This part deals with Russian Domestic control, you can draw your own parallels to current Republican Dogma.
Putin’s brazen manipulation of language is a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak [Link to the Conversation, UK]
By Mark Satta Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wayne State University
If you’ve been paying attention to how Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about the war in Ukraine, you may have noticed a pattern. Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do.
He labels acts of war “peacekeeping duties.”
He claims to be engaging in “denazification” of Ukraine while seeking to overthrow or even kill Ukraine’s Jewish president, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
He claims that Ukraine is plotting to create nuclear weapons, while the greatest current threat of nuclear war appears to be Putin himself.
Nazism 101: Part 5: Manipulation of Language, doublespeak.
Nazism 101: Part 6: Enforced Control of the News Propaganda. [by the legislature, Duma]
Nazism 101: Part 7: Rewrite History to justify the present.
Nazism 101: Part 8: Use/fund Useful Foreign talking heads to demonstrate “international” support.
Russia and the Gulag: Putin is fighting for state control over how Soviet horrors are remembered [Link to the Conversation, UK]
by Andrea Gullotta Lecturer in Russian, University of Glasgow
The state changes tack
The 2010s have seen a dramatic change. In 2012, the state passed the so-called “law on foreign agents”, a new regime for every Russian NGO receiving funding from abroad and involved in “political activity”. They were forced into a register of “foreign agents”, subjected to special regulations, and heavily fined if found to be in breach. Most NGOs involved in preserving the memory of the Gulag were heavily affected, including Memorial and also the Sakharov Centre, also based in Moscow.
Several media outlets ran a smear campaign against these “foreign agents”, which resulted in attacks and threats against NGOs, researchers and activists. Memorial has subsequently been fined under the law more than 20 times. At the same time, monuments of Stalin have appeared in every corner of Russia, while the Perm-36 management was dismissed by by the authorities in 2014, and the museum was revamped to be less critical of the communist leader.
Useful idiots
Too many Republicans who know better are serving as mouthpieces for the Kremlin.
On the other hand, Pompeo has a great deal of respect for the man who has ordered the invasion. Those are his words, not mine: “I have enormous respect for him.” Even though Pompeo says he saw the attack coming, he’s spent the lead-up lavishing praise on Vladimir Putin. In an interview last week, he called the Russian president “very savvy” and “very shrewd,” adding, “I consider him an elegantly sophisticated counterpart and one who is not reckless but has always done the math.” In January, he said, “He is a very talented statesman. He has lots of gifts … He knows how to use power. We should respect that.”
Why is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war? Church-state history gives a clue [Link to the Conversation, UK]
By Scott Kenworthy Professor of Comparative Religion, Miami University
In 2012, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk group, staged a protest in a Moscow cathedral to criticize Kirill’s support for Putin – yet the episode actually pushed church and state closer together. Putin portrayed Pussy Riot and the opposition as aligned with decadent Western values, and himself as the defender of Russian morality, including Orthodoxy. A 2013 law banning dissemination of gay “propaganda” to minors, which was supported by the church, was part of this campaign to marginalize dissent.
The Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment: Joseph Goebbels [Link to SMU Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences]
Hitler's Basic Principles
These principles are abstracted from Jowett & O'Donnell.
- Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions.
- Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.
- Give only one side of the argument.
- Continuously criticize your opponents.
- Pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification.
- Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
- They must evoke responses which the audience previously possesses.
- They must be capable of being easily learned.
- They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations.
- They must be boomerang-proof.
This is worth a read, if you have not already
George Orwell's 1940 Review of Mein Kampf [Link to Bookmarks Reviews]
“It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.
* Bolding, mine.
Nazism/Stalinism/Totalitarianism/Modern Conservative Republicanism, call it what you will, it amounts to the same sack of manure.
[Part 3 will be the final part]