Re-visiting Russian counter-propaganda methods
The Saker
"At the risk of sounding like a Russian propagandist myself, I would say something which is quite evident, but still hard to believe: the Russians have no need to lie, their propaganda is fundamentally truthful, fact-based and logical..."
The anti-communist, russophobic strain in Hollywood is old, smooth and seductive and it has been going on for over 90 years. It has largely accomplished its goal, to demonise Russia in the eyes of clueless Americans and many people around the world. Who can resist propaganda wrapped in legitimate entertainment? (Still, Ninotchka, 1939—TGP).
This article was written for the Unz Review } • October 20, 2017
A special ‘thank you!’ to my Director of Research, Scott, for providing me with the background info for this article
Everything we were told about the Soviet Union turned out to be a lie,
but everything we were told about the West turned out to be true
—Russian joke
In May of 2016 I wrote an article for the Unz Review entitled “Counter-Propaganda, Russian Style” in which I tried to show the immense difference between the old, Soviet, approach to propaganda and counter-propaganda and the approach taken by the Russian authorities today. The main difference was this: if the Soviets went out of their way to prevent western propaganda from reaching the Soviet people, the Russians are nowadays doing the exact opposite: they are going out of their way to make sure that western propaganda is immediately translated and beamed into every single Russian household. What I propose to do today is to share with you a few recent examples of what Russian households are regularly exposed to.
By now, you must have heard about the CNN report about how the evil Russkies used Pokemon to destabilize and subvert the USA. If not, here it is:
ABOVE: This is how pathetic CNN has become in its loyalty to the imperial propaganda commands.
In Russia this report was an instant mega-success: the video was translated and rebroadcasted on every single TV channel. Margarita Simonian, the brilliant director of Russia Today, was asked during a live show “be truthful and confess – what is your relationship with Pokemon, do they work for you?” to which she replied “I feed them” – the audience burst into laughter.
The Russian Pokemon was just the latest in a long series of absolutely insane, terminally paranoid and rabidly russophobic reports released by the western Ziomedia, all of which were instantly translated into Russian and rebroadcasted by the Russian media.
One of the techniques regularly used on Russian talk shows is to show a short report about the latest crazy nonsense coming out of the United States or Europe and then ask pro-US guests to react to it. The “liberals” (in the Russian political meaning of this word, that is a hopelessly naïve pro-western person who loves to trash everything Russian and who hates Putin and those who support him) are intensely embarrassed and usually either simply admit that this is crazy nonsense or try to find some crazy nonsense in the Russian media (and there is plenty of that too) to show that “we are just as bad”. Needless to say, no matter what escape route is chosen, the “liberal” ends up looking like a total idiot or a traitor.
In my May 2016 article I mentioned several examples of particularly heinous and offensive foreign characters which are regularly invited to the Russian talk shows including rabid Ukie nationalists, arrogant Polish russophobes and, last but not least, US reporters working in Moscow. To balance out these truly repugnant characters, mentally sane and credible foreign guests are also invited, typically from southern Europe (France, Italy, Spain). So the typical “guest matrix” ends up looking like this:
| Good guys | Bad guys | |
| Russians | Patriots | Russophobic Liberals |
| Supported by | Southern Europeans | Ukies, Anglos, Germans |
This is a formidable propaganda technique for a number of reasons. For one thing, it joins the internal and external russophobes at the hip in a kind of “guilt by association” which forces them to try to help each other which, of course, only makes them all look even worse (their negative traits reinforcing each other). There is no need to label anybody as a “traitor” when the people in question do a great job placing that label upon themselves when they try to explain away all the crazy and hateful anti-Russian nonsense the western Ziomedia constantly spews. An average Russian who hears a Russian liberal explaining that the “Russian Pokemon” story might be based in reality immediately wonders how much the CIA pays this SOB to say that kind of nonsense. But here is where this is getting really cute: It ain’t the CIA paying that liberal – the Russians are doing it themselves!
A few days ago a major article appeared in the newspaper Komsomolskaia Pravda (yup, they kept that old and, frankly, silly sounding name which translates to “Truth of the Communist Youth League”) which revealed that some of the most offensive guests on Russian talkshows are paid a lot of money to spew their anti-Russian propaganda. Here are the top paid guests:
- Viacheslav Kovtun (Ukraine): 500’000-700’000 rubles (about 8’700 to 12’000 dollars) each month
- Michael Bohm (USA): 500’000-700’000 rubles (about 8’700 to 12’000 dollars) each month
- Iakub Koreiba (Poland): no less than 500’000 rubles (about 8’700 dollars) each month
According to the KP investigators, these guys have legal contracts and they pay Russian income taxes. So this is all very legal and quite pluralistic to boot: the only people who can seriously accuse the Russian government of trying to crack down on the opposition, pro-western political parties or anti-Putin ideas are folks who have absolutely no factual knowledge about Russia *at all*. Either that, or they are deliberately lying. And that includes the vast majority of the western political leaders (in the USA and in Europe) who are now scrambling to increase the budgets of the traditional western propaganda outfits such as VOA/RL/RFE or who want to create new propaganda outlets to “bring the democratic message to the Russian people”. In reality, the Russian people are fed a daily dose of western propaganda (aka “democratic message”) courtesy of the Kremlin, and that is something which the imbeciles in power in the West can’t even begin to imagine, nevermind deal with.
What is becoming increasingly evident is that western propagandists simply don’t understand the world they live in, especially the US Americans. Think of it: all the major countries involved in WWII had their own propaganda machine which was targeted exclusively at their own population and which was almost never seen by the other side. Likewise, during the Cold War, the frankly stupid people in charge of the Soviet propaganda machine spent immense resources trying to block the western propaganda from seeping in from under the Iron Curtain. As for the Soviet propaganda in the West, it did have a measurable effect (just look at the influence of various Communist Parties in Europe during the Cold War), but never enough to beat the base appeal to hedonism and consumerism promoted by the best and most effective branch of the western propaganda apparatus: Hollywood.
Nowadays, this has dramatically changed and the Russians understood that much better than anybody in the West: in the age of the Internet and satellite TV you cannot target your message solely at a domestic audience, nor can you prevent the other guy’s propaganda from reaching your own domestic audience. The Americans are still operating as they did in the mid 1970s: they target their biggest propaganda efforts at the domestic audience as if the entire world was not carefully parsing everything CNN and the rest of them have to say, and they believe that the West is only unpopular in Russia because of “Putin’s control of the media”. It would be impossible to be more out of touch with reality than these people. The truth is that about 80% or more Russians support Putin precisely because they are exposed to the western propaganda machine and its message on a daily basis.
How is that possible?
For one thing, the Russian counter-propaganda is not aimed at some isolated group of people, but is essentially the same, be it on RT or Sputnik broadcasts for foreign audiences or on the main Russian TV channels. The Russian propaganda effort is global and internally consistent.
Furthermore, and at the risk of sounding like a Russian propagandist myself, I would say something which is quite evident, but still hard to believe: the Russians have no need to lie, their propaganda is fundamentally truthful, fact-based and logical. There is no Russian equivalent of the Pokemon story. And when the western leaders demand that Russia withdraw her forces from the Donbass, the Russians have no need to make up some convoluted story about how the Russian military is in the Donbass but that these forces are as invisible to the observer on the ground as they are invisible to the satellites in space. The Russians don’t have any need to lie about their operations in Syria because what they say they are doing there and what they are actually doing there is one and the same: liberating Syria from Daesh. I could multiply the examples, but my point is simple: unlike their US American counterparts, the Russians are not engaging in policies which they cannot justify before their own public opinion or before the public opinion of the rest of the planet. Sounds simple? Then why is it that the USA seems to be comprehensively unable to tell the truth about *anything* they do?
Being truthful does not prevent the Russians from being crafty, however, and the way they “jiu-jitsu” the western propaganda output to their own benefit is very clever. Clearly somebody in the Kremlin has learned the painful lessons from the dysfunctional and, frankly, ridiculous Soviet propaganda machine.
Contrast that with the kind of self-lobotomy the German media is inflicting upon itself when it calls anybody who is not rabidly anti-Putin a “Putinversteher” or a “Putin understander”. As if not understanding somebody ought to be considered a mark of intelligence or as if agreeing with anything Putin would say ought to be seen as a clear proof or moral depravity. Is it really so surprising that a media capable of coming up with a concept like “Putinversteher” is in no condition to compete with the Russian media? Can anybody imagine the Russians labeling somebody a “Merkelponimatel”? Of course not, instead they invite some garden variety doubleplusgoodthinking German journalist on a live talk show and make sure he gets to defend those who came up with the notion of “Putinversteher”, which that idiot will most certainly try to do, if only because of a misguided sense of professional solidarity with his colleagues back at home. The Russian audience will love it, listen to every word of it, and then go to bed with an absolute conviction that their European neighbors have gone batshit-crazy.
But if foreigners are bad, and Russian liberals are bad, what could be even worse?
Russian liberals abroad of course. And they also exist.
Meet Owen Matthews and Greg Vainer. Oh, these two are soooo cool!!
First, Owen Matthews. The man has an official Wikipedia page, so first check it out here. What his Wikipedia bio does not indicate, however, is the kind of background Matthews comes from. In his biography Matthews claims that his maternal grandfather, Boris Lvovich Bibikov, was the first Secretary of the Chernigov regional Communist party Committee, awarded with the Order of Lenin, and that in October 1937 he was charged with violation of the 58th article of the criminal code and executed. So he was a Party apparatchik. Bad enough, but it gets much, much worse.
According to my Director of Research, this information might be misleading. There are historical records including the lists of the NKVD officers that indicate that Boris Lvovich Bibikov never worked for the government of Ukrainian Soviet republic and never was the 1st Secretary of the Chernigov regional Communist party Committee, but was a high profile NKVD (secret police) officer and he worked in the Central Apparatus of the UKB NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. Indeed, the First Secretary of the Chernigov regional Communist party Committee from January 1934 till August 1937, was Markitan Pavel Filipovich, and after him, Mihailov Aleksey Dmitrievich. As for Bibikov himself, he was eventually shot during Stalin’s anti-Trotskyist purges of 1937. So whether Bibikov was “just” a Trotskyist Party apparatchik or a member of the genocidal gang of russophobic maniacs known as the “NKVD” – Matthews’ hatred for Russia clearly stems from the fact that Stalin executed his grandfather and that his family fell from the top echelons of the Bolshevik regime to the unenviable status of “enemies of the people” (which I personally think every Soviet Trotskyist amply deserved).
Owen Matthews: the russophobic pompous ass
[Sidebar: I don’t think that it is fair, ethical or logical to blame a person for his/her ancestors. I myself am also distantly related to one of the worst murderers of the early Bolshevik regime, and I don’t consider myself guilty of, or in any way bound to, his actions. However, in his book “Stalin’s Children” Matthews clearly takes sides with, endorses and, possibly, even covers up for his Trotskyist Commissar grandfather and that makes him a fair target for criticism]
Matthews himself made his entire career in the growing wave of russophobia in the West and that is why he is a regular guest on Russian TV: I think that nobody comes even close to Matthews in expressing a total condescension to anything and everything Russian. The man literally oozes, radiates, russophobia and contempt. I would say that while his hatred for anything Russian is typically Trotskyist, his immense complex of superiority is definitely British. And that combination make him an ideal guest for Russian talk shows. If anybody truly embodies the notion of “the West truly rabidly hates and despises us” it is Owen Matthews.
Greg Vianer is very different. As much as Matthews is the ideal prototype of the condescending British racist, Vainer is a caricature of the arrogant US American. Of course, Vainer is no more US American than Matthews is really British! Vainer’s real name is Grigorii Vinnikov and he is also a Russian Jew. The funny thing is that this Grigorii insists that he be called “Greg” (in Russian “Грэг”) even though the entire audience knows that he is Grigorii. Needless to say, right there his persona sets off a powerful rejection reaction. But where Vainer is truly at his best is when he defends the USA. Which is paradoxical since in the USA he is known as a petty crook who had to flee the USA (with his client’s money) to avoid prosecution. Says so not yours truly, but Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (backed by other Russian sources, see here and here).
Greg Vainer: the petty crook
Ain’t that all precious?! Instead of a Brit and an American what we really have are two very typical types of russophobic Jews. Neither of them qualify as “Russian liberals” at all, and the audience senses this immediately.
What we have here is a layered cake:
- Layer one: on the surface, these guys present themselves as British and American.
- Layer three: in reality both are Jews, one the offspring of a family of Trotskyist Commissars and the other a petty crook. Both a caricature, really.
Could the Russians who hire them to appear on talk shows possibly not know that?
Of course they do, that is precisely why they hire them: to let them spew their anti-Russian hatred on a weekly basis to educate the Russian public on the type of characters which in the West are considered opinion-makers (especially Matthews, of course).
So where is the bona fide Russian liberal?
He exists, of course. Introducing Alexander Nikolaevich Sytin.
His biography is boring (you can check a machine-translated version by clicking here) and as far as I can tell, he is “legit”, in the sense that he is truly Russian and that he is what he claims to be: a political scientist and a historian. But, oh boy, he is also a class act for sure! Not only does Sytin regularly express the most fantastically Russophobic views on Russian TV, but he also penned some amazing articles including one entitled “The Destructive Terroristic Role of Russia in the World Community” and another one entitled “How the World Should React to the Destructive Terroristic Activities of Russia”. The main thesis of Sytin is that Russia is a terrorist state. This triggered such an outrage that a group of citizens has joined the well-known Russian commentator Ruslan Ostashko in a collective lawsuit demanding punitive damages from Sytin. The logic for their lawsuit is that since they are all Russians, the claim that Russia is terrorist state damages their credibility and offends them. Of course, what they are really doing is forcing Sytin to defend his statements in court. Predictably (at least for anybody who knows Russian liberals), Sytin has freaked out, he is now trying to apologize and wants to avoid a lawsuit. Ostashko and the people supporting him (thousands of people apparently) want their day in court. It will be fun to watch where all this goes.
Still, there are a few interesting moments in Sytin’s biography. For example, being a historian and a lecturer in Russian and Soviet history per trade he managed to get a high profile position as the head of a section and project manager in Yukos just when a convicted felon and a suspected murderer Mikhail Khodorkovsky was organizing the giant oil company with western backing. Having no expertise in the oil industry, Alexander Sytin worked at the YUKOS Oil company till October 2003, when Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the director of YUKOS was arrested and charged with fraud. Immediately, control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos were passed to a banker Jacob Rothschild. Sytin had lost his cushy job at the YUKOS when the company went bankrupt, and nationalized. It’s possible that Sytin also had lost his share of this company in the process. It’s also possible that he is now representing the interest of Rothschild Asset Management that recently lost its lengthy legal battle with the Russian state. The company you keep, right?
What really matters here is not so much what Sytin did in the past as the fact that he, using an expression of Zionist love, is a real “self-hating Russian” and, more importantly, a living image of what such a self-hating Russian can say and defend. Looking at him most Russians probably think “God forbid these guys ever come back to power again!”.
Alexander Sytin: the prototypical Russian liberal
Truth be told, Matthews, Vainer and Sytin are all typical useful idiots. They appear to sincerely believe that when they go on Russian TV to spew their Russophobic views they are achieving some kind of result. Well, I guess, technically they are, but certainly not the one they hope for. If anything, seeing these hate-filled clowns triggers a powerful reaction against everything these guys claim to stand for.
Okay, so the Russian counter-propaganda effort is a very sophisticated and effective one. But is it ethical?
I think that it very much is. Here is why.
First, as I said, the Russians do not fabricate lies. What they report is usually factually true (I say usually because I know too much about how journalism really works behind the scenes to have any illusions of the “they always tell the truth” kind).
Second, they are using the enemy’s own stupidity. Nobody would call Aikido “unethical” yet it is based on using your opponent's moves and momentum against him (“combining forces” in Aikido terminology).
Third, outrageous, over the top and disgusting as some of the clowns shown on Russian TV are, they do not misrepresent the reality of the AngloZionist Empire. Yes, sure, true Russophobes are a tiny minority in the West at least where the people are concerned (especially in southern Europe and the USA), but practically all the regimes in power in the West are controlled by Russophobes or by their puppets. As for the western Ziomedia, it is wall-to-wall Russophobic to such a degree that I would call it unambiguously racist.
So yes, the Russians are using the immense arrogance and poorly-concealed hatred for Russia of some of the more pompous and least intelligent representatives of the West to paint an absolutely fair and accurate representation of the western ruling elites. If the message was “everybody in the West hates you” then this would be grossly unfair, deceptive, and unethical. But when the message is “the western elites hate you” then the message is absolutely fair, truthful and ethical.
We will soon find out whether the Trump Administration will demand that Russia Today and Sputnik register as foreign agents (with the total and enthusiastic support of the US Ziomedia, of course). The US Congress will do what it always does – appropriate more money to try to solve the “Russian problem” by throwing dollars at it. NATO countries will get with the program and “follow the lead”. The Ukronazis in Kiev are doing even better: they are re-activating old Soviet-era jammers to prevent Russian broadcasts from reaching the areas currently under Nazi occupation. I will not be surprised if a full-scale witch-hunt against Russian sympathizers and/or agents in the USA (including Ron Paulians, libertarians, real progressives and yours truly) will eventually be unleashed by the frustrated, frightened and totally clueless US ruling class. If that happens the only thing protecting us all will be the First Amendment (something which, at least so far, the Neocons have not succeeded in destroying). No First Amendment in Europe, but neither is the risk of a crude police crackdown as imminent there. For one thing, the European elites are very very slowly, by tiny steps, waking up to the reality that their abject and total subservience to the USA has put them in an extremely uncomfortable situation. They are still far from the full realization that Russia has much more to offer Europe than the USA, but the first cracks are appearing, which is good. Furthermore, Europe being politically far more diverse than the UniParty system in the USA, the chances of a major crackdown on dissent are much smaller. Finally, it is pretty clear that a lot of folks in southern Europe, even in the media, are more or less pro-Russian, even if they don’t always say so openly.
One of the main weaknesses of the US political elites is that they never bothered to seriously study political science, never mind Marxism and, even less so, Hegelian dialectics. Which is too bad for them because they are now completely overlooking the fact that the internal contradiction of the AngloZionist propaganda machine are creating a reaction which will make Russia Today, Sputnik and the pro-Russian Internet even more attractive to the western audiences than it already is. In fact, every effort to crack down on “Russian propagandists” will only serve to strengthen the latter, making the perusal of pro-Russian sources something sexy and exciting.
As for the Russians, they will continue to report about, for example, drag queen Xochi Mochi reading stories to children in the Michelle Obama Public Library as part of LGBTQ History Month and then invite the likes of Owens, Vainer or Sytin to prime-time talk shows to comment on the event and they will make sure that each one of them gets all the time needed to fully express his thoughts and feelings 🙂
Western style “diversity”
Putin’s popularity will soar while the western Ziomedia will explain it by the total control the authoritarian “Putin regime” has over the Russian media.
—The Saker
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During the Cold War, the Soviets had a strict censorship system, entire segments of literature were banned, you could not take certain books across the border and radios like RFE/RL, the BBC or DW were jammed.
Maybe they do not target the western public because the western public has zero influence.
If so, then this is very immoral. How can the Russians criticize the West while at the same time not caring for those in the West who are the first victims of AngloZionist policies?
And if Russia is showing a “false face” (via her counter-propaganda efforts) of Russia to the West, how can she expect the people in the West to see the huge civilizational difference between Russia and the West?
And, finally, if Russia wants to position herself as an alternative to the Empire, then why show her ugliest and most boring aspects, instead of showing her true beauty (of which there is plenty)?
No, no amount of pragmatic considerations can ever offset or justify a lack of true idealism and true faith, both in God and in our fellow human beings.
Could this be a sense of “not my problem”? The way they have no obligation to protect anybody outside of Russia militarily, why should they feel an obligation to protect anybody outside of Russia intellectually or spiritually?
If so, why do the feel like they have to add to the vomit spewed by the western media?
Shutting down RT would be more honest, in that case
Just throwing coals on the fire.
@Anonymous (the one who wrote): “The way they [RF] have no obligation to protect anybody outside of Russia militarily”
A desirable result for providing an alternative to the western propaganda is that it could help westerners get a better understanding of Russia. A lot of people in the west think that Russia is a Morder like country where the sun never shines and everybody looks like those old stone faced guys who ran the Soviet Union. Russia could use some positive PR. Most people won’t spend time reading in depth speeches by Putin and Lavrov unfortunately.
It makes sense to try to counter the lies being told about Russia. It is off topic but I never understood why the Trump Administration did not go after the people pushing the Russiagate narrative after Mueller came up empty handed. They never went on offense for some reason even when they had a chance to do so.
The Saker,
I have wondered about this issue for years now.
A country (or its citizens) that can come up with the RT, Ruptly, Sputnik, Yandex and Telegram can surely do better to represent themselves to the rest of the World, let alone to the West.
“No, no amount of pragmatic considerations can ever offset or justify a lack of true idealism and true faith, both in God and in our fellow human beings.”
Unfortunately, we are not living in that world.
Maybe it requires some kind of economic incentive. Truly the Russians can see the economic benefit (and required investment) of making yourself look more attractive then your competitors (adversaries) to the world.
I think in solutions and opportunities, and there are enough solutions for this Russian problem or lack of emphasis, but it requires vision, mind set and directing of peoples and funds.
saker, i think the russians have concluded the western elites are destroying the underlying nations they control irrespective how powerful their control over media and storytelling may be, thus the smartest move to be made allow them to continue while preventing them at the same time from using military power to shore up and or distract from this collapse.
its much easier to clean up a trainwreck after all the pieces stop moving than it is to try and stop the wreck while its in motion.
To try and reply: they do not care because they ( the Russian elites) understand that world depopulation is unavoidable, due to dramatic energy shortages. If you have an enemy that is committing cultural, economic and military suicide, at a time when the world population must decrease (there is not a lot of gas in Russia, maybe 50 years worth), and your enemy is doing all this without you firing a bullet, you focus your energies on other things, and thanks the gods that you are killing two big birds with no stones.
Not only does Russia have no obligations towards anyone, as Hodges says, whatever obligations they might have is towards the Yemeni, the Lebanese, the Taliban, and other people with higher levels of humanity. No one came to help the common Russians in the 1990s, and the West is anyway very far and unable to be a real threat. Before the West comes even the economic development of Central Asia and countries in the Russian sphere.
I must quibble with the idea that Russia is awash in money. It’s not. Standards of living have almost certainly declined in the last 4 years, at least here in Samara. I would not spend any money on propaganda. I am already mildly unhappy about Putin calming energy markets (like some of the smaller parties, I would have driven a much harder bargain), and the internal front really does need some care, as real UR voters around here are very rare indeed (but UR won September 19).
Why should Kremlin spend resources when Biden is delivering remarkable results to his handlers when it comes to the disintegration of the Republic.
Vax Mandates = (Defund the Police + Defund the Military) x (Exterminate America)
Excellent well-written article, Saker. I took the opportunity to throw a little more $ your way. Thanks for all you do.
I sincerely hope that someone in the Kremlin will read your words!
Natercia Pedroso
When Putin talks to the press we have to wait several days to read the English translation and share it.
I know, this gets me so mad, I want to command a firing squad 🙂
I sincerely hope that someone in the Kremlin will read your words!
The Kremlin has no use for me. First, they don’t control me. Second, I do not recognize the Moscow Patriarchate as the legitimate Russian Orthodox Church. Third, I did work in the past as an analyst for the Swiss Strategic Intel service – these are all “red marks” which the Kremlin won’t ignore.
Besides, my loyalty is to Christ first, and the Russian nation second, not the current or any other occupant of the Kremlin.
They don’t like that.
Dear Andrei. I share you frustration.
But Maybe we are missing a point because we see the world through the lens of the Golden rule:
Treat thy neighbor like you would like to be treated yourself.
Empires, usually contains multiple ethnicities and several religions. To influence such a diverse population is hampered by the educational, religious and cognitive ability of the population.
What if the majority does not believe in, or are never taught the golden rule.
Maybe the majority don’t want to adhere to the Golden rule.
Maybe the majority prefers to be Comfortably Numb, until the pain hits them right between the eyes?
Then we are left to influence our fellow man only via his Basic instinct (the reptile brain).
Isn’t that what both CNN, WP, BBC, RT, Sputnik and most MSM News outlets are trying to do?
How do we counter such a propaganda barrage of stupidity?
When in most cases the facts and words of sanity arrives to the majority, too late to counter the damage done by propaganda. As has been the case during the Global war on terror, and the now 2 year long COVID insanity.
On that point Andrei hits the head of the nail, by criticizing the delay of reply from Kremlin.
The Global awakening is slow and frustrating.
Never the less, sanity is gaining momentum because the consequences of the insane policies is becoming obvious for the majority.
I think that Andrei is selling himself short. This post is making a difference albeit maybe not a large one. It has been a great resource for a US citizen like me. Like most in the US who grew up in the US during the Cold War while I did not hate Russia I certainly feared it. I realized that something was wrong after the way the west treated Russia after the end of the cold war. I have learned so much reading posts here. I do repost them regularly on FB.
Perhaps RT and Sputnik actuall show the true face of Russia? Namely there is no essential difference at the elite level (the globablists) to the “West”, but the question is just about the infights — which groups gets which share? And the internal shows are just shows, to create a fake image?
I personally know a number of Russians, and they fall exactly in three categories: the russophopic expats (the more intelligent they are, say as mathematicians, the more mad they are), the fifth column (according to them, Putin is quite busy with murdering, must have a double to stage the speeches), and everybody else is deeply depressed by the state of the Russia, due to the endless lies about the Soviet past, and due to the total triumph of neoliberalism (no science anymore at Russian universities, if it doesn’t create some immediate profit).
Rusia doesn’t have an ideological backbone. So when Russians are abroad, they just become “Westeners” after some time (most of them). Which seems quite natural, since Russia just appears very weak, when considered from the “West”.
Perhaps RT and Sputnik actuall show the true face of Russia?
This is not the single cause, but surely part of the problem. Yes, enough to watch Russian commercials, or see how some Russian tourists act to see that much in Russia is as bad, or worse, than in the West.
But so what?
The state media’s function is not to feed the folks in the West even more garbage than they are already fed by the AZ propaganda!
There is, for sure, both evil and degrading crap in Russia, including tranny bars and toxic drug abuse, but right next to them you have millions of people who have a different self-image, who try to live according to their civilizational values. Why not more of that? And with no need to lie and pretend like “Holy Russia is back” or any such nonsense.
Furthermore, does the state not have as one of its many functions to show, to educate, to lead by inspiration towards the improvement of society? Maybe not in the West, but in Russia the state has always had that function, however poorly executed, even in the Soviet times.
And this is what I think is the single most important reality to keep in mind:
In the West, the very concepts of good/evil, false/true, moral/immoral, healthy/pathological etc. have been fundamentally abandoned. Not in Russia, at least not yet. Russians might disagree, like all normal free people, about what is good or bad, wrong or right, but they have not (yet) tossed these concepts in the trash.
But RT online clearly has. They make no such distinctions. And, in that sense at least, the MISREPRESENT the true face of Russia and her people.
I tend to agree with you. What is obvious is that the West is far better at propaganda and it does influence Russians. I watch RT as there are several very good shows and some interesting tidbits and human interest stuff on there. RT web site is good for western news but very poor on Russian news. I agree the weird sports stuff is supposed to appeal to a target audience but what that audience is I have no clue. Of interest my alternate AOC in the Army was PSYOPS (now MISO) and targeting civilian populations to support an insurgency is a military goal. Basically, it is advertising and I can very easily see the west is ramming this onto Russians all the time. My wife, who is a Russian, fell for this and emigrated to the US in 92 believing all the propaganda only to find conditions in the US to be very different and in many cases worse than in Russia. This is another category of Russians in America (most of who I have met or employed) who fall into this category of Russians lured to the west only to find that it was all based on false hope.
But, what to do is a real question. It seems to be that Russia is deliberately not pursuing a propaganda campaign even 1/10th as much. They clearly toe the line with the west and make every attempt to comply with ridiculous western demands about foreign agent registration and limiting information to be relatively non-offensive to westerners. What is weird is that RT is one of the most viewed channels in the west so they do have an audience. What is even weirder is that the RT in Russia (in Russian language) is very different (and often a lot better) than the RT we see in the west. I watch RT on Youtube and living in Europe (it was banned in Hungary and dropped from the UPC television provider (Netherlands) we get a choice of the standard feed coming from Moscow, the UK feed, and the US feed. Each is somewhat different so someone has a sense of target audiences. I read Sputnik as it is basically okay but for real analysis, I prefer to watch Alexander Mercouris or the Duran. Colonel Cassad (in Russian) is also very good as is SouthFront. Mercouris somehow pounds out 2 or 3 detailed shows every day and I have no clue where he finds the time to do this great analysis. He is as astute as Putin and knows a great deal about Foreign Policy. He only uses official releases to base his analysis but so far he has been dead on. Google Chrome at least does a decent job automatically translating the Russian language so you can easily read Russian language stuff without too much problem if you can’t read Russian.
I also think a good question is who the target audience in the west might be. There is no possibility that anyone in the UK will ever stop being Russiaphobic. That goes back centuries and is fully engrained into their mentality. The US is similar. So, why waste money? The EU in terms of the politicians in Brussels who are the only people that matter as the EU is in no way a Democracy and the people have zero say in EU policy. These same parliamentarians openly receive separate salaries from Soros and/or the US. I suppose Russia could try and bribe them more and things might change but I think that is also a waste of time and money. What Russia does attempt is to counter the threats by demonstrating the idiocy of the EU actions and decisions but the EU politicians are clearly suicidal and sometimes insane. Northstream 2 is just one example. The MH-17 investigation another, the list goes on and on. So, as far as I see it the west is hopeless to try and influence. So, this leaves on the Russian people themselves as the target audience. It is a very tough battle. However, the west is so insanely Russophobic the never-ending onslaught against Russia is backfiring against them. There are new sanctions every day and often for things completely debunked even in the west so there is a disconnect from reality which is so obvious even idiots in Russia see this as categorically unfair. The west reveals itself to be a hollow champion of rights now shifting to Rules-Based Order rather than Rule of Law. The west falls for this rhetoric but not Russians. Even my wife’s family who are minor oligarchs and have hated Putin since his arrival on the scene have turned to thinking he is good for Russia. These are people who frequently deal with the west and travel a great deal. They see and understand the realities of the anti-Russian propaganda effort.
I also notice a distinct change in Russian attitudes away from believing they are a central and key part of Europe and instead now are turning to the East. So at least for now, the old trope of Russians trying to prove they are more European than Europeans is dwindling. The world is changing and there is a lot going for Russia. They have the resources to influence the world in positive ways and counter US aggression when it becomes too much to bear or becomes a real national security threat such as Georgia, Syria or Crimea. The western efforts have mostly backfired and the sanctions have forced Russia to once again become self-sufficient. Anything they can’t produce themselves they can now get from China who so far is a reliable partner and they cannot survive without each other. We are in the middle of a new hybrid war very much on the scale of a world war. The end game is coming and whether it escalates to real hot war or not is a bigger question. Russia won’t start it but they will defend the Russian homeland at all costs. Considering the forces in the EU as any kind of actual threat is ridiculous. The same for the US military. They haven’t fought a peer force since Korea and we didn’t win that one and haven’t won anything since. The problem is the US might start believing their own propaganda.
The best course for Russia now is to keep things relatively quiet, counter the US aggression when it becomes intolerable, counter the foreign relation aggressions at a political level, continue efforts in the courts, and leave the US to collapse on its own which is happening before our eyes. It won’t be too long before Americans realize things are in shambles and recovery impossible without revolution. I see it happening already and “The Biden” is causing it to accelerate. What comes from the ashes of the US is anyone’s guess but I think we will see it soon. Keeping this from boiling over to WWIII is the real challenge and might explain the reticence of Russia to stoke the fires.
Great to see your comment and it resonates deeply with me. Glad to see you here and I appreciated your great contribution a couple of years ago to the Unz website.
When some McCarthyist that makes Joseph Raymond McCarthy and Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (who refused the advisor of his economic advisors to privatize the copper mine) look like a hard-line Stalinists such as the 23rd district of California self-promoting wack-job plays Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev, what is left of the Union of Congressional Corporatist Republics will be wrecked in four days or less quite easily.
Looks to me that Fox Hasbara, Fox Plunderbund, One Neoconservative Propaganda, ad nauseam are fomenting a revolution that can only finish off the corporations, for-profit, and non and the governments, federal, state, county/parish, municipal, and township of Americastan.
I also think a good question is who the target audience in the west might be. There is no possibility that anyone in the UK will ever stop being Russiaphobic. That goes back centuries and is fully engrained into their mentality. The US is similar. So, why waste money? The EU in terms of the politicians in Brussels who are the only people that matter as the EU is in no way a Democracy and the people have zero say in EU policy.
You are significantly mistaken on your opinion of what people in the UK/US/EU think of Russia, but more importantly you are missing the qualitative angle. Polls show about 2/3 of US citizens do not believe any of their MSM, and we can extrapolate that to include the anti-Russian lies. I know many hundreds of thousands of people in each of the larger EU nations watch RT and I suppose there is a similar but smaller audience for all
the other pro-peace, anti-Empire media.
The larger hole in your understanding, OMB, is that you seem to not have thought about which people are in the pro-Russian audience, and – a related question – what these people can or could do with their knowledge. Here’s how things really work: What matters – especially in the long run – are the street-level (circle of friends) opinion leaders and a small fraction of the actual elites. What matters is not so much nfluencing the next election cycle, but rather to shift people’s understanding so they can better “head off” or defeat the war-mongering “strategy of tension” which the Empire pushes. Let me expand on that idea briefly, because it gets overlooked too often. There are many issues in the world, and no one person has time to keep up with all the big ones, such as climate change, Covid, the economy, the political economy, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, China, etc. etc. It’s overwhelming and there are not enough hours in a week or a month to really stay on top of all of them. So what sensible people do is to find and validate some experts and then they follow these experts until they might be proven wrong. What does not matter are the opinions of insensibe people – most of the population in nations where there isn’t a clear, strong connection between international policies and what happens to them personally. So while the “Arab Street” is quite well informed, people in the US, Germany, etc. are not and will not learn much until the Empire falls.
So in the long run, this is all about qualitative changes and change takes lots of time.
There are two ways to change opinions. One is to get individuals to change their personal beliefs, and the other is for those (typically unintentional) “change agents” to influence their friends and colleagues.
Last thing I’ll say here is that a small number of enlightened people can go a long ways. History has many such examples.
“…the russophopic expats (the more intelligent they are, say as mathematicians, the more mad they are”
What are the chances for an immigrant to start career in US academic climate as Russian patriot?
Believe it or not, I was actually waiting for this your rant! And not before time! I can totally, absolutely agree with every word you said – it is truly pathetic the way Russia responds to the AZ media onslaught. I had, on quite a few occasions, contacted RT to express my disgust at some crap they would publish, and you are right, they are, most likely, doing it to reach some target audience. Such as the “social media” crowd, no doubt. Retaliatory responces for mistreatment of Russian journalists are also pathetic. Throwing the western journos out of Russia, especially those that write garbage about Russia for their western publications, would be a good start. I also agree that translations of REALLY important stuff, like speeches by Russian President should be practically instantanious for western consumption/audience. Another issue- that of deliberate sabotage by imbedded in Russian Media so-called “Russian liberals”, (who would be mostly members of the tribe by the way) and still hankering for the West’s idea for Russia, is a serious problem, that government absolutely needs to address, and SOON! Thank you Andrei! This needed to be said. Let’s hope someone will hear it.
Just two observations: conserning RT, I only browse through
– RT UK news https://www.rt.com/uk/ : really horrible
– RT DE https://de.rt.com/ : much better
Also the German version of Sputnik https://snanews.de/ is better than main Sputnik https://sputniknews.com/ .
Perhaps this is due to the fact that the English speaking sites are much more “professional”, while the German speaking sites are more “amateurish”.
Could be.
Then there is an Arabic RT too and it might be better than RT English.
But if so, then it is even MORE inexcusable to continue allow RT English to be such a fountain of vomit.
Even more,
I actually much prefer PressTV, which informs without needing to resort to scatological contents, good for them!
And while I don’t follow the Chinese media, I am quite confident that they would not sink to the level of RT either, if only because of their Communist ideology which very much has a sense of right and wrong (even if it is not mine).
The Chinese media in English is quite though extremely dry and almost robotic in their tv shows. I also follow Korean media (in English) and their presentation is almost the same. The Chinese live presentation has gotten better and has spent more time countering AZ propaganda.
I would not fault RT for its coverage of “sexy stuff” and sports, because that attracts an audience which could become interested in the other stories. Also, for the regular RT audience, it’s bait to lure your locker-room pals into visiting a site they otherwise would not see. The details matter here. Does RT coverage degrade women ? I’ve seen a lot of it (believe me) and I think it is almost entirely benign. Sports coverage is a funny topic, because a large part of the sports audience does not care about sports, but yet they feel they have to “keep up”. It’s a sad fact of life in “the land of the free.” I know a dozen salesmen (the men, not the saleswomen) and they all tell me they pay attention to sports just so they can do small talk with their customers, but beyond that, not only do they not care, some salesmen actually look down their noses at the fools whose lives are so vacant that they really do care about professional sports. Sales people see “sports” as just another industry, something for fools with nothing better to do. As they say, it takes all kinds to make the world go around.
Yes, RT in English should be far better than it is. There are too many face-palm quality “news” items that get their facts wrong or miss what’s important. The qualitative differences between RT in the various nations is big. A friend, whose “hobby” is journalism, has a close-up view of RT in the US, and he says there is a noticeable difference between RT in New York and RT in Washington, DC. He thinks RT has difficulty attracting high-quality journalists in the US, partly because RT vastly prefers young attractive alpha-level people, and such people don’t tend to be savvy, of course. A couple years ago, RT had a 1 or 2 week workshop to get people started in journalism, but I never heard what became of it. It would be good to try it again.
I haven’t read Press TV in years for its news content, but the rest of Press TV is interesting. This government-owned news outlet is tight-lipped where it matters. I appreciate that Tehran might feel a need to not say too much. Iran has more interesting sites such as https://en.mehrnews.com/ By comparison, Hezbollah english.almanar.com.lb/ goes into valuable details. Little Lebanon is not as significant as Iran, but you can see the universe in that particular gain of sand, or to be more precise, you can see how the Empire operates. And of course, al-Manar journalism extends well beyond Lebanon.
Thank you Saker for this analysis.
I agree with your general assessment of Margarita Simonyan and Maria Zacharova. They are doing a really good job. Indeed they are up against powerful forces of misinformation and other dirty tactics by the western media and their propagandist.
Also, I agree that what RT does on it’s website by posting regularly and prominently incidents of violence, whether the UFC stuff (how is UFC legal anyways? It is so barbaric and primitive) or videos of fights in public places and images of scantily clad women in is immoral. and seems to have no other purpose other than to attract the lowest common denominator to click on the story.
As someone who works in mass communications and is of a mature age I can offer some thoughts that may help explain this behaviour of the western oriented Russian media.
back in the day, journalism (whether print or TV) had some very simple rules. Is the story news worthy or not? Then, if the story was newsworty, your task was to write an article or story using the 5 W rule (who, what, where, when, why and sometimes how). That’s it. No personal opinion, no conjecture or theories of any sort were considered good journalism. That was reserved for the Op-Ed pages.
Today, the media landscape has changed dramatically. Not only is personal opinion allowed, it is also encouraged. what the media bosses are looking for is stories that will make people click, tune-in and thus increase their viewership stats. In other words, data relevant to advertisers is more important than actually newsworthiness or truthfulness of stories. Then, there is another factor. believe it or not, the younger generation of media workers are all copy cats. They all copy and emulate what others are doing. There is no room for being different, brave, bold or even conservative. everything must be done how google and facebook and other social media giants do it. There is huge pressure to not think or work outside the established box of the social media way of doing things. Any story we post, any video we make MUST be made how entities who have a huge following do it. I argue with my young colleagues constantly and tell them that they are not brave enough, that they don’t have the guts to do things differently then the established way. And the established way is how RT does it. That’s how I would explain what RT website is doing. they are simply doing what everyone else is doing. perhaps they think that if their website looks more like Fox or MSNBC etc..then it will be more accepted by the western audience and they can then squeeze the “truth” in between the lines. That’s all I can think of.
Although, I don’t discount your idea of there being Atlanticists in the ranks of Russian media, I also wouldn’t give them that much credit. Many of the new generation today are all about copy, paste, get the check and brag on social media about their great life. I hope I’m not too harsh on them. I simply think that RT is still searching for the right formula but tying to be “cool” and “modern”.
And regarding the translations of texts into English from Russian media and speeches and statements, I agree, someone is being too lazy.
Another thing that I notice in media is how few people think to the future. There is very little planning and organisation believe it or not. There seem to be only short-term tasks being handed out with no way of seeing the big picture (if there is any). So, media workers are pretty much blindfolded workers given simple individual tasks with no idea how and if their work is connected to the larger goal. And God-forbid that you even bring this up in the team meetings. If you do, then you are “not a team player” “always obstructing” “not doing what you’re paid to do” etc.. It is very much top-down management in other words and there is no way of knowing whether the information and task you are given are actually what was meant to be assigned from the top.
Well, that is my experience and I hope it helps the conversation a bit.
I have asked myself the same questions for a while, rt and sputnik is trash now. That is why i read RIA or TASS, Yandex translate in the browser, ad the app is getting better all the time.
But most people are either too lazy to check foreign media and use auto-translate or they simply don't care, they just want their Kardashian fix.
Send this article to President Putin via his official site, translated to Russian.
Send in questions to his “meet the people/ask the President” events, small things but i have no other ideas.
Dear Andrei,
Regarding Sputnik and RT websites: i have found that they tend to follow the western “news” system which, for me, is virtually total propaganda, lies and deceit. I find myself incessantly having to “read between the lines” and search through many websites to confirm aspects of stories that are making the rounds. This includes not only political and military “news” on Sputnik and RT (west-leaning propaganda and anti-Russian propaganda as well), but also in fields that are more technical, including what today is called “science”. Coverage is always gven in these fields with an extremely strong (and in my opinion, wrong) slant / bias towards Status Quo thinking from the delusional high priests of Dogma. These are things the West, actually also other nations as well) have been doing for generations in order to control the flow of the narrative in every human field of endeavor using an intellectual “cattle shute” methodology. This keeps us trapped in a zero-sum mind trap.
And, of course, there are the regular articles vying for the basest of human instincts including regular adulation pieces about certain sports figures and, of course, as you said, the UK-style booby-stories / nudity pieces. It seems both Sputnik and RT have become British tabloids. Is this because the population (and politicians, in a kind of self-inflicted head wound) of the West has been trained to be Reality Incapable?
Because of these chronic failures, i tend to disbelieve anything i read on these websites, unless and until i see the same information presented on more reliable websites, such as yours. I always need to connect the dots and see if they make sense. There are very few websites that i consider reliable, even in the loosest sense of the word.
As for Youtube: I am simply disgusted and i feel like i’m living in a nightmarish dystopian virtual reality where “news” is mainly manufactured out of thin ideology rather than reported. Some Youtube videos are good (mostly technical “how to” videos) but it is all so controlled from the political side that i have had the strongest urge on many occasions to throw all my communications technology (smartphone, computer, internet) away and go back to a pre-internet and pre-computing lifestyle, if that’s even possible anymore. However, this is not possible for me, since i am an engineer and i rely on these tools to do my work.
I’m sure there must be an alternative to this Borg-like global system. I’d really like to find or build a door and enter…
I read all three submissions written by Saker “as per instruction”. This one (2021) is mostly doom and gloom, although I can understand the frustration, whereas the posts written and published in 2016 and 2017 are uplifting and entertaining to boot. Granted, I don’t take issue with people revealing something which certainly amounts to a 100% correct observation regarding indifference on Russia’s part towards the importance of Russian counter-propaganda abroad. But, still, I have to say that I find it infinitely preferable watching the immense successes of Russia’s (and China’s) global power projection driving the West right into its own neoliberal gutter and its “leadership” and media absolutely insane with Russophobia rather than Russia/China suffering political defeat in spite of more sincere, professional counter-propaganda in the West. For all the ineptitude on Russia’s part in the information war, the West is getting beaten even if its 99% dearly prefer to remain faithful Ziomedia addicts.
To Nussiminen
With great respect to your intellect, and keep well, K. : )
Cпасибо, Kатерина!
Your posts are definitely resonating with my political sensibilities as well as they are appealing to my tastes for wit and sarcasm.
Living in Sweden, watching the ongoing neoliberal collapse in broad daylight and listening to the nonsense about it from our p••s-poor EU puppets in the government and the media, is entertaining in a sense. Sweden used to be a very peaceful country, but is turning fast into a dystopia of gun violence and hold-ups (foreigners who prefer the quixotic narrative about ’rapefest horrors’ are missing out on what’s happening for real here).
What this evokes in me is a mindful looking back at the 1990s when Russia found herself in this state of free-fall, hailed by Western ideologues as ’End of History’. Well, 30 years later it is the greed, corruption, rot, and all-out malevolent incompetence of these God-awful Euroshmoks (beautiful derogatory term!) and their Pindo kith and kin which can’t be denied. Russia might not be particularly dexterous when it comes to information warfare, but her resilience and political power projection are second to none! Russophobia 24/7 is the due result on the losing side