Michael Malice

They thought this is the society of the future.

At least everyone's trying to make it a better country for everyone, not like back home with a poor slip between the cracks.

We got to do what we can to make this work.

And, you know, there was a lot of, I don't want to say conspiracy, but within the industry, there was a consensus that

that the Stalin was the good guy and we were, if not the bad guys, certainly not as good in certain regards.

So when this news of the famine started percolating, all the other Western journalists besides Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge were saying this isn't true.

It's nothing that they haven't seen before.

The paper that took the lead in this was the New York Times with their guy, Walter Durante, who had previously won a Pulitzer and had interviewed Stalin, which is an enormously rare honor for a Westerner.

And he, because he has so much experience covering Russia and the Soviet Union, he basically took the lead and other people followed his lead.

He was kind of the dean of the press corps in Russia.

And he made a point, and the thing, there's so many quotes I have from him where he's not only denying that this mass starvation is happening, he's also going after journalists who are questioning the narrative.

And he says things like, look,

This is nothing that the Russians haven't experienced before.

They're simply tightening their belts.

And it's like, you only have to tighten your belt when you don't have enough food.

It's not like they started a new exercise regimen and now their body fat's dropping.

Why would someone tighten their belt?

So that was one.

And the New York Times had a 13-page article

article, big headline, Russians hungry, not starving.