Elite liberal newspapers like The Guardian<\/em> cannot even report on a summit meeting between Presidents Xi and Trump without making disparaging and belittling comments about President Putin. Their Washington correspondent headlined his story “Trump swoons over soulmate Xi – are you feeling jealous, Vladimir?”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n And The New York Times<\/em> regularly chokes on using President Putin’s appropriate title in references to him. That denigrating stance is exemplified by The New York Times<\/em> op-ed by the late former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright<\/a>, in which she described him as “small and pale” and “almost reptilian”. Such language would not pass muster according to the paper’s own community comment guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n An alternative view of Vladimir Putin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The coverage is intentional. We lap it up as it resonates with our prejudices, thereby reinforcing our allegiance to the ruling narrative. But what if the coverage is false? What if it is intended to manipulate and shape public thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not an issue of conspiracy, but rather how social systems work. We know we have a dominant ideology which we all partake of. That ideology is produced by and suits our ruling political economic interests, which is why it is dominant. It also guides media editors who partake of it too, and it shapes what the media publishes because the media wants to make profits and it does so by selling stories that fit comfortably with our existing thinking (i.e., our ideology).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given that, watch this off-the-cuff interview (September 2026) with President Putin<\/strong><\/a>. You may not agree with his point of view, but one cannot deny his sophisticated intelligence and evidenced reasoning. The contrast with our own leaders is stark (consider Messrs. Trump and Biden in the US; Messrs. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Keir Starmer in the UK; Messrs. Mertz and Olaf Scholz in Germany; and Monsieur Macron in France). By any standard, Vladimir Putin is an extraordinary political leader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Personally, I agree substantially with the ideas he expresses. But regardless of that, the important point is our media coverage is shockingly disrespectful and dishonest. Comparisons to the insane murderous Adolf Hitler are better read as proof of our own bad faith. The aim is to deepen our existing hostile attitudes, thereby making it even more difficult to understand what motivates “the other” and to block consideration they might be justified. That augurs very badly for all of us, and especially badly for Europe and Ukraine. It also spells grave danger regarding China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toxic hegemonic ideology: the defining political problem of our time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Parenthetically, I see similar processes at work in the coverage of our economy. That helps explain why Neoliberalism endures despite its worsening record of failing society. In my view, toxic hegemonic ideology is the defining political problem of our time. Right-wing political fantasies and movements like QAnon are definitely a challenge, but they pale in comparison to the damage done by the ruling economic and geopolitical ideology that is shared by Western political elites – by Democrats and Republicans in the US, Conservatives and Labor in the UK, and Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Continental Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n CLICK HERE TO WATCH<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been grappling with the problem of ideology (economic, political, geopolitical). How do we get people to reconsider narratives and beliefs which are held with such deep conviction they automatically dismiss other ways of understanding? Those narratives and beliefs have been drip-fed us, as if they were mother’s milk, by a system which constantly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-political-economy","category-us-policy","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2895"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2931,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions\/2931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomaspalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/cpsprodpb\/14F82\/production\/_123409858_dssfeb25edition.jpg.webp\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n