Yes. They really do do it. They block comments which are too far outside the accepted narrative on Ukraine. Some comments are allowed e.g. a rather weakly argued ‘maybe Putin has a point about NATO in Ukraine’, might just about make it past the censor, but the comments which are shot down are the ones which are well-argued and supported by facts and evidence. In fact they have just blocked one of my commenting accounts after I tried to make the following comments:
Russia was concerned that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat to them – imagine how the British would feel in China set up listening posts and missile bases in the Republic of Ireland.
According to an EU report it was Georgia not Russia who started the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. (Search term to locate report information provided)
Zelensky’s attempts to implement Minsk after he got elected were blocked by the Azov battalion, recently rehabilitated by the Guardian, and based on this there may be a risk they will try to block any new peace agreement.
I can see why they might have got a bit prickly over my reference to a AZOV as having been ”recently rehabilitated by the Guardian“. However; this is pretty much what they did. Compare this story about an “elite force” which “has shed any far-right associations, relentlessly emphasised in Russian pre-invasion propaganda” with the story about AZOV in 2018:
These woodland vigilantes, all in their early to mid-twenties, are not your typical environmental activists. They are members of the National Militia, an ultranationalist organisation closely linked to Ukraine’s Azov movement, a far-right group with a military wing that contains openly neo-Nazi members, and its political spin-off, the National Corpus party. [1]
Notice how what they now call “Russian pre-invasion propaganda” was what they themselves called news just 7 years ago.
I put my banned comment against their Community Standards. It is absolutely clear I did not break them. They specifically allow criticism of articles, which I did, in a constructive and focussed way. (While blocking my researched and rational comments they publish no end of smears and almost racist attacks against Trump).
It is interesting because I have established that the Guardian is running an unacknowledged extra level of ‘moderation’, which essentially operates as a political censor. It is all the more insidious for being ‘secret’.
I don’t like to say anything without empirical evidence or convincing argument. But, let’s put it this way, if there was an MI6 officer on secondment to the Guardian this is how you would expect them to behave. I am 100% not saying there is; just that the behaviour is as if.
Update
Just as a final confirmation. I have another account on the Guardian. (I didn’t open two to try to get round anything; I just happened one day to open a second account on a separate device using a Google SSO account, and thus ended up with two accounts). Today, on their live feed about the latest developments in European politics about Ukraine, I wrote a few comments. As always; nothing personally rude. Not even, this time criticising a Guardian article. Just standard points. For example; one commentor had said “Just what could we have done to prevent Russia’s invasion”, so I answered: force Ukraine to implement Minsk and drop the idea of Ukraine in NATO as France and Germany advised when Bush forced it through in 2008. I wrote about 5 comments of this kind, (clear, evidenced, rational). All shadow banned. This is sufficient empirical evidence that the Guardian operates a secret extra layer of censorship over and above their published “Community Guidelines”. It seems that clear, rational, evidenced comments which undermine the official (phantasy) narrative, comments which, so to speak, risk successfully bursting the bubble and changing minds, are the ones which are most likely to be blocked.
Update – manipulated narratives
Using the second account which I mention above I posted another comment on another story about Ukraine. My commenting account was marked as being “subject to pre-moderation”, perhaps as a result of having attempted previously to post some rational comments against the prolongation of the war. I posted the following comment:
Starmer says we should continue to arm Ukraine. Can he or anyone else in the war party explain what the path to victory is? How will Ukraine defeat Russia or even put them under such pressure that they give up what for them is an existential demand? (No NATO in Ukraine). Surely, there is a winnable strategic plan?
This comment was passed and published after about 10 minutes. Very soon some replies by other commentators appeared. One was a silly comment that just said “If you don’t understand that Putin wants ALL of Ukraine you never will”. These kinds of sub-rational faith-based comments abound on the Guardian comments section. I think they are mostly written by American readers. A second comment made the argument that Russia’s economy is on the way to collapse. A third reply seemed to argue that a stalemate or ceasefire is possible and it is necessary to inject force into Ukraine to prevent Ukraine being completely captured. I replied to all 3. To the first I cited the evidence that the initial invasion force was too small to take the whole of Ukraine, and Putin’s statements about accepting that Ukraine could join the EU. I invited rational argument. I replied to the second with a reference to an article by a Russia expert at a Western military linked think tank that the Russian economy is in pretty good shape. I replied to the third by reminding the poster that Russia has stated that they would not accept a Western armed military entity on their borders so Russia will keep fighting and so the question remains; how can Russia be defeated? None of these comments were published. The effect of this is to manipulate the narrative. The resulting appearance is that the Guardian permits open political debate but at the same time it makes sure that it is the pro-war narrative which is amplified. This looks like an operation which is quite consciously being carried out for manipulative political ends. (I should say that my 3 comments were made about 10 minutes before a cut-off point for the posting of comments. I imagine the Guardian might claim that they had not moderated these comments before the cut-off point and then just threw them away. Given the pattern of behaviour I find that the less likely explanation than they deliberately blocked them).
Guardian liberals and Daily Mail readers compared
I did a quick comparison of the comments section on the Guardian on a story on the Ukraine war with the comments section on the Daily Mail on a story on the Ukraine war. This was quite illuminating. What emerges is this: the comments on the Guardian are almost all, (I would say greater than 99%), anti Russia and pro war. They are very, very homogeneous. Putin is an evil dictator. Trump is a Russian asset. Russia wants to capture the whole of Ukraine and is a threat to us. There is scarcely any variation in the content. It is almost how one imagines a policed comments section on Pravda might have been with comments submitted by party members eager to show their adherence to the ruling ideology. The first thing that strikes you about comments in the Daily Mail is the variety. There are pro war and anti Russia statements, but plenty of comments which show understanding of the Russian point of view. Secondly; the comments are much more thoughtful. There are comments looking for historical parallels. There are comments where people cite recent historical facts. The comments do not break down into “pro-war” and “anti-war” along simplistic ideological lines. In terms of the overall weighting I have looked at the likes on comments. For example one comment says: “Russia isn’t threatening France, or Europe for that matter. It just wants to sort out the Ukraine problem. Macron however is threatening Russia. Putin is right, it didn’t end well the last few times the French tried it on with Moscow.”. This comment, which is critical of the European war policy, has 28 likes and 8 downvotes. This pattern is indicative of the general balance. However; the pictured is fairly nuanced, for example, comments which simply criticise the lack of free speech in Russia tend to get upvoted, or at least receive an equal number of upvotes and downvotes. Comments which support a stronger British army get upvoted.
The overall impression of this brief research is that the readers of the Daily Mail are thinking about the problem whereas the readers of the Guardian are people who have bound themselves to an ideology and just feel it necessary to express that. I have just listened to John Mearsheimer on the Judging Freedom Podcast, (available on Amazon Audible and YouTube and other places), suggesting that some of the problems that liberals have with Russia is about the difference in values, especially in terms of LGBTQ and about how they believe that Russia caused Hilary Clinton to lose to Trump in the 2016 election. The Daily Mail readers seem to be more concerned with current UK domestic politics. (I don’t know about the US-UK split; possibly there are less US commentators on the Daily Mail). The Daily Mail readers seem not to be bothered by Russia having different social values, and less bothered about international liberalism and demanding that other countries look like us.
Are Daily Mail readers true liberals?
There is a more nuanced question here; are Daily Mail readers not critical of Russia because they share the conservative values in relation to ‘LGBTQ’ or are they simply willing to consider what happens in Russia not their business? This would require more in-depth research. As a very initial observation, my sense is that Daily Mail readers generally do accept ‘LGB’ ‘rights’ but have misgivings about transgender ‘rights’. In as much as this is the case, and I have not established it, one could then argue that Daily Mail readers are true liberals; they have a set of values, accepting of LGB, but do not see it as their business to complain that another country does not share these values. This would be a fruitful area for research.
In summary, what emerges is that there is a liberal ideology in play. I emphasise ideology because it is not particularly rational; something which tends to come out very clearly in the Guardian comments where there are many comments about Trump and other members of his cabinet being “Russian assets” and so on which are just made “without evidence”, as they say. A possibly distorting factor is that the Guardian censors its comments section, actively blocking comments which undermine the liberal narrative on the war. This does not appear, based admittedly on only a quick sample, to be happening on the Daily Mail. But all that tells us is that the Guardian is keen to reserve the purity of the liberal ideology, which it seems likely, most of its readers subscribe to anyway. Contradicting my earlier comment about MI6 – one could theorise that the Guardian is operating more like a business-cult. In seeking to preserve the purity of its ideology it is motivated in part by a business rationale; it wants to please its readership by echoing back to them their prejudices and in part, because the editors and managers of this Trust owned publication are dedicated liberal ideologists and seek to promote this ideology.
Notes
