On Thursday, March 24, the Chief of Chemical and Biological Protection of the Russian Armed Forces, Igor Kirillov, a accusé Hunter Biden, the son of the President of the United States, to be involved in the financing of a biological military program in Ukraine. Although the Russian Ministry of Defense gave no evidence of the existence of these biological weapons laboratories, the rumor was picked up the same evening by Tucker Carlson, the journalist who hosts the most popular news program. watched in the United States.
“Apparently a private equity fund led by Hunter Biden funded research on pathogens in these biological laboratories”, explained the presenter. As often, he then says that the details are not clear but that it is “legitimate to ask questions”.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact origin of these kinds of conspiracy theories, which originate on social media and are then picked up by Russia and the Trumpist right, says Matt Gertz, a researcher who analyzes conservative misinformation for the organization. Media Matters.
“Russian propagandists and some Fox News anchors have similar interests, similar obsessions. They’re wading through the same conspiratorial quagmire. The mention of Hunter Biden on Russian TV shows that Russian propagandists know what kind of story appeals to American conspirators.”
“Alternative” point of view
The synergy between Fox News and the communication organs of the Russian government is such that excerpts from broadcasts by the American conservative channel are regularly found on Russian television.
“Meanwhile on Russian TV: more excerpts from Tucker Carlson. It does not stop because he continues to advance an argument almost identical to that which they defend, sums up journalist Julia Davis, who analyzes Russian propaganda for The Daily Beast.
Meanwhile on Russian state TV: more clips of Tucker Carlson. It never stops, because he continually delivers the talking points that are virtually indistinguishable from their own.#TuckyoRose pic.twitter.com/sPJ2gQtGeR
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 22, 2022
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A description confirmed by the Russian presenter Olga Skabeevawho recently quoted Tucker Carlson on his show, saying that “more and more often, his interests match ours”and by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who criticized the lack of independence of “western media”with one exception: “As far as the United States is concerned, only Fox News tries to present an alternative point of view.”
This “alternative” point of view praised by Moscow consists of spending more time criticizing the Ukrainian government than counting the deaths of Ukrainian civilians under Russian bombs. That’s pretty much what anchors like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham do on Fox News.
“Their angle is that Biden is overdoing Ukraine, that the United States should not get involved in this conflict, which is just a legitimate reaction by Putin to defend his country’s national security interests.summarized by Matt Gertz. Tucker Carlson’s show tends to discredit the Ukrainian cause, to say that this country is a tyranny, a dictatorship. The implication being: “why support Ukraine rather than Russia?”
Rejection of neoliberalism
American journalists and elected officials who constantly seek excuses from Russia have in common to denounce what they describe as the “liberal globalist elites”. To critics of Russian authoritarianism, they respond that Facebook and Twitter also censor, citing the case of Donald Trump. This criticism of American “hypocrisy” is very popular with Russian propagandists, whose aim is to highlight the gray areas of the West, whether real, exaggerated or completely invented.
To the legitimate nationalism of Putin, pro-Russian conservatives oppose a borderless and worthless neoliberalism, that of Biden, the European Union and Volodymyr Zelensky, a rejection of neoliberalism that corresponds to the ideology of national conservatism, a new right-wing intellectual current which has taken off since the election of Donald Trump.
The pro-Russian rhetoric is also adopted by certain figures from the left, such as the journalist Glenn Greenwald or the former elected Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who are regular guests on Fox News, where they tend to downplay Russian abuses by redirecting the conversation to Western flaws. Liz Wahl, an American journalist who quit Russian broadcaster RT after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, summed up this dynamic as follows: in the Daily Beast:
“There are attempts to change the subject to absolve Putin of responsibility by asking: ‘What about Iraq? What about Afghanistan?” This kind of talk has strong propaganda value because there is an element of truth: that the United States is not blameless.”
A long-standing sympathy
On the whole, Fox News does not have a coherent editorial line on the Russian question. Like the Republican Party itself, the conservative media is divided between interventionism and isolationism. Other Fox News reporters accuse Biden of being too weak and not arming Ukraine enough.
This is also the majority position of the Republican Party, even if in Congress, a handful of Trumpist deputies elected in 2020 prefer to criticize Ukraine, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, representative of Georgia, who accused Ukraine of having “provoked the Russian bear” and Madison Catwhorn of North Carolina, who said in early March that the Ukrainian government was “incredibly corrupt” and that he “promoted woke ideologies”.
On Fox News, sympathy for Putin is not a new phenomenon. Matt Gertz has observed it at least since 2010, when American conservatives saw Putin as the ideal strong male leader (shirtless on horseback) in opposition to Barack Obama, considered weak and effeminate.
“Putin portrays the West as decadent, and he pushed through several crackdown laws against LGBT people. Some of the American conservatives admire this, they find that Putin defends Christians and traditional morals while Western leaders do not.explique Matt Gertz.
These ideological affinities remain present today in the speeches of Vladimir Putin, who recently denounced the “cancel culture” and what he calls “gender freedoms”.
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