Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia *(ePub)
A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and bizarre heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system. Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness. Read more
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Why Must Read Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia?
Pomerantsev began writing about his Russian experiences in 2011. His experience with the Russian media ran from 2001 to 2010. As the son of dissident Russian parents who left in 1978, his knowledge of the language gave him an entry into that world. The book came out in 2014. While The material is serious and very pertinent to today's international political world, the book's style gives researchers an easy start to understanding the complexity. I also recommend a web search. I recommend the book and have purchased copies to hand out. Fake news is a hot topic and here we see how it is planted and politically used in detail in a post-modern authoritarian world. There is information showing how crony capitalism or modern fascism is opposed to the free market when government can take over businesses and put them in the hands of partners as governments change laws to fit the new situations. The Russian oligarchs are detailed and it is shown how money is laundered through the political West. There are stories of the Russian modeling world and how these models have only a short number of working years during which to find their "Forbes." Want to learn how religion is used as a tool to bond followers to the government? And, oh yes, New Age cults have found a new sucker base. Afterwards, read the works of Soviet dissidents to see how dictatorships haven't changed but are just modernized.
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