Dear Readers,
Good morning and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that arrives every Monday to compliment our quarterly print magazine. As the spectre of World War Three looms in front of us, we’ll be doing everything we can to deliver some small shards of joy to your inbox and doormat. But at the same time, we’ll be bringing you deep-dives and dispatches concerning the war in Ukraine and the events that have led to it over the next month.
If you fancy supporting our journalism, then please do subscribe to the print magazine at this link here. Every quarter, we offer more than 60 pages of investigations, essays, fiction and comic stories from the most exciting young and youngish writers on the block. A woman of excellent taste called Daisy Alioto has described our publication as ‘a young, smart and brutally funny in the tradition of vintage Tatler or Spy’ which is kind of what we’ve been going for all along. Thank you, Daisy.
And now to business. Watching Russian incursions into Ukraine this week has been a depressing, and confusing, spectacle but so too has been watching those charged with telling us what it all means. Sorting fact from fiction and propaganda from counter-propaganda is an onerous task, and The Fence is lucky that it possesses neither the arrogance nor professional obligation to pretend it has many answers. But one question did emerge repeatedly as we watched odd footage on Russian state TV coming in over the wire, amid reports that the UK may follow the EU in stripping RT of its broadcasting licence; what is the media landscape like for Russians themselves?
News From A Russian Front
We reached out to our man (who was) in Moscow, to ask how the Kremlin’s outward-facing media actually works, and whether there’s cause to, or sense in, banning RT if it means they’ll just ban the Beeb in return.
‘Unless they breach Ofcom rules, I’m not sure it’s worth completely shutting it down’ he tells us. ‘Most people listen and watch the BBC online in Russia. It would be huge for Putin to go down that road – but not impossible. Radio Free Europe was banned, and Voice Of America periodically gets shut down, although they always seem to bounce back.’
Our source was employed by RT during his time in Russia, before working as a Moscow correspondent elsewhere for many years afterward. The hype about the Kremlin’s direct influence on its foreign channels is, he tells us, quite real.
‘You hear tales of one other Russian-backed news org in the UK’ he says, ‘whose editor used to have to collect bags of cash from Russian officials, presumably in some crude way of avoiding HMRC. And initially, RT itself was totally designed to inoffensively whitewash Russia. Lots of features and business shows. Things changed after 2008, during the Russia-Georgia war, where it simply started lying, claiming a genocide was happening. It justifies Russia’s actions through a combination of spurious stats, weird guests and ideological whataboutery. A former FSB official tried to shape my journalism when I was young and impressionable. We became good friends until I realised what was happening. RT is running out of young people to brainwash. There’s really no excuse for anyone over the age of 26 working for RT. It’s a poisonous cult. I was definitely a useful idiot.’
‘Margarita Simonyan [RT editor in chief] has a lot to fucking answer for. There’s absolutely no hiding what Putin is. The whole propaganda machine has been blown wide open through Putin’s weird, messianic, pan-Slavic ramblings.’
Western audiences have spent this week becoming more familiar with Russia’s broadcasts in its own country. Combing through such footage, we ask specifically about this alarmingly cack-handed video purporting to show the ‘shelling’ of journalists during their reporting.
‘Nobody believes this shit in Russia’ he says, ‘it’s designed for impressionable country bumpkins. That clip is from a channel called Zvezda (star) which is a wall-to-wall war channel that usually runs Soviet war movies. They have a long-established reputation for fake news, and don’t seem too fussed about it’.
That being said, he feels the past week has not been business as usual, per se.
‘One of the biggest surprises has been Putin’s justification for going to war - to “denazify” the county and stop the genocide of pro-Russians. Putin’s cherry-picked bits of Slavic history/mythology and wrapped it all up in WW2 language to justify the unjustifiable. Nobody beyond his inner circle of mad/terrified advisors are buying this mythical bullshit. It’s a bit like Putin saying he was going into Syria to fight terrorism. A way of selling the idea to the country. The difference this time is that Putin has gone way too far, giving a massive, long speech in which he rambled on about everything, accusing the Jewish president of Ukraine and his PM of being Nazi drug addicts, and insisting Ukraine should be part of a wider Slavic empire run from Moscow. It’s proper crazy shit. Not like the guarded, secretive Putin of old’.
‘Second big surprise; a full invasion seemed almost impossible a few days ago. Everyone was expecting him to annex Donbas but not head to the capital. Third, no one expected Russia to do quite so badly. The advance is slow. The Ukrainians are fighting with real conviction compared to Russia’s army of conscripts that are reportedly being followed around by a mobile crematorium to cover their sizeable troop losses. 4. I never expected sanctions to go THIS far. [Their being ejected from] SWIFT is pretty seismic.
Since none of this has trickled down to RT’s coverage, are we to take it their newsrooms are filled with duped true believers? Our man says… nyet.
‘I have old mates who are basically stuck paying mortgages dependent on RT. They are literally slaves to their jobs, now facing a network under international sanctions. There are a handful of Lord Haw Haws for Russian interests. They will never work in journalism again after this. Which means they’re either deluded, or slaves to the cash. It permeates every sector or state. And then you have the useful idiots, people who have never worked anywhere else since graduating. Everyone was paid well from the offset, it’s difficult to say goodbye to those incomes’.
Whatever the case, he doesn’t feel like Russia’s media involvement is likely to wither on the vine any time soon.
‘The most successful and compliant members of RT tend to be moved onto Kremlin side projects. Shadowy PR companies, weird websites, strange radio channels like Sputnik. Sanctions on RT and Sputnik alone won’t stop the Kremlin’s reach’.
Light Me Up
At present, we’re open for submissions, albeit for a brief window. If you’d like to write for us, then do send a pitch through to editorial@the-fence.com and we’ll come back you promptly.
For Issue 12, we’re particularly keen on dispatches from the world of fashion, sport and music, so if that sounds like something you could write, please do get in touch. There are a few more details in our pitch guide here. First-time writers are especially welcome, too.
Perry Anderson’s Peachy Boys
For those of labouring down the content mines, it’s been a hard week to observe our profession’s silliest individuals out-do each other with performances of sham solidarity, cod expertise and sofa-bound bellicosity. A Twitter account operating under the handle @Islingtonchap has collected some of the barmiest takes from the warhawk Centrist Dads of Fleet Street, and has also produced one particularly brilliant tweet which tricked a load of people who really, really should have known better.
Cocaine Limited
The spirit of reform is in the air: efforts to stymie the financial clout of the Russian elite might lead to the regulations at Companies House finally being tightened. Last year, we published an investigation into the wilder shores of the government agency, where individuals register businesses under the most ludicrous names (maybe we’re being unfair, maybe Mr Donald Duck is the real deal). Do give it a read.
Ian McEwan’s Swag Bag
As bleak midwinter breaks into the promise of nuclear winter, permit us to try and raise a few smiles by dusting down a classic from the archives. Why do all famous authors always write exactly the same plot? We take a dagger to the canon in this glorified listicle that was an absolute joy to put together. And to be honest, it’s one of the funniest things we’ve ever done.
Turn, Turn, Turn
Recently, we have ladled praise on some of the excellent insurgent publications in Britain, so it was a pleasure to see the Drift – who are doing great things across the Atlantic – receive a glowing notice in the NYT. Reading the article, we were thrilled to learn that David Remnick has donated $250 to their cause. But it does underline why the States has such a diverse marketplace for young and thrusting new mags: people are very happy to support new titles. As we have mentioned previously, about nine percent of our subscribers are based in North America, which is disproportionately high for a magazine with such a London focus.
Anyway. We digress. It has come to our notice that there are quite a few Remnick-types who guzzle this newsletter every week without paying for our wares. If you don’t want to appear on ‘10 Biggest Cheapskates in British Media’ then do take this opportunity to subscribe to the quarterly print magazine at £25 for the year.
In Case You Missed It
Friend of newsletters passim, Huw Lemmey, writes an excellent, probing piece on the ghouls seeking to co-opt the Ukraine war to attack the pro-LGBT ‘wokeness’ of the west, be they fringe MAGA cultists in the US, or shock horror – cosily respectable broadsheet writers in the UK.
Matt Reynolds tells a mysterious tale of dental detective work that involves ‘the help of a forensic DNA expert, three dentists, some stamp collectors, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’.
Mark Rozzo explains how Hollywood composers don’t often write any of the scores they compose.
Kaila Yu investigates a Pacific Northwest Furry scene coming to terms with the far-right shooter in their midst.
Across the Atlantic, Jennifer Robinson and Stephen Kimber share some Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow
Flower Power! Jamie Grierson reports on the single snowdrop bulb that sold at auction for £1,850.
And Finally
As Oscar season descends, we reckoned it might be fun to run a little series, profiling five-star movies that are really, when you come to think about it, six-star movies. The plan was to review and reappraise the flicks that are widely regarded for their brilliance but should – in the plain light of day – be recognised as timeless exemplars of the cinematic art.
But you don’t come to this newsletter for that sort of fatuous and lazy navel-gazing. Allow us to treat you to something more pleasurable and decidedly more tasteful. The relationship between film directors, privacy and publicity is a curious one, with many auteurs preferring to stay firmly behind the camera. And there are few directors as venerated as Terrence Mallick, and none more secretive. There is only one recording of his voice in the public domain. He disappeared from view for 20 years. He refuses to allow his likeness to be used in any promotion of his work. Now watch as one of the greatest living film directors – maybe the greatest – dances in a grainy twelve-second clip from a honky-tonk bar.
*
We’ll join you next Monday for another Russia-tinged dispatch. In the meantime, do send pitches, queries and pointers through to this address. If you want to pick up something from our archives, then you can do so at the link just below. Speak soon.
All the best,
TF
We are also delighted to offer a subscription service. For £25 you will receive all four copies of the magazine per year, delivered to your door.
