One of the wonders of the digital age is the ability to travel around the world's national news shows by a mere tap of the TV remote. On 9-11 the news shows from country after country were remembering the mass terrorist attack on America in 2001. They were all in basic sympathy with America. Except one -- Russia Today (RT).
Flipping the channel to RT, I found myself in a different universe. A universe of anti-American conspiracy theories. A show about whether to believe 9-11 was an inside job by the American Government.
One should give RT credit: at least it's different. Not for RT the me-too journalism of the respectable Western daily papers. More like the supermarket tabloids with the Aliens Sighted headlines.
And sadly, more like Russian domestic TV.
Conspiracy theory is something RT is providing more and more often, not just for 9-11. On just about any American topic in the news, RT pops up with a conspiracy theory. One with American Power always as the central conspirator.
It reflects habits nourished under Russia's long history of authoritarian regimes. The regimes often made radical plans in secret, plans that amounted to conspiracies against their own people, massacring large swathes of their own societies. After generations of that kind of thing, it is not surprising Russians suspect conspiracies might be lurking around the corner everywhere. And then there are the conspiracy theories spun by the Russian regimes themselves, branding those who disagree with them as demons conspiring to drag Russia down into the abyss, or spies conspiring with foreigners against Russia.
The practice of coming up with fanciful economic conspiracies is also often seen on RT. It's an echo of Marxist-Leninist days, when regime journalists would regularly point to sinister economic interests as the explanation for anything, and any one, it didn't like. Nowadays the anticapitalist conspiracy theories, though frequent, take second fiddle to broader conspiracy themes at RT -- antigovernment conspiracy theories, far right conspiracy theories, militia movement conspiracy theories, antimilitary conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination conspiracy theories... As long as America or Capitalism or some invisible American-global power center is the Conspiracy, it seems, RT will welcome the Theory. It won't exactly endorse it openly. But it will give it privileged coverage, replete with supportive questions and comments.
This brings us back to RT's enthusiasm for the conspiracy theories of the "9-11 Truth movement. That movement is a typical collection of extremists, far left and far right, united by one thing: hostility to the American Government.
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