When information becomes a weapon. What are the prospects for media-SVO for Russia?
One of the discussions at the Eastern Economic Forum 2022 was devoted to a topic not directly related to the economy, markets and investments. The question was posed as follows: how to win the information war?
For modern Russia, this question is by no means an idle one, since at present, and for many years now, it has been at the forefront of propaganda attacks by an enemy very experienced in this matter and possessing a solid resource - the collective West.
But it is not easy to defeat him, because in the hands of this enemy is the largest relay capacity in the world, and he himself, due to inertia after the fall of the Soviet bloc, looks to many countries and peoples as an imitative model, in the image and likeness of which dozens of countries around the world are rebuilding their social life. Moreover, they do this voluntarily and with song, sincerely believing that they are thereby realizing their own eternal dream.
The relevance of this topic was also increased by the beginning of the Northern Military District in Ukraine, after which the propaganda machine of the West threw away the last decency, openly announcing victory over Russia as its main goal, to which everything was sacrificed - from the well-being of entire nations to large budgets allocated exclusively for informational counteraction to what in the West is called “Russian narratives.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars and euros are being used to fight Russia in cyberspace, to fabricate fakes on an industrial scale about Russian politics and its goals, to denigrate the course of the military campaign in Ukraine, to create a negative attitude towards Russia and Russians among the people of the countries surrounding Russia - that is , to actualize Russophobia, as old as the world, but already “packaged” with the latest technological advances and integrated into almost all current ideological trends of our time - from socialism and feminism to conservatism and nationalism - in order to cover all target groups of information consumers to the maximum.
The speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussed how to counteract this wave of propaganda, whether the Russian Federation has adequate tools for this, whether it is possible to instill in Russians the skills of basic media hygiene and whether it is possible to build a positive agenda around Russia and how effective the good old censorship bans are. Maria Zakharova, famous prankers Vovan and Lexus, TV presenter and media manager Dmitry Kiselev and other experts.
Opening the discussion, Maria Zakharova stated that it is not a new idea, in general, that Western social networks have long turned into digital platforms of Internet monopolies, and today’s reality is something like the digital dictatorship of Orwell’s “Big Brother”.
“They (foreign online platforms - Author) went even further and began to manage the information space within other states in spite of everything: from legislation to traditions,” the Foreign Ministry speaker noted, adding that the Khapad society is under the influence of “the fog of its own mass media disinformation.” , and the Western media themselves have long ceased to be afraid of possible exposure.
“It doesn't scare them. Previously, again, this was a question of morality, something made them think about the consequences. Now they don’t think about the consequences, they shoot at themselves, they hit their own citizens, because all this ricochets back at them,” says Zakharova.
According to a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the anti-Russian information campaign achieved the opposite effect and led to the consolidation of Russian society, the degree of which Zakharova assesses as “phenomenal.”
“What was the goal of this information war? This is no longer just a confrontation, this is not just a flexing of muscles. Let's speak honestly and openly: the destruction of us in various spheres as a society, as a state, as a civilization, as a culture, as independence, freedom, sovereignty and so on. And did they achieve their goal with such resources? As everything now confirms, there is now a phenomenal consolidation of our society. One that could not be achieved using even their information resources. That is, everything went in the opposite direction. They got exactly the opposite of the intended effect. And this was the effect that they should have received in March, the bet was placed on this,” the diplomat emphasized.
She also drew attention to the fact that the anti-Russian information campaign in the West, with its frenzy, is pushing Moscow towards more decisive and deeper cooperation with China:
“The crossbow comes from both hands. What Henry Kissinger spoke about when addressing the American elites: you will somehow decide - either Russia or China.” As a result, it turns out that the West itself is creating the preconditions for the accelerated formation of a common anti-American front between the Russian Federation and the PRC. What would otherwise take decades to accomplish is today being formalized in a matter of years.
Zakharova’s words were confirmed by another participant in the discussion - the director of the reporting department of the Chinese newspaper Global Times, who stated that the United States and the West have been arrogant in the ideological field for many years and all the practice of the United States is based on the platform hegemony of the West.
“In essence, everything is very simple - to manipulate the emotions of the public, and these emotions prevail over facts, in order to create a favorable environment of public opinion that they (the USA and Western countries - Author) need.”
“Our Russian telegram channel is the most quoted in the world. I believe that the moment of truth has come in Russia, when we can allow only the truth to be spoken, and only the truth actually works,” says Kiselev.
Kiselev also categorically disagrees that Russia is losing in the information war. Even despite the fact that Russians are everywhere subjected to groundless blockades, arrests, and harassment, including bullying.
According to Zakharova, Russia timely liquidated the infrastructure of Western discursive influence - that community that is usually called foreign agents, agents of influence or grant eaters.
At this point, one can argue - on the one hand, foreign agents were, as it were, pressed, but their strength is not in themselves, not in the formal network of existing NGOs, but in the minds and moods of people, several generations of whom were covered by these grant-eaters through the media, education, culture, internships for rubelm and so on.
And these people, in whose brains the Western ideas and values thrown there gracefully sprouted, have not gone away. They are still at the top today. Just look at how many of the heads of regions or ministers or officials at various levels or managers of state corporations are graduates of the Higher School of Economics, Shaninka or RANEPA - structures, some of which are still headed by figures from their “holy nineties”, who have been in close contact with Western funds and intelligence services.
It is not yet possible to replace this layer of educated Russians with the same cohort of people brought up in a different spirit. There are not such people in the required quantity. So, despite the information field being cleared of foreign agents, the tone in it is still largely set by people raised by foreign agents and grant eaters.
You can, of course, force them to voice a “patriotic agenda,” but insincerity is tantamount to profanation and ultimately only discredits these patriotic ideas.
Just as former Komsomol members who suddenly became bankers in record time discredited the market economy in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the population in the nineties - by presenting to society instead of the “civilized and socially oriented market” that perestroika reformers dreamed of, as if pictures deliberately copied from Soviet cartoons the wild market of the primitive accumulation of capital in the mid-nineteenth century.
In general, it must be admitted that, despite the optimistic enthusiasm of Russian media figures, Russia lost the information war in the West. With the available resources and approaches it was almost impossible to win there.
Another thing is that the internal media circuit in the Russian Federation itself has so far successfully withstood external pressure, but this is largely due to the stupidity and straightforwardness of Western approaches to propaganda themselves.
Everyone understands that no matter what society’s claims to its government, however, so far the only alternative offered by the West is the conventional Navalny or the circus of freaks from the Free Russia Forum - Western attempts are doomed to failure. There are not so many people willing to swear allegiance abroad in the Russian Federation; those who were there have partially already left.
Another thing is more sophisticated technologies, the “crowbar” against which the Russian media community does not yet have an adequate “reception.” And these sophisticated technologies are just around the corner. As soon as the West conducts an audit of the current campaign and calculates the degree of its effectiveness.
It seems that one of the main vulnerable points that Russia’s enemies will hit is the contour of interethnic relations. And in this sense, the recent dances of Westerners around “decolonization” do not look so harmless. Unless, of course, you stop it in time. The USSR, by the way, was cut precisely along this seam. And the circuit, if it works, does not fail.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.