Leading members of the US Congress are pushing for the nation to revive its propaganda machine, largely dormant in eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War, to counter the rapidly multiplying Russian media barrage from TV channels, news Web sites, Internet trolls and think tanks pushing the Kremlin line.
“Russia has deployed an information army inside television, radio and newspapers throughout Europe,” US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce told a hearing on Kremlin propaganda. “Russia’s propaganda machine is in overdrive, working to subvert democratic stability and foment violence.”
Royce has said that Russian propaganda “may be more dangerous than any military because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining US security interests in Europe.”
US Representative Eliot Engel said the situation required “a robust response from us.”
The US Department of State has become so alarmed that it appealed to major media companies, including Sony Pictures, for help in combating the Kremlin’s “skewed version of reality.”
However, there is division over a push by Royce and others in Congress for Voice of America to play a more propagandist role.
In the West, the Kremlin’s most visible mouthpiece is RT Television, formerly known as Russia Today. Critics say that under the guise of challenging mainstream news coverage — RT’s motto is “question more” — the station works to discredit critics of the Russian government and justify Moscow’s actions.
“Russian propaganda is sometimes so crazy, it says such impossible things, it does not have the effect of making people believe them, but it breaks down people’s defenses,” said Kadri Liik, a Russia and eastern Europe expert on the European Council on Foreign Relations in London. “It is not just lies, in the way of Soviet propaganda. It is something much more sophisticated. A kind of violence against the mind.”
BALTIC FEARS
The focus of Western concern is the Kremlin’s influence in the Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — where, US officials say, it is seeking to strengthen pro-Moscow nationalism among Russian-speaking minorities and erode support for the EU and NATO.
The US countereffort is spearheaded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a US federal agency overseeing the Voice of America and similar stations aimed at the Middle East, Cuba and Asia.
Matthew Armstrong, a member of the board, said: “Kremlin propaganda intentionally and willfully undermines public confidence through lies and propaganda. It questions — not to find answers, but to question the hell out of you so you tune out. It undermines confidence in the media, in democracy, in the EU, in NATO, in the West.”
Liik said Russian minorities in Baltic countries mostly get their news from Russian television. She said that in her country, Estonia, viewers are drawn in by populist programs with Kremlin propaganda alongside game shows and drama. Liik said she is skeptical of claims that it fuels divisions that threaten the integrity of Baltic states.
“It is pretty logical that Russian-speakers have a bigger soft spot for Russia’s view on foreign policy. [However] it is not just because of what they see on television. It has its roots in education because many of the teachers who have taught history have a Soviet education,” she said. “They see what Russia is doing in Ukraine differently from other Estonians; they tend to justify the annexation of Crimea. [However,] when people ask, say, whether anyone feels discriminated against because of nationality, then overwhelmingly they say no. When you ask about language, they say everyone should learn Estonian.”
Baltic governments are not so sanguine, but their efforts to counter what Latvia has called an “information war” by the Kremlin are uncoordinated and weak.
Latvia, with the largest Russian-speaking population in the EU, has proposed a Balkan-wide Russian-language channel. Estonia said it would launch one this year.
The UK and Denmark have pressed for EU financial assistance to independent Russian-language channels. The US launched a news program, Current Time, aimed at the region, but it drew few viewers.
Royce and Engel are pushing legislation to move Voice of America away from what it sees as its traditional role in countering propaganda with independent reporting to have it explicitly broadcast in support of US foreign policy as well as greatly expand its television output.
WESTERN RESTRAINT
That has met resistance from officials who say it will erode the credibility of Western broadcasts that are already regarded by some of those they are intended to influence as yet more propaganda and play into Kremlin hands that foreign news is no more credible than Moscow’s broadcasts.
Andrew Weiss, former director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs on the White House national security council staff, said pro-Kremlin messaging was encouraged by regional political leaders sympathetic to Putin and those with business ties to Moscow.
“The Russian government tries to play off anti-Americanism, which remains a significant force, as well as to use the well-oiled and tested machinery of influence peddling and mutual commercial benefits to promote its cynical view of how the international system should work. In some countries, particularly in eastern Europe or central Europe, those forces are very powerful,” Weiss said.
The EU is pushing back with a plan to launch a “myth busters” task force to challenge Kremlin claims that it is anti-Russian. NATO, which the pro-Moscow media has accused of driving the conflict in Ukraine to undermine Russia, has established an information center in Latvia with a similar goal.
Liik is doubtful that Western efforts to change the minds of those sympathetic to Moscow will have much effect.
“People focus on communication, how to get our message across. But they don’t notice we have a problem with our message. We are not really necessarily living the model we are preaching,” she said, adding that US and western European claims to stand for human rights and democratic freedoms often ring hollow when others look at events in the Middle East, and politics appears corrupted by money.
“When you live in London, you know that’s not the norm. When you’re a Russian, you read about it and you think, of course, that’s how things work, everything is for sale, it’s no different from Russia. I think we don’t really understand the way our political model comes across, how people who live in different societies interpret our reality through their own experience,” she said.”
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