Victor Shenderovich: A lie repeated over and over again begins to be seen as a truth

Agents of influence and troll factories have proved effective in the West because deception is, in principle, very effective. It’s one of the few things that Russia is good at: hybrid warfare, disinformation, propaganda. We might have no roads, social welfare like in Africa, hospitals without medication, but everything related to troll factories and things like that is in an excellent state. Modern Russian propaganda is doing especially well – it’s much better and stronger than its Soviet predecessor.

Lying can be dealt with; it can be stopped from having a damaging impact. In Russia, there’s nobody to do this, and the West is very careless. It hasn’t realized yet that the real war is going on. It continues to pretend that it’s somehow dealing with a partner. People who must make decisions regarding this in the European politics are rotten from corruption in a large number of countries. There must be less of that in England, but I have no doubt that there were attempts to bribe someone.

European officials are continuously trying to negotiate, appease and reach an agreement. That’s precisely why the World Cup took place in Russia, although it shouldn’t have been. If everybody came to their senses, it would have been in any place in Europe, but not there.

This World cup was needed for the very purpose of strengthening Vladimir Putin’s position. Like every other Olympic Game, Eurovision, festival, it’s powerful publicity for him. Not a single win of English or French football team would boost the ratings of Theresa May or Emmanuel Macron even by one percentage point, allow to usurp the power or quietly pass anti-popular laws because there is feedback.

In our case, it was like people breathed the strong laughing gas. Present-day Russia had no interest in anything except the World Cup and the fate of the Russian team. This situation made way for the decisions to increase value-added tax and pension age. The last time it was on the wave of euphoria from the Olympic Game victories that the war with Ukraine was launched. It’s absolutely obvious and very dangerous because it makes Putin’s grip on power, his ratings and confidence stronger and, as the result, embolden him. The stronger the support he draws, the more opportunities he gets.

We know how this ends. A lie repeated over and over again begins to be seen as a truth. It was formulated by Goebbels that a lie should be repeated many times, loudly and shamelessly. Now we see that it has penetrated everywhere. It begins to be perceived as a truth and then morphs into an expression «as is known» because of millions of posts and reposts, thousands of agents of influence. If something is told a thousand times, and you read the same thing over and over written by the dozens of media, but with the reference to different sources, after a while, let’s say, in 2-3 months, this thing will become «as is known». And then this «as is known» turns into crucified boys and other horrible crimes committed by ukrofascists in Ukraine. In order to fight this, one has to have a clear understanding of the level of this threat.