Tucker Carlson's propaganda on Russia is sickening
We on the right often rightly point out the left's fetishism of Europe, Russia and China, as well as Venezuela and Cuba and other socialist countries. These countries hire western propogandists to spout out nonsense that is positive about their countries, and sickeningly politicians or political pundits use this to push an insanely biased narrative about the supposed superiority of our enemies and their standard of living and why we should just give up and stop fighting these genocidal maniacs because hey, "at least the trains run on time!". Bernie Sanders infamous trips to the soviet union, including a honeymoon where he was married by the Soviet Union, highlight this where his criticisms were sparse and he spouted out propaganda points about how clean and nice certain parts of the show cities foreigners were allowed in to were. Beijing Biden has earned his name fairly, and so have people like Eric Swalwell who was sleeping with a China spy "Feng Feng", or Diane Feinstein with a Chinese agent driver for more than a decade. But while we ruthlessly mock the left for supporting the nightmarish shitholes that are Cuba and Venezuela, there are some on the right, or who claim to be on the right, who rush to the defense of these same socialist shitholes. It is entirely that the west is seeking to emulate Russia and Cuba and Venezuela that places like Canada or the UK have lowering standards of living right now and high amounts of inflation. We need to move away from socialist policies, not continue to copy them. However, for all of our problems, they are still nowhere near as bad as places like Russia or China. I said some time ago we need to be prepared for some people on the right-wing to actually be working for Russia, or working for China, just like many on the left. Tucker Carlson at this point is being deliberately disingenuous about his talking points. These ideas are easily disprovable, and aligns perfectly with Kremlin talking points. While I don't believe interviewing Putin is in and of itself pro Russian propaganda, despite his softballing questions that were so weak even Putin himself called out Tucker for be too propagandistic, straight up lying about the standard of living in Russia or socialist countries is absolutely absurd and is designed to make westerners think Russia is some kind of Utopia and the west is somehow awful by comparison. And while there are certainly problems in the west right now, many afflicted by pro socialist Putin type leaders, emulating Russia would be a catastrophe for the west. Russia also has virtually no freedom of speech and regularly assassinates journalists, is ran by super rich elitists oligarchs who openly run the government at the expense of the poor, and is actually drafting it's people to fight in a war in Ukraine (unlike Tucker's hysterical fears that his kids will somehow be drafted by Ben Shapiro to fight in Ukraine or Israel despite no-one ever suggesting a draft). Because this apparently isn't obvious to some people, allow me to explain further.
From statistics in 2021 [1], the figures showed that Russians spent on average around 29% of their income on food, while in the U.S. they spent 6.7%. This mean that Russians spent about 1/3rd of their money buying groceries just for food, without including Vodka, eating out at restraunts, or other groceries, while Americans spent around 1/16th. Russians spend 5 times the amount of their income on food as Americans do; if you think your grocery bill is bad in America, it's 5 times that in Russia, relative to their income. This is higher than obviously poor places like Mexico (26.2%), Iran (28.7%), Saudi Arabia (20.5%), Venezuela (18.6%), South Africa (21.3%), and Greece (17.6%), just for example. It's only slightly below places like Pakistan and Vietnam, and of course Belarus which is a Russian ally and has about the same amount of spending on food. Standard of living in Russia is laughably bad, and it's a common pro-Kremlin talking point to talk about how food prices are "somehow good actually" and things are doing well and more importantly the west is doing much worse (even though it's not). In Russia, the 100 dollars Tucker spends is close to 1/4 the monthly paycheck of the average Russian, which is far, far worse than the percentage of what Americans spend on groceries, even despite the recent 20-40% spike due to inflation largely from Biden and the Democrat spending bills. As bad as it may feel right now in the west, inflation has been far, far worse in China and Russia, and has been this way for the past 30 years, if not longer if we decided to go back even further to the Soviet Union. All of the data shows this, but so does anecdotal evidence. If you talk to any Russian person they'll tell you they're struggling, even in rich cities like Moscow, and if you wander outside of the place where the government corruptly dumps all the money in to the hands of Rich oligarchs and show areas for tourists, it appears even worse. For example, in America, the average American eats about 124 kilograms of meat a year, where as in Russia from 2002 to 2020 it's range between 50-80. Russians eat more cheap vegetables like bread and potatoes and their diet has less protein and vitamins in it. The average Russian knows it has only gotten worse since the start of the war, with the meat consumption falling dramatically and replaced by groats and less savory foods.
Housing prices are similarly bad. The price to income ratio [2] of housing in America is roughly 4.1%, while in Russia it's 16.1%, and in china nearly 30%. Europe by comparison is twice as high as the U.S. at around 10% for most countries, along with Canada and Japan, but this is still half that of Russia. Housing as a percentage of income is 4 times that of America in Russia, while food as a value of income is 5 times higher. Russians spend the bulk of their income on food and housing, and have very little left over for luxuries. This isn't just due to a difference in overall GDP, but purchasing power parity. The average Russian's money goes less far in his own country, and things are far more expensive relative to America. After the war in Ukraine it's only gotten worse, with some reports that food prices have gone up to 40% of the average Russian's income, and many houses are freezing in the winter and are without power. [3][4] Russia's economy is hemorrhaging right now both under international sanctions and terrible economic decisions like BRICS, as well as it's poor decisions on the war with little to show for it, so Moscow is desperate for propaganda to paint Russian life as idealic and far better in comparison to westerners. While it may be easy for westerners to believe that because things have gotten worse in the west, and it's easy to believe it's better in some other country they want to believe is real and idolize, the truth is Russia and China are far, far worse than America right now, in fact by the numbers orders of magnitude worse. 22.6% of Russians do not have indoor plumbing. In rural Russia, almost 2/3rd's have no access to indoor toilets, 48.1% use outhouses and 18.4% do not have a sewage system. The figure (page 180) has since gone up to 27.4% of people as of 2020, as in it's gotten worse. 13% of people living even in the rich cities like Moscow still don't have plumbing either. So even where the big cities where all the money is concentrated, 13% of people don't have toilets or sewage systems, and sewage just piles up in the street. More than a third of Russia's roads are unpaved and track mud everywhere, in fact even in many of the Big cities, including Moscow. The economy is more than 50% socialist, or government ran, with it being approximately 40% in 2005, and now well over that past 2020.
Bear in mind also that Russia has strict gun control and freedom of speech controls, and regularly assassinates journalists, often with polonium darts, a radiotoxic poison that is virtually guaranteed to kill someone slowly from cancer. There are strict movement controls and you need a passport to travel internally to certain areas or aren't allowed to leave, just like China. If you think if you are from a poor region Moscow deliberately starves and that you can go to a big city like any America could go to New York or LA, you'd be wrong. It has to be approved by the state specifically. People cannot generally go to certain areas or even leave the country unless they are rich. Russia's immigration has doubled the immigrant population from 5% to 10%, and has put a terrorist Chechenia warlord in charge who admitted to doing terror attacks across Russia, openly finances and arms groups like the Taliban and Houthi rebels, and Viktor Bout, a convicted FSB arms trafficker, admitted as much and Russia traded for him. Sex slavery and prostitution is common in certain Islamic regions of Russia and is even encouraged by many elites who frequent there. Russia also is responsible for the bulk of Islamic migrants heading to Europe and disproportionately chooses to send terrorists there on purpose. [5][6] Putin has said that he believes Russia's version of Christianity is more compatible with Islam than it is with western Catholicism or Protestantism, which is not only heretical but explicitly anti-western. Russian propogandists laugh that European girls are being raped by these terrorists they help to finance and send to Europe. Russia has one of the highest domestic abuse rates, murder rates and abortion rates in Europe, and that's according to Russian propaganda. This is before getting in to the hundreds of thousands killed in Ukraine, including their own young men drafted in to the war when Russia is facing a demographic crisis (a fertility rate of 1.5 or lower, much lower than the west), and in Moldova, Georgia, Chechnya. You can try to argue that the U.S. somehow magically forced Russia to invade Ukraine because it needed a buffer zone to stop an invasion from four alternate directions of Finland, Eastern Europe, Alaska or the middle east (NATO already borders Russia, including America itself with Alaska) but it's harder to use this argument to justify every single invasion and mass murder of the Russians going back since the 90's, or right before the Soviet union collapsed when it killed 3 million people in Afghanistan, 30% of the population of the time which is what destabilized the middle east, not the U.S. (that and Saddam draining the Mesopotamian marshes).
Other than a complete lack of freedom, such as online, in journalism, to walk in public or do what you want, the standard of living is far worse, and on par with places like Iran, Pakistan, Kenya, Mexico and India. It is an absurd pro kremlin talking point to act like the standard of living is not only all fine during the war, but somehow better than the west. And Tucker repeating this garbage is beyond grotesque. Just as how Labor party leader Jeremy Corbyn praised Osama Bin Laden and Treduea and others praised Fidel Castro after he died, this must be called out. Mass murdering regimes are evil and tricking the west in to accepting this kind of rule would completely destroy us. There are however many bewildering or absurd statements Tucker has made recently that feed in to the pro Russian narrative but are more specific. Chiefly that the Subways are cleaner and run on time, that somehow Americans will be drafted to fight and die in a war in Ukraine and Israel due to the likes of Ben Shapiro (of which Russia is the only country drafting it's men to fight in Ukraine), and that Moscow is a much cleaner, prettier and better city than any city in the west. Theses are also easily disprovable, and it’s a huge shock Tucker would do this at all, unless you’ve been paying attention.
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