The eXile Feature Story September 07, 2007
The World’s Sleaziest Magazine
By Mark Ames
Sometimes they loved him, that is. And sometimes they didn't. Kinda depended on the day of the week.
Keep in mind that in this relationship, Putin is the only one who's been consistent. When he came to power in 2000, he promoted the siloviki, shut down opposition media, and brought all other sources of power - the Duma, Federation Council, and regional governors, under the Kremlin's control in what was called the "vertikalnaya vlast'." It was all out in the open. Everyone knew it.
At first, The Economist was skeptical - about everything, ranging from Putin's credentials as a liberal to an even more serious concern for Western investors, whether or not he could really get the chaos under control, which in his first year or two was really the main concern of Western investors--and The Economist:
"Though Mr Putin has said he will 'eliminate' the oligarchs 'as a class', the early signs are not encouraging." (May 13, 2000)
"It is not just that reform has bogged down, that economic growth is fizzling out, and that the Chechen war is dragging on unwinnably; the Kremlin's own authority also seems to be fraying." (March 13, 2001)
Regarding the media crackdown, in a rare moment of truth-telling The Economist explained, "Independent media in the provinces of Russia have been shriveling for years, under the combined assault of powerful regional bosses and their business friends. Now the same is happening at the centre. But, for the time being at least, information is still available to anyone with an Internet connection or a decent radio." (April 17, 2001)
That provided some solace then, but is never mentioned today, even though any Russian with a radio or Internet connection is still in the same position they were in on April 17, 2001. Read that quote again, and again...it's so incredible in its complete contradiction to everything The Economist says now that I can almost feel my hair falling out of my scalp...
A few months later, the magazine had this to say:
"At home and abroad, things have never looked brighter for Russia's president, Vladimir Putin....At home, the economy is still growing and reforms continue." (Nov 3, 2001. "Hope Gleams Anew")
Wait...didn't they just say...you can't do that, can you? Let's pull up another 2001 quote:
"Russia's opinion polls still show Mr Putin as very popular. But they are not completely trustworthy - and in any case his standing is artificially bolstered by a servile state-run television." (March 17, 2001.)
Ah, that's what I likes to hear. Yeah, give me more like that. Again, again! Another quote:
"Mr Putin's huge popularity means that his new foreign policy faces no direct threat. Most Russians are delighted to see their country more popular and respected, and glad to avoid a direct entanglement in Afghanistan. Even slow and patchy economic reforms are better than none." (November 3, 2001)
Wait - you can't flip-flop like that. Or can you? Yup indeed, if you're The Economist, you can go a-flippin' and a-floppin' all you want, on any issue you please. Even the most sacred issue of all: Putin's human rights record:
"Other western allies, such as Turkey, have plenty of blots on their human-rights record too." (May 18, 2002 "What Russia Wants")
Wow. So first it was unsettling and foreboding, and these days it's Hitlerian, but way back in 2002, it's just... a "blot." And blots like these are par for the course for the West's friends, so therefore it's not really an issue.
By now, it's pretty obvious why The Economist decided to switch to pillow-talk mode with Putin: In the months after 9/11, it looked like he was going to be America's best, most submissive friend in the whole authoritarian world.
To put it in their own words, "On acute issues, such as American involvement in the former Soviet empire, Mr Putin is shunting Russia's policy in the right direction, towards accepting the inevitable." (May 18, 2002)
Inevitable indeed. They really called that one. But at the time, they were gloating like a clique of English villains proud of their own deception: "That's a good Pootie-Poot! Good boy! Now go run along and play with, Blair. Go on, be a good doggie!"
The Economist's flip-flopping is so over-the-top absurd and unapologetic that it reads like a scene out of a bad Mel Brooks skit, with Harvey Korman playing Edward Lucas, by turns grotesquely sweet-talking or contemptuously dismissing the character of Putin, played by Cloris Leachman. One minute Putin's popularity is "not trustworthy" and "artificially bolstered by a servile state-run television," a few months later, "Most Russians are delighted" and "Mr Putin's huge popularity means that his new foreign policy faces no direct threat."
In the sleaziest of all of these flip-flops, they even managed, in November 2001, to brush off a future martyr's threat to her safety, balancing it against an inexplicably placed PR exercise:
"Change is least visible in politics...The squeeze on the independent press continues: Anna Politovskaya, the most intrepid Russian reporter dealing with Chechnya, has fled to Vienna after receiving threats. But the competent and well-publicised salvaging of the Kursk did strike a good note, in sharp contrast to the lies and confusion that surrounded the tragedy of its sinking as it unfolded in August last year."
I-bee-bee-bee-bee-whuhhh? So what you're saying is, Politkovskaya had to flee for her life, but hey, didja see the way they pulled up those Kursk corpses? Pretty impressive, wasn't it? Yeah, so, how 'bout them Red Sox, eh? Dang, lost my train-a thought here... I forgot what we were talking about. Oh yeah, Putin... Right, what a guy! (Incidentally, speaking of flip-flops, they supported John Kerry in 2004...after supporting Bush in 2000, and the Iraq War in 2002-3.)
So what changed? Why did Putin's crackdown on the media go from being a problem, then to a blot not unlike other blots, then to something you contrast to a successful corpse-salvage mission in Murmansk, to... a clear sign of Fascism?
What changed is Yukos. The arrest of oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October, 2003. The darling of everyone from Exxon and Chevron to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle. The man who argued that Russia should have supported the war in Iraq, and should orient its oil towards the West, rather than China. The man who, in the end, tried and failed to change the power structure in Russia.
The Economist has admitted as much: "If the emergence of Yukos epitomised Russia's transition from a planned economy to the wild capitalism of the 1990s, which for all its excesses thrived on private initiative, its destruction was a turning-point towards an authoritarian, corporatist state." (May 10, 2007)
What "excesses" might Yukos have committed? Murder, if you believe ex-Economist writer David Satter. Mass theft, if you believe even Khodorkovsky's candid account of how Yukos' assets were acquired. Not that that's a big secret. But you see, admitting that into the record would sorta muddy up the picture. So that all gets passed off as "excesses," which could really mean anything, like "excess of free-market zeal." It's a whitewash, just like when Putin seemed pliable, The Economist downgraded his human rights record to mere "blot" status.
This is how The Economist has always worked in Russia, its hand constantly on two dials: a "sunny side" dial, and a "bleakness" dial, the latter ending in Fascism.
Take this example from the Yeltsin years, a period where The Economist's record is so appallingly deceitful that it would require a separate article, and scores of beta-blockers just to get through alive. In late 1997, when it still looked like Western financial institutions were reaping huge profits and stood to earn more, The Economist said of Yeltsin and his notoriously hated "privatization" lieutenant, Anatoly Chubais:
"Market forces have grown stronger with each year, but may not yet be strong enough to propagate themselves unaided. Their chances would be much better if there were a hundred more people in government of Mr. Chubais's calibre, or even a score. Mr. Yeltsin, at least, appears to believe that there isn't one. Un-Marxist as it might be to argue as much, great men are needed to do great things. Mr. Yeltsin, in his way, is one such. And Mr. Chubais, in his way, is another."
Exactly four months later, as the IMF-backed pyramid scheme was unraveling and Westerners started getting burned, The Economist changed its mind, but in smarmy known-it-all language suggesting it had known this all along: "Russia's institutions being worryingly weak and the powers of its president frighteningly strong, it is vital that the man in charge is beholden to neither demagogues nor billionaires...Unfortunately, as age, vodka and the wooziness of barely diluted power get the better of him, Mr Yeltsin is utterly failing to do this part of his job....Once a Titan, rightly lauded for helping to pull down one of the world's most evil regimes, he now seems to lurch, disaster-prone, from one fit of bad temper to the next. Poor Russia."
Yes, it was so long ago that he was "rightly lauded," I mean, how could anyone possibly have guessed he'd turn out to be so bad four long months later? It's like when Austin Powers discovered that Liberace was gay: "Who would have guessed? I never saw that one coming!"
The Economist even played their Fascism card back in the Yeltsin years...although to entirely different purposes, as this 1998 email from scholar Anatol Lieven to David Johnson shows:
"Dear David, attached is part of my book on Chechnya...The relevance of the argument is demonstrated by the latest article in The Economist: "Could Russia Go Fascist?" - which translates as - "Shoudn't we give billions of dollars to support Yeltsin and our darling Young Reformer Chubais because Russians are intrinsically given to imperialism and aggression and Chubais assures us that he and Yeltsin are all that is standing between Russia and Fascism." Some of the people you can indeed fool all the time. Yours, Anatol Lieven"
In 1998, The Economist lied about a Russian Fascist threat in order to prop up a wildly unpopular, corrupt regime, which had overseen the total collapse of its economy, devastated the health of its citizens, and forever ruined the concepts of "liberalism," "free markets" and "free speech" in the minds of those who survived it...all because it seemed to benefit us. Today, they're lying again about the Fascist threat, only this time in order to bring down a highly popular (albeit corrupt) regime that has overseen the unexpected revival of its economy and power. All because Putin isn't our bitch.
How did The Economist get to such a vile state?
The horrible answer is, it's always been this vile. If you go back to The Economist's beginnings in Victorian England, you'll find, for example, magazine's brave stand on the Great Irish Famine, the English-led genocide that left up to two million Irish dead. When a cry went up to stop the famine, The Economist countered, "It is no man's business to provide for another. If left to the natural law of distribution, those who deserve more would obtain it."
And speaking of Hitlers, in the mid-1930s, The Economist even found time to praise you-know-who: "Herr Hitler is showing encouraging signs of statesmanship." Yes, they really did write that.
The first and last witty aside that The Economist ever made.
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