How Putin’s propaganda works
Putin:
The basics of our policy is freedom, the freedom for all to choose the future they want and the future they want for their children.
On February 24th 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine
Anja Turnbull:
Over the last seven months Ukraine has been brutalized by Russia: civilians targeted, infrastructure destroyed, a quarter of the population forced to flee. In Russia though you’re not supposed to call this brutal war a war. It is “a special military operation to protect the people of the Donbas”. Ironically YouTube has its own censorship issues, which is putting it mildly. So I’m gonna bleep the word and a bunch of other words too, because that’ll probably help not get this video suppressed.
this video is about the insane schizophrenic world of Russian propaganda where you see one thing with your own eyes and you just get told the complete opposite and why unfortunately people still believe these insane lies as a harbinger of Western Decay foreign agent enemy of Traditional Values corrupter of Youth and propagandist of homosexuality I would ask you to please subscribe The Lies start at the very top this is the Russian foreign minister Sergey lavrovista Ukraine even a little bit you will know that everything they’re saying is the complete opposite of the truth there’s there’s no angle here there’s no spin What’s Happening Here is that the Kremlin has just completely given up on outward facing propaganda they are not trying to make Russia seem respectable to the rest of the world anymore all they’re trying to do now is just keep the Russian people on their side and keep them obedient and within the country there’s this entire propaganda apparatus that sort of builds a world around these lies and manages to actually make them effective lies don’t need to be believable if you create conditions in which people will voluntarily choose to believe them so this propaganda apparatus has three main qualities it’s based on emotion it’s contradictory rather than affirmative and it’s enforced [Music] I watched a lot of Russian TV to make this video and what I’ve learned is that most of the propaganda content they produce is not based on facts or even lies pretending to be facts it’s mostly just abstract emotional Rants and there are only three topics Russia is special and great but everyone hates us but we will show them this guy Vladimir solavio is one of the top Kremlin propagandists and he translates these points really well foreign he can take the most random topic and somehow make it about Russian greatness for example visas foreign notable embezzler and head of Russia Today the wildly ineffective Western audience oriented branch of the Kremlin media machine they say things like we won’t take this our people know when they’re being lied to it’s always either outside enemies the west or if it’s really impossible to blame the West if it’s clear that Russia is harming Russians then they’re going to point the finger at mid-tier officials they’re going to say those people are incompetent those people are doing a bad job for example here she’s talking about the mess immobilization in Russia and people being sent to the front with no combat experience but the Supreme Commander will make sure to get the them to do their job properly and then they immediately lead the conversation back to their favorite topic of our enemies are out to get us and we must fight them I would like to point out that if you’re trying to convince people that others and that you yourself are not in fact using words like Vermin might not be the best choice the essence of Russian propaganda is gaslighting but stupid you just take whatever your critics are saying about you and you say it back to them Russian propaganda is like if an ideology could have a full-blown personality disorder in this case narcissistic personality disorder it has the grandiosity and the Deep insecurity and the sort of viciousness this type of content is directed mostly at the poor less educated Russians especially those who are a bit older and more likely to trust the TV over the Internet these are the parts of the population where Putin is actually popular even though his politics make them suffer the most if you are poor in Russia nobody has your interest in mind it’s a kleptocracy it’s not big on social justice Russia respects power and wealth and not much else you’re likely to feel angry and scared and you’ll be looking for someone to blame Putin has always known this and he’s always been good at finding enemies for Russian people to blame and be angry at it used to be for example queer people I mean it still is queer people were used by Putin as a proxy for the West as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with Western values and as a danger to the traditional values that supposedly are very important to Russians and now it’s the Ukrainian nice who you know elected a Jewish president 70 percent of the people voted for him you know as one does when one is enough and again here Putin appeals to Russians past talking about how Russians fought the actions in World War II and uses ukrainians as a proxy for the West saying that they are NATO’s Pawn let’s say people believe him still the problem is neither ukrainians nor queer people are attacking Russia Russia is attacking them but Putin justifies this by saying that Russians must stand up for their values that are being attacked so there’s no physical attack happening whatsoever but he insists that these groups are attacking Russians just by existing people will jump through hoops and do complicated mental gymnastics to force themselves to believe this narrative yes that’s it thank you yes [Music] no no no this is because and I’m not trying to justify the fact that people believe this but I think it’s fascinating to understand the underlying emotional basis for this insanity and I think it’s the fact that if you’re scared and angry and the reason you’re suffering is your government then it’s just you against Putin and your chances are zero but if the reason you’re suffering are these enemies that big strong Putin is fighting for you then your chances are much higher okay this part is extra Grim trigger warning for anything you can possibly think of when a report about Russians in Ukraine comes out and there have been a lot of them over the past seven months the Kremlin immediately denies everything and then spits out as many counter arguments as it possibly can their strategy isn’t to prove that they are telling the truth but to convince as many people as they can that the other side might be lying one example of how this works is the reporting done on bucha in April 2022. in late February shortly after the beginning of the Russian Armed Forces encircled Kiev they weren’t able to take kiva’s plan though so instead they occupied small cities around the capital like European and stayed there frustrated and ungoverned for over a month at the end of March the Russian Armed Forces gave up on Kiev and redeployed to the East and on April 3rd International press was allowed to enter the city and what came out was some of the most horrific images I’ve ever seen I do not want to show it here without the blurring but it was just dozens of lying in the street the Russian Ministry of Defense immediately responded not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action they then presented quote-unquote evidence and look I want to be really clear that by looking at this evidence I am not entertaining any of it even for a minute but I think it’s important to look at it closely to understand how Russian propaganda Works Russian units withdrew completely from bucha as early as March 30th on March 31st the mayor of bucha did not mention any local shot in the streets evidence did not emerge until the fourth day and then the ministry says basically that in the photos don’t look old enough they aren’t saying this outright but what they are implying is that between March 31st and April 3rd ukrainians came into the City and their own people to make Russia look bad I don’t really know what to say to that just you I hate having to respond to this but one three days between a city being freed and press aloudin is normal protocol civilians have to stay off the streets until the Ukrainian Army is done clearing the city of Mines that the Russians leave behind everywhere two most of the photos aren’t close-ups three a lot of the bodies that are visible do display for Decay for the New York Times and others use satellite images to prove that bodies were already lying in the streets as early as March 13th 5. felling Cat found videos of these same bodies from different dates and angles and six interviews with dozens of butcher locals corroborate the photographic evidence of civilians then this story was picked up by TV propagandists who add their own surmises here is a video of a street that doesn’t have any bodies on it the reports came out at the same time which seems suspicious the ukrainians chose bucha because it sounds like the word butcher it’s just it’s just so sad it’s so sick the ministry of Defense also pitched a false actor Theory even though it contradicts their first Theory they claim that in this video you can see one of the bodies move its arm I actually thought this was fascinating because at first glance it does kind of look like there’s an arm that’s moving but an open source investigations team slowed the video down and provided a negative of it and that way you can see that it’s a raindrop that’s moving on the windshield so the strategy of the propaganda apparatus when they’re facing actual facts is to present as many counter arguments as they possibly can just throw anything out there and see what sticks it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t coalesce into a single narrative it doesn’t matter if almost all of it is completely unbelievable because if you support Putin you will grab on to any of these lies like a drowning man to a straw rather than believe that your government did this since April more and more evidence of Russian war crimes in Butcher
and elsewhere has surfaced there was never any doubt that atrocities happened but now the proof is insurmountable there has been no objective government media in Russia in decades even the straight up newsy news channels are just spouting the same amount emotional propaganda like our heroes we’re fighting evil there are free Russian language media Outlets online but they’re all based in Europe nowadays because Russia loves and jailing journalists to combat these sources Russia is trying very unsuccessfully to cordon off the internet like China did large chunks of the internet like all of Facebook all of Instagram are technically inaccessible but they totally are via vpns the problem is there’s still Russia’s own social media so Russia has laws policing actual individual Free Speech which is some 1984 it is illegal to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and there are people literally in jail right now for that and in general civil descent in Russia is quite harshly punished a lot of online discourse about the war and among Russians and ukrainians has been about to blame falling on Russians like how did we let it come to this there have been a lot of think pieces which discuss the complacency of both liberal and non-liberal Elites young professionals who earn a lot of money entrepreneurs because the odds and the 2010s were so affluent that it was easy to just be apathetic yes if you’re queer you have to hide yes if you’re a person of color you’re basically treated like across the board but when you’re sipping an aperol Spritz on a rooftop bar celebrating the launch of your matcha latte delivery service life isn’t so bad yeah human rights are getting eroded but I mean you’re doing good this apathy was skillfully conditioned by the regime the regime is like a noose and every time we struggled the new juice was tightened a little more there were massive protests in 2011 2012 group protester banned then there were individual protests now that’s not a possibility rights were taken away little by little by little that teaches you that struggle doesn’t just get you nowhere it’s counter-effective I kind of hate Hemingway but he does have this really good quote how did you go bankrupt two ways gradually then suddenly Russia has become a straight up classic exemplary fascist government in those two ways that fascism was brewing the militaristic the racist the Nationalist imperialist culture was brewing slowly slowly slowly and then it just erupted like a pustule all over the world in this massive explosion of pain yeah I guess the lesson is to my friends in more liberal countries is we got to be careful we gotta be you know the gradual worsening is just as much part of the worsening as the abrupt worsening [Music]
I’m half Russian which I bring up in every video to add color and I grew up in in Moscow I cannot begin to explain the shame I feel about what my country is doing in Ukraine I I truly think it’s and I think it’s going to be a blight on on Russians for generations to come we’re going to carry this because I’m so ashamed I really like compulsively want to talk about what I’m doing and about what every Russian I know is doing to help ukrainians but as I’m well aware now is not the time for Russians to be asking for forgiveness I still mentioned it because I’m a baby now is just the time to act and do everything we can to help I’m listing my favorite volunteers and organizations in the video description below tiny orgs that are super Brave that are working on the ground because UNICEF the average Ukrainian salary is 300 a month so even a really small donation goes a very long way please check out the list and donate if you feel you want to do that and thank you as always to my lovely lovely patrons who support me both financially and spiritually and also just as much thanks to my viewers who are still interested miraculously in my stuff even though I haven’t posted in a year it means so much and I’m really gonna try and post more often thank you foreign [Music] [Music]