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The World Of Russian Propaganda by Elvira Vikhareva

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Russia | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 683

How is Russian propaganda organized? The same as anywhere else, just bolder and more unrestrained.

Modest propaganda dilutes the truth with lies. They add a drop of tar to a barrel of honey – so that honey can still be consumed, but why would you want to?

In Russia, we have over a long period become gradually accustomed to tar. A spoonful for President Putin, for former Defense Minister Shoigu, for Foreign Minister Lavrov – and gradually, by Archimedes’ law, all the honey has been displaced, leaving nothing but pure tar. A whole barrel.

In the realm of official mass media (radio, television), there is simply no truth left. Even on the entertaining Russian show “Field of Wonders,”[1] heroes of the “special military operation” have already appeared. Now, we can absolutely say that what is black on TV is white, and vice versa.

You see, the word “propaganda” stands in opposition to honest information, and there’s practically none left in legal sources. This is no longer propaganda; it is simply the imposition of a single ideology in Russia. It is an experiment, akin to Gianni Rodari’s story of building a land of liars within a federation.[2]

Honest information in Russia is now literally punishable by law. The so-called “foreign agents” are minor nuisances compared to the extremist and undesirable organizations. Anyone, even a 70-year-old grandmother who does not support the Russian government, can be labeled an extremist.

And working in an honest media outlet is outright criminalized.

It Is Easier And Less Costly To Believe The Propaganda

In neighboring Belarus, dictator Lukashenko went even further – reading truthful news is a crime there. We are successfully moving down the same path.

By now, there is no point in analyzing new propaganda techniques used to deceive viewers, listeners, and readers. Just different shades of tar in a single, huge barrel.

Don’t want tar? Then read the blocked and throttled internet, where only Telegram remains accessible, a platform the government could not control a few years ago and decided instead to use as one of its propaganda outlets. It is our only lifeline.

Of course, you can get truthful information – Telegram and its dedicated channels. But Telegram is not like a familiar TV you turn on during dinner, and the government exploits this. There is a habit, you see… a lazy press of a button, and no effort from even the most heroic journalists can compare.

Information should lead to conclusions. Often, conclusions lead to street protests in some countries. Try a solo protest in Russia. If you are lucky enough to get beyond your own doorstep – that is a win. But you will not stand with a poster for long; they will arrest you and send you to the police station.

If you are unlucky, you will be tried and sentenced to ten years. So many simply give up. It is easier and less costly to believe the propaganda, to sincerely love Big Brother (in the form of cameras on every corner helping the authorities identify dissenters) than to read the scary truth every day.

The truth is frightening. But propaganda sings about how “you are Russian, and you are lucky.” And who would not want to believe that more?

Here is what Russian propaganda says: here is the enemy – in yellow and blue, under the flag of the EU or the USA. And here is how to fight the undesirables: an ad for enlistment in the “special military operation” on every corner, offering money to impoverished Russians.

In addition, they explain that you are doing the right thing. And if getting off the couch is still scary, if there is any self-preservation instinct left – people are encouraged to inform on others. That is also very easy and “right” in the world of Russian propaganda.

Interestingly, there is a gradual replacement of idols in Russian media. Some public figures are too morally upright and are seen as role models. If a public opinion leader does not support Putin’s policies, he/she is automatically an enemy. They must be urgently replaced with someone loyal, while the former is labeled a “foreign agent.”

As you know, the English have been caring for their lawns for 300 years, so every blade of grass grows next to another – and here, for 30 years, they have been grooming brains so every convolution aligns perfectly. People are not grass; they adapt faster.

We Always Have To Prove Something, Or Face Fines Or Arrests

There are no special paths for Russian propaganda. Everything has been thought up before us.

It is no coincidence that so many Nazi techniques are repeated – from slogans to the incredibly popular blond singer who, since the beginning of the military operation, is shouting in his songs, “I’m Russian, I’m lucky,” with his compatriots, intoxicated by propaganda, echoing him.

It is simpler that way.

And the primary tactic has not changed over the years. Deceive and intimidate.

First, deceive with lies, and then intimidate those who do not believe.

To make your brain explode from what you have just read, let me tell you this: Russian propagandists love to echo, “Where were you ten years ago?!” They ask this question as in that old joke: “Have you already quit drinking cognac in the mornings? Yes or no? Look me in the eyes! Have you quit or not?”

Agree, caught in such a situation, you feel confused. The remarks that propaganda uses trap Russians, denying them the chance to say, “But I never drank!” There is only a definitive answer that places you in an utterly absurd position: “Yes, I quit, so I was indeed drinking endlessly but stopped,” or “No, I did not quit.”

And both are the worst possible answers.

These are classic rhetorical traps.

So it is with propagandists – they ask meaningless questions designed to provoke inflammatory responses.

The main question long posed to Russians, and picked up by many, is not about where we were ten years ago but what happened in 2014 and who was responsible for the events.[3]

(Read about what happened in 2014)

That question – “What actually happened?” – propagandists carefully sidestep, because the answer is known, and it instantly shatters their entire scheme.

Or another favorite question of Russian propagandists: “Why don’t you love your homeland?” It carries similar demagoguery and can be phrased differently, but the essence remains the same: my compatriots are put in a position of having to justify themselves. We always have to prove something, or face fines or arrests.

Russian propaganda successfully equates the homeland with the authorities. For them, as for the Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, “As long as Putin lives, Russia lives too,” and should Putin disappear, Volodin believes, the whole country should vanish as well.

But the homeland is something completely different – it is not the government.

The government long ago stole elections from the people, tortures people in prisons, and sends troops to other countries.

And if an ordinary Russian disagrees, they must come to love a truncheon in the back, which prison guards (the Russian police enjoy torturing liberals) will inflict upon them.

We are constantly placed in false conditions.

The Russian Parliament Changes Laws Every Year To Suit Themselves

If you do not support the army, do not draw a “Z” on your forehead, they call you a traitor to the motherland, and hopefully, it does not lead to a 25-year sentence.

For decades, Russians have been distracted from what is really happening in the country.

They do not answer questions about why the dollar was 30 rubles ten years ago, but today it is 98. What happened to doubling the GDP? Why is food importation banned, even though the West did not prohibit it – our own authorities create all the conditions for escalation.

Propagandists serve the authorities and hope that the average citizen’s memory is that of a fish, that we remember nothing of what happened yesterday.

For example, that not long ago Putin promised not to change the constitution but ended up rewriting it to suit himself.

That the chief propagandist mentioned above, Vladimir Solovyov, once said: “We cannot dream of seizing Ukrainian Crimea!” Turns out we can.

The authorities and their henchmen say many things, but in the end, they only do what benefits them.

The Russian parliament changes laws every year to suit themselves, hoping we will not be able to count how many people have been deprived of their right to be elected, contrary to the constitution.

And from every angle, we hear – “Where were you ten years ago, why don’t you love the Motherland?!”

It is simple.

We were in the Motherland and do not confuse it with the president.

Those who disagree with the “Putin regime” have been diligently remembering how those who seized power have been looting the country, hiding behind words about how enemies are everywhere.

Those Who Ask Questions Are Either Deliberately Ignored Or Arrested

These enemies, as a consequence, turned out to be the Russian opposition and most public opinion leaders, among them world-renowned people (poets, artists, journalists, musicians) who do not share Putin’s views.

It happened that they were unprepared to tolerate conflicts igniting on neighboring lands.

I still do not understand why we had to invade Ukraine.

First Moldova, then Georgia, and now Ukraine, and nowhere has the protection of Russians led to anything good.

In Turkmenistan, Russians were successfully betrayed, sold out for gas contracts.

And today, as in 2022, it seems that Russian authorities are once again in urgent need.

We understand that for them, people are unimportant; imperial ambitions are far more valuable.

And when given a chance to ask the propagandists an inconvenient question, do not expect reasonable answers. Everything is predetermined: “Enemies of the regime are not engaged with.”

Those who do not believe Putin are not worthy of Russian citizenship.

This is the tragedy – there is no one to hold accountable.

Those who ask questions are either deliberately ignored or arrested.

Under worse circumstances, they are killed.

But some are still alive here. Some even resist. Although not everyone lives to see the end.

AUTHOR

Elvira Vikhareva

Elvira Vikhareva is a renowned Russian opposition politician based in Russia. In 2023, she was poisoned with heavy metal salts.

SOURCES:

[1] The Field of Wonders is a Soviet, later Russian adaptation of the U.S. game show Wheel of Fortune.

[2] Tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/GelsominoInTheLandOfLiars

[3] In February and March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The President’s Conference and its message: “Think Again, Turn Away”

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Today starts a three day conference in Foggy Bottom at which President Obama will appear before an audience of representatives from 60 countries dealing with the threat of “violent extremism”.  The White House and State Department have made it abundantly clear that they refuse to identify the perpetrators and the victims of the Paris Charlie Hebdo and Kosher Supermarket attacks, this weekend’s attacks in Copenhagen, among them Jews, and the grisly beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by ISIS.  The critics of this no name policy suggest that if you cannot define the threat of radical Islam and its basis, Qur’anic doctrine and Sharia Islamic law,  that you can’t develop a strategy for “degrading “and” defeating” the Islamic State.

Given what happened in Egypt’s Sinai and this past weekend in Libya, the area of conflict with IS might be expanded to include North Africa and, obviously, the West, given the attacks in France, Belgium and Denmark, as well as America and Canada. Thus the “violent extremism” conference will focus on warning potential IS recruits of foreign fighters from across the globe to “Think Again, Turn Away.” That message is  being  refined by the State Department  Center  for Strategic Counter-terrorism Communications (CSCC) set up under an executive order issued by President  Obama in 2011. Otherwise, the recruits might end up dead either as suicide bombers or at the hands of IS masterminds. The CSCC has a daunting task. According to its website:

CSCC is comprised of three interactive components. The integrated analysis component leverages the Intelligence Community and other substantive experts to ensure CSCC communicators benefit from the best information and analysis available. The plans and operations component draws on this input to devise effective ways to counter the terrorist narrative. The Digital Outreach Team actively and openly engages in Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, and Somali to counter terrorist propaganda and misinformation about the United States across a wide variety of interactive digital environments that had previously been ceded to extremists.

As a New York Times (NYT) article on the conference pointed out the State Department CSCC coordinator, Ambassador Alberto Fernandez is leaving shortly after trying to lead the messaging effort across a broad spectrum of competing internal State, Homeland Security and intelligence echelons. This comment by former State Department counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin sums up why Fernandez will retire in April, 2015. “After its first year or two, it was never taken seriously and got little support from higher-ups.”

The CSCC has endeavored to communicate that the IS Salafist jihadist slick presentations in videos, tweets and Face book pages corrupts the central message of Islam of “peace and justice” – that is only to adherents of the faith. In point of fact, the IS following in the way of Allah, Jihad.

How slick is the IS agit-propaganda spewed out on-line to the unwary recruit? One recent example is reflected in a new release translated by MEMRI, entreating recruits to come to Libya and join the gateway to the Conquest of Rome – a thought that should be unnerving to Pope Francis. The NYT CSCC article cited as examples of effective “messaging”:

One online image two years ago, for instance, showed photographs of three American men who traveled to Somalia and died there, including Omar Hammami, a young man from Alabama who became an infamous Islamist militant. The accompanying message reads, “They came for jihad but were murdered by Al Shabaab.”

Another image showed a young man weeping over a coffin. The message read, “How can slaughtering the innocent be the right path?”

Each of the online posts carried a warning: “Think again. Turn away.”

Last June, Islamic State supporters warned fighters to beware of the center’s Twitter account and not to interact with it.

The reality of the CSCC mission, is that it has been corrupted- to quote Egyptian President Al-Sisi- by the origin of  IS and Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).  As late as January 2015, the State Department was caught in a conference with alleged Egyptian MB leaders.  There were graphic messages on twitter set against the backdrop of the Seal of the State Department by one of the participants flashing the ‘rabbia’ hand sign-a signal to support ousted President Morsi and hundreds of others currently being tried for sedition in Egypt.  Last May, the State Department was embarrassed by a tweet it sent about the presence at a White House meeting on messaging with Sheik Bin Bayyah, a deputy to notorious MB preacher, Yusuf Al Qaradawi.  Bin Bayyah had been there before along with another Egyptian legislator and member of a terrorist group in 2013.

The President’s Conference on Violent Extremism is being stage managed by a skilled media expert, Richard Stengel, former Time Magazine managing editor, who was appointed in 2013 as Undersecretary Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.  Stengel will be assisted at the Conference by Ambassador Rashad Hussein, current Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and former Deputy White House Counsel with MB connections.  Stengel admits that countering the ISIS supremacy in messaging its appeal to young impressionable Muslim recruits is daunting. He was cited by the New York Times saying, “We’re getting beaten on volume, so the only way to compete is by aggregating, curating and amplifying existing content…. These guys [meaning IS] aren’t BuzzFeed; they’re not invincible in social media.”

Last fall, Stengel was interviewed by the Voice of America while in the midst of the propaganda war with IS:

VOA: What are some challenges in terms of dealing or confronting the ISIS propaganda machine?

Stengel: There are a lot of challenges. They are very sophisticated. They will stop at nothing, so to speak. They are not bound by the truth in any way. There are structural problems in the Middle East and the Arab world that can sometimes make Daesh’s ideology attractive, attractive to young men who don’t have jobs, who don’t see a great future for themselves, who have only heard a kind of misbegotten idea of Islam. So that is part of the challenge. What we’re trying to say, along with the coalition partners, is that Daesh is not the true face of Islam, it doesn’t represent what the prophet or the Koran stands for, and that the vision they’re creating of a caliphate is a false vision where none of the things they say are true are true.

Clearly, Stengel is toeing the White House line that IS is ‘misinterpreting’ Islam, even as  some scholars believe it is reflecting the core doctrine of Salafist/Jihad.

Last October, Stengel appeared at a forum on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy (CPD).  Watch the video of his talk and Q&A here:

USC Professor of Journalism and International Relations Phillip Seib in a CPD article suggested that countering ISIS messaging capability is in the wrong place at State’s CSCC. Rather it should be transferred to the CIA. He wrote:

A much more effective approach to combat their message would be a bare-knuckles operation: no disclaimers and a product that matches up better against the videos coming from Al Hayat, ISIL’s video production arm (the name stolen from the pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat).

These videos should feature imams denouncing ISIL’s tactics and women urging their sisters not to be enticed by ISIL’s recruiting messages. They should include video testimony from disillusioned ISIL fighters who have returned home. And they should show the ravaged Muslim communities that have been attacked by ISIL. But few anti-ISIL speakers want to participate in a State Department-branded video. And even fewer jihadist recruits believe it. American credibility in the region remains low, and many Muslims are wary of a new round of U.S. involvement in their homelands.

Our comment on the President’s “violent extremism” Conference this week in Washington is soft power is trumped by raw Islamic Jihad every time. That is embodied in failure to recognize the Qur’anic doctrine behind the rise of IS. To paraphrase the CSCC motto, “Think Again, Turn Away” from Taqiyya – lying for Allah.

RELATED ARTICLE: Islamic supremacist groups including Hamas-linked CAIR say Obama terror summit wrongly singles out Muslims

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.