The American Who Tells Russia How Bad Things Are in America

[Zangeiti]

Alexander Nefyodov A man who moved from Russia to america to spew propaganda on american society ( allow me to tell you that this is not mine i thought it would be a good topic to talk about and do not wish to take credit from another persons hard work.)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...366755234.html



alexander Nefyodov hears it every Thursday when he tunes in from the Arctic port city of Murmansk. "It's so interesting to hear from an American about how America really works," he says.

It isn't quite the radio of days past. Soviet-era beacons like Radio Liberty and the BBC have lost their place on Russian airwaves, and now the Kremlin is offering a fresher voice: Tim Kirby, an expatriate from the suburbs of Cleveland, who says he wants Russian citizenship and says Joseph Stalin was a better leader than he has been portrayed in history books.


Omar Lesnikov
Tim Kirby, from Ohio, in the studios of Moscow's Radio Mayak.

On radio shows on Moscow's state-controlled Radio Mayak and in frequent appearances on state television, Mr. Kirby is making a name for himself inside Russia as a kind of Kremlin-appointed Joe the Plumber who explains a broken America to Russian listeners.

"We Russians think that whenever something goes bad here that it must be better in America," says Mr. Nefyodov, 25, who works in a small family wholesale grocery business. Now he says he knows "that things are worse or the same over there."

As the Kremlin rallied support for its ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans imposed late last year, Mr. Kirby, who is 31, appeared on prime-time talk shows to say that one quarter of American children take pills that affect their brains, and that they are endangered by religious sects whose members oppose medical care or dance around poisonous snakes. "Every 6 or 10 years a snake bites a child, the child dies and that's the news of the day and the process repeats itself," he told a national television audience in February.


Controversial American-expatriate radio host Tim Kirby is making a name for himself in Russia as a kind of Kremlin-appointed "Joe The Plumber" on why America is broken. Excerpts from his appearances on Russian television shows. Photo: Omar Lesnikov

When demonstrations erupted around the country over Vladimir Putin's plan to return to the Kremlin in late 2011, Mr. Kirby took to the airwaves to say that Mr. Putin was just taking a page from Washington's playbook. "In America there is a tendency for whoever is sitting in power to be the winner," he said. "In Russia it's the same: Putin is there, we understand it's best not to risk anything."

Mr. Kirby's career is flowering as the Kremlin ramps up a campaign against U.S. influence in Russia, warning that Western-paid agents are trying to undermine the country's stability under the guise of civic action and human rights campaigns.

He has a regular show on RT, the Kremlin's lavishly funded international broadcast channel, whose boss calls it a weapon for "information war." Last month the channel aired a report calling America one of the worst places to live, with quality-of-life indicators down there with Papua New Guinea. A state-run newspaper quoted a top Russian veterinary official saying American milk is laced with hormones that sprout whiskers on women.

TIM KIRBY

Since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia has been a magnet for Americans disillusioned with the American dream. In the 1920s, socialist labor leader Big Bill Haywood fled to Moscow to escape espionage charges, and today his ashes are buried behind a plaque in the Kremlin wall. In the 1970s and 1980s, singer and songwriter Dean Reed toured here and gave the Soviet Union moral support for the war in Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall.

Mr. Kirby disputes comparisons to Soviet-era American ideologues, and says Russia simply isn't suited for Western-style democracy. That has gotten him hate mail from some Russians, including a message from one who warned he "may one day be found facedown in a swamp." (That was an apparent reference to Mr. Reed, who was discovered dead in a lake near his East Berlin home six weeks after an appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes" when he compared Ronald Reagan to Stalin.)

He urges Russians to take pride in their past, and stop looking west for role models. He often appears on television in a flannel shirt, and his message is simple: The American dream is a myth for most Americans, and better realized in Russia. "Maybe the American dream does exist somewhere, but not where I'm from," he said in a video interview.

Mr. Kirby humbly offers his own travails in America to exemplify the dream's crackup.

He grew up in a rundown suburb of Cleveland, where his father struggled with deadbeat clients in the furniture-refinishing business and saw their house plummet in value when the neighborhood was hit by white flight, he says. Mr. Kirby says his upbringing as a white minority in his neighborhood left him "uncomfortable" in polite society and hostile to authority. In high school, he says, he was forced by school administrators to pay weekly visits to a psychologist after he was identified by fellow students as someone "who would pull off a Columbine shooting."

Mr. Kirby decided to explore his Slavic roots—he says his grandparents were Polish—and after college he joined the Peace Corps, which sent him to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

He ended up in Moscow in 2007, where he found work designing videogames. His media debut came that year as a guest on an adult podcast where the hosts quizzed him on American sexual attitudes, asked him to say swear words in Russian and giggled at his accent.

The show wasn't successful, but Mr. Kirby performed well and soon moved on to offbeat video reports promoting tourism in Russia. He was hired by RT, the Kremlin-financed television station, after giving an impressive presentation on a cucumber festival in the provincial city of Kirov, he says.

He also made acquaintances close to the Kremlin. Leaders of a Kremlin-financed youth group invited him to join a handpicked group of students meeting former President Dmitry Medvedev, he says.

Mr. Kirby got his own talk show on the state-controlled Radio Mayak, a station founded by the Soviet Communist Party to counterbalance Western influence. For an hour on Sundays he invited guests to talk politics. Some of his guests were Russian ideologues who praise Stalin as an effective manager who forged Russia into a superpower.

Radio Mayak says it doesn't know precisely how many listeners tuned into Mr. Kirby's shows, but they say he's a hit. Russia's Ministry of Communications rated it the best political talk show in Russia in 2012, but the format was abruptly changed last summer after Mr. Kirby got an on-air tongue-lashing from a Kremlin critic for suggesting fascism needn't be outlawed. Now he appears on Thursdays, as a regular guest of another talk show host. The station said the move was a promotion, so more listeners could hear him as they drive to work.

Mr. Kirby also shoots English-language opinion pieces on the Kremlin cable channel, RT. "I always wanted to affect society in a positive way, and now I can," he says.

[Atrea]

What is the point of posting this?

You haven't given any of your thoughts on it, and it is very hard to actually sit and read.
You also haven't given any link to where the article was written (which would have been more helpful than posting a wall of text), so we can't even see it for ourselves.

This topic is of little discussion value.

[Grissym]

Well since some of terms are unfamiliar to me, some of this was lost to me.

But basically this guy is trying to tell Russia that "being more like the USA" is not all it's cracked up to be? Or did I completely miss this by not knowing who these people are or the parties being talked about?

edit

What the first response said. I'm not quite sure where you're heading with this. You didn't really make a point to lead the thread in discussion.

[Reg]

We have a group that dances around poisonous snakes? I'm not doubting it, I just haven't heard of that one lol

Propaganda is fun. I kind of miss the Cold War days, other than the looming threat of nuclear destruction. Two countries that seem hell bent on hating each other for funsies.

[Olo]

forced by school administrators to pay weekly visits to a psychologist after he was identified by fellow students as someone "who would pull off a Columbine shooting

Sounds like a cool dude

[Deleted]

He's trying to tell that US will soon collapse by it's own ideas and it's better not to imitate them.

Mr. Kirby's career is flowering as the Kremlin ramps up a campaign against U.S. influence in Russia, warning that Western-paid agents are trying to undermine the country's stability under the guise of civic action and human rights campaigns.

[Deleted]

Well contrast is always nice; but extremes are not welcome in my book.
Yes it is nice that someone tells them the USA isn't paradise and they can make mistakes too and have poor and sick people as well. But telling them to look at Stalin as a rolemodel or inspiration, isn't a good idea in my opinion.

[Deleted]

Says Joseph Stalin was a better leader than he has been portrayed in history books.

Well for stalin to be a worse leader than told in history books would be impossible

[DEATHETERNAL]

Its Russian state media; the state media of the original third world country. What more would you expect than this?

Also on Stalin, he was a great leader in that he had a great ability to lead. The downer is that he used that great ability to lead to kill more people than Hitler.

[Atrea]

Its Russian state media; the state media of the original third world country. What more would you expect than this?

Also on Stalin, he was a great leader in that he had a great ability to lead. The downer is that he used that great ability to lead to kill more people than Hitler.

This 'original third world country' was the first to put something into space, the first to put a man in space, and is still a world leader in aerospace.

Every day you seem to surpass yourself in displays of ignorance.

[Deleted]

Lmao, you're so stupid deatheternal it's funny.

Russia gains first world status in 7 years, meanwhile the US puts tax payers into the useless imperialistic army while refusing citizens basic healthcare or education with a steadily declining economy bringing countless unemployed and often forcing them to sleep in dirt.

Russia will become a developed country with low inflation, a sizable middle class, and much slower economic growth rates in just seven years according to research from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Ironically the research argues that the country’s problems, such as a declining population, will become the catalysts for these changes and will actually drive the country to improvement in internal consumption.

“By the year 2020, Russia will turn into a developed country thanks mainly to its demographic problems,” the research by Vladimir Osakovsky of Bank of America Merrill Lynch suggests.

The Russian Ministry of Economic Development also supported this concept, Finmarket.ru reports. Economists believe that scarce human resources will force employers to compete for qualified workers. Hence higher salaries will boost internal consumption. Experts of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development however have disagreed with such a notion.

According to analysts of the Russian Higher School of Economics, “in the long term perspective of the world economy development before 2060 Russia’s share in the global economy is steadily declining (as opposed to the recent long term forecast of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development).” They named the demographic problem as a major reason bashing Russia’s apparent decline.

According to Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist at Renaissance Capital, the existing demographics data are not enough to draw this conclusion.

“We do know that demographics are an issue for this country and we do know that the population is declining creating some of the conditions for Russia to become a more Western-like economy. But we also have to take into consideration such factors as the accumulation of capital and the productivity of the remaining labor force. So I think that looking out from now it’s difficult to say what we’ll become in ten years, it’s more a matter of speculation,” Tchakarov told RT Business.

As for the inflation level and the GDP growth, the economist expresses his agreement with his American colleagues: “We have already seen a considerable reduction in inflation in the last couple of years which is mainly due to the Central Bank’s policies as it decided to change its targeting from the exchange rate to inflation, and I think it will stay the case. As far as the GDP is concerned, I think we’ll be seeing a slower growth rate. For example, between the two major crises, the internal one of 1999 and the international recession of 2008, Russia’s economy was growing at 7% per year. Now the tempo has already slowed down to 4-5% per year, which is natural for any country along its route of development.”

“I think from now on we certainly will not see 7% growth in Russia’s economy, it will stay somewhere between 3-4% per year,” concluded the expert.

From russiatoday, the news network based in washington and moscow that have often been able to offend putin on national television while reporters in the US are getting jailed for throwing some verbal abuse to the right-wing fascist amish moron mitt romney.

I know why you bash my home country and that's because you're the typical american redneck sipping coca cola all day long while being slightly overweight constantly jumping on anti-russia bandwagons just because it's cool to do so.

Infracted.

[Xenofreak]

Lmao, you're so stupid deatheternal it's funny.

Russia gains first world status in 7 years, meanwhile the US puts tax payers into the useless imperialistic army while refusing citizens basic healthcare or education with a steadily declining economy bringing countless unemployed and often forcing them to sleep in dirt.

-snip-

From russiatoday, the news network based in washington and moscow that have often been able to offend putin on national television while reporters in the US are getting jailed for throwing some verbal abuse to the right-wing fascist amish moron mitt romney.

I know why you bash my home country and that's because you're the typical american redneck sipping coca cola all day long while being slightly overweight constantly jumping on anti-russia bandwagons just because it's cool to do so.

Wait, what? Okay, first off, we do have basic education for everyone. No one is ever refused emergency care, there is also medicare and medicaid. Our "countless unemployed" with our higher rate of unemployment than normal at the moment is about the high side of average for most European countries. Can't lie and say that there aren't homeless, but there are also a number of homeless shelters and soup kitchens for such individuals. No reporters have been jailed for criticizing Romney. Nor were any jailed for criticizing Bush when he was president, or for criticizing Obama now.

It's also rather hypocritical to come in here spouting about deatheternal's ignorance while spouting your own ignorance about the US and straight out flaming him.

[Kasierith]

Its Russian state media; the state media of the original third world country. What more would you expect than this?

Also on Stalin, he was a great leader in that he had a great ability to lead. The downer is that he used that great ability to lead to kill more people than Hitler.

Ya, two things.

First off, the Soviet Union was second world. The "three world" system was pretty much American propaganda that put the US and it's European allies as first, anyone communist as second, and anyone else as third. What's more, it suffered years of financial and social decay, completely collapsed, went through almost a decade of mass civil disorder and chaos, and eventually came out as still being one of the strongest countries in the world. You really can't just handwave that away.

Second, Stalin was actually a very powerful leader. Being good at leading and being horrendously evil are not mutually exclusive; Stalin and Hitler are probably two of the most successful leaders of the 20th century.

Interesting read, though. He was very hyperbolic on a number of problems, but it's hard to deny that everything he stated had a seed of truth.

[Tierbook]

at Kaiz: "Imperialistic army"? you realize we are scaling the army down right from 570k to 490k still a decent number but a drop of about 17-18% or so

[Chort]

As a person of that eastern european origin and living in the usa atm i diss-agree with you. Both have its own problems but US is way ahead in handling its issues. Lets just remember about pussy riot...

[Komati]

Well, Joseph Stalin probably was a better leader than history depicts him. After all, the cold war was still a war, enemies needs to be demonized.

[Kasierith]

As a person of that eastern european origin and living in the usa atm i diss-agree with you. Both have its own problems but US is way ahead in handling its issues. Lets just remember about pussy riot...

Pussy Riot: bunch of girls repeatedly and knowingly break the laws while flaunting themselves on international TV and hoping that fanfare and public outrage will cause the police to not rightfully convict them. They were wrong.

The only thing out of place with their arrests and sentencing was the length of their sentence.

[Wells]

the state media of the original third world country.

That's a pretty dumb thing to say since the term was coined to designate nations outside the respective spheres of the US and the USSR

[Olo]

Second, Stalin was actually a very powerful leader. Being good at leading and being horrendously evil are not mutually exclusive; Stalin and Hitler are probably two of the most successful leaders of the 20th century.

Being able to whip your people into a nationalistic frenzy does not make you a good leader. Hitler and Stalin were terrible leaders who either ignored or purged all the genuine leaders in their perspective countries.

[Kalyyn]

This 'original third world country' was the first to put something into space, the first to put a man in space, and is still a world leader in aerospace.

Every day you seem to surpass yourself in displays of ignorance.

Actually, here you are the ignorant one. "Third World" literally means any country which is allied with Russia. First world being allied with America, second world being neutral. People tend to incorrectly use it to describe poor, undeveloped countries. You are one of those such people using an incorrect definition.

edit: Sorry, I had that backwards. Second World is Russian, Third World is neutral.