Comment

The nature of Russian news has changed. Pictured: workers stand on scaffolding erected around the top of the Spasskaya tower (Saviour Tower) of the Kremlin as it undergoes repair, in Moscow this month. Photo: AFP

Historians will dwell on the irony. As Russia's propaganda machine jolts back to life, flooding the Western world with curated hoo-hah, a popular notion in Russia is that these days everything is PR. The same cynical idea can be described as a symptom of the post-Great Recession West, a time in which what sells threatens to be confused with democratic consent, and the power of wealth tests the power of the rule of law.  

Into this world, the Russian media machine gives airtime to voices that accentuate suspicions and conspiracy, confusing and conflating issues at will. In matters dear to the Kremlin, Russia's propaganda makes it almost impossible to know what's actually going on. Yale history professor Jeremy Friedman writing about Russia media says: "What Putin has done, along with Kremlin spin doctors … is effectively undermine the possibility of receiving accurate information through undermining the confidence that such information exists."

If this were just a matter for Russians, it would be an issue for Western foreign policy experts. But Russia is now exporting this targeted news confusion through the West with outlets like the rebranded Sputnik and RT, formerly Russia Today. If the goal was simply to sell Russia's point of view, it would be understandable. Instead, the networks present conspiracy theory alongside hard news, exacerbating the sense of suspicion that appears to be in the DNA of globalised online news. Criticising Wall Street is more than fair; suggesting the hidden hand of Western imperialism explains every Russian misfortune, is not.

Now, Peter Pomerantsev, who in The Atlantic has documented the Russian elite's embrace of PR, writes:

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The Kremlin switches messages at will to its advantage, climbing inside everything: European right-wing nationalists are seduced with an anti-EU message; the Far Left is co-opted with tales of fighting US hegemony; US religious conservatives are convinced by the Kremlin's fight against homosexuality. And the result is an array of voices, working away at global audiences from different angles, producing a cumulative echo chamber of Kremlin support, all broadcast on RT.

This is in contrast to the Soviet times when the ideological prism of communism sought to offer an alternative goal for the world. Although flawed from its birth, the Soviet experiment had been founded on a hope for a new kind of social system. Capturing the mood, American writer John Dos Passos asked of the Soviet Union in the 1920s: "Will it be something impossible, new, unthought of, a life…where goods and institutions will be broken to fit men, instead of men being ground down fine and sifted in the service of Things?"

That hope is long gone in Russia. Today the modus operandi of Russia is about whatever those in power can get away with. And the world-weary Russian generation (including Putin himself) who remember the Soviet Union, then the euphoria of its collapse, then the chaos of the Wild East and now the emerging period of darkness, well, they don't believe in believing in political systems. As Pomerantsev writes "To believe in something and stand by it in this world is derided, the ability to be a shape-shifter celebrated."

The grand vision for a Communist ideal, even if it fell short, at least gave Soviet-era propaganda a nominal moral direction. Even if it diverged from the truth, there was a time when the Soviet Kremlin, through its media outlets, "claimed to speak the truth" based on a "sincerely held view of reality" Friedman writes.

Today's Russian propaganda doesn't advocate for a new utopian world. Instead it sows doubt in the minds of Western citizens. RT's motto of 'Question More.' is telling. 

So when Russia unlawfully annexes Crimea? Well, that's really about NATOs arrogance after the historical Cold War, says Russian media. And the Russian backing of rebels in Eastern Ukraine?  That's a referendum on Europe's errors since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin pundits say.

Are we sure? Not really. But the arguments sound legitimate, certainly as legitimate as Western criticism for Moscow.

A quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, freedom of expression over vast swaths of the world was one of the indisputable gains of the Cold War. This was supposed to be normal. Now, the freedom of the media in the West is being used to undermine the value of truth in public life.

So what can Western governments do?

Ironically, the best inoculation against this kind of targeted misinformation and confected cynicism is for Western leaders of any stripe to recognize that the post-Cold War power vacuum has ended. The performance of Western democracies is subject to wide criticism and scrutiny, as the recent US Senate report on CIA torture shows. The Western system must be seen to be – and in fact must be -- more equitable and open than those of the authoritarian states. That's the best antidote to the marinade of cynicism and confusion RT and Sputnik seeks to baste the West in.

The only other option is for Western governments to, as some suggest, place restrictions on Russian propaganda media networks. But that would be futile in an age of viral social media. It would also fly in the face of the values of openness the West is supposed to represent. A hardline approach would really only raise more doubts about the motives of Western governments – and that, in a nutshell, is what Russia's news confusion and retooled propaganda is all about.