Benutzer:Maturion/Paul Goble
Paul Goble (born 1949) is an American political analyst and journalist. He is a former employee at the CIA and the US State Department and a self-styled "longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia". He has also worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Today, he is a regular columnist for Euromaidan Press and major contributor The Interpreter. He is one of the most notorious English-speaking Anti-Russian propagandists.
Propaganda
General summary
As a regular writer on The Interpreter, Goble regularly predicts the demise of Russia. Some of his stories are made up of exaggerations of real facts, some are merely wrong. He often selects obscure and/or minor political figures, quoting them extensively and depicting their opinion as common or important. Nearly all of his writing on Russia feature the aforementioned theme of a dying country on the brink of collapse. To put the message across, Goble is often exaggerating or simply inventing facts. Many of his articles are not fully written by himself, they are instead partial or full translations or summaries of articles published elsewhere, with some additions or annotations by Goble himself.
Many of his articles were republished by La Russophobe, an openly Russophobic blog.
Selected topics covered by Goble
Russian demographics
One of Goble's favourite topics have been Russian demographics. Goble declared Russia was "likely to Disintegrate as Result of Demographic Decline" and has been repeating these claims over and over again and has been fantasizing about "de-Russification" of Russia[1]. He predicted Russia to become a country with a Muslim majority already in about 2035.[2] and claimed ethnic Chechen Muslim women living in Moscow have on average more than 10 children, while failing to give any sources for that number. This would be by far the highest birth rate in the world, surpassing the previous champion Niger, which has a fertility rate of about 6.89 children per women.
Most of his claims regarding Russian demographics cannot withstand a five-minute fact-check on the Internet. In 2014, Russia had a positive net migration rate and a birth rate of 1.75 children per women, which is well above the European Average and the highest number in Eastern Europe. In fact, there was a population decline in all non-Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union since 1991, with Russia being affected the least and being the only of those countires that recorded a population growth in recent years. Russia's population decreased by 2.6% between 1991 and 2013 and has been growing again since 2009. In contrast, the population of Latvia, a member of the EU since 2004, declined by 25.2% during the same period and has seen not a single year of population growth ever since. Several Russian provinces with an ethnic Russian majority population have in fact a higher birth rate than some Muslim-majority regions and the share of ethnic Russians of the total Russian population actually rose from 80.6% in 2002 to 80.9% in 2010. The highest birth rate in Russia can be found in Tuva, a region that has a Buddhist majority. Despite Goble simply being incorrect, his absurd claims have been picked up by several book authors[3] and he has even been teaching about the topic.
Azerbaijan
Despite it being one of the most repressive countries in Asia, Goble has been affirmative of the Azerbaijani government. He questioned political repression and human rights abuses in the country, denouncing critique as either "inappropriate", "informed by double standards" or "reflecting" the kind of examination that a rising power has to expect"[4]. According to Goble, Azerbaijan should not be criticized as to prevent its geopolitical reorientation away from the West. Although Azerbaijan is geographically outside of Europe, he suggests EU and NATO integration for the country. [5] Due to his near unconditional support for the Azerbaijani government, Goble also came under fire from Azerbaijani oppositional bloggers.
He is famous for the so called "Goble plan", a plan to swap land between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1992. Goble suggested Armenia to cede Zangezur to Azerbaijan, a previously uncontested Armenian border province with an Armenian majority in order to gain recognition of its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited mostly by Armenians but within Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders. [6] In the end, the Goble plan was declined by both sides. In addition, Goble got several facts wrong in his plan, such as claiming Zangezur to have had an Azeri majority (which it didn't according to Soviet censuses taken well before the conflict between the two countries). According to Goble, Russia as well as Teheran have an interest in preventing a solution to the Karabakh conflict. In a 2008 interview he stated that "he was no expert" on either Azerbaijan or Armenia<ref>http://yandunts.blogspot.de/2008/10/interview-with-paul-goble-georgia-war.html</ref>
Examples of propaganda spread by Goble
A fine example of Goble caught spreading plain lies. In the whole of the Kaliningrad region, the largest Muslim population group are the Tatars, numbering about 4,500 people, with Azeris coming second with about 2,800 people. The total number of Muslims does not exceeed 15,000 and the number of practising Muslims is far lower as Atheism is common in Russia. And again, this number is for the whole Kaliningrad province and not only for the city iself. And while Muslims were denied building a mosque, there is absolutely no indication that the situation is "on the brink of an explosion" as Goble wants to suggest.
This is one of the finest examples of anti-Russian propaganda by Goble. Goble is quoting one single political activist who claims Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad "is crying out" for independence and even this activist admits that separatism is endorsed only by a tiny minority in Kaliningrad, a region where ethnic Russians make up about 90% of the population. A quick Google search for the aforementioned "political activist", Anton Chadsky, turns out that he is in fact Ukrainian, had only moved to Kaliningrad a couple of months ago and openly declares himself to be Russophobe. Chadsky is thus in no way representative for Königsberg (Königsberg was the previous German name of Kaliningrad). To make matters even worse, Chadsky's rants come close to anti-Russian racist tirades, with him talking about the "barbaric approach of the Muscovites to culture", the "Russian yoke" and the "perverse notions about reality" among opponents of separatism.
Although stylized as summary of a presentation from a historian in Tatarstan, this piece is particularly revealing as the "Russians are not Europeans" theme is something that was already picked up by the Nazi racial ideology.
Summary
Despite Goble often spreading univocal propaganda, his stories have been picked up regularly and he is still cited as an expert.
