Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, has said that he believes the popular U.S. online video-streaming service Netflix to be a mind control project.
Netflix exploded in popularity worldwide to such a degree recently that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his new defence minister to watch it for insights into U.S. politics.
Medinsky, who has also been keeping a close eye on the streaming service, has told Putin that he believes it to be a U.S. government plot to take over the world’s TV screens.
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Rferl.mobi reports:
Vladimir Medinsky, known for public statements that often veer toward the hyper-patriotic, asserted in an interview published on June 22 that Netflix is part of a U.S. government mind-control project.
“And, what, you thought these gigantic startups emerge by themselves? One schoolboy sat down, thought for a bit, and then billions of dollars rained down from above?” he was quoted as saying in the interview with the Russian news agency Rambler.
“It turns out that that our ideological friends [the U.S. government] understand perfectly well that this is the art form that is the most important,” Medinsky continued, alluding to a quotation by Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin about the influence of cinema on the masses.
They understand “with the help of Netflix, how to enter every home, to creep into every television, and through that very television, into the heads of every person on Earth,” Medinsky said.
Founded in 1998 by U.S. entrepreneurs Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, California-based Netflix, which started out as a DVD-by-mail service, now says it offers its streaming services in 190 countries, including Russia.
The company did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment.
One of the service’s flagship series, House Of Cards offers a deeply cynical look at U.S. politicians. That was the reason, according to Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar’s 2015 book All The Kremlin’s Men, that Putin recommended the series — which is based on a British production of the same name — to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu after his 2012 appointment.
“It’ll be useful,” Putin is quoted as telling Shoigu in Zygar’s book.
For his part, Medinsky has gained a reputation for making bombastic, nationalistic and sometime outlandish allegations since becoming culture minister in 2012.
He has called for patriotic summer camps and films, and last year called for a “patriotic Internet” saying the West had launched “a new blitzkrieg” against Russia.
Last week, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Medinsky suggested that Russian animated films had too many “Asian faces”. That elicited wide derision in places like Yakutia, the Siberian republic whose main ethnic group is non-Slavic.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
Dunno about you guys, but I am still able to watch American Netflix outside USA using these steps https://goo.gl/89l89y
Good article ..
i am use vpn to unblock netflix in my country … i am use nordvpn netflix it’s very good vpn
Netflix is a great TV for all over the world, not just US. haha