As
a current affairs obsessed-child, I did often laugh in amusement when listening
on shortwave radio to the strident, unyielding tones of the voices of Soviet
newscasters when announcing the USSR's triumphs in heavy industry and crop
harvesting. I knew that they were perennially jamming radio signals emanating
from "enemy capitalist states".
But fast-forward to the contemporary situation.
Why does the U.S.-led West seek to do what the USSR did? It bans channels such as RT and Press TV from the Internet and TV platforms.
The EU for its part enforces draconian measures on the likes of retired army Colonel Jacques Baud, a former Swiss intelligence officer who worked for NATO, simply because his analysis of the Russia-Ukraine does not conform with the Western political class and the mainstream media? Baud was sanctioned even though his books only used Ukrainian and Western originated source material and he declined repeated offers to appear on various Russian media outlets.
NathalieYamb, the Cameroonian-Swiss activist, has also been sanctioned for "spreading" so-called "Kremlin narratives" and calling for Francophone African states to reject France's shadow empire on the continent. She also asserts that her specific criticisms of French President Emmanuel Macron played a major part in the decision to have her sanctioned.
The imposition of sanctions means that persons such as Baud and Yamb are not allowed to travel within the EU member states. Apart from travel bans, their assets are frozen and third parties who help them are subject to punishment.
The banning of media platforms and sanctioning of individuals are redolent of the sort of actions typified by the "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" regimes to which the EU professes to be opposed.
Western
governments and the EU are in effect acting in the manner of an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’.
Rewind back to the little boy who chuckled at Soviet broadcasting style and Soviet clamp downs on the information space:
It would have been inconceivable to him that decades later he would only be able to tell certain truths as he saw it on Russian media.
© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
