The importance and danger of constant propaganda over years

Phrases like “decades of relentless radical right propaganda,” “decades of Republican dark free speech” and variations thereon (always with “decades” in there somewhere) are pretty common here at Dissident Politics. I use them a lot, or at least it seems that way. 

My understanding of human cognitive biology, such as it is, led me to instinctively intuit that the alt-inconvenient world, alt-inconvenient reality, alt-inconvenient facts and alt-inconvenient reasoning that American fascist propaganda has created and made to look real took decades of trial and error, expertise and discipline to construct. The tens of millions of minds that are now trapped in that alt-everything inconvenient faux world did not get trapped overnight. It took time, expertise, endless repetition and literally billions of dollars to build and keep the radical right’s dark arts machine running and fine-tuned.

An interesting interview the Washington Post published makes the point about the importance of years of propaganda continuity in the context of Russia. The WaPo writes:

Few Americans have parsed Russian propaganda on its various platforms like Maxim Pozdorovkin.

The Russian-born, Harvard-educated filmmaker and thinker is behind several works on the subject, most notably “Our New President” from 2018, an award-winning documentary deconstruction of the Russian media’s portrayal of Donald Trump’s election that was, as he puts it, “a movie based entirely on actual footage without a single true statement in it.”

Far from just an attempt to negate discontent over its Ukraine invasion, Russia’s current state-media approach is, in Pozdorovkin’s view, a continuation of a decade-long campaign to warp Russian citizens’ view of the West. He argues the country’s population has been long primed for this moment — seriously lowering the odds for any tech company or foreign outlet hoping to poke through the veil.

Q: You’ve been very vocal in your work that there’s been a whole narrative about America playing out in Russian media that most Americans aren’t aware of. What exactly has been happening?

A: I don’t think Americans fully understand what’s been fed to Russians about the U.S. and the West for literally the past decade. It’s been an information war — a totally one-sided information war — and it has been waged so fully and artfully that it’s made a lot of what’s happening now preemptively possible. What this information war boils down to is this: “The West is completely against us and trying to stifle and destroy our way of life.” It’s a simple message. But people are told this over and over, in so many different ways.

Q: Like how?

A: The Western sanctions back in 2014 over the war in the Donbas? An attempt to destroy the Russian way of life. The backlash to the Russian disinformation campaign in the 2016 U.S. election? An attempt to destroy the Russian way of life. Russian-doping punishments at the Olympics? Same thing. You name it, if it has involved Russia and the West, it was the West trying to destroy the Russian way of life. When in reality, of course, most Americans don’t typically spend much time thinking about Russia at all.

Q: And Trump fits neatly into this —

A: Trump fits neatly into this because Trump was the one American leader who wasn’t trying to destroy the Russian way of life.

Q: And in their eyes that’s what caused the U.S. backlash to him.

A: That was the one and only reason.

Q: What effect does this have? Like you said, it’s not like the U.S. or Europe has done much to really feed this narrative.

A: It’s true, the Russian media has been totally shadowboxing for years; no one was fighting back. But that doesn’t really matter. If you ingrain this message of victimhood so completely, what it does is when there’s any kind of [President Vladimir] Putin aggressive action, as there is now, a lot of people in Russia don’t see it as aggressive — they just see it as standing up for their way of life. That’s why the nuclear threat computes. 

Q: Because it’s not viewed as much as saber-rattling as “look at what you made me do.” 

A: Exactly. “We don’t want to take the nuclear option. But what choice do we have? You tried to destroy our way of life.”

Note that last bit about “the nuclear option.” I think he refers to nuclear weapons possibly happening in Ukraine. The New York Times commented on that awful possibility in an article entitled, The Smaller Bombs That Could Turn Ukraine Into a Nuclear War Zone: 

“Today, both Russia and the United States have nuclear arms that are much less destructive — their power just fractions of the Hiroshima bomb’s force, their use perhaps less frightening and more thinkable. Concern about these smaller arms has soared as Vladimir V. Putin, in the Ukraine war, has warned of his nuclear might, has put his atomic forces on alert and has had his military carry out risky attacks on nuclear power plants. The fear is that if Mr. Putin feels cornered in the conflict, he might choose to detonate one of his lesser nuclear arms — breaking the taboo set 76 years ago after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. .... For Russia, military analysts note, edgy displays of the less destructive arms have let Mr. Putin polish his reputation for deadly brinkmanship and expand the zone of intimidation he needs to fight a bloody conventional war.”

The victimhood card

Also note the bit about a completely ingrained message of victimhood. Who else endlessly and constantly screams victimhood in their/its propaganda? The Republican Party, including its donors, elites, politicians, professional propagandists (Fox News, etc.) and now its rank and file too. GOP messaging is disciplined and professional. Claiming victimhood works so it is used, whether it’s true or not.

Some recent commentary on conservative and Republican victimhood:
Republicans make Ketanji Brown Jackson’s hearing all about their own victimhood

How White Victimhood Fuels Republican Politics 

Don’t be fooled: The GOP love affair with Putin is worse than it looks

White Male Conservatives Think They’re America’s Real Victims

Of course, it should be clearly noted that victimhood is claimed by more than just conservatives and Republicans. Some liberal snowflakes claim it, warranted or not. It is a fairly common rhetorical tactic. Sometimes there is more truth than hyperbole and deceit in a particular claim of victimhood. It can be real.