Collaboration is built on everyday vanity and ambition. Just look at RT’s wannabes | Nick Cohen

Few people on Putin’s TV network were true believers... which is the really frightening thing

When Adolf Hitler was ascendant, the American foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson invented the “macabre parlour game” of guessing who would “go Nazi” if the Germans invaded. With Vladimir Putin, there is no need to imagine who would collaborate, as so many have already collaborated with the Russian propaganda effort.

Some were convinced ideologues. Others were has-been politicians such as Alex Salmond and George Galloway: conceited old men, grateful that Putin’s RT (Russia Today) network still wanted to broadcast them. The rest were not has-beens but never-beens: wannabe pundits the national media would not touch; TV presenters who never had star billing; desperate young reporters who could not break into the UK’s exploitative media sector.

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