How propaganda (not) works

Now we can watch live how low the efficiency of Russian propaganda is. For eight years, this propaganda has been preparing society for the current events, and now it has completely launched the engine at full capacity. And as a result, for some reason, there is no mass support for military operations. This is not to say that propaganda does not work at all, but finding a person who would take everything said by a conditional TV at face value is not so easy. The impression is that propaganda works like phone scammers and other gypsy NLP. It thrashes around the squares, catching individual individuals with a reduced critical thinking skill from the crowd. In the case of gypsy magic, one deceived by a round sum compensates for the efforts spent. But in the case of propaganda, it seems like a waste of money. Here you have spent a billion, so what? To convince two grandmothers and one alcoholic? It begs the assumption that this activity is needed purely for cutting and reporting to superiors. In many ways, this is true. But what if propaganda does work, just in a different way?

There is an amusing assumption (I already somehow referred to it) - they say that propaganda may and would like to be believed in, but in general it is enough for it to act as a "show of force". If the state can compost your brains around the clock - this is simply a signal of the format "I am strong and powerful, you are small and weak." From this point of view, many things fall into place: for example, the use of absurd and contradictory messages by propaganda. "Yes, we are crazy! Well, what are you going to do to us?"

In general, as Comrade Homelander said: "I want to be loved, but if not, then the fear will come down." Russian propaganda has it all. But there is more. Unlike Soviet propaganda, it does not try to build an alternative narrative (where our noble ideals vs. their capitalist abominations). Russian propaganda is propaganda... of postmodernism. She is not trying to convince us that there is no corruption in Russia. She simply says that corruption is everywhere. They say that nowhere in the world there are any bright ideals, but there are only endless "power relations" disguised with all sorts of tinsel. In the West, there is also theft, oligarchs and a police state. They just disguise themselves more gracefully - a rich experience.

This explains quite well why the Kremlin's propaganda was able to gather under the umbrella of the RT western radicals from different sides of the spectrum - from conservative paleo-libertarians to neo-Soviet "tankis". For the former, the West is a dictatorship of the left-liberals, where instead of freedom of speech there is a "culture of cancellation". For the second - the realm of capital, covered with neoliberal rhetoric. In both cases, there is no justice in the West, there is a fake. And all this fits into the Kremlin's narrative that there is no justice anywhere. Well, see for yourself: Trump's votes were stolen, Assange was extradited, anti-vaxxers were beaten with batons, Epstein was killed, Biden's son was saved. And at the same time, Russia is also scolded!

And this is basically true. In the West, everything is there: corruption, oligarchs, and periodic attacks on freedom. But the whole point is in scale. Every society has homicides, but 10 or 100 murders per 100,000 population is a huge difference. In the same way, "democracy" and "freedom" are a gradient, somewhere more, somewhere less, but this is what makes the difference. Propaganda denies this gradient, smears everyone with the same black paint. Actually, this is what distinguishes propaganda from normal criticism (which in the case of the West, of course, is also necessary and important). Propaganda simply sets an unthinkable standard, according to which everything in the world should be either black or white. As expected, there is no white, and only solid black remains.

This has a demoralizing effect. If there are no ideals and guidelines in the world, then what is the point of trying to change something? Especially at the risk of your own neck. This demoralizing effect is combined with the propaganda "show of force". As a result, the real victim of propaganda is not the one who fell in love with Big Brother. It's more like a self-satisfied sucker who doesn't believe in anything at all. He is convinced that, firstly, any protest is useless (especially non-violent), and, secondly, self-interest, meanness and other "realpolitik" rule the whole world. A self-satisfied sucker will make fun of the "oppositional hamsters" from above, being sure that it was he who understood how the "real world" works. But this lack of ideals turns him into an atomized social plankton, which turns out to be food for anyone ranging from the state to the ordinary mafia. After all, every time when plankton tries to get up from the couch, he is stopped by his own inner voice, repeating "not everything is so simple", "think about who benefits" and similar wisdom.

And here we can even admire a little the real effectiveness of propaganda. Well, it is necessary to manage to convince a person of his superiority, at the same time turning him into a completely helpless creature.

27/07/2022

After reading the news about the detention of several workers of the Kremlin telegram channels, I thought about the role of these propaganda networks in the overall structure of Russian propaganda. This can be considered a continuation of this post. I wrote there that, in general, Russian propaganda broadcasts the message that politics is an exceptionally dirty business, built purely on self-interest, deceit, and the like. In the West everything is the same, only they pretend better.

Propaganda telegram networks are fodder for a more demanding audience than the one that is being bombarded with TV. Therefore, the message here is a little more tricky. The narrative of the Kremlin telegram is as follows: the channels are overflowing with plums, insiders and other exceptionally truthful information about the secrets of the Kremlin court. Shkolov's group moved forward, sneaking up from the rear, and all that sort of thing. Even if you carefully study all this dubious content, only one thing will be clear: it is absolutely impossible for an ordinary person to understand the intricacies of intrigue, the wars of the Kremlin towers and all other nonsense. Consequently, one can watch politics from afar, stocking up on popcorn, but in no case participate in it. here you can figure out who the hell stands for what, muddy people catch fish in troubled waters and will certainly use you in the dark. Thus, politics ceases not only to be a struggle for ideals, but even a struggle for understandable and publicly voiced interests. Politics is a struggle for interests, but it is not clear what and it is not clear whose, because there are intrigues, deceit and political technologies everywhere. In general, the result is a further depoliticization of the public.

P.S. Of course, one should not think that the admins and creators of the Kremlin networks are sitting and deliberately broadcasting this message. Short-term motivation is much more prosaic there and comes down mainly to mastering the dough, writing reports to the authorities, and the like. The audience is probably half bots, and half the same users who are just driven back and forth. Everything described above is such "unintended consequences". Unintentional, but very beneficial for the regime.

Mihail Pojarsky 16/08/2022