Time of propaganda and information war

We live in a time of propaganda and an information war between Western and American mass media against Russia. Online and print media copy each other, distributing information about “enemy Russia and aggressor Putin”. But who can we actually believe?

Latest example is The Economist. This British magazine puts a lot of effort in posting and reposting the following post:

Putin is portrayed as an octopus with tentacles and ink black liquid around him. The post being targeted by The economist to the particular audience they are willing to influence. The description is screaming:” For the West to protect itself against Russia and other attackers…”

“Protect itself”, “Against Russia”, “Attacker”. This is the image mass media creates around Russia today.

But unfortunately for The Economist reactions in comments are negative. People think that the information of The Economist isn’t based on any facts and looks like straightforward propaganda:

In 2016 Russia was accused of cyber attacks and intervention in US elections which lead to Donald Trump becoming president.

Putin has a different opinion on it:

The Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald said that the news from the US Department of Homeland Security (“Big Brother” who spies on the Americans) that Russia intervened in the elections in 21 US states turned out to be fake. It was in vain, because the mainstream media around the world just loved this story. State governments called on propagandists from the Ministry to refute false statements:

The relations between Russia and US are more unstable and closer to World War 3 compared to some years ago. We just hope that this information war that is already going on between these two giants won’t turn into actual warfare.

Some representatives of the Dutch political elite also were willing to be involved in this mass media war. The latest example of fake news and disinformation in the Netherlands is a story of Halbe Zijlstra.

The latest scandal with Halbe Zijlstra, dutch politician of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy was lying to a face of all Dutch citizens and to the rest of the world for 12 years on end. The VVD player said he had been at a meeting at Putin’s dacha where he was sharing his plans about Greater Russia. Afterwards Zijlstra admitted that he has never been there and just heard it from his source, a former Royal Dutch Shell Plc CEO Jeroen van der Veer. He eventually told that Zijlstra had misinterpreted the information. The politician paid with his position for such propaganda.

Nowadays, there are hardly any independent mass media left which reflect the unbiased situation. Every channel tries to compete with each other, faking real facts, bullshiting and influencing minds of millions. Our question is: do they write and broadcast this because the audience wants to hear it, or do they spread this message because they want to actually influence the public opinion? In short, are people in the west hungry for scaring news and do they need to see this enemy created so they feel better, or are there other things at stake?  More and more people prefer to follow rather new news sources which are more open and independent, like https://www.geenstijl.nl/.

This is the real sign of the times, the war between the powers that be and their “common people”. The disharmony or misinterpretation of what normal people want to hear is leading to ever decreasing view numbers and readers. The common people may not have the actual power, but they do have power over their own minds and intuition. Last year we wrote an article about the danger of bullshit in our world. How simple it is to manage minds and actions of people supporting them with wrong information. Nobody knows, what is truth what are lies and who to believe.

Information transferred through the different social media channels has the same dangerous potential as a real weapon of mass destruction. One big social media “shot” can cause a war as easy as a real shot. Within a minute an honest picture, that might not be understood by other cultures, can be changed into a false reality that is closer to the reality the media like to send to their audiences. The fact checking is then no longer important, because the picture is a super clickbait, to earn money with, and people are put in their corner.

What can we do to work with this reality, where fakenews becomes the warmly welcomed reality and nobody seems to care about actual fact checking. Stay independent and do not blindly follow your leaders. In both Russia, the USA and the EU.