Putin versus the BBC

Last week, BBC Panorama shone a bright light on President Putin and allegations of corruption against the Russian leader. At first the programme focuses on Putin’s lifestyle - his expensive watches and tracksuits - and quickly moves on to hearing journalists, former allies and politicians dredge up old accusations: $40 billion in assets and the Cape Idokopas palace. It notes that the CIA and the FBI agree that Putin may be worth $40 billion in assets.

We’ve heard much of this before. However, Panorama does flesh out its coverage with new goodies for its viewers. The US Treasury’s Adam Szubin makes an appearance to call Putin ‘corrupt’ provoking outrage from Russia. There have been calls for evidence to be put forward. It’s obvious the truth isn’t really the point here. The US and Russia are at odds more so than ever. The crisis in Ukraine and the Syrian civil war have brought tensions to the surface.

Of course, this isn’t to say Vladimir Putin is beyond corruption. He’s often described as presiding over a ‘Mafia state’, and with good reason. The allegations against Putin are certainly plausible given the state of Russia’s body politic, yet the more interesting question may be why the BBC would take aim at Putin now. It’s not like corruption and authoritarianism are new to Russia. No immaculate figure could pass through the system and reach its heights. History tells us all we need to know.

Rule by excrement

Under the Yeltsin administration, the level of corruption was so rife there was an investigation into allegations of embezzlement of funds through the refurbishment of the Kremlin. The coterie of oligarchs around President Yeltsin - particularly Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Khodorkovsky - brought in Putin as a new weapon to be deployed against the investigators. Putin did a good job in quashing the investigation. He was soon on track to succeed Yeltsin and become the leader he is today.

This background story is removed from most reportage. It’s particularly inconvenient given the West’s love affair with Russian oligarchs. The British media romanticises figures like Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky. Both men are now portrayed as dissident critics of the Putin regime. Evidently, the West still harbours nostalgia for the Yeltsin era, when the Russian economy was prised wide open, and the state was stripped bare of its regulatory powers. Never mind corruption. Never mind the plight of Chechnya.

The Panorama documentary shows us that the system is based upon patronage throughout a state-embedded elite. This is far from the free-market utopia, which was meant to emerge under Boris Yeltsin. Instead the period of primitive accumulation created the basis, not for market democracy, but for Russian nationalism to be rejuvenated. As a consequence of Yeltsin’s rule, many Russians jokingly equate democracy with rule by excrement. Shitocracy might be the word for it in English.

The best parts of the documentary provided some details of Putin’s inner circle. It turns out Putin has maintained his team from St Petersburg. This includes his old lawyer Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as Russia’s Prime Minister alongside President Putin. Even neighbours and childhood friends have done very well for themselves. Putin’s former assistant Igor Sechin, who now chairs Rosneft, and economist Alexey Miller, now the head of Gazprom.

None of this is very surprising. It’s compatible with the kind of political system preferred by the former KGB agent. An admirer of the conservative French strongman Charles de Gaulle, Putin believes in the confluence of national and corporate interests. The idea being that this guarantees capital will comply with the body national and its needs. He thinks he can unite the powers of the state with the economy. This leaves room for state intervention, protectionism and a lot of corruption.

The key difference between Yeltsin and Putin has set out to block the US in its pursuits. While Yeltsin allowed the Soviet Union to be dismantled, Putin clearly mourns the loss of the Eastern bloc as a buffer region. NATO can no longer be kept away from Russia’s periphery. The crisis in Ukraine emerged out of the tension between NATO expansion and Russian nationalism. Now Putin has intervened in Syria to challenge US policy on a new front. The BBC has clearly taken sides, but this is nothing new.

The role of the BBC

Much like the New York Times, the BBC sets the contours of public debate and its coverage becomes history. Contrary to the popular misconception, the BBC does not have a left-wing bias and its coverage really straddles the centre of politics. This is also something the BBC has in common with the New York Times. It's standpoint really oscillates around the so-called ‘centre-ground’. Yet the corporation is as much constitutive of the centre, the left and the right, as it channels the flow of discourse.

Although the BBC hopes to stand as an impartial intersection, the truth is far more complex. If the BBC wants to get both perspectives on a political issue it usually asks a Conservative and a Labourite to comment. This excludes everything beyond these tribal affiliations. Programmes like Question Time and Newsnight become opportunities for the political class to assert itself. Discussions can only take place within the realm of certain assumptions.

Despite the right-wing accusations of rampant ‘political-correctness’, the BBC was the home of Jeremy Clarkson for many years and Nigel Farage is a regular guest on Question Time. Many BBC journalists were cheerleaders of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Famously, Andrew Marr was eager to herald the vindication of Blair over Iraq. The same was true over Syria. As David Cameron was pushing for bombing in 2013, the BBC aired discussions with hawks Bernard Kouchner, David Aaronovitch and Paul Wolfowitz. The only dissenting voice was Mehdi Hasan, a liberal Muslim journalist.

However, the pro-war bias is not consistent. With the rise of Islamic State, Newsnight allowed Patrick Cockburn to talk freely about the Syrian civil war, and he is far from an advocate of Western intervention. Meanwhile the BBC has, for the most part, supported a narrative around Ukraine favouring the US and the EU over Russia. You can either support the West and its ‘values’, or you’re secretly sympathetic to Russian aggression. Other positions are disregarded from the outside.

‘Objectivity’ is based on the exclusion of particular viewpoints. There is no space for inclusivity here. If you’re beyond the reach of conventional opinion, you will be policed and demonised. For example, you could only be for some kind of austerity and not against it outright. The contours of official truths can only be perceived once you’ve cleaved away everything else. This is only possible if the BBC is partial. In this way, the BBC sets the agenda for the British media. This is why it is both loved and loathed.

This article was first published at Souciant.

Multiple Reagasms.

For a great number of self-proclaimed conservatives Ronald Reagan was a man of great moral integrity. Yet the facts tell a story of a washed up B-movie actor who, while in office, actively vandalised the American economy for the rich to pig-out on the eviscerated entrails of civil society. It wasn't the birth of laissez-faire capitalism out of the death of New Deal liberalism, rather it was accumulation by dispossession. Reaganism only represented a shift in fiscal policy: tax-cuts for the rich combined with greater subsidies for the rich. The covert war that the US had waged against Latin America was stepped up a knotch, leaving tens of thousands of civilians dead. This was at the same time that the US government refused to withdraw support from the Apartheid regime in South Africa and placed Nelson Mandela on the terrorist list where he sat until a couple of years ago. The casual criminality of the US government reached new heights under Ronald Reagan, not least with the convenient failure to impose basic laws to protect workers, which consequently led to a massive increase in illegal firings. It got to the point that the administration was condemned by the UN for the "unlawful use of force" - meaning international terrorism.

Now Seth Rosenfeld exposes Reagan's past as a stoole pigeon in the FBI's McCarthyite campaigns against Hollywood and later the counter-revolution against student radicals and the free-speech movement of the 1960s. As an actor Ronnie was an informer, he snooped on his fellow actors and infiltrated groups that the FBI suspected of "subversive activities". The Hollywood Independent Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions was one such group that the FBI had Reagan infiltrate. It was a very broad-based group with many people of different political views and when Reagan proposed a resolution to repudiate Communism it divided the Committee. At the behest of the FBI Reagan went on to drive a wedge in other groups through similar propositions. This included the American Veterans Committee. He also stole the minutes of group meetings, only for the minutes to find themselves in FBI archives. As President of the Screen Actors Guild Reagan acted to oppose a strike of set-builders for the reason that he believed the Communists were behind the strike.

Reagan even had the FBI open a file on an actress who questioned his position on blacklisting alleged leftist radicals. In 1966 Ronald Reagan railed against the Free-Speech movement in California. He began "There is a leadership gap in Sacramento, a morality and decency gap," before sliming against Berkeley as a home for 'beatniks', 'radicals' and what he described as 'filthy speech' advocates. Reagan went on to spew yet more disdain on "the so-called free-speech advocates," who for him "have no appreciation for freedom" instead he thought it more important to rein them in for 'violating' law and order. Apparently the Berkeley campus had become a rallying point for 'Communists' and 'sexual misconduct' by then. To stamp out the left-wing intellectuals Reagan went on to call for the investigation of academics and demanded that the professors sign a code of conduct. He was bashing the student movement and academic Left to undermine Democrat Pat Brown. As Governor of California Reagan maintained good relations with the FBI and procured secret briefings on protests.


The Governor's office was not just interested in information on left-wing students and academics, even liberal intellectuals and Berkeley's Chancellor Clark Kerr. The right-wing campaign eventually forced Kerr out of office, it was coincidental that Kerr had been a great administrator of public education. Under Clark Kerr the university had opened its doors to thousands of people who would have ordinarily not gone on to higher education. He crafted the master-plan for higher education for this purpose. The institution became one of the most successful public universities in history. It was a model that was emulated around the country and the world. Kerr lifted the ban against socialist speakers on the campus on the grounds that the students should be made 'safe' for ideas rather than making ideas 'safe' for students. Later Kerr was not so active in crushing the Free-Speech movement, yet he was not a supporter - he was attacked by the Left and the Right.

The student movement viewed Clark Kerr as an enemy because he refused to lift bans prohibiting  activists from handing out Civil Rights leaflets on campus. Yet at the same time J Edgar Hoover and Reagan were convinced Clark Kerr was a menace because he wasn't acting to break the back of the student radicals. The FBI used background investigations as a pretext to destroy Kerr and relied on false accusations to do so. It was only Pat Brown who protected Clark Kerr from this campaign. Once the FBI had a friend in office, it was easy to force Kerr out. Unsurprisingly Reagan launched a campaign to smash public education in California and imposed tuition fees on the University of California. This was only the beginning of the New Right's counter-revolution. Rosenfeld was most shocked that the FBI was so active in the use of the exceptional laws of wartime against civilians, particularly students and academia. But it should be remembered that the US has much worse incidents of repression in its history.


At the same time that the FBI was acting to destroy Clark Kerr and backing Reagan's bid for Governorship the Bureau was running COINTELPRO. The target of the operations included the Socialist Workers Party, Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It went from surveillance and attempts at subversion to outright assassination. The Black Panther organiser Fred Hampton was murdered Gestapo style by the Chicago Police in collusion with the FBI. This was exposed around the same time as Watergate and yet it is virtually unkown by comparison. The mainstream liberal commentariat was far more concerned by the sight of Richard Nixon trying to destroy the Democratic Party than an active campaign by the Establishment against Civil Rights and the New Left. COINTELPRO went as far back as Eisenhower and ran right up until Nixon. This shouldn't really surprise anyone. The FBI was founded during Wilson's Red Scare, a shameful period in America's history, as a national political police force to crush dissent.