The Anti-Russian Propaganda is Relentless

The interwebs are completely inundated with pro-Ukrainian and anti-Belarussian/Russian propaganda. Whenever I go to my favorite internet streaming service, I am subjected to ads that my adblocker can’t turn off talking about the war crimes of Russia in Ukraine, or calling on Belarussians to rise up against Lukashenko or stories about how Russian soldiers have been abandoned or their families not given compensation for their deaths.

Many sites are boycotting Russia and Belarus and then, whenever I put on my Western VPN to get around this, it’s just pro-Ukraine banners and hashtags all over the place.

None of this is organic. This kind of over-the-top propaganda takes money. There are even micro-celebrities on the various social media platforms who take time out of their busy days giving make-up tutorials or analyzing celebrity gossip to shill for Zelensky. We know that the FBI is deeply involved with curating content on Twitter, and we know that people like Maxine Ghislaine, an Israeli spy and head of a global blackmail pedo ring, ran the front page of Reddit (r/worldnews). Spooks pay people to shill the Current Thing (tm) or shill it themselves, is what I’m saying.

Not all propaganda is worth the investment though. This little piece is making the rounds on Telegram:

Money was given only for a grave and a headstone. How a Russian family is trying to get money for the death of (their) soldier.

It’s funny how Ukrainian Soviet-era apartments are so similar to the ones built in Russia. And, despite Kiev’s protestations to the contrary, Ukrainians bear an uncanny resemblance to Russians. It’s almost as if they’re virtually indistinguishable.

But few Russian families have Ukrainian writing on their fridges.

I mean, I guess some might have a Ukrainian warranty on their fridge … but … yeah, no, they just wouldn’t.

There are similar videos of supposed Russian servicemen and vets urging Russian soldiers to lay down their arms. I’m not sure what the purpose of these ads are, seeing as the soldiers aren’t exactly binging Netflix during their deployment to Donbass. I guess while they’re rotating out for R & R they might see an ad and tear up their contract?

Bizarre.

It’d be one thing if there was an actual general mobilization and a bunch of already demoralized conscripts were subjected to this sort of thing like in WWI when the Bolsheviks worked with the Germans to create anti-war Communist propaganda and spread it among POWs. But this situation is vastly different.

Still, the golden rule with advertisements and propaganda it is that quantity is its own quality. Take a look at the diversity agitprop that is pushed in Western media. It’s poorly done, ham-handed and frankly, insulting to the people forced to watch it, but its churned out without pause regardless.

Back before the start of the military operation in Ukraine, there were many channels on Russian social media that would shill for Ukraine. Some of them were even self-styled “right-wing” channels. It turns out that content-creators were simply getting paid to put out pro-Ukraine material. Amusingly, once the psychological operations center was hit in Brovary, Kiev, some of these meme and chat groups stopped posting, forever, which really makes one go “hmmmm”. Others got the message and stopped accepting money for posting pro-Ukie content.

As you guys know, I’ve been annoyed by the inability of the Russian government to engage in active PR campaigns by finding and supporting pro-Russian content-creators. But at the very least, we now know that when all else fails, the Russian military can be counted on to do what the civilian-run government can’t by just dropping a missile on the enemy internet troll army and stop the flow of their propaganda that way.

Overall, it’s still tough out there for pro-Russia content creators. VK, for example, has janny moderators that are Liberal and anti-Russian. As a result, patriotic groups get their advertising cut off and shadow-banned. That means that their growth is effectively knee-capped. This doesn’t just occur with edgy, vanguard groups (like the people I work with) who post horrible, racist, and frankly, unacceptable content:

When you distinguished yourself on the frontlines and as a reward get to shoot a captured mercenary negro sent from the USA.

It happens with very basic, pro-Russia groups that cater to older folks’ sensibilities as well.

The only way to get growth on these hostile platforms is to collaborate horizontally with like-minded people, but, as everyone who has spent any time online knows, people prefer to feud and squabble rather than work together, so this is easier said than done.

In terms of samizdat efforts, pro-Russians are confined to Telegram channels that serve as news and meme-aggregators. Even benign content like Orthodox priests reciting psalms on Tik-Tok is immediately censored and shut down. All of this could be fixed by creating a sovereign Russian internet, but, as I’ve reported before, despite Putin’s repeated calls for getting serious about this, and money being allocated for it, people like PM Mishustin in the Duma prefer to spend that money on various digitization schemes. Almost the entire budget for the development of a Russian internet was spent on Sber’s WEF-inspired digitization effort. This included measures like trying to put face-recognition cameras in public schools. How this helps anybody except data-miners and Sber stockholders is anyone’s guess. And the guy who is in charge of like, the media operation in Russia, generally is a guy called Gromov.

He seems to exclusively give out money to Liberal media and so is hated by the patriot community, who accuse him of being a treacherous drunk.

I wait with great anticipation for the day when I can write an article about a purge of people like him from the cabinet of the Presidential Administration. Imagine if the Kremlin got serious about its propaganda efforts and fixing up the internet situation.