Russia Today was created as a child company of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti itself was created as Sovinformbureau in July 1941 so the propaganda is in it's core.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK's far-left Labour party was quite a fan of Russia Today.

Please, the Labour Party is centre-left not far-left by U.K. standards.

Corbyn himself is far-left (again by U.K. standards), but the Parliamentary Labour Party itself gave him 172-40 against in a vote of no confidence in 2016, only for the public members to vote for him 313,209-193,229 in the subsequent leadership contest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Labour_Party_leadership...

When you watch FoxNews they call everything that’s not in line with them “far left”. It’s a cool trick to mark anybody only slightly left from them as extremist. And judging from conversations with FoxNews viewers it works like a charm.

A tactic that's backfiring on them now, as they get accused by the President of "pandering to the left".

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-nuclear-agains...

Allying with Trump is a dangerous path because his only ideology is himself.

A similar phenomenon is the mainstream media (and its believers) with the term "conspiracy theory".

I would argue that there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there at the moment that should be labeled as such.

A better example would be the tendency of the left to mark anyone they disagree with as “racist”. Same strategy. Mark your opponents as something that’s so bad that no further discussion can be allowed.

> I would argue that there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there at the moment that should be labeled as such.

You can attach whatever label you would like to something, it has no effect on whether it is objectively true (in shared, physical reality), it only affects people's perceptions of its truth (virtual reality). This applies both to conspiracy theories, as well as mainstream news theories. There is surely a difference between which class of theories has larger epistemic variance between physical and virtual reality, but this variance exists on a per story basis, and should therefore be analyzed at that level. No one has ever done such a comparative analysis (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong), despite what mainstream news theorists would have the public believe.

> A better example would be the tendency of the left to mark anyone they disagree with as “racist”. Same strategy. Mark your opponents as something that’s so bad that no further discussion can be allowed.

An excellent example indeed.

Cory Doctorow's written a lot about conspiracy theories. Or you could look at https://www.everythingisaremix.info/.

"CONSTANTLY WRONG: THE CASE AGAINST CONSPIRACY THEORIES"

This seems like a less than promising title for those of us who are interested in what is objectively true. A quick skim of the first three strawman-filled minutes of the video does not make me feel any better.

It's true, one can indeed find plenty of batshit insane ideas within the conspiracy world. Similarly, one can find plenty of dark-complexioned people engaged in fisticuffs on /r/fightporn. What speculative conclusions one should form based on these two facts is a matter of opinion.

Sorry; I linked the blog. You can watch it here: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series

Corbyn is on the left of most Labour MPs for sure, but I don't know if it'd be fair to call him "far left" when there are groups to his left.

There is an actual far left in the UK though, primarily represented by the Communist Party of Britain. There are other smaller groups too, mostly linked to the wider trade union movement.