Anyone can fall into the trap of artificial reality or become part of its creation. However, it is happening for the first time on such a great scale on the territory of post-soviet states. I am a journalist with Russian passport living in Kiev and I want to ask Russians and citizens of East Ukraine: Do you not find it strange that friends and relatives from Kiev are telling you one thing and Russian TV channels show something absolutely different. Every single time you make a conclusion that whoever lives in Kiev is scared of Nazis, bribed by the US or recruited by the banderovets and that is why they deny what you saw with your own eyes. You couldn’t possibly see what didn’t happen, could you? Unfortunately you could. I will reveal what happens behind the scene when journalists are creating an artificial reality. It is done in a very simple way.
The mechanism of its creation consists of only three main rules.
1. Selection. Select only those facts, quotes, shots that fit our story. Do not give an opportunity for the readers and viewers to make their own opinion.
2. Handling. Commenting on events using false statements but just as a reference, not as a main idea. Than audience does not think about it and just soaks it in. Any information is absorbed better with an image. Does not matter which one, even if it has nothing in common with the topic.
3. Propagation. Replicate same disinformation on different channels including Internet. A lie that is supported by an “eyewitness” and comments of supposedly independent bloggers is perceived as a common fact.
Now let’s make a Nazi out of you…
According to this scheme let’s make a Nazi stronghold out of your hometown. Here is a swastika sign on the fence (The journalist will draw it himself, however it can happen even without him, right?). Here is a person from your town who believes that “Churki”*** need to know their place (we will never admit that we have been searching for a radical like that for a week). Here is the statistics on the neo-Nazi organizations from all over the world (It perfectly highlights the scale of the treat). Here are biographies of couple of hilfspolizeis and vlasovtsu**** (I can’t believe there are none. That’s ok, we can make them up; you are too lazy to check the archives anyways). Here are some World War II pictures where hilfpolizeis are hanging partisans. And here is the modern video: a frightening demonstration on the streets of your town (It was a May Day demonstration, but we are not going to show flags or slogans. We are also going to add a very alarming music to this video). Finally here is a police report on murders and injuries (most of them are domestic homicide and drunken fights but we will drop this little fact down). Can you imagine that in an old lair of Nazism they have started killing and crippling people again!
The only thing left is to put all of this in one TV story or a newspaper article. It is important to mention all over the text that the murders are motivated by hatred towards dissenters and that some people went abroad and could have received instruction there… One month of this brainwashing and in the neighboring towns people will start forming “anti-fascists squads”. We haven’t even started lying yet; we just took out fragments of reality and made several assumptions. We can start lying later, when the people will be ready for it. We will post a video of people Nazi saluting during “Russian March” in Moscow filmed right here, we will openly call the citizens of the town Nazis, we will record revelations of several alleged victims…Holy Moly, after this even I will be charged with righteous hatred, will ask for a gun and will go under the command of a foreign instructor or a local criminal, doesn’t matter which one, as long as he is against fascism!
Fake reality with the “banderovets” is created in exactly the same way. Out of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians that came out on Maidan against the criminal regime, they have shown you only those who looked the most brutal. They added confessions of fake victims and fake militants (sometimes even the lip sync is not done properly!). They have added images from World War II, remembered Stepan Bandera, even though most of the protestors know more about Napoleon than about him… They have added tons of lies into this brew: about a supposedly banned Russian language, about supposedly occupied by the “Right Sector” apartments, supposedly robbed trains… They have never shown you these captures or robberies, the have just told you about them showing absolutely different pictures (and you can not even remember which one), but you definitely have a feeling of “I saw it happening with my own eyes”.
How to destroy a fake
All these fakes have a weak spot: they do not fit very well with what happened before it, or especially after it. If you will set aside your newspaper and TV for a week or two, your mind will start to clear up and will notice discrepancies. Remember how in 2004-2005 they have been scaring you with the “fascist regime of the pro-American president Yushenko”? However, you never saw any political repressions or Ukraine entering NATO. Moreover, during the next elections the “fascist” gave away his power without any resistance.
Current fakes are quite obvious as well. Even Putin had to admit that Russian soldiers were acting on behalf of Crimean self-defense. He was doing so well with lying about the fact that his soldiers were never there! You were shown that the whole Donbass region is resisting authorities in Kiev and if this would be true, Yanukovich would have ran there instead of Russia! You were shown that “banderovcu that hate everything Russian” and “those that got paid by the West to start war” are in power. If this would be true there would have already been tanks shooting those separatists that have occupied administrative buildings in Donetsk. However, every day they are trying to negotiate with the “peaceful civilians” that are barricaded there and armed with machine guns and sniper rifles. That is a surprisingly humane “fascist junta”… And by the way why is it “fascist” and why is it a “junta”? You got told that, so you would be scared and to provoke hatred in you. What did they support their statement with? None of the members of the provisional government have been related to militarism, or totalitarianism, or implementation of the cult of personality, or extreme nationalism. All of these are typical for the fascist ideology… Just have a closer look at Turchinov or Yatsenyuk: where do you see a single sign of these characteristics? By the way Putin has all of these written all over his face, there is even no need to fib…
The main mistake of this monstrous information campaign is in its promiscuity, which is inevitable due to such hurry and scope…As a result amongst professional lies one can find those that are primitive and are easily refuted, for example the “ban of Russian language” and all “persecution of Russians” related stories. Another example is when they have made an “agent of the West” out of a director of the zoo in Nikolaev. Or another example when the same person was shown on two different channels: on one as a person who got paid to be on Maidan and on the other as a person “injured by Maidan activists”. Clinging to such blatant lies, one can ask a besotted victim of TV channels: why is such propaganda necessary? If it is really that horrible in Ukraine, why can’t they show it just the way it is without exaggeration? If they did lie about one thing, how can we trust them regarding everything else?
Author: Vladimir Alifanov
This article is taken from the website FaceNews
* a campaign of eradication of illiteracy in Soviet Russia and Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
** The banderovets is a term used by Russian media to describe pro Ukrainian activists.
*** Churki is a term Russians use to call central Asia nationals. It is an offensive word.
**** Members of the Russian Liberation Army, fought on the side of the Third Reich against the Soviet Union
