Despite restrictions on the use of the Russian language and the recent repression of some anti-government media and personalities, Ukraine remains a relatively free and open society. “The problem here is not that the government is a ‘fascist junta’. That is clearly an enormous exaggeration. This becomes even clearer if you read the article in question. The claim that RT was saying otherwise is false. You will immediately note that this headline specifically says that Ukraine is not a fascist state. To prove the point, the report includes a link that takes you to an old RT.com homepage on which you will find the headline of an article of mine that includes the words “Ukraine may not be a fascist state but it has a fascism problem.” RT continued to feature this false accusation on its homepage.” Even after Ukraine became the second country in the world, after Israel, to simultaneously have a Jewish president and prime minister, Russian disinformation media outlets continued to push this narrative. Here, the document tells readers that, “in 2014, Russian state-funded and state-controlled media began spreading disinformation narratives describing the Ukrainian government, and a significant portion of the population, as either fascists or Nazis. This became clear to me on reading page 28, where I came across a reference to something I had written. Unfortunately for the authors, though, many of their accusations concerning these “false narratives” are themselves false. The most interesting part of the document consists of case studies that seek to illustrate “false narratives” allegedly peddled by Russian media. Titled ‘Kremlin-Funded Media: RT and Sputnik’s Role in Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem’, its fundamental complaint about RT is that it suffers from a “lack of objectivity.” This reflects the authors’ apparent belief first that there is an objective truth, second that they are its guardians, and third that Russia is trying to undermine it. We can see this in a report published last week by the US Department of State’s Global Engagement Center – a branch of the government devoted to fighting foreign disinformation. Read more Is Putin set on conquering Europe at any cost? In this way, an industry dedicated to fighting disinformation itself becomes a source of it. The results are egregious errors of analysis and, on occasion, outright falsehoods. But what they fail to realise is that they are just as biased as those they criticise. In their eyes, their interpretations of reality are objective and true, whereas alternative interpretations are biased and false. The information warriors imagine themselves as guardians of the truth. Unfortunately, the quality of the output is often extremely poor. It has issued report after report illuminating what its members believe is the dire threat that RT, Sputnik and Russian ‘fellow travellers’ and ‘useful idiots’ pose to Western democracy. This dynamic is clearly visible in the ‘disinformation industry’ that has grown up in the past few years to counter ‘Russian propaganda’. The result is a tendency towards threat inflation. Furthermore, an element of self-selection means that people who believe the problem is serious predominate over sceptics. Consequently, the industry dedicated to it invariably favours the idea that it exists. That process rests on the assumption there is a problem. Whenever a new ‘threat’ appears, be it ethnic conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or anything else, the coffers of government open up, and funds pour into state organizations, think tanks and private ‘experts’ in an effort to dissect the problem in question. Far from being an isolated case, it’s typical of the West’s burgeoning disinformation industry. However, in the process, Washington officials have exposed some untruths of their own. A new US government report has accused RT of spreading false narratives.
0 kommentar(er)
