I drafted\u00a0an op-ed piece a few weeks ago that I failed to oversee to publication, because it was quickly overtaken by events that I didn’t manage to incorporate into the piece.<\/p>\n
I’m sharing it here for what it’s worth, as it includes some useful links to materials I have not posted to this blog. It’s more opinionated than my posts have usually been, but that’s the nature of an op-ed. The general idea remains quite relevant (as my “Right Sector vs. United Russia<\/a>” post shows). A brief update follows.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Manufacturing reality: The Russian infowar over Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n When the U.S. secretary of state chides a foreign media outlet for acting as a \u201cpropaganda bullhorn\u201d promoting a national leader\u2019s \u201cfantasy\u201d about an international conflict, it is important for media watchers to take note and weigh the argument carefully.<\/p>\n Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov responded<\/a> to John Kerry\u2019s claim by defending the Russia Today network as an \u201cindependent alternative viewpoint on what the Western propaganda tells us.\u201d Lavrov might have referred to the famous argument made by MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and his co-author, Edward Herman, that western governments are in the business of \u201cmanufacturing consent\u201d via mass media. The question is whether Russia has gone one step further \u2013 toward a more radical form of propaganda called \u201cmanufacturing reality.\u201d<\/p>\n As noted<\/a> by many observers, Russian state media have for months blanketed their country with news of \u201cchaos\u201d in Ukraine. Their neighbor is supposedly ruled by \u201cneo-Nazi thugs\u201d who took over in a violent, U.S.-supported coup and now engage in a reign of terror against Russians, Jews, and other supposed enemies. Never mind<\/a> that most of the ruling \u201cthugs\u201d are members of previous governments and part of a parliamentary majority coalition, and that they include Russians, Jews, and a large number of eastern Ukrainians. Russia, meanwhile, is said to be stoically standing aside, prepared to defend the interests of Russians if necessary, but not entering<\/a> into Ukraine. Media have repeated these lines even as their own footage<\/a> has shown that Russian forces<\/a> are already there.<\/p>\n In their effort to create this sense of Ukrainian chaos, Russian media have gotten overenthusiastic. In one case, three Russian TV stations filmed the same man<\/a> in a Mykolaiv hospital playing three different characters: an ordinary citizen<\/a> protesting Ukraine\u2019s \u201cneo-Nazi government,\u201d a pediatric surgeon<\/a> tending the victims of neo-Nazi gunmen, and a German EU spy<\/a> who hired a group of 50 European mercenaries (!) to carry out NATO\u2019s dirty work in Ukraine. In another case, a Russian actor<\/a> promoted to the position of \u201cpeople\u2019s deputy\u201d in the newly proclaimed Republic of Donetsk, was faced with questions he simply had not qualifications for answering.<\/p>\n More insidious<\/a> has been the \u201cJewish card<\/a>.\u201d While no one has claimed authorship of the anti-Semitic flyers that recently made the news in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Jewish historian David Fishman convincingly argues<\/a> that the Kremlin\u2019s \u201cfingerprints\u201d are \u201call over them.\u201d With its attempt to portray the new Ukrainian regime as \u201cNazi\u201d and \u201canti-Semitic\u201d failing to get much traction in world public opinion, the Kremlin has reverted to the other side of a longstanding Soviet-era strategy: to their domestic audience, Russian state television now claims that the new Ukrainian leadership is Jewish and Zionist. Fueled by the arrival in eastern Ukraine of Russian Cossack \u201cBlack Hundreds,\u201d this is resulting in a surge of anti-Semitic attacks.<\/p>\n The nature of the pro-Russian separatist movement remains murky in Russian and western media depictions. Yet several of the leaders of the movement have histories of involvement<\/a> with the Russian far right, including the Russian National Unity movement, the Eurasian Youth Union<\/a>, the neo-fascist Slavic Union, and their Ukrainian allies, Oplot (Stronghold) and Natalia Vitrenko\u2019s Progressive Socialist Party, which Ukrainian leftists have long known is neither progressive nor socialist. These constitute some of the ground forces for destabilizing Ukraine.<\/p>\n All of this concurs<\/a> with President Putin\u2019s recently articulated policy of defending Russian speakers abroad. The “Russian nation,” he claimed, is “one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders,” and the rights of its members need to be protected by the one state that is in a position to do that.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t clear if Putin considers that nation to be defined by its language, by religion, or something else. If it is language, that nation would be trumped by the massive English diaspora, \u201cdivided\u201d by so many borders around the world. If religion \u2013 Putin has often mentioned Russian Orthodoxy, going back to 988 in Kiev, as constituting the core of the Russian nation \u2013 this claim faces another difficulty: Kievan Rus’ is claimed by Ukrainians, too, with more geographical justification, and many of them want little to do with the Russian nation.<\/p>\n Or is it some more \u201cmystical essence,\u201d as Russian ideologues like Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr Barkashov, Dmitry Kiselyov<\/a>, Aleksandr Prokhanov,\u00a0and Aleksei Pushkov have argued. The views of these men \u2013 particularly regarding the \u201cbattle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians,\u201d as Dugin has called for<\/a> \u2013 constitute the kind of \u201cpalingenetic nationalism\u201d that is the core definition of fascism, according to respected scholar of fascism Roger Griffin. Such views are, unfortunately, widely promoted by Russian state media and appear to undergird official policy<\/a> more and more closely. And they are supported<\/a> by many in Europe\u2019s far right<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n As a result, the West may soon face the problem of how to respond to an incipient fascist threat growing both at the edges and on the inside of Europe.<\/p>\n There is no question that criticism of Russia \u2013 like the one being made here, or Kerry\u2019s recent claim \u2013 could play into the hands of those in the West who wish for a new cold war, or even a hot one. This situation resembles the old cold war \u2013 a time when it was nearly impossible for those in the western peace movement to criticize Russia without being perceived as lackeys of \u201cAmerican imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n The way out of this dilemma is to build on those institutions the west can be proud of: institutions of media freedom, investigative openness, and democratic culture. The upcoming Ukrainian elections, scheduled for May 25, will be the best sign that Ukraine is moving in the right direction \u2013 which is precisely why Russia is trying to prevent them from occurring. The west should actively support an open and transparent electoral process across Ukraine. Steps toward a freer media, such as the Ukrainian parliament\u2019s recent decision<\/a> to fund a public television network, should also be applauded.<\/p>\n Western media, for their part, should ensure that Russian journalism is subjected to the same kinds of scrutiny that are used to criticize and improve the coverage of political issues here. If Russia is to maintain some status as a modern and civilized country, it must show that its state media know the difference between truth \u2013 or at least an honest attempt to find it \u2013 and the manufacture of reality through the cynical production of lies by legions<\/a> of hired infowarriors.<\/a> The latter rival the networks of \u201cclimate skeptic\u201d trolls who patrol and pollute the online airwaves of the global warming debate.<\/p>\n Journalists in the West should pressure their Russian counterparts not to succumb to Kremlin directives for producing such misinformation, and they should defend them when they are disciplined for acting according to their consciences.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adrian Ivakhiv is a professor of environment, society, and public affairs at the University of Vermont. He blogs on Ukrainian affairs at UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Update <\/strong>(May 7)<\/p>\n Several\u00a0relevant articles have appeared recently, including this one<\/a> on Yuri Felshtinksy’s assessment of Putin’s fascism, this one on the far-right networks<\/a>\u00a0supporting Ukraine’s separatists (Google Translate gives a fairly readable English-language version of it), this one on the Seliger youth camps<\/a> that provide “patriotic education” for tens of thousands of Russian young people,\u00a0this one<\/a> from the Guardian<\/em>‘s public editor on the suspected pro-Kremlin “trolling” network,\u00a0this one<\/a>\u00a0on the kinds of journalism being rewarded in Russia, and several discussing<\/a> recent announcements about policies\u00a0controlling internet use<\/a> in Russia.<\/p>\n Also relevant is the way Russian media have been spinning the May 2 events in Odessa, which I wrote about recently<\/a>. Analyses<\/a> of some of the photos and images in the Russian press — including one of a pregnant woman supposedly murdered by “fascists” — have been converging around<\/a> the conclusion<\/a> that they were also staged. That said, a thorough investigation should still be carried out to find out what happened and who was responsible for it.<\/p>\n No doubt there will be a continuing need for media analysis as the pro-Russian “referenda” play themselves out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I drafted\u00a0an op-ed piece a few weeks ago that I failed to oversee to publication, because it was quickly overtaken by events that I didn’t manage to incorporate into the piece. I’m sharing it here for what it’s worth, as it includes some useful links to materials I have not posted to this blog. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[103264,103257,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-war","category-russian-propaganda","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdPO21-7P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}