The renewed attack on Russian media is from the same playbook as the one employed by the Third Reich, Maria Zakharova has said
The latest attack on Russian media is part of a broader, deeply Russophobic, and supremacist campaign against the country, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, drawing parallels between the present-day US and Nazi Germany.
The spokeswoman made the remarks on Saturday while hosted by Russian broadcaster TVC. The discussion primarily revolved around the announcement made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken the previous day of new sanctions targeting Russian media outlets, including RT. He accused the network of being “engaged in covert influence activities… and functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence.”
RT has been trying to somehow undermine democracy in the US and elsewhere, and erode global support for Ukraine, Blinken claimed.
The new measures are an open declaration of an information war on Russia, Zakharova stated. “This is not about sanctions, not about some restrictive measures. This is a declaration of information war, a direct one, without any alternative,” she said.
The spokeswoman drew parallels between the present-day US and Nazi Germany, accusing Washington of waging a broader campaign against Russia and its media.
“This information war is based upon a distinctive Russophobic, nationalist ideology, the very same one we’ve repeatedly seen in history, including the most visible one in the 1930s. The methodology is the same, the driver is the same, and the technological means are different. But it is all the same,” Zakharova said.
The campaign includes pressure through purportedly legal means “guised as laws,” as well as open “bullying,” a tactic repeatedly used by followers of such hateful ideologies before, Zakharova suggested. This “bullying” and “hounding” come in various forms, such as “segregation” and “cancel culture.”
The campaign affects US domestic affairs, as one of its goals is actually to “restrict free speech for their own American citizens, and, ultimately, their right to speech altogether,” Zakharova stressed.
