Mirror Universes: The US/NATO proxy war, or Mad Putins Genocide?
Propaganda in a war where the stakes are the entire Western hegemony and world view on one side, and Russian national security on the other
We now live with a level of propaganda that is not merely detached from reality, it is a Mirror Universe. Good is bad, danger is safety, Kirk is Evil Kirk, it’s madness.
I used to think the Star Trek Mirror Universe was a contrived narrative but by god was I naive.
If you were to try and draw a Venn diagram of the opposing positions in this war, the second circle would complain and refuse to be drawn on the same piece of paper as the first circle, and the person drawing would be labelled a fascist, Putin Puppet
The propaganda washing over us is dangerous because it acts as a barrier to peace. As long as we allow it to continue we are consigning the people of Ukraine to permanent war or their own destruction. This might be in the interests of certain people but it is not mine.
Additionally, the situation has now become more dangerous than any since the Cuban missile crisis, where one nuclear superpower is doing its level best to back another nuclear superpower into a corner, to the point where it feels the stakes are existential.
This simply cannot be allowed. There is no possible outcome of the war in Ukraine worse than nuclear armageddon.
I have no influence over Putin. I didn’t vote for him, and nothing I write will be read in Russia. Myself and those reading this live under a Western propaganda bubble which has nearly complete narrative domination.
In order to assist the cause of peace, it is our duty as members of the west to dismantle our own propaganda, for our own sakes and that of the world.
For my part, I hope here to list a small number of the key tools with which we are propagandised, to help you identify the methods employed to shape our perceptions of the war and the current reality. In this way, you’ll be able to better identify and resist them.
#1 We are the good guys
The first item I am listing is not actually propaganda, but it is exploited by propaganda. As humans we have empathy for the suffering of others. We tend to want to support people against injustice. This is a good thing and shows you are a well balanced person that cares for others.
It is natural to want to classify the parties into the good and bad side. Those on the side of justice and the aggressors on the other side. It’s a useful heuristic, but it is easily exploited.
Identifying with one group as the good guys, or victims, tends to make us more sympathetic to them. This means for example we trust information coming from the Ukrainians implicitly while treating Russian statements with more scepticism.
We need to put this aside. Sometimes, like now, there are no good guys. There is nothing which says one side has to be right and one has to be wrong. Your starting point should be that there are no good sides. The victims are the civilians caught between Ukraine, the USA/NATO and Russia. Those are the people we should put first.
Once we start to believe in Just Causes we become crusaders, and we have to necessarily start dehumanising the other side in order to maintain the purity of our crusade.
As an example, this week it was reported Ukrainian musician Yuri Kerpatenko was killed, with reports abounding asserting Russian responsibility, like The Guardians headline:
Russian troops kill Ukrainian musician for refusing role in Kherson concert
And then, in the first line (bold for emphasis)
Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv.
Is there any evidence of Russian culpability beyond the Ukrainian culture ministry saying so? None of the reports offer any other than repeating the claim. It’s a pretty wild story, but it is reported with absolute conviction. Just because the Ukrainians say it, and the Ukrainians are The Good Guys, it must be true.
This is incredibly dangerous because continual stories like this reinforce a crusader mentality. Russians are evil and committing all the terrible acts, Ukrainians are total innocents. Our cause is pure.
This story should be considered with extreme scepticism. The Ukrainians have a strong incentive to blame everything on the Russians because it helps their cause in fundraising and gaining legitimacy among western populations for more weapons. Likewise, any counter reports by the Russians should be considered with equal doubt, as they too have an interest in redirecting culpability.
War is horrible. All parties have strong motivations to lie, to engage in information wars to improve support for their positions.
We cannot trust the media, who are also parties to the propaganda. The Guardian article above shows how the framing they choose is political. They are not merely reporting objectively, they are taking sides and choosing to amplify the propaganda of one side while purporting to be a neutral party.
The reality is we cannot trust anybody in this conflict. It is incredibly hard to separate ourselves emotionally when the propaganda is so strong and it makes such an effective weapon of our empathy, but we need to recognise that the Ukrainians, the USA, the USA owned media, the Russians all have conflicts of interest. They are not indepedendent.
As difficult as it is to accept, we must recognise that it is also possible our own governments are complicit in crimes that either led to this war or are helping to continue it through their actions and their propaganda. We must treat the actions of our own governments with the highest scepticism in order to be able to hold them accountable.
Since we live in democracies, we are ultimately responsible for the actions of our governments. In so far as our governments are contributing to this war, we are also responsible for those actions.
This is the most important point. We cannot control the actions of Putin. Calling him out is cheap and does nothing but make us feel good. We do however have power over our own governments and so our first responsibility must always be to take care of our own house before judging others.
#2 Putin is a madman
This is one of the most pernicious pieces of propaganda, in particular coming out of the mouths of U.S. officials and media talking heads. It is a particularly powerful tool that has several effects.
Firstly, it dismisses any discussion of what led to the war. All conflicts have causes, to suggest Putin is just a madman and is acting without reason prevents any serious analysis. How can we work toward peace if we cannot address how we got here?
Secondly, it robs the other side of agency and eliminates the possibility of negotiation. You can’t negotiate with Putin because nothing is important to him, he’s just a madman. You can’t negotiate with crazy people. This is an extremely convenient narrative if you are invested in the continuation of the war.
War can only end with the utter destruction of one party, or negotiated settlement. A framing of the conflict that pretends negotiated settlement is impossible then only leaves the possibility for utter devastation.
You should be asking yourself why the West would be interested in framing Putin as merely crazy. If they had any interest at all in finding a peaceful settlement, this would be the wrong way to do it. So if they don’t want settlement what do they want? Perhaps they want to continue the war as long as possible?
If this is the motivation of western officials in their framing of Putin, then they should be considered as extremely dangerous people, playing a geopolitical game that is putting all of us at risk, most especially the people of Ukraine.
There is a wealth of information available from respected sources prior to 2022 that predicted this conflict and outlined in great detail the various elements leading to it. We don’t need to come up with fantasies about Putin having imperial ambitions or just being a genocidal maniac.
It’s important to understand that you can be against the war, be against Putin, while also recognising there were legitimate issues leading to it and that the West was complicit in creating it. These are not contradictory ideas. We do not need to be zealots.
#3 XYZ is Russian Propaganda
I love this one because it is both the laziest of all propaganda and also the most employed. It’s so flexible you can use it for literally anything.
Here's an example from Foreign Policy that is a beautiful example of the species. The author lists a number of statements by various people - mostly people I consider ghouls - and comes to the conclusion that Russian propaganda is seeping into U.S. discourse.
Well well know, can’t have two sources of propaganda right? We must stamp out this Russian junk and keep ourselves pure with only U.S. propaganda.
Lets take a few examples.
Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, is campaigning on an end to aid for Ukraine and just called for “negotiations” with Putin, who of course continues to insist on Ukraine’s dismemberment.
Negotiation is a Russian Talking Point. That’s a good one. By extension, anyone wanting peace must be a Russian propagandist.
Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives from Texas, tweeted: “Congress just voted to send another $12,300,000,000 to Ukraine! … Why aren’t we putting America’s best interests first?” Allen Waters, a Republican House candidate from Rhode Island, shared, “#AmericaFirst not #Ukraine. Keep Rhode Island safe from nuclear conflict.”
Americans worried about nuclear conflict and their own interests rather than the defence of another country? Definitely Russian Propaganda.
Michael Carpenter: “@USAmbOSCE Carpenter is omitting the context for Putin’s military operation … He’s ignoring Ukraine’s 8 years of war crimes & Russia’s 8 years of restraint. Putin acted late.”
Saying anything at all supportive of Russian positions? Could only come from a Putin Talking Point.
Recently AOC was ambushed at an event by some anti-war protesters, who called her out for her votes supporting weapons to Ukraine and failure to call for peace negotiations to avoid nuclear escalation.
She responded later that these protesters weren’t progressives (as if that matters?) and that they were pushing “pro-Putin talking points”.
Let’s think carefully about what all of these examples are suggesting. In responding to these arguments as “Russian propaganda”, we are:
Denying the agency of the people involved. You can’t have your own opinions. If you are at all opposed to our consensus, you must be compromised by enemy propaganda.
Sidestepping whether the statements are true or not. Did Ukraine commit war crimes for 8 years or not? It doesn’t matter, because the statement supports Russia we must necessarily believe it to be false.
It delegitimises everything said by the other side, making understanding and negotiation impossible.
This is an incredibly dangerous path. We are claiming that anything not completely aligned with the Western consensus is Russian Propaganda, and additionally that it is therefore false because it supports the Russians.
We have at this point fully left the realm of reality and are living in a fantasy world constructed only of our own narratives. We have decided that truth is not merely subjective, it is partisan.
As an individual, the way you should deal with is to ask “but is it true?”. When things are labelled as propaganda, that does not necessarily make them untrue.
We should keep our eyes open, to try and see the world in the way that it is, not in the way we wish it to be. Anyone dismissing facts on the basis of which partisan side they support should be seen with extreme scepticism.
#4 Negotiation is appeasement
One of the most completely outrageous and frankly stupid arguments has been that any negotiation is appeasement. It is closely linked in form to propaganda forms 2 and 3, but it deserves its own section just due to the total ridiculousness of it.
The best example of these is a recent article in Insider whose headline warns, incredulously:
Putin's nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that's 'dangerous.'
The article goes on to argue, against all rationality, that peace in Ukraine increases the threat of nuclear war.
It does this through a process of the most exquisite fantasy. It starts with the common misconception that Putin has threatened nuclear war, which is not actually words he’s ever used. It then pretends that Putin is bargaining on a nuclear threat, and presumes that if there is peace Putin will repeat the process over and over to take over more countries.
This is a remarkable piece of fiction given there is absolutely zero evidence for any of it. It is designed to leave the reader somehow with the impression that negotiated settlement in Ukraine leaves the world at a higher risk of nuclear armageddon than having a proxy war continuing between two nuclear superpowers.
It should not have to be explained to anyone that peace is preferable to war, or that people shooting each other is inherently more dangerous than people sitting down to negotiate.
Further, negotiation is not appeasement. Negotiation is negotiation. It means the parties agreeing to a compromise that is acceptable to all. The only way this can possibly be a bad thing is if you are invested in continuation of the war.
You should be extremely suspicious of anyone trying to paint people advocating peace as appeasers, or Putin Puppets or anything similar. These people are actively pushing for endless war, which is not in the interests of the Ukrainians, or of the Russians, or of the civilians of the Donbas stuck between them.
You’re not crazy, it’s the propaganda that is nuts
Propaganda is extremely powerful when it is uniformly repeated across the media and government. It is designed to utilise social pressure both to provide reinforcement of the narratives and punishment for non-compliance.
The media are able to normalise ideas that would otherwise be considered insane just by presenting them as fully accepted. Being confident, claiming to be experts, they can make you feel as if you’re the crazy one, that you know nothing and have to trust them.
The way around this is to drop the social media, stop spending so much time watching the news. Find people to talk to who challenge the dominant narratives, but have trust in your own judgement.
Most importantly, remember that the other side are people too. Understanding and recognition are the paths to peace. As long as we can hold on to that, the task of propagandists is made all but impossible.