Why is the mind falling asleep?

Media analyst Igor Yakovenko-On the anatomy of Russian propaganda

Part One: TV

Why is propaganda is stronger than common sense, friendship, kinship, stronger than life experience and accumulated knowledge? What evil magic managed to turn four fifth Russians, people who lived with the thought of “if only there was no war” in supporters of aggressive military operations against a neighboring state for almost 70 years? As a normal person who studied at school, at a university can believe that in a neighboring country, where almost everyone speaks the same language with him, tens of millions of people suddenly became fascists, and they kill for Russian? What methods of influence on consciousness does the Russian propaganda machine use, what are their specifics and why they act almost without fail - tried to figure out The New Times

According to the Levada Center, 94 % of Russians learn news on TV, and 70 % of our fellow citizens trust the interpretation of Russian television composers. “Big Television Troika” is a shock force, having almost one hundred percent coverage of the audience (Channel One is 99.8 %, “Russia - 1” - 99.5 %, NTV - 95.5 %). However, it would be a mistake to believe that such coverage and monopoly position in the information space themselves give television propagandists the effectiveness that we observe today. In the second half of the 80s, Soviet television had no less coverage, and the volume of propaganda in the general content was no less, but rather more, which did not save the CPSU from defeat in a battle on the field of public consciousness. Why is Putin's propaganda surpassing not only the efficiency of propaganda of the late Soviet period, but, in some parameters, can be given a headgrass promotion from Hitler and Stalin?

The first person of the Russian televisionopaganda is Dmitry Kiselev

"Zhdanov Law"

In the late 40s of the last century, the American sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld discovered the principle of a two-stage communication model. Its essence is that the influence of the message is increasing as a result of discussion with those who are recognized in society as “opinion leaders”. That is, at first, at the first stage of communication, information is transmitted, then, at the second stage, - the “opinion leaders” express their position. The difference between the Russian two-stage model and the western one is that in the West, “opinion leaders” become as a result of achievements in public or professional activities, according to the results of competition for the minds and hearts of citizens, and in Russia, TV presenters and analytical programs are appointed “leaders of opinions”. Of course, the moment of the “mediatization” of philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, writers are in the West, but there a person still must represent something of himself and be recognized in his professional environment. In Russia, this is precisely the purpose.

What are political scientists Sergey Markov or Alexei Mukhin? What contribution did they make to public thought so that their opinion became important for tens of millions of Russians? In the professional community, their weight is equal to “zero”, and the presence in the federal broadcast strives for infinity. Alexander Dugin was appointed the main television philosopher of the country, and Alexander Prokhanov was appointed the chief writer. Vyacheslav Nikonov and Veronika Krasheninnikova are appointed main experts in the field of international politics. The constant presence in the prime time of the clips of two dozen of the same experts turns them if not into the “rulers of the thoughts”, then into “leaders of opinions”, to whose words they listen to.

Since the capitalization of these people is almost one hundred percent dependent on their presence on the air, and this presence depends on the will of the TV presenter, there are power relations between the TV presenter and experts who play the roles allotted on the air. Moreover, the degree of freedom of expert expert expert is in a reverse proportion with its real weight outside the studio. That is, the more capitalization, the public and professional weight of the expert, the less he depends on the host, and the more difficult it is to manage them.

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When Solovyov, Kiselev, their guests and experts shout out the words “fascism”, “genocide”, “Russian world”, this is nothing more than combat Clichs

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Therefore, public “heavyweights” are not the air, which are difficult or impossible to manipulate. It is difficult to imagine in the studio of Solovyov (“Russia-1”), for example, Sergey Yursky or Lyudmila Ulitskaya, or any of the large Russian social scholars, such as, for example, linguist Vyacheslav Ivanov or ethnologist Sergei Arutyunov. There is no move to the federal broadcast to these experts in the Russian economy, such as Natalya Zubarevich and highly professional political scientists, such as Lilia Shevtsova and Georgy Satarov.

At the end of the last century, the French sociologist Giselle Sapiro, having analyzed the French literary field of the times of the Hitler occupation, revealed the pattern: the more weight the writers had in their environment, the more they were recognized by the brothers in Peru, and not the general public, the more they were prone to resistance. And vice versa: the more the writer strove for commercial success, the easier it was to persuade him to cooperate with the Nazis. The scientific adviser Sapiro, sociologist Pierre Burdier called this dependence “Zhdanov’s law”, by the name of the Stalinist executioner of literature and philosophy, who knew well how easy it is to manage mediocrity and how difficult it is to bend the master.

By virtue of the action of the “Zhdanov Law”, the presenters love to invite experts with zero public and professional weight, and such experts seek to compensate for the deficiency of public weight with hypertrophied aggression and extravagance, try to use every appearance on the air to attract attention. Some Baghdasarov or Korotchenko, whom professional military are unlikely to recognize as military experts, are striving to gain specific media capital, urging them to destroy two-thirds of Ukrainian troops, organize a trip to Kyiv, etc. And here the feedback mechanism is turned on: such performances on the air form a kind of fan clubs, super -sulgressive “sofa” troops that are waiting for the escalation of aggression on the air and not only on the air. Even discontent is formed by Putin's “soft and indecisive” policy.

Three whales of Russian propaganda

The Russian TV-propaganda forms a single space, inside of which there is a clear division of labor between news and “analytical” talk shows. The news is responsible for creating the desired emotional resonance, the introduction of an audience into a state of psychological shock. You can see any news program of any federal channel - one scheme: first there is a “block of horror”, consisting of a demonstration of people's suffering. Large plans for crying children and elderly women, a demonstration of corpses and destroyed houses cause any normal person a strong sense of compassion, involvement in the process on the victim side. It doesn’t matter that part of this video - fakes shot in another region (for example, in Syria) at another time, and part are not news stories, since for months they are wandered from the channel to the channel, from the program to the program. The goal was achieved, the viewer received a psychological shock and introduced into a state of emotional trance. Now he is ready for the uncritical perception of content, which “analysts” and “experts” of final programs and political talk shows will give him.

The function of “analytical” programs is the conversion of the emotional state into which the viewer was introduced, the introduction of a black and white propaganda myth into his head. The peculiarity of the Russian televisionopaganda is that it acts in monopolism, so Dmitry Kiselev and Vladimir Solovyov does not have the task that the propagandists of countries with a pluralistic media model-Russian TV presenters should not take care of reliability, or, at least, the credibility of facts and opinions, about their protection from criticism. Therefore, for example, Sergey Markov may fearlessly argue on the federal air that the US Congress allocated $ 10 billion of the Russian opposition to overthrow power in Russia. There are no stands to refute this nonsense on Russian television.

A decisive role in the formation of a propaganda myth is played by the language of television propaganda, the “New Yoois” that has been formed for the last 10-12 years and has acquired finished outlines in recent months. The same Sergey Markov writes with rare frankness about how the new political dictionary should look like in the “Izvestia” in the column called “On the Fronts of the Information War” of 08/12/2014. He insists on the standardization of the terms that indicate participants in the events in Ukraine. Those who are fighting against the Ukrainian authorities must be called “anti -fascists”, or “anti -fascist rebels”. Poroshenko, Markov believes, cannot be called the president, at best - the “leader of the Kyiv regime”, the government of Ukraine is only “junta”, and the Ukrainian troops are “punches of the junta”.

If Vladimir Soloviev reports that Poroshenko is under the control of the United States, Solovyov should not refute Solovyev

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The cult of illogicality

After the annexation of Crimea, the general place was the comparison of the Putin regime with the Reich of the 1938 model, when the Anschlus was already, and the second world has not yet begun. All totalitarian and personalist regimes are held on violence and lies. But usually the foundation is violence, and lies cover it. The peculiarity of the Putin regime is that the violence in it is relatively few, the foundation is a lie, and the violence covers it, supports it. The regime, the foundation of which is propaganda, is a unique feature of Putinism.

The second and main feature of Putinism is the lack of intelligible ideology. All totalitarian regimes of the XX century: fascism of Mussolini, Hitler Nazism, Stalinist communism, Islamism of Khomeini - all of them were built on the foundation of powerful ideologies. And the propaganda myths of these regimes were built in accordance with certain ideological patterns. Putin's regime rests on an ideological void. He forms a very specific space, into which the non-stopmoles Prokhanov and the Jurgens, the Eurasian, a fan of Italian fascism Dugin and the Orthodox Communist Zyuganov, the National Bolshevik Limonov and the "marketer" Dvorkovich, are drawn. Under the umbrella of Putin's emptyness, there is enough space for everyone.

The lack of ideology is not a weakness of Putin's propaganda, but by its power, the key to invulnerability. People who are accustomed to opposing some concepts are lost, faced with aggression of emptiness, with an illogicality, erected into a cult. For six months, all television channels created the cult of Yarosh and the “Right Sector”, in the frequency of references in the Russian press “Right Sector” went on a par with “United Russia”. The entire professional part of the propaganda television myth was held on the omnipotence of these forces of evil. After Yarosh scored 0.67 %in the presidential election, a replacement was almost instantly: the “Forces of hell” is now headed by the Ukrainian oligarch and the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Igor Kolomoisky. It is he who now personifies the fascist regime in Ukraine. No one is embarrassed by the fact that the main Ukrainian “fascist” Kolomoisky is the president of the European Jewish congress. Especially for conducting the “anti -Kolomian” campaign, Soloviev actually settles in his transfer of the Israeli publicist Avigdor Eskin, makes him his permanent expert.

Cligs and combat Clichs

Along with modern techniques, Russian television propaganda uses one hundred percent used the good old classics. The history of the Bloody Night has about two millennia, goes back to the times of antiquity, but today it is used by the first channel of Russian television. By the way, about a three -year -old boy in panties crucified on an advertising shield in Slavyansk by the Ukrainian military, and his mother, killed by drawing behind the tank, Konstantin Ernst was never explained with the audience. And the Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Communications, Alexei Volin, responded about this plot shown in the program “Time”, is very approving, despite the fact that his deceit was repeatedly proven. So, this is not an excess of the contractor, but the most, which is the mainstream of information policy.

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The lack of ideology is not a weakness of Putin's propaganda, but by its power, the key to invulnerability

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Those sounds and actions that the leading and guests of Russian information and analytical programs produce, in principle, are not subject to verification for truth, and indeed are not subject to any analysis, since they cannot be correlated with any subject area. When Solovyov, Kiselev, their guests and experts shout the words “fascism”, “genocide”, “Russian world” and so on, this is nothing more than the combat cryes necessary for bringing oneself and the audience in a state of altered consciousness, known as “fighting trance”. Funds to achieve this condition are well known: choral singing, combat dance, drill march, combat coloring, drum fraction. When Solovyov says that the “Russian dream” was formulated in a naked sermon, and Prokhanov picked up that right now the Nagorno -Russian sermon is realized in Novorossia, it makes no sense to compare the text of the Nagorno -based preaching with the actions of Abwehr, the shooter, demon and other evil spirits, which today runs its ball in the part of Ukraine, called in the Russian air of Novorossiya.

It never occurred to anyone to check the truth of the Russian “Hurray!”, Japanese “Banzai!”, Islamic “Allah Akbar!”, The fighting cry of the ancient Romans “God is with us!” Or the call of the crusaders "finally in paradise!". No subject area can correspond to these sounds. Just as what is said by Russian propagandists. When Vladimir Solovyov, for example, reports in the Sunday evening: “Poroshenko himself honestly stated that he is under the direct management of the United States”, there is no need to try to refute Solovyov, or, conversely, look for confirmation in the real statements of the Ukrainian president. Soloviev does not report a fact, but expresses a state of hostility towards Poroshenko. The same applies to the dreamy forecasts of the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Igor Markov, who hopes that “the next day of the victory will meet in Kyiv”, or the assumptions of the Secretary of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation Alexander Brenchalov that “tomorrow Ukraine can wake up by the 52nd state of the United States”. It makes no sense to ask Brenchalov which country to Ukraine will “wake up” the 51st state of the United States.

The effectiveness of all these sounds and actions on the air is measured not by the measure of their truth or falsity, but to the degree of immunity to someone else's and its own pain that Russian society gradually acquires. It, this society, is no longer only ready to support the war with Ukraine, but calmly and joyfully welcomes the sanctions and rusty lummy of the lowered iron curtain. About what pain points in Russian society was able to press propaganda in order to achieve such effectiveness - in the following publications.

Photo: Andrey Epikhin/ITAR-TASS