'Political Commissar Lies': Goebbels' Principles Still in Demand in the West

Recently, the West has embraced the trend of making direct appeals to the Russian people, sometimes using sloppy Russian-language phrases.

This tradition was established a couple of weeks ago by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and in recent days has been creatively used by the British media and personally by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The Daily Mirror even featured a Russian-language headline on its front page titled "You Need to Know". This is not counting the frequent injections of similar appeals to Russians by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily television broadcasts.

All of the authors of the fiery speeches constantly proceed from the same postulate: Russian residents are deprived of the opportunity to receive "the truth about the events in Ukraine". Just compare:

In other words, they seriously believe that Russian citizens are cut off from world news and, like in the good old days, still listen to foreign "voices" through their tube radios, trying to catch the signal that occasionally breaks through the "jammers". How poorly they know our people and understand the situation in Russia! A fact well proved by Johnson, who fancies himself as Prometheus, bringing the Russian people the secret knowledge of "fire" - in this case, the mysterious acronym VPN. And how, one wonders, before Boris, could we have known about such a miracle of modern technology? If necessary, our people are ready to share this knowledge with the British, we don't mind.

This handout picture taken and released on April 9, 2022 by Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (2R) speaking with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) during their meeting in Kiev.

© AFP 2023 / STRINGER

I would like to remind those Western critics who have suddenly developed a "love for the Russian people" that it was not Russia who started turning on the "jammers", as was the case during the Cold War. It was the West, contrary to all its fairytales about "freedom of speech" and its own laws, that began mercilessly sweeping Russian media outlets and even users of social networks sympathetic to Russia the information expanse, putting them under the single label of "Kremlin propaganda". And our response was just reciprocal and symmetrical.

Schwarzenegger and company genuinely believe that we haven't seen footage of the destruction in Mariupol or other cities. Confessing his "love for the Russian people", Arnold refers to his childhood memories of meeting our great heavyweight weightlifter Yury Vlasov. Ask Schwarzenegger if he has heard anything about what has been going on in Makeevka, his childhood idol's birthplace, for eight years, the ex-governor of California would be most surprised. Show him footage of Ukrainian troops razing this city to the ground in 2014-2015, and ask him why he did not remember the name of the great Vlasov back then – he will shrug it off, and that is it. Kindergartens, schools, and hospitals in Makeevka – everything was indiscriminately shelled. But there were no such appeals to the Ukrainian people and UAF soldiers by Western actors, politicians, and writers. They had no interest whatsoever.

Boris Johnson believes that the Russian viewer or reader has heard nothing at all about the events in Bucha. If we turn on a VPN and read the British press, the scales will immediately fall from our eyes. He probably has no idea that if there is a place, it is in our media that the events in the town near Kiev are analysed frame by frame, minute by minute, with reference to primary sources, including, first and foremost, Ukrainian ones. I have not seen in any Western publication such a detailed analysis of these horrifying images as we have. Perhaps I haven't seen it because a thorough analysis of the chronology of the events in Bucha refutes the myths about "brutal Russians executing defenceless people".

For example, we are the ones showing everywhere the statement by the mayor of Bucha, who solemnly declared on 31 March that the city had been "liberated from the Russian orcs". It is we who are showing footage of this mayor (please note, together with Ukrainian police units) in the city centre on 1 April. We are the ones wondering where the pile of dead bodies in the streets of a small settlement that has only recently received the status of a city is. It is our media who are broadcasting a video of the National Police of Ukraine about the mopping-up of Bucha, filmed on 2 April. And at the same time, they quote a Ukrainian fighter who requested permission to shoot at people "without blue armbands". For some reason, they're actively trying to remove this video from social networks, and it is our media that cites it. Schwarzenegger and Johnson do not want to ask why these facts are being kept from Western audiences?

A monument to the writer Vladimir Korolenko is seen near a library destroyed as a result of shelling, in Mariupol, Donetsk People's Republic.

© Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev

Or does someone in the West think that our public is not being shown the "sensational" satellite images from Bucha shared by The New York Times, allegedly proving that the bodies had been lying untouched in the streets since at least 19 March? It is the Western media that dutifully, without any critical analysis, echoed the "enemy of the American people" (as Donald Trump affectionately called this newspaper). Our journalists have analysed these pictures in detail, raising questions that you will not find in this or any other Western newspaper.

For example, none of the many Western analysts has raised the question as to how the bodies could have been preserved and not decomposed during the more than two weeks of warm weather. We're the ones who've carefully analysed the temperature in Kiev and its suburbs since 19 March and found out that sometimes on those days it reached 20 degrees Celsius. But the hordes of Western journalists who have swarmed Bucha in recent days are quietly filming these bodies and do not even wonder why they do not need respirators to be near a place where the smell of death should simply knock you out. Nor were there any questions as to why in more than two weeks none of the townspeople, neighbours, relatives, or acquaintances of the murdered people had missed them, found them in the streets, called for help or called the same police that was working in the city even while the Russian units were there. We're the ones who want to know the whole truth about the tragedy of the residents of Bucha, not them.

Veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion, who took part in the war in Donbass, salute during the mass rally called "No surrender" in Kiev on March 14, 2020. - Around fifteen thousands participants rallied despite the ban on holding mass events because of the coronavirus, demanding President Zelensky's resignation. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)

© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY

And now let's ask Johnson: so why would a Russian user need a VPN? What more can they learn about the events in Bucha that are not reported and covered in great detail on Russian TV? But a British viewer would discover much more if they could get away from the propaganda of Russophobia and media fakes for a moment and familiarise themselves with Russian materials. Both London and Washington are well aware of this, which is why they are actively cleansing all information from Russia.

Although it does not always work. Media outlets in the Netherlands, for example, lament that the party Forum for Democracy, which recently boycotted Zelensky's virtual address to their parliament, continues to accuse the West of unleashing the conflict in Ukraine even after the events in Bucha. The Financial Times pointed to a more serious problem in Asia and Africa: its audience, no matter how Twitter bans accounts for the hashtag #IStandWithPutin, still believes in the "Russian propaganda" and, once again, blames the West. One would wonder why people with more access to information than Britons or Americans with their carefully censored social media are inclined to trust Russian media outlets? Perhaps because they know at a glance who is right? But the conclusion is unambiguous: all the worse for the truth - they need to increase the censorship of their media and spread more lies about Russia.

The example of the address by Britain's Daily Mirror in Russian is most revealing because it is written in the worst traditions of Goebbels' propaganda. Eighty years ago, the trenches of the Red Army were constantly bombarded with leaflets: "The political commissar lies to you. You are not tortured or killed in German captivity, but treated well!" Hence The Mirror blatantly writes: "Your president is not telling the truth when he says Ukraine is a threat to Russia and full of Nazis".

And the same newspaper publishes a monstrous fake headlined "Woman raped and killed by Russian troops who branded her corpse with swastika". The lie is awfully cynical, as the article features a photo of a woman's body found in the basement of Mariupol School Number 18, which the Azov fighters have turned into their base. The photo has long since made its way around all the Russian media and caused broad resonance, Russia's Investigative Committee opened an investigation into the atrocity back on 28 March, with The Mirror writing a week later that it has failed to establish "where the photo was taken". But the newspaper already knows, you see, that the girl was allegedly raped and killed by Russian troops. Because, you see, if you admit that she was a victim of Nazis from "Azov" – the leaflet "The political commissar lies to you that Ukraine is full of Nazis" immediately loses all meaning. And how, pray tell, are The Mirror's principles different from those of Goebbels in this case?!

9 March 1945: Goebbels awards a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, Willi Hübner, the Iron Cross for the defence of Lauban

CC BY-SA 3.0 / German Federal Archive / 9 March 1945: Goebbels awards a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, Willi Hübner, the Iron Cross for the defence of Lauban

Now let Johnson answer the question for himself: how would access to British sites via a VPN change the mind of a knowledgeable reader who knows (mind you, thanks to the Russian media!) where and when the gruesome photograph of the tortured woman was taken? For some reason, it was the British audience that was kept away from this photo for a week, not the Russian audience. Had the people of London or Edinburgh had access to our TV channels, blocked by Boris Johnson's government, they would have been able to receive truthful information about the events in Ukraine and Donbass, rather than these primitive fakes from their tabloids. But this is precisely why Johnson the "Prometheus" is explaining to us, not to them, what a VPN is.

By Vladimir Kornilov