REGISTRATION: Bette’s Happy Hour with Paul Niland — Founder of Lifeline Ukraine
Bette members — please register to join Paul Niland, a reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the founder of the nation’s first suicide hotline, Lifeline Ukraine — Tuesday, July 23, 10 am PT
***BETTE MEMBERS: You will find the registration link at the end of the post below the paywall. If you would like to join our community events, please take out a membership. PLEASE NOTE: 10 am PT start time.
“As a result of propaganda, Russia has become a death cult.”
—Paul Niland, Ep96 RadPod
Welcome to all the new members, and a heartfelt thank you to those who have been supporting my work with monthly, annual, and Founding Member donations. If you are new to Bette, scroll down to the very bottom of this post to access the registration link.
This event is Tuesday, 10 am PT. Paul Niland is based in Kyiv, so we are starting early and hoping he has electricity.
As Bette members know, I frame every shock event and every dominant narrative in the US on how Putin benefits, and the current division in the Democratic party benefits authoritarian nations globally. Our fight is for democratic governance in a world that is marching toward fascism. Thankfully, the recent elections in the UK and France remind us we don’t have to obey in advance.
I reposted my report from Timothy Snyder tonight to remind people that Putin needs it to look like democracies are failing, since he has failed the Russian people.
As Snyder noted in that report:
“The idea that elections could be real… is a threat… Putin needs Russians to believe that elections are always a circus, a farce and a fake, because if Russians believed that British elections and German elections and American elections are also fake, they’re not going to mind that their own elections are fake.
What Trump does for Putin is he normalizes the Russian way of doing politics. So Putin’s view that democracy is a joke, you can lie all the time, politics is fundamentally about some rich guy becoming richer, corruption is normal, right, that—Trump normalizes that for the whole world. So it’s a huge gift for Putin.
Putin was now normal thanks to Donald Trump, and that had a tremendously negative effect on politics around the world.
Look, it was a bonanza for them… a feast for the Kremlin every day. Because what the Trump administration delivered every day in its outrageous rhetoric, in its disrespect for American institutions, and in the countless scandals was what Russian propaganda outlets dreamed of. They dream of this kind of raw material which proves that democracy is a joke.
Trump is there to tell you that democracy is a joke. He’s there to tell you that the rules don’t apply to everyone equally; they don’t apply to him. He’s there to tell you that might makes right. He’s there to tell you that you can lie every day, not just in Russia but in America, which—that’s what he did. He lied every day, all the time, just like Putin.
Trump gave them the basic thing that they wanted, which was an American administration which was an embarrassment for everyone who cared about democracy.
Those of us who care about democracy realize the stakes of 2024. We have a country that is defending democratic governance against Russian invaders, and it’s our duty to not only support that country, but defeat the Russian invaders here — who are harming the US with their hybrid warfare.
I am continually revisiting Russian active measures that began in 2013 and 2014, laying the groundwork for the Great Information War. If we do not pay attention to what those fighting for democracy in this moment are teaching us, we will be worse for it. I bring you these interviews so you have greater global awareness, better threat perception, and are able to better take directed action.
So that brings us to our guest for Tuesday.
I stay close to my friends in Ukraine — they are not fooled by Russian information warfare.
Kyiv-based reporter Paul Niland, who is also the founder of the nation’s first suicide prevention hotline, Lifeline Ukraine — is back with us Tuesday, July 23, 10 am PT.
When I brought him back for Ep96 of RadPod, I knew it would be an important interview, but it still blew me away when he described Russia as a death cult.
“The UK Defense Ministry said the number is 465,000 dead and wounded Russians… they don’t do medevac, they don’t take people off the battlefield… it’s even worse than that, they not only leave their own to bleed out on the battlefield, anyone who is retreating is shot by the Russian side.
“As a result of propaganda, Russia has become a death cult. The way that the supposed heroism of fighting and dying for your country is portrayed in Russia has become a fundamental part of their national identity. And one of the things that leads to that is the militarization of their society — we’ve seen that in the ten years since Russia has been at war with Ukraine.”
When Niland talked about how Russia denied the war in Donbas a decade ago, I think about how Stalin denied that he was starving Ukrainians. Instead, he ran a propaganda campaign to pin the blame on starving peasants and not his failed collectivization. Poland ran its own propaganda campaign, putting up posters of Stalin calling him the “Hunger Tsar”.
“The domestic propaganda has not only turned Russia into a fascist state, but it’s also a death cult, it’s a place where people are indoctrinated into believing the lies about the reasons for this war.”—Paul Niland, Ep96 RadPod
Niland became a reporter after the initial invasion a decade ago, when Russia tried to portray Ukrainians as nazis — poisoning the truth, poisoning reality.
Please have a listen to our interview, and Bette members, please register for our Tuesday event below the paywall.
Good news since last time Paul joined us in May: LifelineUkraine.com received funding to continue doing its very important work! Thank you to Bette members who also supported. Niland founded the national suicide to help prevent veteran suicides after Russia’s first invasion. As we all know, war is hell.
Thank you to everyone who supports my work, and the work of many vital pro-democracy voices in this global fight for truth and humanity,
REGISTER BELOW…
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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