Posted on 11/19/2014 1:40:41 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
Edited on 11/23/2014 8:57:37 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
I grew up hating America. I lived in the Soviet Union and was a child of the Cold War. That hate went away in 1989, though, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. By the time I left Russia in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed, America was a country that Russians looked up to and wanted to emulate.
Twenty-three years later, a new version of cold war is back, though we Americans haven't realized it yet. But I am getting ahead of myself.
After Russia invaded Crimea and staged its referendum, I thought Vladimir Putin's foreign excursions were over. Taking back Crimea violated plenty of international laws, but let's be honest. Though major powers like the US and Russia write the international laws, they are not really expected to abide by those laws if they find them not to be in their best interests. Those laws are for everyone else. I am not condoning such behavior, but I can clearly see how Russians could justify taking Crimea back — after all, it used to belong to Russia.
I was perplexed by how the Russian people could possibly support and not be outraged by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But I live in Denver, and I read mostly US and European newspapers. I wanted to see what was going on in Russia and Ukraine from the Russian perspective, so I went on a seven-day news diet: I watched only Russian TV — Channel One Russia, the state-owned broadcaster, which I hadn't seen in more than 20 years — and read Pravda, the Russian newspaper whose name means "Truth." Here is what I learned:
I have to confess, it is hard not to develop a lot of self-doubt about your previously held views when you watch Russian TV for a week. But then you have to remind yourself that Putin's Russia doesn't have a free press. The free press that briefly existed after the Soviet Union collapsed is gone — Putin killed it. The government controls most TV channels, radio, and newspapers. What Russians see on TV, read in print, and listen to on the radio is direct propaganda from the Kremlin.
snip
Sounds like a description of the bully in the White Hut who is shoving his amnesty and who-knows-what-else down our throats. Later, the article does mention Obama's weakness.
Russia's propaganda works by forcing your right brain (the emotional one) to overpower your left brain (the logical one), while clogging all your logical filters.
As someone who occasionally exposes himself to Russian TV during this Russian-Ukrainian war, truer words than ones above have never been spoken. Western propaganda, or 'methods of persuasion' are subtle, there's almost a sense of respect for an individual to make his own judgement. In Russian propaganda, the emotional impact is so raw, you almost have no choice but to think that way. The individual is violated and the public becomes just a big Pavlovian dog reacting to emotional stimuli.
And TV - that's the worst, it goes straight into your head, because if you're reading something, your analytical faculties are still intact. With the TV picture, you become an eye witness, so the impression is that much stronger.
Germany will, in the end, betray NATO by being neutral in any US-Russia conflict. The French would also likely sit that out.
“Russian’s propaganda works by forcing your right brain (the emotional one) to overpower your left brain (the logical one), while clogging all your logical filters.”
Oddly, liberal arguments work (to what extent they do) by this same mechanism.
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