“Democracy Now” Interviewee Satanizes Putin and Glorifies Biden

No right-wing, war-mongering talk show jingoist could satanize Vladimir Putin more than New Yorker journalist Masha Gessen did on today’s Democracy Now’s hour-long interview. Gessen alleged that a “culture of lack of respect for human life” pervades Russian society including the nation’s leaders who don’t think twice about bumping off adversaries. She attributes “vaccine hesitancy” in Russia to this “culture of lack of respect for human life” unlike in the U.S. where vaccine hesitance” can be traced to conspiracy theory. Basically people don’t get vaccinated in Russia because they don’t care about human life. She says “why should you take the vaccine, when any number of other things could kill you?” In addition to denigrating Russian society per se, she forgets about the fact that a large number of people in the U.S. who are resisting getting vaccinated are African Americans who have good historical reason to be skeptical. She also claims that Biden, unlike Putin (who she claims wants to make a show of Russia’s importance in the world), is acting in good faith: “Biden is concerned … with finding areas of common interest, and he is alone in that. He is alone in actually trying to negotiate in good faith.” Gessen should read todays NY Times which points out that Biden’s motive for negotiating with Russia and changing its line on Russia (Biden now brushes off and actually laughs at his statement that Putin is a “killer”) is in order to pit Russia against China and isolate the latter, which is now considered the main enemy. There is a dire need for objective analysis on U.S.-Russian relations. This interview not only fails to do that, but it reinforced lies, half-truths and deceptive statements about Russia. That does the world a lot of harm in this moment in which agreements among the super-powers are imperative if we are to avoid ever greater disasters. Democracy Now should consider rectifying.