Lies on blood – “birthmarks” of Western civilization

MOSCOW, April 14, 2022, RUSSTRAT Institute.
The vile bloody staging in Bucha, the terrorist shelling of Kramatorsk pinned on Russia, and the thoroughly false anti-Russian bacchanal in the Western media and social networks. Today, Russia is once again being portrayed as a universal evil. And in this crazy choir, the leaders of leading Western European countries, and above all England and Germany, are soloists. A powerful polyphony is provided by the entire system of so-called “free” Western mass media, which are now openly working to fulfil this “state order”.

It may seem to some that humanity has never seen such rampant lies, slander, malicious insinuations and disgusting dramatizations. But in fact, what is happening now is nothing new. All of this has already happened and more than once in the past of humanity, or rather what can be conditionally called “modern Western civilization”. Its entire history is also an inglorious chronicle of bloody military campaigns, predatory wars, which were always accompanied by a sharp aggravation of what used to be called propaganda or “psychological warfare”.

Once again, following the lead of Western “theorists”, we have now shyly replaced these terms with the sweet-sounding and deceptive phrases “soft power” and “information” war. Forget about “soft power” – even its author, Harvard professor Joseph Nye, abandoned this term. And the avalanche of lies and slander can not be called “information” – it is not even close.

What is happening today is actually a blatant and aggressive propaganda war, and in the Western sense of propaganda, the content of which is best clearly defined by Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Propaganda, dissemination of information— facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies —to influence public opinion.” Facts in the current anti-Russian campaign have not been seen for a long time, but there are plenty of rumours, half-truths and lies.

But let’s go back to history and try to run through Europe at a gallop, so to speak.

The foundations of modern propaganda were laid by the cruel rulers of Ancient Rome, and even the same Ancient Greece, to which, however, thanks to the myths that have come down to us, we treat with a certain popular sympathy. It is from them that the practice of organizing provocations, powerful brainwashing of public opinion by spreading false rumours, intimidating the enemy with atrocities, exaggerating their own military achievements and losses of the enemy has come in our time.

With each passing century, this practice only improved more and more. This was clearly shown by the period of the so-called “Crusades”. To encourage the people to participate in them, all the same techniques were used – promises, deception, outright lies and intimidation. It was during this period that propaganda tools typical of the modern world were also developed, namely, spreading rumours about the “atrocities” of the enemy – and then it was the “Saracens” – inciting discord between the states of the East.

By the way, it is to the Vatican that we owe the appearance of the term “propaganda” itself, since in 1622, by decree of Pope Gregory XV, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide was created. In fact, for the first time, a center was created that carried out a systematic propaganda campaign on a global scale.

The 19th century made a significant contribution to the development of propaganda. Napoleon, perhaps the first of the rulers, made it an integral part of state policy. He once even said, “Two hostile newspapers are more dangerous than 100,000 troops.”

And the victorious march of the Russian army across Europe after the defeat of the Napoleonic wars was accompanied by a sharp surge of malicious anti-Russian hysteria, quite similar to what is happening today in the European media. Russians are barbarians who came to Europe to rob, rape and kill civilians – that was, in short, its essence. Doesn’t that sound painfully familiar?

Tellingly, after the crushing defeat of Napoleon’s troops and the liberation of Europe by our troops, Russia’s enemies launched an even broader anti-Russian campaign. Exactly the same thing happened a hundred years after the end of World War II, when the USSR played a decisive role in the victory over fascism.

In this connection, I cannot fail to quote Fyodor Tyutchev, whom we know well as a poet, but we rarely remember that he was a diplomat by profession, but in spirit the first and very effective Russian propagandist who single-handedly did a gigantic job of refuting slander against Russia. In one of his works, he wrote: “The power that the generation of 1813 greeted with noble enthusiasm has been transformed, with the help of a refrain that is constantly repeated to the present generation, … into a monster for most people of our time.” As a result, he complained, Russia is viewed as “some kind of 19th-century cannibal.”

Let’s move on to the 20th century, which is closer to us. It, or rather the First World War, allowed us to finally formulate the basic principles of propaganda in wartime. The pioneers of a systematic approach to military propaganda were the British. They had been well trained during the Boer War at the end of the previous century, in which many countries were sympathetic to the Boers, the first European settlers in Africa. The British press then wrote hundreds of stories about their atrocities. And the “attack” on the Red Cross tents with the wounded was even filmed. It was later revealed that it was staged with the participation of actor at Hampstead Heath.

At the same time, a concept was born that was later called “horror propaganda”.

This “horror propaganda” flourished most profusely during the First World War. In Great Britain, the ideological leader of this kind of propaganda was one of the founders of the English press, the “noble” Lord Northcliffe. He combined the various independent propaganda organs that had existed up to that time and turned them into one of the most important instruments of war.

“I have a lot of direct proof of the success of your invaluable work, which contributed a lot to the defeat of the enemy.”

One of the most successful campaigns of English propagandists was the so-called “Liege Tragedy”. “Eyewitnesses” told the press about the alleged atrocities of the Germans, how the palms of children were cut off, how German officers and soldiers raped 20 Belgian girls in the market square of Liege, how German soldiers bayoneted a two-year-old child and cut off the breasts of a peasant girl, how they tortured Catholic priests by hanging them from bells how the nuns were bullied.

A committee of lawyers and historians headed by Lord Bruce, the former British ambassador to the United States, even compiled a report stating that “murder, lust, and plunder reigned in many parts of Belgium on a scale not comparable to any other wars between civilised nations during the last three centuries.”

At the same time, an abomination was thrown into the press that the Germans allegedly processed the corpses of soldiers, their own and others’ into stearin and pig feed. Only after the end of the war did the truth come to the surface – the special commission did not confirm a single case of brutality cited in the report.

The Germans, in turn, also did not disdain what is now called “fakes”. The “horror propaganda” of the Russian invasion of East Prussia in the German press continued until the very end of the war. The themes are exactly the same – Russian soldiers rape German women, kill children, and rob the population.

Stories of atrocities made it possible to present the war against such an enemy as righteous, as defending the “values ​​of civilization” in the face of barbarism. Isn’t it the same thing we see now, if you read the Western and Ukrainian media and social networks?

But the “horror propaganda” flourished most profusely with the emergence of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party. In his well-known book “Mein Kampf”, the Fuhrer is very frank: “Propaganda does not have to be objective. It should not search for the truth and then present it correctly and adequately to the masses, if this truth works for the interests of others. Instead, it must continually serve only its own interests.”

“In fact, propaganda is a means and therefore should be considered only from the point of view of the ‘goal’,” he adds. All the same well-known “the end justifies the means.”

Having come to power after their own organized provocation with arson of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, Hitler immediately establishes the Ministry of Propaganda, headed by “doctor” Joseph Goebbels. The result of his activities was the creation of a state propaganda apparatus, unprecedented in scale, which covered both civilian and military structures.

Its main task was to provide an ideological basis for the extermination of Jews, communists and all other “second-class people” in the name of the “great German people”, and to this end prepare public opinion for the need to wage war. “Russians are not a nation in the conventional sense of the word, but a rabble that shows pronounced animal traits,” Goebbels said, for example.

And the fascists succeeded in this “Nazification” of Germany perfectly, as, by the way – I cannot throw over a historical bridge – it was successfully done in today’s Ukraine.

To promote these ideas, the Wehrmacht even created “propaganda companies”, which in 1943 were allocated to a special branch of the armed forces. Their total number at that time was about 15,000 people.

Again, looking at the present day, we see that similar units are also present in the Ukrainian army. And it was one of them, judging by the information received in the media, that organized the production with the “massacre” in Bucha.

Just a few years ago, the Russian State Military Archive (RSMA) found copies of the Minutes of secret meetings of Goebbels that were mentioned at the Nuremberg trials and were considered lost. It was at precisely these meetings that the strategy of propaganda war against the USSR and its allies was developed. At one of them in October 1941, Goebbels, for example, forbade calling Soviet fighters soldiers, so that no one could compare these “animals and monsters” with the soldiers of the Reich.

The failure of the blitzkrieg and the offensive on Moscow, international admiration for the resilience of besieged Leningrad, and then the defeat of the fascist army at Stalingrad – all these events not provided for by the “concept of superiority” caused serious “discomfort” in Berlin and required adjustment of the activities of the Nazi propaganda machine.

At one of the briefings, Goebbels stated: “What confronts us here in the Russian mass soul is nothing more than the primitive animal essence of Slavism. There are sentient beings who are too capable of resisting, because they are just as inferior. A street mutt is also hardier than a thoroughbred Shepherd. But that doesn’t make the street mutt any more complete. A rat is also more resilient than a pet …” He called for separating “the bravery and heroism of a German soldier from the primitive animal endurance of a Bolshevik.” Here is such a disgusting in fact, but frank quote.

The more Germany suffered losses on the Eastern Front, the more Goebbels tried to create an alternative picture of the world for internal and external audiences. Isn’t that what Ukrainian and Western propaganda is doing now, telling about the “incredible success” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in battles with the “Russian invaders”?

For almost three months, the defeat of Paulus’ army was kept secret from the Germans. Only on February 4, 1942, did German newspapers publish editorials in which they tried to present the defeat as a victory. “The Fuhrer honors the heroes of Stalingrad. Paulus was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal General.” Again, an association with the smaller-scale recent events on Snake Island – whose unfortunate defenders surrendered to the Russian troops in full force, and Kiev “declared them dead” and elevated them to the rank of heroes – involuntarily pops up.

As the Red Army advanced, Nazi propaganda began to install in the burghers that the only way to stop the “barbaric hordes of Russian communists” was to give the last of their strength and resources to the front and join the Volkssturm people’s militia. The press endlessly spread what is now called fakes about the atrocities of Soviet soldiers, how they rape everything that moves, rob houses, kill women and the elderly, do not spare even children. Is it not according to this instruction that Kiev began to distribute weapons to all comers and create so-called “territorial battalions”?

It’s possible to talk endlessly about the Nazi propaganda machine, but I think it is already clear that the current Ukrainian and European propaganda campaign is made according to the same French curves and patterns.

It is hardly necessary to repeat how many times these Nazi propaganda techniques have been used by the West in recent decades. The test tube of white powder that the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell demonstrated at the UN Security Council to justify aggression against Iraq is somehow even inconvenient to remind in a decent society, as well as the endless productions of the notorious “White Helmets” in the Middle East.

Let me just once again quote one of the few real-minded people in the United States, retired US Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor: “There’s this enormous explosion, which is almost volcanic, of hate and criticism and stories supporting all of this against the Russians that bursts on the scene, almost immediately. All at roughly the same time. And all of the retired general officers came on and, with no exceptions, saw virtually all the same thing. And when that happens, I step back and I’m extremely suspicious and very sceptical, because I’ve seen this before. I saw it in the run-up to the Iraq war back in 2002-2003, I saw it in the Balkans with regards to what happened in Bosnia and subsequently in Kosovo.”

It is hardly surprising that the West and the Kiev regime under its leadership are using the patterns and techniques of the past to denigrate Russia and its special military operation. Nothing is new under the moon, and, as history shows, such abhorrent methods are firmly embedded in the genome of Western European politicians, especially when you consider that the grandfathers of a number of leading West German politicians held high positions in the Third Reich.

History teaches us that powerful “black propaganda” does not mean victory in the war. Hitler committed suicide, and Goebbels poisoned his six children on May 1, 1945, and then he and his wife committed suicide and their bodies were burned. The Nuremberg war crimes trial put an end to this terrible period. I am sure that the same trial will inevitably await the current Ukrainian Nazis, the leaders of the Kiev junta, as well as their Western patrons, the whole gang of war criminals – the Bidens, Johnsons, Scholzs and other Macrons. Your place, gentlemen, is next to a prison chamber pot.