Skip to main content

"Living in another world"

In the early days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel made a widely reported comment that Vladimir Putin was "living in another world". The point being that the statements that were being made by the Kremlin were so completely untrue that they had literally no basis in reality. 

 Over the past few months we have started to become used to Russian propaganda: astroturfing, Putintrolls, and all the rest of it, but nevertheless, no matter how vehemently propagated, the Kremlin position remains completely at odds with objective, evidence based truth. The well funded Russian propaganda machine is slick, well presented and almost entirely half truths and whole lies.

 According to Peter Pomerantsev, in his book "Nothing is true and everything is permitted: the surreal heart of the new Russia", the kleptocratic cabal that now controls the Kremlin does not believe in truth even as a concept. Instead they believe that anything and everything is merely a matter of presentation and PR. This message ultimately becomes totally nihilist: the only reality is PR. Those who control the PR machine, control the state. The twisted version of the assassins creed becomes the ultimate reality.

 This corrosive cynicism quickly becomes irrational. If nothing is true, then everything, no matter how far fetched, can be believed. The result is that Russians- as in the last days of the Czars- are falling prey to all manner of quacks and charlatans, from soi-disant wizards to astrologers. These people are not the harmless frauds of western newspaper columns, but actually have real influence and power! 

 This is a breakdown of all logic, the end of rational thought, and proof, if any further were really needed, just how sick a society Putin's Russia has become.

 Angela Merkel spoke no more than the truth: Vladimir Putin is probably seriously detached from reality, to a degree that in a rational society would probably be categorised as mental illness.

 Now, as the Russian economic crisis accelerates into breakdown, the decadent court of wizards and astrologers serving Vladimir Putin and his cronies are going to get a cold wet bucket of reality dropped all over them. It remains to be seen how dangerous a process this may become. One thing is sure: it is certainly a necessary one.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and
1 comment
Read more

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo
Post a Comment
Read more

We need to talk about UK corruption

After a long hiatus, mostly to do with indolence and partly to do with the general election campaign, I feel compelled to take up the metaphorical pen and make a few comments on where I see the situation of the UK in the aftermath of the "Brexit election". OK, so we lost.  We can blame many reasons, though fundamentally the Conservatives refused to make the mistakes of 2017 and Labour and especially the Liberal Democrats made every mistake that could be made.  Indeed the biggest mistake of all was allowing Johnson to hold the election at all, when another six months would probably have eaten the Conservative Party alive.  It was Jo Swinson's first, but perhaps most critical, mistake to make, and from it came all the others.  The flow of defectors and money persuaded the Liberal Democrat bunker that an election could only be better for the Lib Dems, and as far as votes were concerned, the party did indeed increase its vote by 1.3 million.   BUT, and it really is the bi
Post a Comment
Read more