Tuesday news
Today is the 14th of April, 2022. The purpose of propaganda in Russia, and yesterday’s visuals.
I don’t want to close for free subscribers the list of yesterday visuals and part of the propaganda article, so I split the theory and practice in two parts. One is closed (for paid subscription only) because it has examples of rythorics I can’t share publicly for the reasons of my safety following the new law issued in Russia against fake news. If you want to read about propaganda techniques and Bucha - it’s in the propaganda article published separately. There I don’t discuss the facts or fakes. I dissect how the propaganda complex was used by different sides for their purposes.
Now I want to explain why Russian foreign affair play at the moment looks lame, cynical and completely soulless in its publicly spoken part.
For Russia foreign public opinion at the moment isn’t important, because nothing there can be changed. “The face” is lost. Any propaganda message would be considered an obvious lie. So the best tactic is the straight forward language. The West did everything it could possibly do to oppose Russia, here’s nothing new to expect, direction is clear, all the players are known. The West said it will fight till the win, which, I guess, meant “till the last Ukrainian”.
Russia doesn’t even try hard to back up the results of the “special operation” with any ideological cover or any propaganda language in the talks to the global media right now. The language is precise and concrete as you can see from Mr. Lavrov’s speech. To win Russia needs to catch up with the economical challenges as well as with support or at least a high level of tolerance among their own population, a significant part of which is deeply connected to Ukraine - on the family level. All the propaganda resources and messages addressed not to the Western public but to Russians.
Speaking to the global media the officials want to be heard by their own people first of all. Those should be able to decode the message according to the narrative they received multiple times through federal media and social accounts controlled by the authorities.
Propaganda and the realities of the war make families divided by Russian-Ukrainian border collide and fight over right and wrong, fake and real. They hate each other but it’s a love-hate, they try to get to each other and to explain what is wrong, to help or to ask help. No government can control it without a fundamental ideological platform that doesn’t exist in Russia at the moment.
So people exchange the arguments until they can’t. As soon as the death becomes personal, as soon as those families lose their physical connection to Ukraine, their roots, they won’t be under control anymore. They won’t speak of “nazi” or “NATO threat”, they will start asking questions, and will feel pain. And that is inside Russia, that is Russia, because “Russians'' are the whole pack of 190 nationalities living in the country, including ethnical Ukrainians, Ukrainian jewish, Ukrainian Russians, Ukrainian tatars, and so on. Only those who identify themselves with Ukrainian nationality are more than 4 million citizens. Russia will feel the pain of loss. And there will be mothers and wives of the soldiers who died in the same war. Again the same question: What for? and another one, more dangerous: How could they kill their own?
That’s why Russia insist on the fact that it tries to avoid bombing and hurting the civilians, that it tries to establish bad peace but peace for a reason. Those are actual intentions, not just words. That base for propaganda messages was made not for humanitarian reasons only, but for political reasons as well. “Brother nation” isn’t a propaganda word here. It’s not about the historical roots of the nations. It’s about demography.
The Russian propaganda polemics are defined by the many restrictions, but its strongest aspect is the fear and the belief that Russia is alone against the West. That’s inherited imperative from Soviet past, and even from Imperial Russia past. People don’t need to be trained to read it. They are preset to think it, you need just to give them a reason to activate the mode.
Restriction of free media isn’t something that was made for the authoritarian president to save him or his government from the revolution. He was elected, he would be reelected no matter that people don’t trust him completely, they see him as a protector of Russian interests, they support him for that. The country was in the stable economical conditions, the level of disagreement with the general line of the policy wasn’t significant before the conflict. It was much lower than in 2010, 2014, even in 2020.
Fully controlled media is necessary for different purpose - to limit the information noise around the directive propaganda ideas so people would be united and work together backing the country in the war - not with Ukraine, but with the West. That’s the real war that’s going on according to Putin.
Maybe Western nations don’t feel it, but for Russian people that’s how it feels even without TV news or social media fakes support. Western sanctions made it clear as well as the cancelled Russian culture, Russian businesses, Russian clients, artists, readers, scientists, students, everyone who has Russian name and/or doesn’t have second citizenship.
If you have nowhere to escape or you don’t want to leave you home, there’s no choice left, isn’t it? You stand behind your country, believing the bullshit you were told or not. If you choose to believe it, you feel better. Otherwise it drives you insane to stay in permanent contradiction to the environment. But there’s your choice and there’s your home behind your back. You can’t lose it.
Freedom of speech in the time of war is a luxury even true democracy can’t allow. The narrative should be one. The narrative is to fight, to stay strong, to behave, to believe, if not to believe then to hope and to rely on the people in power. The Russian government needs to control that narrative otherwise it will lose the war. So they try to make it right, composing the whole ideological construction in the real time. People weren’t prepared for the “special operation”. The answer to the question: “Do Russians want a war?” is “no”. But it’s not the question that was ever asked.
Russian propaganda asks: “Do we want to be slaves of the West? Do we want to be discriminated as a nation?” The answer is “no” and the question was so much in use by nationalists, so the whole thing based on it smells.
Could be a more sophisticated concept chosen so fast? According to the father of the contemporary propaganda Dr. Goebbels, the simpler the better. So why to overthink? The idea is clear and understandable and close to the mentality of the demographic majority of Russians - people 60+ y.o.
As a conclusion I want to make it clear, no propaganda or ideology can excuse the war or the will to prolong the war for whatever reasons. The lives are always more important than any ideas. We should remember about that even when we judge the politics from home. Peace comes first. Otherwise everything is allowed and possible.
A digest from my feed for April 13th, 2022
6.30 am zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 How are you today? #haveagoodday Yesterday I was falling apart a bit, today it’s obvious that I’m with angina… can’t talk, throat is painful. It’s 5.57am, and I need to decide if I go out to deliver Sasha to school or It’s better to stay home sick and finally finish writing I’ve started yesterday. Meanwhile I decide what to do, I share that quite peaceful version of heaven’s universe. @jopfe Seraph, Ophar and Cherub #c4d #cinema4d #artasinspiration#goodmorningart #digitalart #contemporaryart#morninginspiration #morningmood #goodmorningpost
6.30pm zakharova_kaetano #finding @vancleefarpels butterfly brooch from @melaniecgrant #artofjewellery #beautyofjewellery#jewelleryasinspiration #contemporaryjewellery#natureinspiredjewelry #natureasinspiration
8.00pm zakharova_kaetano #nightmood #fashionportrait#fashioneditorial @irisvanherpen Symbiosis photography by @maria.bodil (@lieve.eek and @marthebodil) 3D design & concept: @post.neon Art direction & concept: @kilianvos Hair: @latoyavelberg Makeup: @marijekoelewijn Set dresser: @isabelevangelisti Model: @rivakeuning #artofphotography #beautyoffashion#fashionasinspiration #fashionstory #fairytaletime
11.00 pm zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmood#fashionportrait #fashionstory one of my favorite #TildaSwintonstyled by @saramoonves in ‘Poetic License’, lensed by #TimWalker for @wmag Vol #7 2018. Hair by @1malcolmedwardsmakeup by @lynseyalexander #artofphotography#beautyoffashion #fashionasinspiration #beautyofwoman#portraitphotography #fashioneditorial tribute to #edithsitwell
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