April 14, 2023

This Musk Smells Hateful


This Musk Smells Hateful
USAFA hosts Elon Musk, April 7, 2022. Justin Pacheco, Wikimedia Commons.

Elon Musk recently took to Twitter to respond to comments made by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia (and ex-president), regarding Ukraine.

On April 8, Medvedev announced at the end of a large thread, "Nobody on this planet needs such a Ukraine. That's why it will disappear." Musk advised his followers to make informed decisions by themselves instead: "All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves."

Many Twitter users expressed their disappointment and disapproval of Musk's stance, with some accusing him of enabling the spread of Russian propaganda and misinformation. Some argued that, by not taking a stronger stance against Russia's actions, Musk was effectively condoning their behavior and contributing to the problem.

Under its new management, Twitter lifted restrictions on accounts affiliated with Russian authorities, allowing them to be recommended once again and to appear in search results. These include the official account of Vladimir Putin, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Russian Embassy in the UK, among others.

When Twitter was still a publicly-traded company, the platform released a statement outlining its intention to combat Russian disinformation: "We will not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict - whether Twitter is blocked in that country or not."

However, the Telegraph ran a series of experiments and found that Twitter has since changed its policies. A newly-created account had Russian government tweets appear in its "For You" section, a feature driven by algorithms, despite the new account not following any Russian government accounts.

This isn't the first time Musk utilized his free speech regarding Russia, and it certainly seems like it won't be his last.

You Might Also Like

Injustice
  • July 15, 2022

Injustice

The outcomes of political trials in Russia are mostly preordained, but activists have learned to use them as a way to speak out.
Musk vs. Putin
  • March 18, 2022

Musk vs. Putin

Elon Musk receives backlash after challenging Vladimir Putin on Twitter.
Looking for Elon
  • June 09, 2021

Looking for Elon

“I think he has already been born. I think he is already in school studying or in kindergarten. And of course, he is not alone. A great country will certainly appear.” – On June 5, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, on where the Russian Elon Musk is.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955