“Colin Powell’s test tube trick wouldn’t have worked today” – Zakharova
A hundred years ago, disinformation and fake news stirred people up for revolution, whereas now such informational reasons stay afloat for several weeks.
Maria Zakharova, director of the information and press department and official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated this during the XXV St. Petersburg Economic Forum, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The scale of disinformation (it was called differently - from false propaganda to propaganda) was incomparable to today for one simple reason: there were no means of mass communication. Today, the news lives for a day or two - no matter what you do, no matter how you pump it up. Look, everyone is already tired of Zelensky. And he, for a second, is the president of a country that is in the hot phase of a crisis. The scale and impact of a particular news are not comparable to what it was 100-200 years ago.
Secondly, of course, the world has not come up with anything new, except for means of delivery and means of additional psychological influence. Wars began - World War I, provocation, and so on. States were captured, people were driven out en masse without any means other than the alarm bells of heralds and rumors. They took them out to the square and led them on unknown campaigns precisely due to the spread of misinformation. Revolutions took place. Therefore, in terms of the impact, this disinformation, fakes, had a much more decisive character before,” Zakharova said.
According to her, today the situation is completely opposite.
“People have the opportunity to resist this. Firstly, by checking the information, secondly, by disseminating refutations, and thirdly, by having the technical ability to have various sources of information. In the past - how do you find out what’s going on with Rasputin, what’s going on with Alexandra Fedorovna, how? They told you - you passed it on. This is the circle of obtaining information from the average person and, accordingly, the power of its influence.
Today you can get to the bottom of the truth. You have huge global libraries, you have a quick opportunity to find sources and talk to a speaker. Moreover, now, through social networks, speakers have become accessible to everyone, right up to the level of heads of state. Today we see a reverse process, when humanity has the opportunity to counteract this,” explained a representative of the information department.
She agreed that misinformation does influence some, of course, serious decisions, but not at the same level as before.
“Both Butch, and Duma, and so on, of course, had influence, but, naturally, not the same as it was before with the same test tube of Colin Powell (contributing to the outbreak of the war in Iraq - ed.) If it had not appeared in 2001, and today, it would be disavowed within a week or two. And then it was necessary for four or five years to pass. And so on in all directions,” Zakharova recalled.
She was also skeptical about the idea of blockchain in recording history. Zakharova noted that everyone should be perfectly clear who the blockchain actors will be here, and how all the information changes and is recorded.
“Therefore, the blockchain tablets are all beautiful, but it seems to me that they are at the level of an oxymoron,” she emphasized.
“Understand that today it is difficult for a person to perceive anything - more than two paragraphs of information. A person can hardly read a history textbook. What kind of involvement in the study of history are we talking about if we follow this path? Today's problem is a huge amount of information that fills you, it's like a natural disaster.
Therefore, any appearance of technical innovation will not solve the problem of involvement in knowledge of history. If we live to a certain point when we understand that there is no point in further developing these QMS and media, simply because it nullifies their significance in principle,” concluded Maria Zakharova.
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