I must say, the Ukrainian people have shown amazing restraint and civic courage in the face of grotesque provocation. Instead of picking up guns, they have picked up the microphone, the pen, the cellphone and the webcam. Watch this wonderful appeal to Russian parents from Dr. Komarovsky, a pediatrician well-known to the Russian-speaking world, debunking Russia's state-media lies about Ukraine's change of government.
In other news, two leading institutions of our time have taken near-fatal hits in terms of credibility and trust. The first institution is Russia Today, a.k.a. RT (rt.com), Russia's state-owned media firm which used to deliver energetic, nervy and credible alternative journalism on some of the leading issues of our time. Since RT was a state-owned company, they tended to softpedal criticism of Russia, but they did produce top-notch and professional journalism.
Not anymore. The moment Yanukovych fell from power, RT broadcast the most disgusting lies and shameless prevarications about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian revolution. Democracy supporters were demonized as fascists, nationalists were smeared as Russophobes, and lurid fables were told about riots in the streets, mass killings, and millions of refugees.
It was all lies. There were no killings. Ethnic Russians were not being targeted. There was no wave of mass emigation. If RT was the gleaming facade of Putin's modernization project, then the facade has forever cracked. What was revealed inside is not pretty: imperial xenophobia, and oligarch-funded revanchism disguised as Great Russian militarism.
One of the peculiar features of political credibility is that it takes years and years of slow, laborious effort to acquire -- but it can all go up in smoke in a single day. Right here in the US, Secretary of State Powell's 2003 speech to the UN justifying the criminal and monstrous US invasion of Iraq destroyed the credibility of the White House for a generation. No, you cannot blame Snowden or Assange -- the national security state did itself in, by foolishly spreading obvious lies in the age of the internet.
Now the same thing has happened to RT. Over the next few weeks, we are likely to see an epic exodus from the station, as anyone with a shred of decency heads for the exits. Those who stay will become ever more shrill, intolerant and xenophobic, driving away an audience accustomed to professional journalism, and not siloviki PR stunts. In the end, RT will end up as the Slavophile version of Fox News -- all flash and no substance, and of no particular relevance to the world of journalism.
The second institution which took a fatal hit was the credibility of Vladimir Putin as a reliable, pragmatic statesperson (yes, there was a time when he was a geopolitical realist).
This particular credibility collapse requires a bit more explanation, so more on this tomorrow.
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