Updated 2 years ago
Don’t dismiss the current hyperpoliticization in the West as a cancer just yet.
Here is a deep dive into Putin’s propaganda with Russian intellectual expat Vlad Vexler.
The US in 2016 certainly got a taste of it. The best word I can come up with for it would be chaotic neo-nihilism by diktat. It is, in a way, the opposite of America, which explodes with political sentiment and passion of every stripe. But it is also very similar to conspiratorial thinking common in some groups in the West, as well.
In his own particular KGB way, Putin has epistemologically anesthetized the minds of a generation of Russians much in the same way Mao did to the Chinese in the 1960s Cultural Revolution – and the damage in China can still be felt today. After an initial course correction – the benefits of which we still see – ultimately, inevitably set China on a long-term death spiral with declining birth rates, declining economic prospects, and the good old moral values abandoned or forgotten – the same spiral Russia is currently on.
From transcript:
“Putin’s propaganda doesn’t try to persuade you of an alternate reality that you should believe in. It tries to manipulate your sense of reality. It basically tries to saturate the informational environment with incompatible pictures of reality – and the aim isn’t to persuade you of anything. It isn’t to initiate you into a kind of political mobilization, into a kind of vision.
The aim is to de-politicize you to make you feel well this is too complex for me to engage in and make you feel that maybe there isn’t such a thing as an unqualifiedly stateable truth about anything.
Soviet propaganda was clear: this is the truth and if you don’t believe in that you’re wrong
Putin propaganda does not try to tell you we have the story here this is what you believe
Putin propaganda tries to tell you “Look, this is a very complex world,” and there are claims and counterclaims and then it tries to pump information at you from all directions and the idea is that you simply give up on politics that’s the key aspiration and it’s been working very tragically effectively.”
And the mobilization is breaking that de facto social contract into a million pieces.
And you know what is a great way to deal with this shattering of illusion? Vodka.
“A postmodern vortex of unintelligibility.”
