RT’s Kremlin-financed Washington Correspondent Sameera Khan will face a “disciplinary review” after posting memes to Twitter praising the gulags of Joseph Stalin.
“RT strongly condemns the posts in question. Ms Kahn’s posts do not represent the network, and were uninformed and misguided. RT is conducting a disciplinary review related to the situation,” a spokesperson told TheWrap on Tuesday.
Khan, a former Miss New Jersey, shared two memes Monday that suggested the Soviet prison camps weren’t actually so bad and that their brutal reputation was a result of “capitalist” propaganda. She came in for immediate criticism online before ultimately deleting the posts — and her entire Twitter account.
“Capitalists fooled you … again,” read the memes that go on to list a number of “facts” including, “Freedom of speech allowed,” “Education, music and theater for prisoners” and “Sentence revoked on good conduct.”
None of these things are true. In one meme, an area dedicated to “source” instead read that “Stalin haters won’t believe any source”
RT’s Washington correspondent and former Miss New Jersey keeping it classy by white washing the gulag pic.twitter.com/YYLGWx2EgD
— Ian Bateson (@ianbateson) October 8, 2018
Internet sleuths soon discovered many more instances of Khan praising the dictator in other tweets.
“No man has made a greater contribution to history than Stalin,” she told a Twitter user, before saying that nobody should be reading “western propaganda.”
In other tweets, Khan actively worked to downplay the atrocities of Stalin’s tyranny, according to another Twitter user.
BTW, lest you think this was some one-time brain fart by @SameeraKhan — she’s shamelessly downplayed the horrors of the murderous Stalin regime (which, to be clear, killed many millions of people) for a while now. She works for Russia Today and Stalin apologism is her schtick. pic.twitter.com/KduQcLOW7u
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) October 8, 2018
Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from the mid 1920s until his death in 1953. His regime caused the deaths of millions of Russians, with many of them dying in his gulag prison network.
RT — formerly known as Russia Today — is Russia’s premiere state media enterprise and has been required to register as a “foreign agent” in the United States since November 2017. A rep for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.
In a statement some hours before she deleted her Twitter account, Khan apologized for the memes.
“I have just found out that the memes I shared re: Stalin’s gulags were inaccurate. My apologies to all those who were offended,” she said. “I also in no way intended to make light of the tragic mass persecutions they took place under the Stalin regime and I again apologize for sharing this misleading and offensive information.”
This might be the best tweet ever pic.twitter.com/zhMG6z2EEu
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) October 9, 2018