So in that sense, historian Timothy Snyder argues, Russia's war against Ukraine really is a war with the West, just as Moscow contends. Watch as he explains how....
By Chicago Humanities Festival
Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2014
Snyder: Russia seeks to undermine the West's faith in itself (VIDEO)
[HT: AB] Snyder calls Russia's current tactic "strategic relativism": Russia knows it cannot make itself stronger, so it is trying to undermine the West's faith in itself, in what it knows to be true, and make the West weaker.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Many Israelis don't know a single Palestinian (NPR)
This report by NPR is well worth reading or listening to. I did not realize before it just how segregated Israeli Jews are from their Palestinian neighbors. And considering the disinformation that Israeli Jews receive about Arabs in schools and the Israeli media, it's entirely possible that many Israelis know LESS about Palestinians than informed Americans do.
I emphasize this because often I have heard in the U.S., usually from a conservative pundit, something like the following: "Just ask and Israeli what Arabs are like," or "We should take Israel's word for it how to deal with the Palestinians." This report shows why this cannot be true. Most Israelis are more isolated from Palestinians than any resident of a major U.S. city is from Arabs and Muslims. Israelis live in a bubble of hatred and fear that they themselves created.
This story reminds us that the main purpose of ghettoization -- be it by Nazis Germans or Israeli Jews -- is to separate the citizenry of the oppressor from the oppressed, to minimize all human contact from which common ground and natural empathy might spring. Segregation makes the job of propaganda much easier: citizens can be convinced those in the ghetto are the "other" with all sorts of evil intent, and essentially sub-human, without the same human qualities as you and I. Ergo they deserve whatever bad treatment they get from the oppressor state.
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
August 4, 2014 | NPR
URL: http://n.pr/1pzbiI5
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Khrushcheva: Putin's rhetoric turns long-time Russian critics into rabid backers
It's a shame that there seem to be no more liberals or internationalists left in Russia:
People I know in Russia, members of the intelligentsia and professionals who have long been critical of President Vladimir Putin’s anti-Western stance, have suddenly turned into America-bashers. Many have been swept away by Putin’s arguments that the United States, not the Kremlin, is destabilizing Ukraine.
[...] A (now former) friend recently told me, “How dare you look for answers when Russia is under the attack of the ‘new colonialism,’ ” — a “threat” that Putin first spoke of in 2007.The Kremlin is banking on this time-tested totalitarian propaganda technique: Use overwhelming patriotic fervor against an enemy. Then your people, even if skeptical of you, will not believe the words of other governments.
Unfortunately, I can say that I'm also at risk of losing a few friends over Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Many Russians have simply gone crazy these past few months....
By Nina Khrushcheva
July 29, 2014 | Reuters
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Skibinskiy: Russia - a 'failed, mafia state' - sees Ukraine's break as 'existential threat'
(HT: NK). Here are links to two blog posts (Part 1 and Part 2) by a Russian emigre Max Skibinskiy who works in Silicon Valley. They're long so I'm going to highlight the best parts. Here's from Part 1, about Russia today [emphasis mine]:
Russia was and is a failed state. What is seen from the outside is just a facade imitating a functional country and government. High oil prices, residual infrastructure of USSR and internal mass propaganda machine maintained the illusion for more than a decade.[...] In simple terms, Russia is a mafia state. All the way from Moscow to regions and to small towns, everything is controlled by various mafia gangs. Police and judiciary are parts of most powerful gangs. They usually assist in extortion or theft of property earned by local small and medium size businessmen. Big business is subject to federal mafia clan wars.The mafia-state formation is logical consequence of Russian economy: it is totally dominated by oil and gas revenues. Oil, gas and derivatives provide meaningful employment to about 1M people. Russian population is about 150M. How do they survive? The majority depends on various forms of government handouts.With Russian-style oil production you don’t have to think, innovate or even hire smart people. All you have to do is to cash the check. Gazprom is ranked as one of the most grossly inefficient enterprises in the world. So what happens when a small, totally incompetent minority controls country-wide oil rent while the rest of 149 million people are a burden? The answer is obvious: that 1M would create a mafia state to keep the rest of 149M in check by means of police and judiciary abuse and mass propaganda.Russian propaganda machine is vast, it now exceeds the one of Soviet Union.
About the degradation of the Russian population:
The population at large is, statistically speaking, not very bright. Many are deranged from overuse of alcohol or drugs. A big number are simply aging elderly rooted in USSR-centric mindset who never adjusted to the modern world. Most of them do not “work” in the sense we understand full-time employment here: they occupy placeholder positions sponsored by the government. Being dependent their whole life on government help, they are psychologically unable even to think government can do something wrong.
About the Russian "brand":
I think we came to the end of the line with regards to Russia as a name, culture, a global brand. For the time being the country future is destroyed, police state is well-entrenched and the narrative for the brainwashed locals would be xenophobic tale of struggle with the “West”.
And here he finally gets to Ukraine:
The differences between “Ukrainian” and “Russian” people are cosmetic. [I certainly disagree, as did many of Max's readers, and he corrected himself in Part 2, basically saying Russians come from Kievan Rus', which is historically accurate and another reason Putin doesn't want to "lose" Ukraine. - J] The distance between Kiev and Moscow is about same as Sacramento to San Diego. Even today, after all that happened, the most likely language you will hear on the streets of Kiev is Russian. So why Kremlin was so enraged about recent Ukrainian revolution? After all Ukraine has no natural gas or oil, there were no riches to divide, what was the fuss all about?What happened is that first time in history, large group of ethnic “Russians” had overthrown a mafia clan in a popular uprising. Until then, Ukraine was a satellite state, and exactly because it had no natural oil and gas, much larger portion of the population had to develop “creative class” skills rather than going to work for oil company or police enforcement. Then suddenly this social group had enough heft and popular power to overthrow local mafia don.You can imagine the amount of terror it produced in the gang occupying Kremlin right now. If was and still is an extensional threat to them, hence they pulled out all the stops to overthrow or destabilize a new government in Kiev, and at the same time whip out xenophobic mass-hysteria in a local population.At this moment, Kremlin can not really stop. If Kiev government survives, it will fairly quickly unlock economic benefits of non-mafia, free economy. The large parasitic class living by bribes and extortion will be displaced: it will have the same effect as if base tax rate would suddenly drop by a double digit percentage. Next door, progressive Russians would quickly notice and spread information about growing prosperity and opportunity in a city next door. What was half million Euro-leaning progressives, would become a million, then few million: before long you can picture a Gaddafi-style demise for the Kremlin gang.Kremlin is fighting for its own survival: supplying weapon system and military crew to a roaming criminal gangs [in Ukraine] is nothing for them in big scheme of things.
And here's what Silicon Valley can do to help Ukraine:
- Help Ukraine. They have terrific outsourcing shops and consulting firms. Send them business if you can. Recent revolution would unlock even more creative force in this economically modest, yet energetic country. They are the first large group of ethnic “Russians” who become free on their own power and valor. To understand the scale of that achievement, here is the last group of Russians who were not ruled by khans, czars, communist chairmans or KGB generals: Free Novgorod Republic. That was over 1000 years go. Ukraine was a cradle of Russian civilization – they might become a source of its rebirth yet again.
- Boycott anything and everything related to Russian government and associated banks and corporations. Any business you send to them only strengthen the regime. Your contract dollars will pay for next Buk missile.
Then in Part 2, here is what Max says about Ukrainians's and Russians' common heritage:
Ukrainian side, deservedly, had a lot of critique for calling Ukrainians “ethnic Russians”. It was interpreted as usual Russian chauvinism rejecting Ukrainian identity, language and rights as a sovereign nation. Ouch.My apologies to Ukrainians. From a historical perspective I was referring to, the article would be unchanged if I were to say “Russia is populated by ethnic Ukrainians from Kievan-Rus“. inosmi.ru did astute and very subtle translation as “Russich”, which precisely the meaning I was trying to convey. Keep in mind, there is no English word I know for “Russich”, and if one exists, I’m sure last person around here who knew it left after he locked gates at Fort Ross after himself.
In Part 2, here's his take on economic sanctions against Russia:
At the same time, make no mistake: current Russian’s regime is ruthless, efficient and fully in control. It not going to change soon, especially with 81% popularity rating. It has no obvious weaknesses besides potential economic collapse from sanctions (and still would take 10 to 20 months and resulting political change that might not be for the better at all). The ruling elite is not considering Russia their homeland: it is occupied territory with captive native population to be exploited for monetary gain which is to be squirreled away overseas. If country and it’s people would be irrevocably ruined by the process so be it: the elite and their children will just permanently move their European residences.That is the key problem that makes sanctions such a blunt and imprecise weapon: until they include all extended families of the corrupt Russian government-industrial complex officials they are toothless. If they do include them (and assets registered in the name of *all* their relatives) it will have big negative impact on EU/UK economy, and it becomes equivalent of nuclear weapon against Russian ruling class: they will have absolutely nothing to loose [sic], the whole purpose of their life (Western wealth) would be wiped out in an instant. In general, it is not a smart move to put a nuclear-armed power in that position.
And on how Kiev's techies are smarter than Moscow's:
Kiev is a cosmopolitan European capital with good climate and great people. Unlike Moscow, it much less infected with toxic poison of oil and gas revenues – here you got to work to make your fortune. I observed many times that when it comes to cutting edge technologies Ukranian and Kiev teams are far ahead of Russia as whole – and Russia is a pretty big place! The reason is simple: Kiev teams already compete, learn and grown on the world level – they wouldn’t get any contracts otherwise. Russian teams always have a fallback to easy low-competency contracts driven by oil and gas: they have much less pressure to become exceptionally good. That how global technology competition works.
Posted by Max
July 20, 2014 | The Vault of the Future
July 25, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Rachkevych: Ukraine's 'Praviy Sektor' is Russia's latest bogeyman
Way to go, Mark! Хороша робота!
By Mark Rachkevych
May 22, 2014 | Kyiv Post
All dictators need an enemy, real or imagined. It’s the telltale sign of an authoritarian state and one that Russian President Vladimir Putin embraces to Orwellian proportions. Appropriately, his latest external enemy is Praviy Sektor, one of the most visible militant nationalist groups that provided securityduring the EuroMaidan Revolution and defended it from police brutality.
The loosely-structured coalition has since registered as a political party, and its leader Dmytro Yarosh, a native of Russian-speaking Dniproderzhynsk in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, is running for president.
At the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on May 22, Yarosh described Ukraine as a “neo-colonial” state that only started building an independent nation after EuroMaidan ousted the corrupt and criminal regime of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in late February. His brand of nationalism is one of a positive, empowering aspiration akin to a liberationist movement. And he views the 100-day revolution as the final shattering of Russo-Soviet tendencies in Ukraine based on comrade capitalism instead of institutional state-building.
Russia’s Kremlin-controlled media started demonizing the group in the early stages of EuroMaidan. Praviy Sektor became synonymous with neo-fascist, a term that Russia gratuitously uses for its enemies and those who pose a threat to its interests.
Rightfully so.
Moscow’s free public relations – its state-owned English-language Russia Today news channel alone has a $400 million yearly budget – elevated the nationalist group to such heights that it overshadowed the pluralistic fiber of EuroMaidan.
Today, millions of eastern Ukrainians who historically favor watching Russian TV channels, fear Praviy Sektor is at their doorstep getting ready to slit their throats. Many attacks on Ukrainian and pro-Russian separatists alike get attributed to Praviy Sektor in Russia’s propaganda campaign. Journalists months prior in Crimea also reported on the ominous Praviy Sektor scare among the local population as the Kremlin bloodlessly annexed the peninsula.
As Ukraine’s former ruler and oppressor, Russia historically vilifies any group or individual who has ever tried to break away from its grasp. The practice goes back centuries.
Starting in the 18th century, with czarist Russia’s increasing encroachment on Ukraine’s quasi-independent state, Cossack leader Hetman Ivan Mazepa forged an alliance with Swedish King Karl XII who was waging war against Peter the Great. Russia never forgave Mazepa’s “betrayal” and its history books say the act violated the two nations’ “fraternal brotherhood.”
By contrast, a pact that Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky signed with Russia a century earlier is viewed by mainstream Russian historians as the start of a beautiful relationship that re-united the two Slavic entities. To Ukrainian nationalists, the Pereyaslav Treaty marked the beginning of Russian domination over much of Ukraine that eventually devastated the Cossacks’ once flourishing lands and subjugated them to Moscow.
Next on Russia’s villification hit list was Semyon Petliura, who headed the Ukrainian People’s Republic Army and for a time the Directory government of the UNR when Ukraine briefly gained independence in the wake of World War I. Eventually Bolshevik Russia took over more than half of modern-day Ukraine’s territory while he emigrated to Paris in 1924 where he was assassinated. Again, mainstream Russia glosses over this period of Ukraine’s statehood and many Ukrainians believe their nation’s first capital was Kharkiv before it was moved to Kyiv – a purely Soviet historiography of events.
Incidentally, writer Mikhail Bulgakov who was a young adult living in Kyiv when Petliura came to power, hated the very idea of an independent Ukrainian state. He felt the same way about Petliura whom he called a “wonderful bookkeeper.” Towards the end of his short story “The City of Kyiv” he wrote: “May the memory of Petliura be damned.”
The Kremlin also lavished free publicity upon Stepan Bandera who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during and after World War II. The militant organization’s main goal was to attain Ukrainian independence. Many of its members fought with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), an underground resistance movement that fought Nazi Germany and Soviet forces until the mid-1950s. The USSR’s propaganda machine demonized Bandera to such an extent that his name still instills fear in many Russians today. Indeed, the term Banderivtsi is another Russian code word for an independent-minded Ukrainian.
In fact today, Putin doesn’t recognize the interim government in Kyiv and his media minions often refer to it as a “junta” or a “banderite regime.” These hollow labels will continue to be sputtered until a government appears in Kyiv that is either “friendlier” to Moscow, loyal, or willing to be controlled by it. Any other option means to be branded a “fascist” by the world’s most bona fide fascist state ruled by a former KGB lieutenant-colonel who constantly needs a phantom enemy to justify his criminal acts.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Who is to blame for 46 Odessa deaths? (Kyiv Post)
Now the Kyiv Post is saying that there were no foreigners who died in the Trades House, although presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko still insists this is true.
Ukraine's security service (SBU) says they discovered that many of the AntiMaidan activists were paid by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
I realize that some people will believe or disbelieve what suits them, but the rest of us should try to discover the facts. Those who believe the government of Ukraine is "fascist" will not believe a word it says; they'll believe SBU is fabricating evidence. I myself have zero belief in anything coming from the Russian government; it is a Putin propaganda machine.
What seems clear to me is that part of this conflict was planned by the * 400 or so AntiMaidan thugs who came armed with guns, clubs, etc. and wearing body armor. But what happened after that was chaos and reaction. I don't see how anybody from Kyiv or elsewhere could have "planned" the movements, actions and reactions of opposing sides exceeding a few thousand people.
At least one film on YouTube shows an AntiMaidan protester shooting a machine gun from behind a wall of police, i.e. under their protection. This was outrageous and must be punished.
My friend in Odessa witnessed two men killed in front of his office by AntiMaidan thugs: one with an ice pick; and one shot by a sniper. I believe his word 100%.
Again, people will believe what they want, but I'm hoping there is still room for facts and sober analysis.
* In Odessa, Slovyansk and elsewhere, we keep seeing similar figures: 200 to 400 fighters/activists/thugs whatever you want to call them. This seems like the key number. I don't know why. (Maybe it's too difficult for Russia to arm and support more men than that?...) But it shows that a lot of havoc can be wreaked by just a few individuals. It also shows that not "millions" of Ukrainian citizens in the East support such violence.
Indeed, let's not forget a a recent Pew Research poll showed that 70 percent in the East -- including 58 percent of Russian speakers -- want Ukraine to maintain its current borders.
By Lily Hyde and Olga Rudenko
May 7, 2014 | Kyiv Post
In the bloodiest day in Ukraine since government snipers claimed more than 50 lives during the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 20, 46 people were killed in Odessa on May 2. The violence started when an armed group of pro-Russian activists attacked a peaceful pro-Ukrainian rally, whose participants, uncharacteristically, fought back.
But nearly a week later, many questions remain about who died, how they died, why so many perished and who is responsible for their deaths amid accusations from Ukraine’s leading presidential candidate, Petro Poroshenko, that a toxic chemical was used in the building where most lost their lives.
Pro-Russians came armed, ready to attack
Some 1,000 pro-Ukrainian citizens and football fans from Odessa and Kharkiv gathered at Soborna Square in central Odessa on 3 p.m. to march for Ukraine’s unity, a tradition that began during the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled former President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22. Metalist Kharkiv’s fan club, however, denied they took part.
Before the march, some 400 pro-Russian protesters approached the square from Hrecheska Street; many of them were armed with guns, bats and sticks and wore bulletproof vests and helmets, while most of the Ukrainian patriots on Soborna Square were unarmed.
After the group of mostly Ukrainian football fans came under attack, they responded by throwing rocks at the AntiMaidan crowd of pro-Russians. Soon the fighting escalated, as both sides threw Molotov cocktails and fired automatic weapons. Police were seen either shielding the pro-Russians or not taking action to keep the two crowds apart. Masked, pro-Russians were also een shooting from the rooftop of the Afina shopping mall in the central square.
The fighting lasted for hours and left six men dead before it moved to an even deadlier phase.
Pro-Ukrainian activists vastly outnumbered the pro-Russian crowd and eventually chased them away. They then descended on Kulikove Pole Square, where the AntiMaidan protesters had set up an encampment, and destroyed the tents near the Trade Union House that had been the headquarters of the pro-Russian protesters in Odessa since February.
When the activists set the tents on fire, Odessa Oblast council member Oleksiy Alba called on some 200 pro-Russians in the camp to flee to the nearby Trade Union House.
The pro-Ukrainians threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the building, while the AntiMaidan supporters threw Molotov cocktails from the rooftop. Several bottles broke inside the front entrance and the windows of the second and fourth floor, where a fire spread quickly.
The burning building trapped people inside. Police said eight of them died after jumping from the upper floors of the tall, stately five-story building as they tried to escape from the fire, while 32 died of smoke inhalation. The rest went to the rooftop or hid in areas of the building not consumed by fire.
The victims
The death toll unofficially stands at 46. As of May 7, only 38 of the victims were identified, 19 of whom have been buried. Despite rumors that there were Russian citizens among the dead, all the identified victims turned out to be from Odessa. Five participants of the clashes went missing. Some 200 people sought medical aid after the clashes. Of identified victims, six are women.
One of the women was Khrystyna Berzhanytska, 22. A blonde young woman of Russian origin and an AntiMaidan activist in Odesa, she died of smoke inhalation inside the Trade Unions House. In early November 2013, she participated in a talk show on local TV, defending the idea of Slavic unity and criticizing the West.
“I don’t understand why everyone is so pro-Western now. What comes from West kills our culture, our traditions. It’s wrong to take after someone; everyone should have their own way. Otherwise, we can turn into a herd,” Berzhanytska said then.
Most of the bodies in Trade Unions House were found lying in the stairwell and upstairs rooms.
How the fire started
The official version given by the Interior Ministry is that the Trade Unions House could have caught on fire from the Molotov cocktails that some of the AntiMaidan protesters were throwing from the rooftop.
But even eyewitnesses are not sure what started the deadly inferno. Many videos shot at the scene show the building on fire from Molotov cocktails thrown by pro-Ukrainian protesters. But at least one video shows a fire burning in the room on the fourth floor while the room’s window is closed and unbroken.
People try to escape from a fire at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2.
Minyayev, who witnessed the tragedy, says he saw pro-Ukrainian activists beating those who jumped from the windows, but he does not believe there was any intent to kill those inside. The activists helped save many lives by bringing scaffolding any other rescue devices to the building.
The pro-Ukrainian fighters “didn’t know there were people inside who had died. People were shouting until the end – ‘Come out!’ ‘Give up!’ Until the very end, when the emergency services people came out and said, “Guys, there are only corpses in there,” Minyayev said.
Some allege that the victims died from a deadly gas, or toxic chemicals, not smoke. Poroshenko, the billionaire front-runner in the presidential election on May 25, thinks this version may be true.
“New details of the Odesa tragedy are now being disclosed. There were terrorists brought from Transnistria and Russia who fired at the pro-Ukrainian march and there were also special toxic substances placed in the Trade Union house. It was a scenario developed in advance to make the number of victims higher,” Poroshenko told journalists in parliament on May 6 after lawmakers listened to a report by law enforcement officials.
The investigation
The unrest in Odesa was financed by members of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle, said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on May 7. He added that Russia’s KGB-successor agency, the Federal Security Service, organized the unrest and backed the pro-Russian crowd.
Clashes between participants of the march “For the unity of Ukraine” and pro-Russian activists in Odessa on May 2.
According to him, the SBU discovered that the people who attacked the pro-Ukrainian rally in Odessa were paid from a money conversion center in Odessa. The center was associated with former Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov and former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Klymenko, both part of Yanukovych’s inner circle. They, along with Yanukovych, are among the coterie of former high officials who fled Ukraine and are believed to be hiding out in Russia.
On May 7 Klymenko was summoned to the General Prosecutor’s Office to be questioned, but didn’t appear.
There were other, peaceful rallies in Odessa as recently as May 1, when AntiMaidan activists and left-wing parties held a march.
The next day, AntiMaidan groups on the Russian-controlled Vkontakte social network suddenly shared calls to forcefully stop the pro-Ukrainian march and “take after Donetsk,” a reference to the bloody attacks by Kremlin-backed, pro-Russian demonstrators on pro-Ukrainians on April 27.
During the clashes in Odessa, many were surprised and outraged by the inaction of police.
Police didn’t prevent the hundreds of armed AntiMaidan supporters from attacking the pro-Ukrainian rally, even though several dozens of the officers were present at the AntiMaidan supporters’ gathering spot. When the fight started, the police formed a line to protect AntiMaidan people from the pro-Ukrainian football fans.
Witnesses say and videos show the police shielded the AntiMaidan crowd and even let some from their ranks launch attacks. At least one protester on the AntiMaidan side was seen shooting a machine gun from behind rows of police, using them as a shield.
“What for me was the worst thing was that the firing came from behind the police line, from behind their shields,” Minyayev said. “They couldn’t have not seen it. It’s proof to me that they didn’t just let it happen, they supported it.”
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitskiy agrees.
“We can speak of not just (police) inactivity, but of collaboration,” Makhnitskiy told Channel 5 on May 6.
Two criminal investigations of the Odessa events have been opened – one of the police actions and the other of the violent riots. Meanwhile, a range of Odessa top officials have been fired and replaced, including the chief of regional police and the governor of Odessa Oblast.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych, Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko, journalist Sergiy Dibrov from Odessa contributed to this story.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Russia, not Ukraine, is flirting with Far Right politics
I meant to send this a few days earlier. It shows that Vladimir Putin's Russia is the truly neo-fascist state, not Ukraine!
By Halya Coynash
April 17, 2014 | Al Jazeera
Ukraine's main far-right party, VO Svoboda, has been dumped by its erstwhile European ultra-nationalist allies. It was dumped for Russia with whom the most virulently anti-Semitic, anti-migrant and far-right parties in France, Hungary and other EU countries are developing close ties. The Kremlin's blossoming contacts with those parties, and the far-right roots of prominent pro-Russian activists in Ukraine do not deter Russia from claiming to be protecting Russian nationals from the anti-Semitic and fascist hordes who have allegedly seized control in Ukraine.
The claims have been refuted countless times and attempts to use anti-Semitism condemned by the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine,prominent Jewish civic figures, academics and others. The UN's High Commissioner on Human Rights has rightly indicated that "misinformation, propaganda and incitement to hatred need to be urgently countered" but missed the point entirely about the source of it all.
Who is fascist?
Russia's propaganda machine, and especially Russian-language TV channels are feeding not only the Russian audience, but also a significant number of Ukrainians with lies and manipulated reports. Images of a Crimean rabbi forced to leave for Kiev after condemning Russian intervention are presented as showing a rabbi forced to leave Ukraine because of mounting anti-Semitism.
In one astounding attempt to explain the denial by Ukrainian Jews of Russia's claims, viewers on the Kremlin-funded Russia Today were asked whether such Jewish organisations "are with their own hands bringing on a second Holocaust?"
You have only to listen to those on the streets supporting the armed "federalists" in the Donetsk region to see that the propaganda works. The armed separatists and their supporters would tell journalists that they do not want to live in the same country with "fascists". It is no accident that the puppet government "elected" after armed Russian soldiers seized government buildings in the Crimea immediately closed down almost all Ukrainian media and gave the broadcasting frequencies to Russian channels.
A number of the main actors in the pro-Russian protests in the Donetsk region have strong links with far-right parties. Pavel Gubarev, for example, is a Donetsk business owner and the head of the "People's Militia". On March 1, he was supposedly elected "people's governor" and led a crowd in storming the Donetsk regional administration building, demanding that a referendum be held on the oblast's secession and calling for Russian military intervention. His detention was presented by Russian TV channels as politically motivated persecution. They preferred not to delve into Gubarev's ideological roots as a member of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity Party.
Gubarev, and a number of other leading figures in the Donetsk federalist protests, are members of Natalya Vitrenko's Progressive Socialist Party. That party was singled out by Josef Zissels, head of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress when he rejected Russian claims that the EuroMaidan protesters were anti-Semitic. He said that the Congress which monitors anti-Semitism and xenophobia had instead found a lot of anti-Semitic material on pro-Russian sites like that of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) aimed at inciting antagonism to EuroMaidan. The latter was presented as having been instigated by Jews.
A rather small rally in Mykolaiv on April 6 declared another PSP supporter, Dmitry Nikonov, "people's governor", while two members - Alexander Kharytonov and Alexander Kravtsov - are leading figures in the Luhansk Guard, a major separatist organisation in the south-east. Kravtsov is also involved in organisations with neo-Nazi leanings.
More can and has been said about the relatively small number of such pro-Russian activists. It should, however, be stressed that none was well-known or had any influence before the events which led to Russia's annexation of the Crimea. This changed on April 6 when administrative buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv were seized, then most dramatically on April 13, with the deployment of armed militants noted by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, as being "equipped with Russian weapons and the same uniforms as those worn by Russian forces that invaded Crimea".
A public opinion survey carried out in the second half of March reported a majority in Ukraine favouring joining the EU and a majority in all regions believing that Crimea should remain a part of Ukraine in some manner. Another survey was undertaken by Civic Watch with the participation of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, from March 16 to 30, with respondents from throughout Ukraine, including the Crimea. An absolutely majority - 89 percent - consider Ukraine to be their motherland. Only 8 percent support separatism. Even in Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) only 18 percent were in favour of it.
The so-called referendum on March 16 on Crimea's future has not been recognised by the international community for many reasons, including the presence of armed Russian soldiers. The self-styled prime minister, Sergei Aksenov whose pro-Russian party gained a mere 4 percent of the votes at the last parliamentary elections, had previously gained notoriety for criminal connections rather than far-right views.
Russian ties with Europe's far right
The same cannot be said of those invited by Russia to "observe the referendum". The choice was clearly limited since Ukrainian and international election watchdogs had refused to recognise a "referendum". Those who turned up were Russia's far-right (or neo-Stalinist) allies.
Russian TV channels reported the essentially full stamp of approval provided by this "team of international observers". These included at least two members of the radical right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria: Aymeric Chauprade, adviser on international issues for the French National Front; Belgian Luc Michel, former neo-Nazi FANE member and now member of an extreme right party, as well as two compatriots from the far-right Vlaams Belang; two members of the Bulgarian far-right Ataka Party; Hungarian Bela Kovacs from the far-right Jobbik party, and others.
Some of the above-mentioned and others are members of the Alliance of European National Movements which issued astatement on Ukraine that effectively drops its former ally, Ukraine's VO Svoboda Party and sides with Russia. The statement's anti-Semitic argumentation is well-worth reading given the constant Kremlin narrative about supposed Ukrainian anti-Semitism.
Shekhovtsov reports that on April 9, Tamas Gaudi Nagy, MP from the far-right Jobbik party gave a three-minute speech against European democracy at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He was wearing a t-shirt reading: "Crimea belongs to Russia; Transcarpathia [in Ukraine - HC] belongs to Hungary." It is worth recalling that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union once signed a collaboration pact which involved a similar carving up of Poland.
Besides Jobbik, Russia is also cultivating relations with Marine Le Pen's French National Front and other far-right movements. Strong showing by these parties in the upcoming May European Parliament elections will presumably add other voices, like Nagy's, in support for Moscow's annexation of a part of Ukraine.
In a recent study, the Political Capital Institute suggests that there are ideological links between some far-right European parties and the current Russian leadership. Russia, it says, has under Vladimir Putin, set its sights on the restoration of the country's status as a world power. Far-right and other parties seeking to undermine European unity and taking an anti-Western line are presumably to play a role in its fulfilment of Russia's imperialist aspirations. So, too, are the references to "fascists" used as an attempt to justify Ukraine's dismemberment. The world has been here before, and the price for collaborating with fascists and for failure to react to clear danger proved tragically high.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
U.S. and Ukraine must fight Russia's propagandistic lies
This one's about a week old but still quite relevant, since Russia continues to push obvious lies about Ukraine. I hope to God that Obama, Cameron and Merkel are telling Putin on the phone, "Look, we know you're full of shit. Cut the crap."
Just to give you an idea of the cynicism of the liar we're dealing with in Russia's President Vladimir Putin:
[Russian propaganda minister Dmitry] Kiselov’s film of Ukrainians purportedly fleeing to Russia was actually of a normal day at a congested Polish border point. The pro-Russian protesters arrive in sleek buses as “protest tourists” with plenty of “walking around money” to pay bands, organize mobs, and harass reporters and international observers, who could documents any outrages against ethnic Russians. Crimean “self defense forces” are not armed and uniformed from the local five and dime, as Russian television claims, but are regular [Russian] troops. Russia’s media magicians claim with a straight face that footage of the brutal horror of Maidan is actually film of neo-Nazi-inspired demonstrations on the streets of Crimea. Wrong time and wrong place, but good television! Russian-television maps already show Crimea as part of Russia and circulate fake photographs of nonexistent Hitler posters in Kiev.
And on and on.... Educated and well-informed Ukrainians and certainly Westerners overestimated the capacity of ignorant and propaganda-laden Crimeans to distinguish truth from fiction. We can't repeat this mistake in Eastern Ukraine. We can't assume the Internet magically keeps people well-informed; in fact it can quite effectively can keep them misinformed. Meanwhile, most Ukrainians still get their news from the TV, which is increasingly Russian.
By Paul Roderick Gregory
March 10, 2014 | Forbes
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…..For the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels
Joke circulating in Russia: If you want to live in France – you go to France. If you want to live in UK, you go to England. If you want to live in Russia – Russia will come to you!
Ukrainian Facebook posting: “We have not killed one Russian (Rossiyan), we did not take their land or introduce troops on their territory, did not grab their resources. We simply became a free people for one week. Is this enough for Russia to declare war on us with a unanimous decision and the full approval of the Russian people! Why do they hate us? Because of freedom? Because of different thinking?
Russia’s Big Lies about Ukraine, while easily discredited, have been repeated with such frequency and with so little pushback that they, unfortunately, are coming to be perceived as true. The Western world finds it hard to believe that a head of state and his official media engage in persistent and blatant lying and distortion. “There must be something there,” we think. “If they are lying, where are the rebuttals?”
Putin takes propaganda seriously. We do not. That is a major mistake.
The first Big Lie is that Ukraine is such a cauldron of ethnic hatred and violence that Mother Russia was forced to intervene to rescue and protect Russian speakers from their extremist Ukrainian neighbors. False.
Ukrainians, be they first-language Russian or Ukrainian speakers (virtually all speak Russian), would shake their heads, just as would Bavarians when warned they are in danger of ethnic and racial violence at the hands of North Germans. On any stroll in Kiev or other cities, one hears more Russian than Ukrainian. Although the Russian media has likely scoured the record, there are no incidents of Ukrainian-on-Russian ethnic violence. There are no cases of Russian speakers in the east hiding in their cellars from the latest Ukrainian pogrom. Ukrainians do not feel hatred towards Russians. First-hand reports coming out of Ukraine say that Ukrainians, who had regarded Russians as friends and neighbors, for the first time regard them with a sense of loss as “others” (chuzhie).
Russia’s second Big Lie is that Ukraine’s East and South wish to join voluntarily their Russian brethren in a united Russia. False.
Putin cites his Levada Institute polls as proof of the admiration he enjoys among his people. He should therefore accept the results of a scientific poll of more than 2,000 Ukrainian citizens taken during the worst of the Maidan demonstrations, when separatist tendencies would have been inflamed, but before the Russian invasion ignited anti-Russian sentiment. The highly professionalpoll shows an overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens want Russia only as a friendly neighbor with open borders and no visas.Some 12.5 percent want Russia and Ukraine as one country, reaching a high of twenty percent in the East and 25 percent in the Crimean south. An unoccupied Ukraine would not voluntarily join the corrupt and dysfunctional Russia. The Maidan revolution offers a fresh start with a chance of becoming part of law-abiding and prosperous Europe.
The new prime minister of Crimea – installed by the Russian occupation to preside over Crimea’s annexation — is one Sergei “The Goblin” Aksyonov, a purported member of the Crimean underworld, whose pro-Russian party won a whopping four percent of the votes in the last regional elections. Now he purports to represent all Crimea as he barrels through the Crimea with his escort of AK-47-toting Russians (Excuse me, I meant to say Crimean self-defense troops).
The third Big Lie is that the Maidan demonstrators were not ordinary people venting against corruption and mismanagement, but vile, extreme nationalists, anti Semites, and Nazis paid and trained by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Having driven out the legitimate president of Ukraine, extremists are poised to take the Ukrainian presidency and parliament. Two presidential candidate hail from the far right. Poor Russia had no choice but to intervene. False.
Yes, nationalists were among the bravest of the Maidan demonstrators, but they constituted a small minority. The grim list of the “Heavenly Hundred” victims shows a grand total of eight deaths from the two right-wing parties. The others were students, factory workers, and otherwise ordinary people, some from the East, demonstrating out of conscience. As to the upcoming presidential elections, the latest polls show ex-heavyweight boxing champion, Vitaly Klitshko, in the lead with the two right-wing candidates polling collectively less than five percent – scant evidence of an impending skin-head Nazi takeover.
If Putin is intent on saving Europe from right-wing extremism, he is advised to invade Greece (Golden Dawn), France (National Front), Netherlands (Wilder’s Freedom Party), or Hungary (Jobbik) – all of which have double the popular support of Ukraine’s far right. Maybe such invasions would actually wake up the somnambulant Europeans.
[Right on! Bullseye! All these hand-wringing liberals forget that far-right nationalist parties exist all over Europe and yet somehow the EU does not degrade into vile Fascism. In fact, it's quite possible that, in the big scheme of things, small far-right and far-left parties provide a necessary political dynamism that leads to compromise and wiser policy choices. - J]
Western diplomats are busy harrumphing that Russia’s invasion of the Crimea violates international treaties to which Russia was a signatory, and that sovereign Ukrainian territory cannot be annexed, especially not by a referendum supervised by foreign forces and without legitimate observers. Putin’s diplomats respond with razzle-dazzle and obfuscate with claims of “self-defense forces,” “humanitarian intervention,” and the threat of Neo-Nazism. In a rare departure from diplomatic language, a State Departmenttalking-points memo labels the “illegal actions in Ukraine” as “startling Russian fiction (not seen) since Dostoyevsky wrote, “The formula ‘two times two equals five’ is not without its attractions.”
But the West is of no use in countering Putin’s Big Lies delivered as desinformatsia to the Russian people and to the ethnic Russians of Ukraine by the Russian mass media. Only informal Russian and Ukrainian social media can fight back. With belief that the Cold War is “over” everywhere but in Russia, the United States lacks voices like Radio Liberty and Voice of America to beam some truth into troubled Eastern and Southern Ukrainian territory. Putin’s forces have blocked Ukrainian television in occupied Crimea and increasingly-occupied Eastern Ukraine. The only media presence is Putin and his Big Lie.
Propagation of the Big Lie requires – not taciturn diplomats – but imaginative media masters, unconstrained by reality and truth telling. Putin has promoted former news anchor, Dmitry Kiselov, to head his Ukraine disinformation campaign. Known for his rants against Europe and Ukraine, Kiselov has promised to “apply the correct political technology,” then “bring it to the point of overheating” and bring to bear “the magnifying glass of TV and the Internet.” (Snyder, Fascism, Russia and Ukraine).
Anne Applebaum (Russia’s information warriors are on the march – we must respond) has reported on Kiselov’s frenetic media campaign:
“Russian television news has reported, among other things, that 675,000 Ukrainian refugees have flooded over the Russian border; that extremists and neo-Nazi militants have illegally taken over the Ukrainian government in Kiev; and that Crimean “self-defense forces” or “pro-Russian forces” have spontaneously gathered in front of the Crimean parliament in order to defend it from those same Nazis. Each of these statements is a lie.”
Kiselov’s film of Ukrainians purportedly fleeing to Russia was actually of a normal day at a congested Polish border point. The pro-Russian protesters arrive in sleek buses as “protest tourists” with plenty of “walking around money” to pay bands, organize mobs, and harass reporters and international observers, who could documents any outrages against ethnic Russians. Crimean “self defense forces” are not armed and uniformed from the local five and dime, as Russian television claims, but are regular troops. Russia’s media magicians claim with a straight face that footage of the brutal horror of Maidan is actually film of neo-Nazi-inspired demonstrations on the streets of Crimea. Wrong time and wrong place, but good television! Russian-television maps already show Crimea as part of Russia and circulate fake photographs of nonexistent Hitler posters in Kiev.
Russian television’s Big Lie bombardment of Russian and Ukrainian has left its mark. A Ukrainian businessman from Dnepropetrovsk stuck in Singapore with nothing but Russian television to watch claimed that, had he not known better, he would have wanted to join the Russian side. A coal miner’s wife in Donetsk reacted to the Big Lie saying that the choice is either “join Russia or war,” and she does not want war. A young Russian historian dumbfounded me by asking whether I knew that neo-Nazis now control Ukraine.
Both the Ukraine and West urgently need to up their propaganda game. Our diplomats must focus, not on violated treaties, but on demolishing the Big Lie. They should not shy away from calling a lie a lie a lie, to steal a line from Gertrude Stein. Ukraine must find ways and means to deprive Russia of its current information monopoly over its southern and eastern regions and the Russian people.
Ukraine must use all the social media at its disposal to counter Putin’s massive media apparatus. Ukraine versus Russia may seem like a hopeless David and Goliath, but the truth is a powerful ally. No lie from Putin can go unanswered. A good offense is better than a good defense.
Ukraine can gain the advantage if and when Putin’s Big Lie machine goes too far. Planting false claims and even doctored or falsified film and photos can backfire. The fact that Putin’s machine lies without hesitation suggests a cockiness and overconfidence.
Philosopher Lao-Tsi said more than two thousand years ago that we do not notice a good government, we hate a bad government, but the worst government is one over which we laugh.
The most potent weapon against Putin’s Big Lies is laughter and satire. Apparently, the thin-skinned Putin is now the butt of jokes on night time talk shows and Saturday Night Live skits.
Let me end with an anecdote that may have a much deeper meaning for the outcome of crisis. On the way to lunch, a colleague told me that the nine-year-old daughter of a Russian couple was teased at her school today for being Russian. If this young girl was subject to public humiliation for being Russian, imagine how Russian tourists, businessmen, and students will be received in the West as a consequence of Mr. Putin’s adventurism. The Russian people have suffered the loss of empire, bankruptcy, and economic collapse. They want to hold their heads high, and they have looked to strong-man Putin to give them this.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Putin's war rhetoric reeks of fascism
These are the characteristics of fascism:
- claims that ethnic kinship supersedes sovereign national boundaries;
- (and correspondingly) claims on other countries' sovereign territory;
- control of private media;
- constant pro-state propaganda;
- cult of the leader;
- persecution of minorities (gays and Caucasians);
- overt militarism;
- corporatism (control by the state and its cronies of key industries);
- active and untouchable secret police;
- an army of "brownshirt" thugs that can be used to stir up trouble;
- disappearance and imprisonment of dissidents and political opponents.
All these things exist in Russia today. Putin has set Russia on a dangerous path toward toward expansionism and fascism.
By Masha Gessen
March 14, 2014 | Washington Post
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