu.edu/person/olena-surzhko-harned">a scholar of post-Soviet politics</a>, I've watched how state-controlled Russian media have portrayed pro-democracy protests in countries surrounding Russia, including my native Ukraine, as CIA-led efforts to destabilize Russia. </p><p>The storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters has allowed Russian media outlets to change the conversation and depict the siege as the final collapse of the U.S. political system and democracy itself.</p><h2>US 'disorder'</h2><p>Russian coverage of the Capitol insurrection points out the perceived hypocrisy of Democratic leaders and the U.S. media. </p><p>Russian state-controlled media have repeatedly juxtaposed Democratic outrage over former President Donald Trump's role in the siege against the party's support for the “<a href="https://sputniknews.com/us/202101131081749132-capitol-insurrection-how-us-mainstream-media--dems-miscalculated-on-the-american-public/">BLM and antifa summer riots</a>" – their term for racial justice protests last summer in the wake of <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-protests-arent-just-anti-racist-they-are-anti-authoritarian-139932">George Floyd's death</a>.</p><p> <img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379545/original/file-20210119-22-1bpd5n0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w"/></p><p> Hosts of 'Time Will Tell,' a pro-Kremlin news talk show, discuss the U.S. Capitol siege on Jan. 13, 2021.</p><p>State-controlled media have also highlighted allegations – debunked in the U.S. – that members of <a href="https://www.vesti.ru/article/2509238">antifa, a left-wing protest movement, and Black Lives Matter</a> participated in the storming of the Capitol. <a href="https://www.1tv.ru/-/zzoyz">“Time Will Tell"</a> and <a href="https://smotrim.ru/video/2258111">“60 Minutes</a>," two pro-Kremlin news talk shows on the state-run Russia 1 TV channel, have dedicated air time to this allegation.</p><p>The upshot of such coverage juxtaposes the disorder in the United States to the order and stability in Russia – a favorite message of Russian propagandists. </p><h2>'Digital gulag for Trump'</h2><p>Somewhat surprisingly, members of both the Russian political <a href="https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970609691701250">opposition</a> and the country's <a href="https://www.vesti.ru/article/2507797">pro-Putin political elite</a> assert that the suspension of Trump's social media accounts amounts to censorship and undermines democracy.</p><p>Such statements from people like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the bombastic nationalist leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, come off as hypocritical in a country whose ruler's power is based on censorship and anti-democratic measures, but are not surprising.</p><p>But Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Putin critic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/world/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning.html">who was poisoned and almost died last August</a> and was recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-zelensky-detention/ally-of-poisoned-kremlin-critic-navalny-jailed-in-moscow-for-extremism-idUSKBN29L0JJ">jailed upon his return to Russia</a>, also <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/russian-dissident-alexei-navalny-criticizes-trump-twitter-ban/a-56183293">criticized Trump's Twitter ban</a>. He is likely worried that the Russian government will mimic companies like Twitter in its own censorship efforts.</p><p>Yet, there is also much relish for discussing Trump's Twitter ban among Russian propagandists. That included Vladimir Soloviev, a popular television host, who has dubbed it the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYoniOL69s">“digital gulag for Trump</a>." He has argued that the social media ban is part of an ongoing campaign to silence Trump and his supporters. </p><p>On Jan. 13, the hosts of the evening talk show <a href="https://www.1tv.ru/-/zzoyz">“Time Will Tell"</a> reacted with horror at the “police state" and “repressions" of pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol. </p><p>The hosts likened the tips received by the FBI from the public to citizens snitching on each other – a remark that resonates with anyone aware of former Soviet leader <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Josef_Stalin">Josef Stalin's reign of terror</a>. </p><p>They also insisted that Trump supporters have become the “enemies of the people," after <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?507932-1/senator-schumer-calls-capitol-rioters-fly-list">Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the FBI to add Capitol rioters to the federal no-fly list</a>. </p><p>This portrayal of Trump and his supporters as <a href="https://www.vesti.ru/article/2509615">persecuted political dissidents</a> has been used to further highlight the argument that American democracy is steeped in hypocrisy.</p><h2>'US is falling apart'</h2><p>So-called U.S. disintegration has been a favorite topic for the state-controlled network <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVmM9RLFX0o">Russia 1</a>. The hosts of <a href="https://www.1tv.ru/shows/vremya-pokazhet/vypuski/vremya-pokazhet-vypusk-ot-13-01-2021">“Time Will Tell"</a> have repeatedly reinforced this point by referring to the U.S. as “United, for now, States." </p><p>During a recent broadcast, host Anatoly Kuzichev repeatedly said, “the U.S. is falling apart."</p><p>RT, another state-controlled media outlet formerly known as Russia Today, reinforced a similar claim by quoting the <a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/511906-gorbachev-capitol-invasion-us-stability/">former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev</a>, who <a href="https://justthenews.com/government/security/former-soviet-leader-gorbachev-says-he-knows-who-plotted-siege-us-capitol">said the Capitol insurrection</a> has “called into question the future fate of the United States as a state."</p><p>If Russian media outlets are to be believed, there are no longer any beacons of democracy left in the world. <a href="https://twitter.com/M_Simonyan/status/1347098395937284096">Margarita Simoniyan</a>, chief editor of RT, summed up that view in a tweet: The United States “never were" a model of democracy.</p><p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter</a>.]<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153158/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1"/></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lena-surzhko-harned-710476">Lena Surzhko Harned</a>, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/penn-state-1258">Penn State</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-is-falling-apart-how-russian-media-is-portraying-the-us-capitol-siege-153158">original article</a>.</p>
CONTINUE READING
Show less