Russia Has Something Unique to Offer the World - Conservative Values and Resistance to "Liberal Fascism"

Boris Nadezhdin, State Duma Deputy: You've convinced me.

Margarita Simonyan, an RT editor-in-chief: Some carrots are harder than some sticks. Things can go any way when it comes to soft power. Second, I'll finally agree with my colleague, your frequent guest. We don't have enough of what they call 'soft power' and we should have way more of it. For many years, we've been under the impression that no matter what you do, no matter how you talk to them, 'might is right.' Turns out, might isn't always right. We can see it even in our audience. Lately, ever since they've started this mass war against RT and against Sputnik (Satellite), Yesterday, we received data from a company that measures our audience. In the light of recent events, our audience has tripled. This is a very indicative story.

 

I want to remind you that when the US was electing their President, Americans voted for Trump because he was friendly with Russia, among other reasons. It's another question how the system works and whether they let him do it but this was one of the reasons he got elected. As you may remember, he openly stated he'd be friendly with Russia and with Putin. And he was elected president, which says a lot about US citizens' preferences. This means that the US population listens when they are talked to. However, we don't talk enough even though we have plenty to discuss.

Something very rare is happening in our post-Soviet history right now. We actually have something to give the world. If you remember the USSR, and I'm not talking about people who worked for money, I'm talking about the people who were ideologically close to the Soviet Union, who was spreading the Soviet idea, the Communist idea in their countries because they were believers. This idea doesn't exist anymore, and for many years, we'd been just like everybody else. But, we're not like everybody else anymore. For the past few years, in the eyes of the enlightened western society, we're the nation of ideas for healthy conservatism and healthy family values. This is true.

If you were to talk to many enlightened people, like doctors, economists, entrepreneurs, or people in our European audience, they'll tell you they like Putin because he wants to stop this insane circulation of some ultra-liberalism, which some already call 'liberal fascism.' For instance, these very religious people own a pizzeria in the US, not a pizzeria, a cake shop, they refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. This cake shop is then harshly obstructed, it gets shut down, they can't work anymore. This is just an example, there are many similar stories. However, there are plenty of people who share these conservative values. For many people, Russia and Putin, in particular, are becoming this healthy shore that, on one hand, doesn't drift towards ultra-conservatism since we don't prosecute for such things, we welcome controlled migration, and it's controlled better and smarter than in many European countries. Thus, Russia becomes a byword of some healthy conservatism idea.

It's another thing that we don't talk about it much. They're right, there's RT, but it's one RT among tens of thousands of other western media. We need to talk about this more because we have something to tell. For the first time in the last 27-28 years, since the Soviet Union fell apart, we have something to tell the world, and we need to do it.

Volodya, we've opened schools for journalists in many countries, based on our Sputnik. People go there to study, we don't force them to work for us afterwards, we simply teach them. Today, Latvia has prohibited its citizens and media to have anything to do with Sputnik. They were asked a question about how people were supposed to work. They've announced, on a government level, that nobody has the right to use pictures, photos, or anything else from Sputnik. They're scared it might be the soft power, scared that we might do something. What if their people who admire us come to us, and become contaminated? What if they start loving Russia more than they're allowed, more than it's acceptable? This is our work reality.

- It would be nice to teach that in Russia.

- When I say 'we' I don't mean you and me personally, I mean the entire country. I know of many stories that have nothing to do with my job when regular people of any foreign nationality who live in Russia wanted to open a Russian school in their home country, to help some Russian University, or to organize Russian language lessons, and they weren't allowed to do that. All because there was a signal from a respective embassy, in this case, it was the US Embassy, that this can't be done. This is due to the fact, as my colleague has rightfully noticed, that our opponents, with their soft power, have managed to make the elite work for them in many of these dependable countries. They don't even need to be conquered, they work just like any employee, for a salary. Their PMs and presidents do what a little ambassador from another country tells them to do. This is what soft power is, and we hadn't done that for some time, unfortunately. We're so deep in our own problems from pension delays to miners' protests, everyone remembers those times, that we somehow missed this part.