The propaganda machine keeps on running
#WarInUkraine #IndependentReport #News #Putin #MultipolarWorldOrder
This photo was taken at a Russian boarding school with children aged between 8 and 12.
These children were instructed in Putin's ideology from a very young age, and through this and mandatory membership in the youth organizations, children were taught to hate Ukrainians and Americans.
The lines above were actually not written by me, I just replaced two words (Nazi --> Putin) and (Jews --> Ukrainians and Americans), but it represents perfectly the current situation with the youth in Russian provinces. Childcare workers, teachers in schools and even professors and directors at renowned universities teach Russian children and teenagers to respect, follow and embrace the ideologies of the 'United Russia' party, which has the absolute majority in all government-related areas and basically dictates the behaviour of almost whole Russian society, who they hate or love, which actions on the international scene are supported and which are mortified, and even how much suffering and pain they have to endure due to shier greed for wealth and lust for power of the Russian President.
We know how the War in Ukraine started, so now let's turn our piercing glance inside the black box called Russian Federation and at how Putin is creating his own Zombieland.
If you prefer watching a video instead of reading a blog:
Slow and steady growth of PutiniZm
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
-George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) in Nineteen eighty-four
I start the chapters in this blog with quotes taken from the famous novel by George Orwell 'Nineteen eighty-four' for the reason, that they perfectly fit the whole political and sociological situation in Russia, where the change introduced to the jurisdictional and executive political systems over time slowly decreased the rights of the common folk while also reducing their legal possibilities to react or speak up and influence the situation in their country. Almost the whole population has been cooking in this propaganda soup for such a long time, that they even forgot what it means to question the decisions of their President.
The legislative body, which should oversee and potentially steer the decision in a democratic government, was never really built up in Russia after the fall of the communistic Soviet Union, so Putin and his close allies used this situation to create a political system, where the president has the whole power over every major decision in the country and delegates the execution to selected few who will then abuse the power to the maximum extent while ensuring Putin's integrity, so the whole 'Duma' set-up only proposes changes. It allowed them not only to profit from distributing all of the country's resources to the selected elite but also allowed the introduction of key milestones which immortalised their seats in the government.
Over the years the methods and psychological tricks used by the Russian government also steadily improved: for example the usage of the well-known 'Overton Window can be easily followed with the increase of retirement age, which went from something never-heard of before to passing the law in just about 3 years:
2015 Jan: Introduction to the info field by briefly mentioning that there might be a possibility of raising the retirement age
2015 March: Inclusion of soft terminology by Putin, saying that there needs to be a discussion and understanding of what might be included in pension age changes
2016 May: Explanations that these changes are to improve the situation for seniors and prolong the productive lifetime of Russian citizens
2018 June: Announcement of concrete plans for raising the retirement age.
At this stage, the Russian government used multiple techniques to ensure that:
1) The visibility for the announcement is as low as possible by sneaking it into the news in the middle of the soccer world cup that ran at that time in Russia, so most citizens didn't even notice the announcement.
2) The press secretary Peskov covered Putin by saying that Mr President is not involved in the discussion of raising the retirement age and that Putin did not lie in 2005 as he said, there will be no change to the retirement age as long he is the President of Russia but instead, times have changed and require this adjustment.
2018 Oct: The bill has been passed and widely accepted by most politicians as well (through long-term propaganda that these changes are beneficial) by the common folk, and this in a country where the average pension is ~135$ and for invalids ~90$. Just for comparison - the average ancillary costs in this country are 35$, hence the reason most elderly either continue working until their death or live in absolute poverty.
This goes along with other adjustments, like the constitutional changes introduced in 2020, that allowed Putin to stay in power forever and the general approach, that Vladimir only tells on television and media the good news, while all the bad ones are communicated by some replaceable pawns.
Controlling the news is controlling the mindset
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”
-George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) in Nineteen eighty-four
I personally remember how different news and television channels belonged to different groups of people in the 90s, as I was growing up in Russia. This was also changing over the years of Putin being in power, where the government enforced their view through the media and especially after 2014 (annexation of Crimea) started rolling the heads of any independent reports, by either declaring them as foreign agents or spies for the US or simply locking up their journalists on fake assertions. Recently the Duma (equivalent to parliament) released the icing on the cake in the propaganda fight - a new law about spreading fakes that could discredit the official information about the special operation. As always, in the end, it was signed by the ruling President.
Any statements that "distort the purpose, role and tasks of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as other units during special military and other operations" will result in severe punishments with up to 15 years of imprisonment. The second part is even scarier because it makes this enforcement not bound to only the running operation in Ukraine, but allows this law to continue beyond and be enforced in any situation the government sees fit.
Shortly after the war operation began, the Russian police and National Guard, which was established only recently in 2016 to ensure further control over any potential protesting masses, shut down the 'Moscow Echo' and television channel 'Dozhd' (transl. 'Rain'), which were known for having oppositional views and since then both these media agencies were not allowed to take up their work again. Then followed also the ban of international news and media agencies like 'Medusa', 'BBC', 'CNN', and 'Deutsche Welle', some of which were not allowed anymore to perform their jobs, others displaced their journalists to continue working outside of Russia to not endanger their lives.
Recently, the controlling institutions also blocked international social media including 'Facebook', 'Instagram' and 'Twitter'. They even went so far as to declare 'Meta' (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) as extremists, so on the same level as 'Taliban' or 'Al-Qaida'. It is only a matter of time until 'YouTube' joins the list of services not working in Russia anymore due to the latest communication by 'Roskomnadzor', the regulating body for technology, stating "The actions of the YouTube administration are of a terrorist nature and threaten the life and health of Russian citizens". The Russian government also started forbidding VPN services and threatening to sue them if they should continue to circumvent the laws.
It is also known, that Russia has already experimented with having its own Internet in 2019 and 2020, so it remains to be seen if this will be one of the next planned steps.
So at the moment, only allowed sources of information have to fit 100% to the wording of the Russian government statements and people have almost no other ways to get independent information from any other source but controlled and manipulated propaganda sources.
This creates a system, where the next generations growing up in Russia will learn ONLY their side of the arguments and be brainwashed from the kindergarten age like these kids:
Source: Russian social media channels, authors unknown
Planned degradation in regional provinces
“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
-George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) in Nineteen eighty-four
People that haven't invested their time in checking the information they receive from the official television channels, radios and newspapers never had any possibility to compare their life to the life of any Westerner. If the pensioners only knew how seniors live in western European countries, America or even by now in most Asian countries, they start doubting if everything they are told about life in the West on the television is actually true. Unfortunately, the degradation in regional provinces reached such a high level, that people there even do not begin to understand, that their regions reached a level of degradation and poverty even worse than in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Such as this elderly woman, who totally supports her President and even the invasion of Ukraine and talks about the revival of the Great Russian Empire and how powerful her country has become under Putin, while in the background you see a car with "digital services for whole family" imprint on a car produced in the Soviet Union.
Source: Screenshot from Video on 'varlamov' channel on YouTube
The reason why you still can see such old cars in Russia is quite simple - production established under Putin's regime breaks down faster than the good ol' soviets. On the other hand, Russian citizens also barely have money to buy anything new, besides the mid and upper classes living in metropolises like Moscow and St. Petersburg, most of which have either adapted their lifestyle already or have simply fled the country to Turkey, Emirates or Asian countries.
What's even worse is the education and prospect of progression for most commoners. Even if about 16% of the ~143 Million Russians live in poverty, even if the monthly living cost in Moscow and other big cities with ~210$ is higher than the average wage of 155$, even if international ratings of education, medicine and other sociological factors decreased over the years, still Putin has ratings higher than 70%. Even people living on the streets stand behind the politics established due to the long-term propaganda they have been fed with, like this person:
Source: Russian social media, author unknown
It is important for him to show that he supports the invasion while actually searching for food and potential valuables like deposit bottles in a trash can. Sadly, he is not the exception but actually the rule.
Conscious destruction of own country with war
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
-George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) in Nineteen eighty-four
The whole reaction of the Russian government to the sanctions and their slow progress in Ukraine makes me think, that they quickly adapted their plans to further build up Nationalism in their country as soon as they noticed that the invasion in Ukraine won't be finished in a Blitzkrieg move and West won't leave it unpunished. They started literally reshaping the whole entrepreneurship by stealing (what they call 'nationalisation') the property of all companies that announced to leave the Russian market, limiting the cash flow of foreign currencies, banning the export of certain goods and equipment which would be required for building up own factories and laboratories, even if these goods were already contractually sold to other countries. Let's also not forget more than 500 planes that Russia stole by keeping them within Russian borders due to Western companies cancelling their leasing contracts. It is as if the politicians have waited for the possibility to reshape their country and the invasion in Ukraine going wrong provided them with the best reason to do so. Maybe that's what Putin meant as he said, that the "special operation in Ukraine is going according to the plan"?
As George Orwell wrote in Nineteen eighty-four, first the established systems, especially the education, media and free economy need to be torn down to enable Putin and his elite to build up the Russian Empire of his own choosing where all these systems would be controlled by the hand of the Big Brother.
The process of nationalisation of foreign assets, together with the ban of international social media and news agencies, together with the constant propaganda that the West (EU and US) is the absolute enemy which tries to destroy the Russian economy with sanctions, together with the newly introduced Putin's Swastika the 'Z' symbol, together with the clear collaboration between Russia, Belarus and some other post-soviet countries like Kazachstan and Usbekistan, lead to the conclusion - Vladimir wants to be immortalised for reviving the Great Russian Empire.
More protesters have been arrested in Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine than there are civilians killed in Ukraine. Most international agencies report ~15.000 detentions while some Russian news even talks about up to 20.000 arrests. As a reminder - the protesters will be forced to pay up to 10.000$ in fees or face up to 15 years in prison. Any kind of demonstration is forcefully shut down by either the local police or the National Guard, which holds more than 340.000 troops just for suppressing any potential insurgence.
Even quoting one of the ten commandments "Thou shalt not kill" is apparently "distorting the actions of Russian military" and will get you arrested, as this woman was:
Source: avtozaklive
Common folk have to suffer for the elite
“All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
-George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) in Nineteen eighty-four
Sadly, most people won't even realise that the elite sitting in power, both in the West and in Russia will still profit from all the deaths in Ukraine and poverty in different countries arising because of the sanctions or disruptions in trade. Putin, as long he is not taken out by someone, will only benefit from the situation in Russia where creating his own Zombienation has become easier than ever before. Oligarchs owning the largest chunks of industry and economy in Russia will be able to monopolise the national production even further, while politicians will be able to enforce laws that would have been unthinkable before the Russian economical downfall which is happening now and show their position even more clear, like when publically supporting the War.
Source: screenshot from Russian television broadcast
Here it is important to note, that the same elite that profited long-term from the whole system built up around Putin, might also turn out to be the weak point of PutiniZm. They love their chilled lifestyle with the yachts, private jets, villas in most fancy parts of the world and if the effect of the war in Ukraine will continue to shake up the stability of their wealth, we might see more rivalries and opposition within the Russian elite.
Unfortunately, this whole topic is valid for absolutely every part of our world - common folk has to suffer because of the political cock comparison between the East vs. the West. So what can we do in our countries to prevent ending up in the same spot as Russians, which are either brainwashed and support dictatorship, end up locked in prison cells or have to flee their own country:
1. Stay conscious when consuming news and political changes; analyse the potential outcome and impact on your life long-term. Larger western media agencies are also manipulating the view of the public based on the direction that the current political power is following and mostly you will find only one-sided information, painting actions black or white. Always try to find multiple sources and if possible, independent blogs/ reports.
2. Spread the word by posting on social media and sharing the information privately with friends and relatives. It is essential to have a healthy dialogue within society about upcoming changes or anything that might impact your life in the near future or long-term.
3. Raise your voice if you feel like your rights are being restricted, as we have seen for example with the protests against enforcing mandatory Corona vaccinations, or if you feel like your government decisions are directed to degrade your situation. There are different ways to address your issues, like posting your structured criticism publically, sending private inquiries to the government through official channels or in the last cases - publically protesting. Always remember, that if the government doesn't care about public protests or starts to forcefully shut them down like it is happening in Russia, then your country is quickly heading down the authoritarian rollercoaster, or maybe even already arrived there.
Maybe someday all the world's 'elite' will finally understand that the only way to live on our planet is together, and not against, so let's hope that soon Times Will Change for the better.