Every totalitarian movement is implanted with propaganda and terror, two sides of the same coin.
Hannah Arendt explains it in
The Origins of Totalitarianism
and it helps to understand how it is possible for Putin to maintain the support of his population while invading an independent state.
The effectiveness of totalitarianism requires the proliferation of lies, such as calling the war a "special operation" to point out that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, that Ukraine is not a nation and therefore there is no war, the same language game that China uses with Taiwan: for Xi Jinping, it will never be a state.
Propaganda is turning the victim into the aggressor, as in that fantasy in which it is Russia that is attacked while the official death toll of its soldiers is hidden.
Propaganda is bathing the masses in a spectacle of postmodern totalitarianism, making politics pure aesthetics, dramatizing the discourse from emotional sensationalism, with flags, anthems and symbols,
like the famous Z we see on Russian tanks and trucks.
Propaganda is the cult of death and sacrifice, the manly invitation to fight ("There is no greater love than giving one's soul for one's friends," said Putin).
Propaganda, in short, is to elevate your enemy, the West, to an absolute category, with a passionate identification of those supposedly responsible for the situation, building the "negative myth" that will keep them united.
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The reverse is terror, the idea of a necessary purification of all those whom Putin has described as "national traitors" against the "healthy" part of society, such as Navalni, whom he has sentenced to nine more years in prison.
“Purify” nothing less, a word that alone generates the certainty of a new horror for those who show, criticize or even mention the war.
Paradoxically, while the word “war” is prohibited in Russia, here, where we can pronounce it, it seems like a new taboo, and perhaps that is why we have not fully internalized it.
Are you aware that we are in a war?
Because war is the energy crisis, the millions of refugees who are coming to Europe, the increase in the defense budget, the rise in gasoline, the radical uncertainty that we live in,
the sanctions and embargoes that will collapse GDP and will require courageous measures and European fiscal stimulus.
The war will impoverish and open new cracks in the 27 or bring back the old ones.
The West's war against Putin will cause turbulence in our democracies, the system to which we are committed, as Trudeau pointed out before the European Parliament.
But I don't know about you;
I miss that, in addition to beautiful words, our leaders also tell us this and do it clearly: we are at war.
Perhaps in this way we will assume that, even if we take measures to alleviate its effects, we will have a bad time.
And there we will put our solidarity with Ukraine to the test.
The war will impoverish and open new cracks in the 27 or bring back the old ones.
The West's war against Putin will cause turbulence in our democracies, the system to which we are committed, as Trudeau pointed out before the European Parliament.
But I don't know about you;
I miss that, in addition to beautiful words, our leaders also tell us this and do it clearly: we are at war.
Perhaps in this way we will assume that, even if we take measures to alleviate its effects, we will have a bad time.
And there we will put our solidarity with Ukraine to the test.
The war will impoverish and open new cracks in the 27 or bring back the old ones.
The West's war against Putin will cause turbulence in our democracies, the system to which we are committed, as Trudeau pointed out before the European Parliament.
But I don't know about you;
I miss that, in addition to beautiful words, our leaders also tell us this and do it clearly: we are at war.
Perhaps in this way we will assume that, even if we take measures to alleviate its effects, we will have a bad time.
And there we will put our solidarity with Ukraine to the test.
our leaders also tell us this and make it clear: we are at war.
Perhaps in this way we will assume that, even if we take measures to alleviate its effects, we will have a bad time.
And there we will put our solidarity with Ukraine to the test.
our leaders also tell us this and make it clear: we are at war.
Perhaps in this way we will assume that, even if we take measures to alleviate its effects, we will have a bad time.
And there we will put our solidarity with Ukraine to the test.
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