BBC on RT, or How the Shepherd loses the Flock

The success of the propaganda campaign against the BBC is a lesson in how wolves teach sheep to fear the shepherd.

It's an amazing trick: on the left, the BBC is "Tory propaganda". On the right, it's "Lefty mush," Yet, somehow, both say "I prefer RT"!!!!!

That is how a dictator gains power - to capture all points of the spectrum, not through policy, not through convincing arguments, not through simply being good, but by presenting a clear, uncomplicated vision of the world that absolves the target of any responsibility. A demagogue tells the people: "Everything that can change your mind is a plot to deceive you, everything you disagree with is a conspiracy against you, and all your leaders are corrupt".

Once one believes that, the game is on - RT is not run by those corrupt leaders, and shows you an alternative vision of the world, where Putin manfully struggles against Western Imperialism, but is attacked out of 'russophobia' (not a real thing) and because he is all that's stopping a global Western takeover, where everyone would be under the yoke of shady actors conspiring to own everything (who are mostly Jewish).

It is a similar dynamic on PressTV - that our leaders are corrupt is an all-pervading assumption - of course we are being lied to at every level. The global conspiracy of mostly Jewish people is ever present, corrupting everything.

Anti-Semitism doesn't die - it just gets repackaged and re-sold. 

As distasteful as I find it to call people "sheep", it is a metaphor that works all too well: yes, the shepherd sometimes leads the sheep astray, yes the shepherd does have power over them, and sometimes the shepherd is unfair, lazy, stupid, paranoid and wrong. But the shepherd only wants their wool, and the shepherd's dog obeys the rules; the wolf wants them for dinner and has no rules.