Serious conversations, or talk shows?

Reflections on the Putin interview and history in the Western media

The Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin has become famous for the Russian President’s chiding of the American talk show host: “is this a serious conversation?” Putin then proceeded to offer serious conversation to Carlson on the history of Russia, Ukraine and their relationships with the United States and Europe. The difference in style between serious conversation and talk shows has rapidly become a symbol of the difficulty of cultural dialogue between Russia and the West.

Tucker Carlson Fails Putin’s History Class

Tucker Carlson struggled to understand how this long ‘history lesson’ was relevant, even though the Russia-Ukraine war is caused by the history of relationships between Russia, Ukraine, the USA and Europe. He looked puzzled during the interview, and tried to bring it back to American talk show host preoccupations. But after a while, he relaxed, shifted his plan, and allowed the President’s monologues to proceed. Yet my impression remained. Tucker could not really engage in the serious conversation, the cultural dialogue on history, that Putin invited him to join. Even in his later video introductions and retrospective chats to camera, Tucker displayed little insight into his interview guest or the serious consideration of history in Russian statecraft. Putin seemed sincere, I guess, the talk show host said. He is clearly bitter and wounded. Tucker consoled himself with Hollywood Green Room excuses; he fled serious conversation about world history and world leaders, and then made another rant about China.

I suppose we might forgive Tucker Carlson for his embarrassment. In the vapid world of Americanised political theatre, Tucker Carlson likely has never before met a leading world statesperson. There are none left in the USA. We might praise Carlson for having the courage to resist the censorship and bullying, for doing his former job as a journalist, and for asking the Russian President about the Russian perspective.

We might acknowledge that Tucker did eventually accept that Putin had a purpose in talking about all that history. But I do not go so far as some commentators, such as Alexander Mercouris at The Duran, who gushed over Tucker’s ‘exceptional skill’ in conducting the interview. The American listened, but did not learn from the history lesson of the Russian. Moreover, Putin was not just delivering a history lesson. He is the most important primary source on many of the events he narrated to Carlson. He was there. He was always in the room. He has been in top central positions to observe and shape relationships between Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the USA since the late 1990s. And indeed the rest of the world, and the new rising powers of BRICS. He counts Modi as a friend. He was involved in BRICS from the beginning. He speaks directly to Xi Jinping many times every year, including a day or two before Tucker Carlson asked that foolish question about China, which received a complete and concise rebuke and rebuttal from the Russian President. Carlson’s unrepentant China-baiting has continued since the interview.

However, Tucker Carlson did learn some things from the interview and his visit to Moscow. To the shock of American exceptionalists, he realised that Moscow is a beautiful, well-serviced city with the most beautiful and effective underground rail system in the world. He might have learned Russia is not so badly governed a country that it can only be described as an autocratic dictatorship. Yet, he also revealed some of the barriers to deep cultural dialogue, including on history, between the modern West and the rest of the world.

Did Tucker Carlson Interview Putin Well?

Rather than conducting a skilful serious conversation, Tucker Carlson began the interview with a typical question of a narcissistic American TV host. I have highlighted the operative phrases from the very first question Tucker Carlson asked in the interview transcript below

Tucker Carlson: Mr. President, thank you.

On February 24, 2022, you addressed your country in your nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States through NATO might initiate a quote, “surprise attack on our country.” And to American ears that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: It's not that the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia, I didn't say so. Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?

Tucker Carlson: That was a good quote. Thank you, it’s formidably serious!

Transcript of Interview with Tucker Carlson, President of Russia website

Now, I have conducted many interviews and serious conversations over the course of my professional life in government and universities. I have facilitated many meetings on serious, sensitive topics. I have conversed about difficult traumas, conflicts and histories. And from that experience I have learned never to begin a serious conversation with a serious person in this way. You sound paranoid, to American ears, Mr President. Tell me why you think your long-standing nuclear-armed opponent might strike you out of the blue. This question is the opening gambit of a talk show host. It aims to get a rise from the guest, and set the scene for the star interviewer to take the guest down, and expose their contradictions. Tucker was rightly chided by Vladimir Putin. It was not the last time over the next two hours that the self-obsessed American would have to be reminded of his minor part in world affairs.

My only praise for Tucker Carlson’s interviewing style is that he stopped this strategy after a while, and allowed his guest to be the focus. Some Western journalists, such as Chris Wallace, formerly of CNN, have since said that, if they were interviewing Putin, they would have kept banging their head against their own broken mirror. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch produced an unintentionally laughable “take down” of Tucker’s interview, demonstrating that he was a ‘Putin puppet’ and, in the words Hilary Clinton stole from Lenin, a ‘useful idiot’.

So Tucker Carlson’s individual courage or limitations as a journalist are not the real issue. The vapid political theatre of the West is the issue. The decay of Western political leadership and cultural institutions is the issue. The degradation of the ‘fourth estate’ is the issue. The poverty of Western diplomacy is the issue. Tired forms, like the talk show or the panel discussion or gotcha questioning, have trapped the Western audience into sound-bite driven scattiness, in which the passive public consume confused, crafted scenes, where a journalist poses for truth before power. They do not get to watch the deep, difficult dialogue which is needed to resolve social, cultural and international differences. That would be boring and go on too long. In this virtual reality world, history has become irrelevant. In the real world, history remains the air in which we all breathe.

Tom Holland, Rest is History, Intervenes

The most disappointing response to the interview was the dismissal by some writers on history of the relevance of history itself. The Rest is History podcast star Tom Holland produced, within hours of the Putin interview, a short video, distributed on twitter and other social media, that dismissed Putin’s discussion of the history of Russia as nonsense. Persuasive? In Tom Holland’s view, Putin was obsessive. Holland used Putin’s supposed ‘obsession’ with history as a comic device to present him as a mad dictator. Holland said it would be better if Putin ignored history altogether. Just leave it to the Tom and Dominic history talk show, structured as a British comedy routine.

Mr Holland did not comment on the first hand-account Putin gave of the diplomatic history of the last 30 years. Holland did not pause to consider the invitation for serious dialogue and diplomacy on better solutions to security dilemmas in Europe. No, he just engaged in public school English dismissals of the bad Russian who had dared to talk about history out of school. Indeed, Holland and the Anglo-American history establishment launched a coordinated campaign to cancel Russian history, and leave it to some Oxbridge old boys. Putin should realise that Russians don’t play cricket, and should leave history to the English.

There is an irony of this transparent British propaganda intervention by Mr Holland. Propaganda may seem a harsh word. But consider that the Rest is History podcast comes from the stable of Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Alistair Campbell. Never forget: Mr Campbell was involved in the production of the ‘sexed-up intelligence’ claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After his life of media manipulation in politics, Mr Campbell has pursued a career of political manipulation in the media, including in podcasting. He is a prime mover in the Goalhanger company that produces Mr Holland’s podcast. He has likely informally advised Mr Holland and his co-host Dominic Sandbrook over time on their ardent advocacy of the ‘Stand with Ukraine’ cause. Rather than relying on Tony Blair’s spin doctor, however, Holland and Sandbrook would do better receiving some advice from Mr Putin on the history of Russia and Ukraine. The Rest is History podcasts on those topics, and some of Mr Sandbrook’s more enthusiastic articles, have been quite unreliable historical accounts. Indeed, Mr Holland never trained as an historian. He is a classics scholar, with good prose style and an admirable passion for the past, especially classical Rome, Christianity and merry England. But he has never undertaken original historical research. He knows almost nothing about the history of Russia, Ukraine or the diplomatic history of the great powers since 1989. He is in no position to dismiss as “nonsense” the lesson of President Putin, and the work of many historians who write in languages that Holland cannot read. He has got way over his skis.

But that seems to be where we have got to in our popular culture of history. On one hand, Western media trivialises a serious conversation on history, that involves a person who has unmatched direct experience of the events, culture and archives he talked about. On the other hand, a thousand talk shows, on mainstream and independent media, prattle on about points of style and give hours of air time to useless idiots who know nothing, and then less than nothing.

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012), The End and the Beginning

If we, readers of the Burning Archive, are to move this troubled world one small step closer to peace, then we need to listen and engage in serious conversations about real history, and no more fairy tales of brave revolutions of dignity. We need to relearn the old arts of sophisticated cultural dialogue. We need to abandon our talk show hosts, media celebrities, and arrogant certainties about the Anglophone world. We need to listen again, and admit we may have something to learn from the rest of world history.

My podcasts and writing on Russian history

If you are curious about the history of Russia and the state of the world, I do suggest you join one billion others and listen to the Putin interview, perhaps including the later interview about the interview that he did with a Russian journalist.

You might also like to listen to my podcasts on Russian history. My series of podcasts on the history of Russia starts with 65. The Black Legend of Russian History (August 2022). They tell the story of Russia backwards from Gorbachev and the 90s, the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars, Catherine the Great and Ivan the Terrible, the Russian Enlightenment and the Mongol Yoke, and the history Putin spoke about in Kievan Rus. They counter the Black Legend of Russian history that the Anglo-American history establishment shove down our throats every day.

The episode on the real history of Russia and Ukraine in Kievan Rus is also available with some illustrations on YouTube here.

If you upgrade your subscription, you can also listen to my reflections on the three lessons of Vladimir Putin’s history lesson, which was this week’s fortnightly video message on the Burning Archive.

Free 1:1 call about my online history courses

And if you are interested in reading world history with me, check out my new course, World History Explorers: Season 1 Civilizations that starts 1 March 2024 at courses.jeffrichwriter.com. Live lessons start on 1 March, and you can enrol now

I am also currently offering a free 15-minue call with people who are interested. Please book a call with me and we can discuss what you would like to learn about or to explore in world history.

You can book a free call until 1 March through this Zcal link.

We could even discuss if you think there would be interest in a course on rethinking Russia in the world today or on Russian history. I could deliver one as part of my course platform, or maybe just write more about it here as part of my theme the symphony of civilizations.

I would love to speak with some of you, but also feel free to leave a comment right here and now.

Until next week, take care, and remember what thou lovest well will not be reft from thee.

Jeff