Blind to their own propaganda - the West's war against Putin: Commentary
"Putin’s propaganda machine has a new focus: brainwashing Russia’s schoolchildren” (The Telegraph, 3rd September 2022)
Sombrely, and with the expected gravitas, the class of young school children stood and faced the Russian flag. The video panned across their classroom. A portrait of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had been placed on a shelf. A teacher flicked a switch and the bombastic Russian national anthem blared from a speaker.
This is the new weekly routine for millions of children across Russia who started the school year on September 1.
Each Monday morning, schools in Russia are now expected to line up and stand to attention as the Russian flag is raised.
Starting the day with the national anthem is quite a novel idea in The Telegraph’s native Britain – it’s not quite so novel in various other countries of the world, of course. Is the Russian national anthem “bombastic”? “Stirring,” perhaps, would be a more neutral term. But this article is all about propaganda, albeit not Putin’s.
The writer goes on to describe the supposedly new measures being introduced by President Vladimir Putin that are designed to instill “unflinching devotion to the great Russian state,” and to persuade children that “life is not worth living ... without a strong Russia to defend a Slavic state.” These are quotations from the article, not from any Russian source. Does such a primary source exist, one wonders – or are the bombastic statements derived from the Telegraph author’s fertile imagination?
“From next September 2023 all school children will also have to study a new subject called the ‘Fundamentals of the Spiritual and Moral Culture of the Peoples of Russia,’” he continues. Well, in Great Britain (where the “great” is acceptable, unlike in “great Russia”), schoolchildren are taught that “British culture is unique.” This is taken from the UK government’s own file on Cultural Education, which goes on to describe how “our language has produced some of the greatest writers and poets the world has known, and our distinctive fashion and renowned designers are admired the world over. Our history has often inspired the most poignant and triumphant art and poetry.”
Leaving aside the intriguing question of whether Shakespeare and Tennyson are really on the same cultural plane as Vivienne Westwood and Burberry, “bombastic” would be quite an apt way to describe the manner in which some anonymous civil servant in a dingy London office has chosen to wax lyrical about his country’s contribution to life, the universe, and everything.
The second part of this bizarre double act to brainwash Russian school children played out nearly 700 miles away in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which Putin visited on Thursday. There he held an informal chat with a group of school children.
Everybody looked deeply uncomfortable. Putin sat awkwardly in his chair, twirling a foot. Some Russian children didn’t even know that there was a new bridge connecting mainland Russia with Crimea, which he had annexed from Ukraine in 2014, he told them.
Putin laughed at the thought and smiled ruefully. The children looked frightened, not sure if the Russian leader had just made a joke or a threat.
The Telegraph was kind enough to provide pictorial documentation of this visit to Kaliningrad; there it is on their webpage in glorious technicolor. “Everyone looked deeply uncomfortable”? Not entirely obvious. Putin was “twirling a foot”? That’s a bit hard to assess in a photograph, of course. As for the “frightened” children, they appear to be entirely a figment of the author’s imagination.
All the same, the Telegraph writer did find one piece of evidence to bolster his claims – a nurse called Anya who lives in Moscow.
In a telephone conversation, she described [how...] after reading about the introduction of state propaganda and saluting the flag in schools, she decided to take her daughter out of the state system and enroll her in a private school...
’The school didn’t obey the rules,’ she said. ‘We drank tea and ate cake and talked about the need for critical learning. We talked about how all human life is valuable and nobody has the right to take it away.’
Declaring a “military operation” against a neighboring country is arguably an attack on the notion that “all human life is valuable.” But this article wasn’t about Russia’s war against Ukraine. It was about big bad Putin and how he brainwashes his nation’s young.
Is Putin more successful in brainwashing Russians than British propagandists are in their own backyard? It seems so, as many of the comments on The Telegraph’s article expressed a good measure of frustration at the author’s tone.
“Could learn a lot from our woke propagandists when comes to brainwashing the young!"
“We could do with a little more ‘Let’s Make the UK Great’ rather than lets bow our heads in shame for our Past and Present”
“Putin is brainwashing children to love mother Russia. Biden is brainwashing children to hate America.”
“I’m reading an amazing book at the moment about how Putin controls the people through TV, radio and social media. Simply they are brainwashed...” “Is it called the BBC?”
Maybe that’s the problem – western leaders are simply jealous of Putin’s success.
