As in "offending to readers" as well as "an attitude or position of attack".
Not a week goes by these days in Western media, across countries, across parties, across mainstream news outlets, without scary, lurid, alarming stories about the power of Russian propaganda.
The author of this post has read articles about the Russian troll factories and the people who fight them despite then being targeted viciously themselves, about the slick and selective RT.com, about serious pressure on independent news outlets in Russia in each and every language our miniscule basement newsroom can muster, including somewhat rusty Russian.
And not just once in each language but multiple times in the same publications. The last instance, the drop in the bucket, Putin's News Network of Lies is Just the Start, isn't even all that bad as a recap, or "taken individually, most Newsweek items would not look out of place", and, yes, journalists being murdered and opposition figures shot dead right on the streets is awful enough.
When the Berlin Wall fell, the Western world stopped thinking about how to explain and promote its political system in Russia and around the world.
"The Western world" did not stop thinking about how to explain or promote its system - or is someone implying that our best strategic minds took their eyes off the ball?
The author of this post will be forever amused that respected
journalists and policy experts keep a straight face when they report the
establishment of a military unit of "soldiers with expertise in social
media". Monty Python comes to life.
Granted, not many people will go and learn the language of the currently fashionable adversary to unlock its culture, its history, and its current affairs, but if you are young and curious, do so. Or if you are old and still curious.
Learn Chinese, learn Russian. Arabic would have been useful a couple of decades ago but in an environment in which Arabic flashcards can get you kicked off a plane, think twice before you enroll.
The current bitching by nearly all major Western news outlets about Russian propaganda has all the same characteristics as its Cold War incarnation, adapted to the 21st century.
And no, this statement is not proof of the efficiency of the claim "It strenuously promotes the idea that truth is relative and facts are elastic". There is no reason to deny that much of what is happening in Russia is bad, that many people in central or Eastern European countries are worried, but it is not "countries" that are worried, ever.
It is people, sometimes a majority, sometimes not, sometimes for reasons based on hard facts, sometimes not.
Luckily, there are much more nuanced and analytically sound writers than Edward Lucas, for instance Patrick Smith in his Salon article The U.S.-Russia "phony war": How Washington warmongers could bring us from stalemate to catastrophe. It is actually, from a historical and cultural perspective, pretty damn impressive that the majority of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact have weathered the incredible social, economic, and political upheavals since the fall of the Iron Curtain without setting the world on fire.
Russia, and the other countries mentioned in the Newsweek article, have never had anything even remotely comparable to our Western ways and means of propaganda. How great is Russian propaganda when, according to credible reports, the vast majority of young Russians regards the country's state-sponsored as pure propaganda?
But, as the title of the post indicates, the author is not primarily worried about facts, because more facts than you can ever digest are available at your fingertips.
Pro tip: forget about "ideology", "human rights" and "democracy", map only natural resources and dominant cultures/religions, and you are already a better strategist than half the talking heads everywhere.
The author is offended by the disgusting condescension, the pervasive distrust in the public exhibited by blatant propaganda like the Newsweek article.
Maybe, just maybe, "the West" wouldn't have such a problem with Russian, Chinese, or Iranian propaganda if "we" hadn't successfully trashed so many of our own values without blinking?
But hey, the author understands that propaganda - from any party - is not about convincing people who hold different opinions but about manufacturing reality, about saturation and looking good in the eyes of of the current bank teller and of future history. Deeply held beliefs are exceedingly hard to change, if at all, and if you don't believe that, the Daily Show's 16 year binge streaming showed it in a manner our daily soundbites media consumption cannot rival.
An infallible red flag that says here comes propaganda is when an old phenomenon is presented as a new one with a swanky new name. Hybrid war and, to a lesser extent, information war are just that: slick names for something that is thousands of years old.
Read Homer, not Simpson, the other one, or read up on how the Romans ruled over their empire, and it should be obvious.
Propagandists, again of all stripes and from all sides, are really ever so pissed off that people want to live in peace.
Insert reference to the previous post here.
The latest to chime in, to be honest, it is hard to keep track, was the head of the Russian service section of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle in an article in Frankfurter Allgemeine. A propaganda piece in its own right.
Okay, the blogster is caving in: In a different world, nobody would need to be reminded of that violence casts a long shadow. Exploiting these memories in support of more violence is simply evil.
About the author: The author of this post is a former civil servant and an honorary lifetime member of a U.S. Army unit, and has no intention to move to Russia.
[Update 16 August] Added Youtube Sharyl Attkisson links (astroturf and "Stonewalled")
[Update 19 August] Paragraph starting with "An infallible red flag..."
[Update 3/2/2016] Added paragraph "The latest to chime in..]
[Update 4/29/2016] Added paragraph "Okay, the blogster is caving in...]
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