I decided to
return to a propagandist article that, using the mechanism of projection (“my
enemy is what I see in the mirror and that’s how I know that he is awful”), to
comb through it and learn (or save) what lies beneath it surface. The article
is entitled “The Menace of
Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money” (http://www.interpretermag.com/the-menace-of-unreality-how-the-kremlin-weaponizes-information-culture-and-money/) and was written by Michael Wiss and Peter Pomerantsev, who judging from his
book, Nothing is True
and Everything is Possible: the Surreal Heart of the New Russia, sees today’s Russia as thoroughly nihilistic
(even though nihilism is another Western ideology par excellence).
According to Pomerantsev,
one of the many fashionable renegades, and Weiss, the threat posed to the West
by Russia is one of “unreality.” This is very ironic for the current US
political model has been built on constructivism (there is no truth and/or man
has no organ for the truth) and on its postmodern derivatives, which negate
reality. As Ron Suskind famously quoted Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s
key strategist, people who are not initiated into the ways of this new Empire
belong to
what we call the
reality-based community … who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious
study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore.
We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality. And
while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just
study what we do. ( Suskind, Ron (2004-10-17). "Faith, Certainty and the
Presidency of George W. Bush". The New York Times Magazine)
As I said, the Empire tries hard to see the enemy as
its own true self. This approach saves
lots of work and thinking. And, literally,
it also brings it all closer home so that a denizen of the empire can relate and
also better understand what to hate and why.
Pomerantsev and Weiss use a very interesting
notion or neologism—that of “weaponization” of information. It seems that by
weaponization of information they mean disinformation and lies “used to confuse,
blackmail, demoralize, subvert and paralyze;” moreover, disinformation and lies
that are part of war, i.e., hybrid war. And hybrid war is a war that includes
nearly all what is available or it is war, which includes war, but, at the
same, from other angles it might look as something other than war. And Russia
is accused of waging such war against the West.
Pomerantsev and Weiss are sure that thinkers in
the Kremlin are “not thinking in familiar terms.” As P. and W. are concerned,
these Russian thinkers may be aliens. Perhaps even demons. In contrast, P. and
W. call themselves “journalists,” really almost priests for they “consider
freedom of speech and freedom of information to be sacred,” and hence their
job, for which they are well paid, is serving this God—information, which will “will
eventually lead to new ideas and generate progress.” And the more we will have
of what P. and W. are doing, the “the more harmony we will have.” I would
almost call this (false) promise “progressive angelism,” if it were not that
ridiculous or absurd to think that the corporate media really care about
reality, dialogue, freedom, or the truth.
But let’s get to work. It means, once we are
mindful of the projection mechanism at work in what P. and W. are saying when
he start putting together the image which they and the Empire reflect and which
they try to paint over the face of Russia, without bothering much what Russia
is really about.
Thus, if we translate their categorical
statements back to their source, we do obtain something very good insights into
the nature of the Empire itself, which is a valuable and laudable enterprise.
1. “the Kremlin sees it as a mechanism for enabling
aggression and an opportunity to divide and rule.”
Does the Kremlin really
want to conquer the world? Not really. But does the Empire? Yes.
Self-evidently, so. Thus what we learn? That globalization is really a
mechanism for enabling aggression by divide and conquer.
2.
“Whether out of wishful
thinking, naiveté, or cynicism, a useful myth was cultivated over the last
fourteen years: namely, that the United States and Europe had an honest partner
or ally in the Kremlin, no matter how often the latter behaved as if the
opposite were true.”
What does it take for anyone to believe even
today that the US or Europe are “honest partners”? Is Obama, Clinton or Bush
honesty incarnate? And when was it the case?
3.
“And in spite of rather naked periods of
disruption—the pro-democracy “color revolutions” in Europe and the Caucasus in
2004–2005, the gas wars with Ukraine in 2005–2006, the Russian-Georgian War in
2008—the myth endured and was actually expanded upon with the advent of the
US-Russian “reset” in 2009.”
Good to see P. and W. inadvertently putting “color
revolutions” into the same category of “naked disruptions” of the Western “myth”
(lies) together with the war of 2008, etc.
3. “Now the United States and Europe have been
forced to face the reality of a revanchist and militarily revitalized Russia
with imperial ambitions.”
I think the key here is “Russia revitalized.”
That is the real meaning of “reality” which P. and W. as well as the US and the
West find so threatening. A dying and moribund Russia (of the 1990s) was much
more cheerful and reassuring.
4.
“A former KGB
lieutenant-colonel, rumored to be the wealthiest man in Europe …” See they
proudly call themselves “journalists” for whom information is “sacred.” It
turns out, they mean by information a rumor—as long as the rumor fits what they
are trying to sell, which is not exactly objective information. They are
priests of financial capital. They live by circulating such rumors in the place
of thoughts, not to mention “new ideas,” which, they assured us, will
eventually arrive as long as we take what they say on face value.
5.
“Russia has hybridized
not only its actual warfare but also its informational warfare. Much of the
epistemology democratic nations thought they had permanently retired after the
Cold War needs to be re-learned and adapted to even cleverer forms of
propaganda and disinformation.”
Epistemology (knowing how we know what know) “permanently
retired”? Who retired it? And from whom? So now we “need to re-learn to be even
cleverer” than before. But, according to P. and W., we have become stupid for,
as they say or rumor, we no longer really know. But they do. Somehow. We are asked to know better by merely
trusting them to make us cleverer than how we are. And they think that we are—after
the Cold War—quite stupid now.
6.
“Russia combines
Soviet-era “whataboutism” and Chekist “active measures” with a wised-up,
post-modern smirk that says that everything is a sham.”
Isn’t postmodernism one of the latest words and
inventions of the West or capitalism itself? Well, yes, it is. “Post-modern
smirk: everything is a sham.” Oh, let’s blame Russia for one’s own pride (or
sin)!
7.
“Where the Soviets once co-opted and
repurposed concepts such as “democracy,” “human rights” and “sovereignty” to
mask their opposites, the Putinists use them playfully to suggest that not even
the West really believes in them. Gitmo, Iraq, Ferguson, BP, Jobbik, Schröder —
all liberalism is cant, and anyone can be bought.”
Do the powers that be, i.e. our corporate
masters, believe what they want the masses to believe? Some basic, simple
questions yield self-evident answers. One just needs to have the courage to ask
them (out loud).
8.
“A mafia state as
conceived by an advertising executive is arguably more dangerous than a
communist superpower because ideology is no longer the wardrobe of politics but
rather an interchangeable and contradictory set of accessories. “Let your words
speak not through their meanings,” wrote Czeslaw Milosz in his poem “Child of
Europe”, “But through them against whom they are used.”
So what is the state we are living in? It is a
state where the age of ideology is in the past for the system has now a better
system—words separated from their meanings and the words are used against those
(of us) who assume that the words are meant by the powers that be in the same
way in which we take them and understand them. Big mistake. (A while ago I
wrote a dissertation just on this very thing).
9.
“The Kremlin exploits
the idea of freedom of information to inject disinformation into society.”
Translation: “freedom of information” means and
meant the freedom to inject disinformation. Provided that one can have a more or
less secure monopoly on such displacement.
10.
“The West’s acquiescence to sheltering corrupt
Russian money demoralizes the Russian opposition while making the West more
dependent on the Kremlin.”
Actually, P. and W. are saying not more than
this confession: “The West is and has been sheltering corrupt Russian money [and
their holders] …” But whether this deliberate sheltering of Russian corrupt
money makes “the West more dependent on the Kremlin” or the Russian (corrupt)
elite on the West is a question, which needs to raised and heard in order to
understand what the policy is and whose is this policy.
11.
“a fluid approach to
ideology now allows the Kremlin to simultaneously back far-left and far-right
movements, greens, anti-globalists and financial elites.”
Is the Kremlin backing the world’s financial
elites? Or who is whom the world’s financial elites are backing in Russia? Oh,
we know. P. and W. told us just above—they are backing (sheltering) “Russian
corrupt money.” If one cannot read a text as a poet, reading it as an average
political theorist might still take us somewhere.
12.
“There is an attempt to
co-opt parts of the expert community in the West via such bodies as the Valdai
Forum, which critics accuse of swapping access for acquiescence. Other senior
Western experts are given positions in Russian companies and become de facto
communications representatives of the Kremlin.”
According to P. and W., Russia is successfully
developing a fifth column in the West by providing employment to Westerners in
Russia. That’s also why it might be good to remain a junior expert or young
(regardless of the age) so that Russia would never hire you. For, evidently,
employment corrupts.
13.
“But whereas the liberal
idea of globalization sees money as politically neutral, with global commerce
leading to peace and interdependence, the Kremlin uses the openness of global
markets as an opportunity to employ money, commerce and energy as foreign
policy weapons.”
Translation: liberalism preaches that money is
politically neutral, but the West has always used money as its almost most
effective political weapon. Oh, but we are not supposed to know that … unless
you are an enemy of liberalism or a Russian.
14.
“The Kremlin exploits
systemic weak spots in the Western system, providing a sort of X-ray of the
underbelly of liberal democracy.”
The idea that someone can see through the lies
and hypocrisy of such corporate propaganda, which cheers the fascists in
Ukraine on, must be clearly maddening.
Russia does not have normal zombified eyes. The
eyes of the Russians are “a sort of X-ray [applied] to the underbelly of
liberal democracy.” The metaphor suggests pregnancy and a doctor (here
representing Russia). One has to wonder what “child” is our late capitalism
bearing. Oh, we already know that! Rosemary has a baby! And it looks like Nazism
reborn and reloaded.
15.
“The West has no institutional
or analytical tools to deal with [this hybrid war and weaponization of
information.”
P. and W. conclude by indicating that, in the
end and after all what they said, we are not supposed to know what they were
talking about anyway. Peace.
So what to do?
P. and W. recommend “enlisting experienced
bloggers … [who would adhere to the same standards … to generate headlines.”
Bloggers then shall be enlisted!@
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