The Western press wants to expose “Russian propaganda” — so it writes its own

Another hit piece, another reminder: the Washington Post, like its peers, has learned nothing from MAGA, Brexit, or the rural revolt.

You’d have to stand back and admire the symmetry. A Washington Post feature sets out to unmask “Russian propaganda,” yet ends up churning out a neat little agitprop script of its own.

Published on Monday, the diatribe headlined “Russia’s ‘anti-woke’ visa lures those fearing a moral decline in the West” is peak old-school Western media “Moscow hack pack.” Even though it’s clearly been filed from elsewhere, which means the authors haven’t even met the people they are framing as caricatures.

They have run the same playbook for so long they no longer hear themselves. First, you reach for the language of menace: a “Dragon-Bear,” a “calculated” effort, etc. Next, you present anyone who moves to Russia, for any reason, as a wild-eyed fanatic or a poor sap. Then you wrap the whole confection in knowing winks about “state-backed” this and “Noah’s Ark” that, until the reader is left with the same conclusion the editors want: there is no moral legitimacy in these people, only the Kremlin pulling their strings.

The Post gives its game away in a single quote, calling these migrants “the face of a small but growing trend of Westerners relocating to Russia in search of the traditional, conservative values they feel are eroding in the liberal West.” That subtle little turn of phrase tells you everything, these silly moral migrants only feel something, as if no rational person could actually believe the West’s social experiment is spinning out of control.

Another giveaway is their gleeful nod to difficulties these families face, warning that “some newcomers face serious challenges, running into legal and financial issues, grappling with frozen bank accounts, or getting lost in the country and its layers of bureaucracy.” As if the United States, with its FBI watchlists and and reams of compliance paperwork, would be any more welcoming to a family wiring in a fortune from Russia. It is a studied blindness, the kind that lets the Post scold Russian red tape while ignoring how the West would treat migrants carrying large transfers from Moscow.

The piece quotes Maria Butina, noting she called the program “a spiritual asylum visa,” before immediately slapping on a tone of disbelief. Butina’s description, “people are moving because they are looking for Noah’s ark, not that Russia is seeking them,” is recited with an unspoken sneer, suggesting only a cynical ploy. But I have met Russian officials who speak about this program with total conviction. They see themselves on a moral mission, standing guard for families and traditions they believe the West has set out to demolish. Dismissing that belief as propaganda is lazy journalism at best.

It gets worse. The Post lumps vaccine skeptics, and those worried about mass migration into a single dark category of conspiratorial weirdos. They say the videos produced by Russian-linked networks feature lines like “Russia Has No American Problems” and “The West Is Trying to Demonize Russia,” as if those sentiments are, by definition, crazy talk.

But even a brief stroll through the culture wars of the United States or Western Europe reveals why such slogans resonate. Large numbers of people, maybe tens of millions, genuinely do not want drag queens reading to children or cities flooded with migrants who cannot be integrated. If the Post’s writers do not understand that, they have learned fuck all from MAGA.

The Post also quotes a Texas migrant: “I feel like I’ve been put on an ark of safety for my family.” His wife adds: “In a small way it feels like I just got married to Russia.” They’re sincere and they doubtlessly say this with their faces full of hope. But the Post cannot help itself: it treats them like pawns and people to be ridiculed. There is no curiosity about what truly led them to believe Putin’s Russia might offer a better chance for their children.

And sure, Russia will exploit these families for PR, as any government would. The Kremlin loves the symbolism, Westerners crossing borders to seek moral shelter. Of course that’s propaganda, no one doubts it. But it is also, for these immigrants, a kind of genuine refuge and hat part is left unexplored.

There’s another little note of snobbery in how the Post frames its subjects as “moral migrants,” in quotation marks, as if it’s a self-parody. There is nothing inherently freakish about choosing a conservative society if you think your own country is going off the rails. Or vice versa if you’re a liberal who feels the same in reverse, with a case in point being Rosie O’Donnell’s much trumpeted move to Ireland.

Yet these families are described in a tone that hovers between pity and scorn, as though they had lost their grip on reality.

The cherry on the cake is the lament about frozen accounts. Again, the Post warns that some families “ran into financial issues,” had to apologize, were frustrated by Russia’s bureaucracy. This is presented as a cautionary tale, but to anyone who has actually experienced international migration, these frictions are perfectly normal, whether you are moving to Russia, America, or anywhere else.

What the Post cannot accept is that some Westerners might judge the freedoms of the West as hollow or destructive. That they might see Russia’s harsh rules as the lesser evil, or even a positive good and that they might genuinely prefer it. The journalists can’t seem to fathom that.

Take the Feenstras, a Canadian farming family with nine children who relocated to Russia in 2023. They had their bank accounts frozen shortly after arrival. In a moment of frustration, they posted a critical video. But they later apologized and reaffirmed their commitment to their new life after it was resolved within a few days. “This was not a reflection of our views on Russia, its people, its government, its banks or its laws,” the father said in a follow-up. What does it say that a large family from rural Canada sees Russia as a better place to raise nine kids than their home country? Whatever your view, it’s a question worth asking sincerely.

In the end, the piece is propaganda about propaganda as it comforts a Western readership with the warm reassurance that no reasonable person would ever choose Russia except by mistake or manipulation. It paints conservatives who flee to Russia as a circus of losers, without pausing to ask what they see with their own eyes and that’s the hallmark of a journalist who thinks they’re an educator, not a reporter.

There’s no monster under the bed here, but just disillusioned people, many of them religious, who have decided Russia’s guardrails suit them better than shifting sands they left behind. That’s a story worth telling straight, but the Post, still gorging on the moral spoils of 1991, cannot do it. So instead we get another serving of their own polite but unmistakable propaganda.