I agree with essentially everything you said, however, I will give a slight clarification and say that I was referring to the domestic RT created for the Russian market, and not the English/American centered branches; as I am Belarusian, and thus speak Russian.
This is why I found the Americanization of the channel even more infuriating, as RT has become a literal carbon copy of Fox News except in Russian. Feeding the most disgusting and reactionary elements of American conservative talking points directly to the Russian population and the Russian overseas diaspora. What was once an amazing source of news is now worse then tabloid drivel. At best I’ll roll my eyes, or at worst I’ll feel like I’m listening to a Mien Kampf audiobook.
It got to the point where when my sweetheart Babushka told me about how the chemicals they were putting in chocolate are turning children trans as part of a plot to destroy America by infecting it with removed values and reducing the white population…. I had a small aneurysm before promptly setting up parental controls to block the channel on her TV and telling her the channel signal was having issues.
I didn’t even know that RT was big in Russia itself, i thought it was mainly an export product so to speak. It’s disconcerting to hear that Russians are getting fed this Americanized slop. I knew that Russia has plenty of its own domestic reactionary media but i assumed at least it would have an authentically Russian character to it. It really doesn’t need to import American conspiracy theories and the American style of media programming, that’s just another form of cultural colonization. It’s good that Russians by and large realized that Western liberalism is a detrimental cultural import, now they need to realize the same thing about Western conservatism as well.
