Disinfolklore (10)

Shapeshifting Between the Inner / Outer Realms - Disinfolklore is a new analytical method to parse disinformation.

Drama Theatre, Mariupol where around six hundred native Russian language speaking Ukrainians - the category of Ukrainian who, in Russian Disinfolklore, needed to be saved by Russia - perished on 20th March 2022 after a Russian aeroplane dropped a bomb on it. Drama, photographed as it was for Christmas 2021 / 2022.

In Russian Disinfolklore “Nazis” belong to the Outer Realm. The Russian consumer of Russian Disinfolklore magically accesses the Inner Realm and becomes “Russian” when they rail against “Nazis.” You’re included in the Inner Realm just by virtue of angrily denouncing a category of Ukrainians which exists solely in Russian Disinfolklore. Russian Disinfolklore created the Ukrainian Nazi stock character as a tool. First, the Ukrainian Nazi was a stereotype that existed only in the Russian Disinfolklorist imagination. It became a perennial character in Russian Disinfolklore through means such as this:

@DecodingTrolls: “Russia plants Nazi memorabilia to provoke the "Disgust" of which Medvedyev speaks. I have first-hand experience of this. A Russian diplomat brought me to a far-right nationalist polit party (Svoboda) who no-one votes for in Ukraine. Mein Kampf (in English) placed beside me. Ruschist patsies…” and “@DecodingTrolls • May 1, 2022: “Russian elite completely zombified (see Medvedyev here), as &0's elites were from early 1930s on til '45 (see Defying Hitler). Germany & Japan got key roles in reconstruction of zombified Ruschists' mind, having gone thru similar processes themselves. a good exegesis of Ruschists…”

The Ukrainian Nazi became an existent in the western mind. It is wholly a product of Russian Disinfolklore. Russian Disinfolklore used this stock character which had no correspondence to reality (the far right vote in Ukraine is less than 1%, while it is far above 20% in Italy and France!) to blunt western support for Ukraine. By promoting the troll that Ukrainians were Nazis (translation: Ukrainians belong to the Outer Realm), they deserved to be genocided, and they are not worthy of support.

The imagery is clumsy and bizarre in these frames from Russian Disinfolklore television - a copy of Mein Kampf is inserted into a “news” item about the capture of a Ukrainian soldier:

A frame from a Russian Disinfolkore broadcast from April 2022. It is one of billions of references in Russian Disinfolklore to a wholly fictional depiction of Ukrainians as Nazis.

As a diplomat in eastern Ukraine, I was once invited to a meeting with a supposed Ukrainian extreme right-wing political party by a Russian diplomat. In the meeting at Svoboda Party in Dnipro, I was directed to a seat beside a bookshelf with Mein Kampf placed on it in a prominent position. I knew immediately I was being trolled by the Russian diplomat, and their Svoboda accomplice - in using Disinfolklore as an analytical technique, as I mention in Lenses of Gender - Disinfolklore (8), intuition matters.

They were trying to provoke me, to troll me, then, as an American diplomat into promoting the idea that an extreme right-wing Ukrainian nationalist political party had a copy of Mein Kampf in its Dnipro office. They expected me to make a Big Thing out of this, which I am doing now, yet in a way that only serves to reveal Russian Disinfolklore. Instead, as an aficionado of Russian Disinfolklore operations (and having been repeatedly targetted by Russian operatives in Ukraine), their botched operation confirmed my prior suspicion that Svoboda was a Russia-funded operation. It was a wolf (a Ukrainian far-right political party) in wolf’s clothing, and funded by a wolf (Russia), as a reservoir for pro-Russia Disinfolklore operations.

As you might also recall, Svoboda was used in pro-Russian president Yanukovich’s plot to to neutralise opposition to his imprisonment of his political rival.

Manafort, Trump’s ex campaign manager who was later himself imprisoned for tax fraud related to his work in Ukraine, was promoting the fact that Yanukovich’s rival had been in coalition with Svoboda when she was Ukraine’s prime minister as evidence that she sympathised with anti-semitism. So, here you have a political party that professes extreme Ukrainian nationalism, is anti-semitic and is funded by Russia.

Then, the Russia-funded ex-president of the United States’s campaign manager uses this Russia-funded anti-semitic party to neutralise opposition to the barbaric imprisonment of the former prime minister of Ukraine. This stuff is devilishly complicated. I acknowledge this. If you are going to counter Russian Disinfolklore, protect democracy, and face down authoritarianism, then, I would suggest it’s worth getting your head around these Russian Disinfolklore operations, no matter how complicated they seem. Disinfolklore is an analytical method to parse Russian disinformation that helps you navigate this Alice Through the Looking-Glass world Russian Disinfolklore creates to exhaust our capacity to fight back. Russian Disinfolklore has identifying markers running through it like the way a fluorescent dye identifies artificial DNA inserts. Disinfolklore teaches you to identify this fluorescence.

Svoboda was a stock character in pro-Russia Disinfolklore operations in Ukraine. Its stock-in-trade anti-semitism had been used by the former US president’s jailed campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort had needed a way to annihilate sympathy in the west for the former Ukrainian prime minister Rapunzel Julia Tymoshenko who Manafort’s then boss - the impeached ex-president of Ukraine - had imprisoned in a tower.

So Manafort ran a secret influence campaign that implied Tymoshenko’s unjust imprisonment was deserved because she had headed a coalition with Svoboda.

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: “Manafort and 'senior Israeli’ spread anti-Semitism story to boost Ukraine leader Indictment shows ex-Trump campaign chair hatched scheme against Yulia Tymoshenko to help rival Viktor Yanukovych; 14 September 2018, 10:11 pm” and @DecdoingTrolls: “Deripaska paid for Trump's jailed campaign manager Paul Manafort's work in Ukraine. Including Manafort's campaign to justify Tymoshenko's imprisonment. Manafort promoted argument that cos Tymoshenko had been in coalition.”

Russia has a long history of creating, stoking, and manipulating anti-semitism, in order to further Russia’s own aims. Soviet propagandists normalised anti-Semitism around the world by branding it as mere “anti-Zionism.”

@DecodingTrolls 5th March, 2022 “This is about the Ukrainian Soviet Jewish experience. Narrated by the famed Kharkiv artist Boris Mikhailov: "Both Jew and Soviet/To me there was/A closeness/There was the IDEA of equality/But you could be turned down/For a job for being E/So there was some duplicity..." and @DecodingTrolls • Dec 30, 2022 “Muscovy's innate antisemitism as a state can be subtle, for those ignorant of how frequently Accusation In A Mirror characterises genocides. When Putin & Medvedyev, both antisemites, brand "Genocide" as "Denazification" too many still fall for the troll” and “@DecodingTrolls • May 8, 2022: "Soviet anti-Zionism... did not have obvious antisemitic overtones...by substituting anti-Zionism for antisemitism in its propaganda, which made it passable for well-intentioned, idealistic individuals.”

Russia is an anti-semitic state. It is led by anti-semitic men, like Putin and Medvedyev. That Russia, a country where Jews are not safe, should messianically take it upon itself to invade Ukraine, where Ukrainian Jew do feel safe, is off the scale chutzpah.

“Exclusive / Exiled chief rabbi says Jews should leave Russia while they can: Pinchas Goldschmidt warns Jewish population will be made scapegoat for hardship caused by war.”

In parsing Russian Disinfolklore and indeed in spotting it, any reference to anti-semitism in Ukraine or Nazis, in any context related to Russia’s genocidal war against Ukrainians, immediately identifies this as Russian Disinfolklore.

@DecodingTrolls - May 20, 2022: "RollingStone: Ukraine's Jewish Community Fights Back Against Russia's Invasion - and Against Putin's Lies - Leaders of Dnipro's thriving Jewish community speak out about their history, their country, and their rejection of Vladimir Putin's lies about "denazification" By NATALIYA GUMENYUK Refugees from Kharkiv are welcomed at the city's synagogue, Golden Rose Synagogue, in Dnipro, Ukraine on March 06, 2022.” and Jewish community in my old city Dnipro raised, supported & fought inside 2 of the most fierce volunteer battalions in 2014/2015. As patriotic Ukrainians, they have great experience of successfully holding back the forces of Russia.”

During my seven years in Ukraine, I worked closely with Ukrainian Jewish community members. For example, in 2018 after a pro-Russia politician made anti-semitic comments in the media, I met the leader of the Jewish community in Dnipro.

OSCE representatives meet with the main Rabbi of Dnipro 16.02.2018..SMM OSCE was represented by the Head of Office in Dnipro, Oleg Starostin (Russia), and the officer-observer Stephen Douglas (USA). The meeting was also attended by Oleg Rostovtsev, the advisor to Dnipro Mayor on issues of nationalities and religious organizations, the website of Dnipro Jewish community has reported. During the meeting a number of issues were discussed regarding the dynamics of the level of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Ukrainian society, the position of Jewish community regarding a number of topical issues, a general assessment of the political situation and the situation in the field of security and human rights. The Chief Rabbi of Dnipro gave a detailed answer to the principled positions of the Jewish community, explaining what was done and is being done to support the Ukrainian society in its movement towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration, cooperation with other ethnoconfessional associations and the processes of formation of modern identity."

Given this experience, it did not surprise me to see appeals like this one from Ukraine’s Jewish community, in which a Ukrainian Jewish community member

@DecodingTrolls • May 20, 2022: "Rabbi Stambler: 'I want you to see the Jewish present & future in our schools, our synagogues. There are difficult pages in Ukrainian history. We've lived here for 1000s of years. What's important is that people are changing, and the moving in the right direction" and@DecodingTrolls • Mar 5, 2022 Replying to @sealsniper urt @DonEford and 2 others REPRESENTS resistance. Z is an "ethnic Russian" if such an "ethnicity" exists - Russian is his native language. Z won a MAJORITY of votes in EVERY district in • (bar 1). He's Jewish. Choose Z as ur symbol. Or this holocaust survivor from Kyiv twitter.com/decodingtrolls... Then - Babyn Yar, were hundreds of thousands. 'Then Babyn Ear where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were executed [by German and Austrian Nazis between 1941-1945]. We all died again in Babyn Yar from a [Russian] missile strike on March 1st, 2022" and @DecodingTrolls 3rd March, 2022 "Interestingly, as this Kyiv holocaust survivor speaks to the camera, you know exactly what she's saying. Even if you don't have a word of Russian ~ Here's a hint: Jews who survived the Holocaust curse Putin from the Kyiv bomb shelter" and @DecodingTrolls • Mar 1, 2022 "Babi Yar which Russian forces are targeting now where 30,000 Jews were massacred (see below ). After WWII, Soviets covered up the site where Nazis genocided Jews. Rush hour one day in late 1960s a dam burst, land erupted with the remains of those slaughtered decades earlier."

So whenever we hear actual anti-semitic Russian leaders and those who echo their nonsense about Nazis in Ukraine, it’s important to weigh properly the situation. On the one hand you have a Jewish president of Ukraine, Ukrainian Jewish community members and diplomats like me explaining: “This is pure Disinfolklore. It’s nonsense.” Yet, on the other hand, you have Russia and its paid agents promoting anti-semitic political parties in Ukraine, while attacking sacred Jewish sites and communities. It’s like a double annihilation. And it is the epitome of Russia’s shape-shifting Disinfolklore techniques.

There is a touch of magic to Russian Disinfolklore. Let’s take a Russian language speaking Ukrainian from the mainly Russian language speaking Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Russia has killed around one hundred thousand Ukrainians in Mariupol since February 24th 2022. Let’s imagine an archetypal female Ukrainian in Mariupol. In Russian Disinfolklore she and her child were being held captive by Ukrainian Nazis. She was the reason why Russia acted on its messianic impulse to “save” Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the non-existent Nazis.

I lived in eastern Ukraine for seven years. I met thousands of native Russian language speaking Ukrainians. Between 2015 and 2022, as a diplomat, I had detailed conversations with over one thousand elected political leaders, community leaders, Civil Society Organisation activists, teachers, police, military and ordinary people in a variety of contexts, including at the Bridge. I was also living embedded in the very communities in eastern Ukraine which Russian Disinfolklore claimed were being held hostage by Nazis. I repeatedly visited President Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih where I met with all kinds of community leaders. I frequently visited the flat complex where President Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaking Ukrainian Jewish community member.

I never found any evidence of any discrimination. Nor did I ever find even a scintilla of desire for liberation by Russia. Yet, in Russian Disinfolklore the very people I lived among were represented as wanting and requiring “liberation.”

@DecodingTrolls 16th March 2022: “Russian abductions in Ukraine. I've met 100s of elected leaders in areas inside/close to occupation forces. Not only I (but US ) warned of this. Same model used in occupied Lhansk (also worked there) & Donetsk: abduction, torture, murder of elected/activists. How rolls!” “Ambassador Bathsheba Nell Crocker-U.S. Representative to the Office of the United NationsDear High Commissioner Bachelet: l am writing you today [21st February 2022] with some urgency to express profound concern about the escalating situation in Ukraine… We are deeply concerned about Russia's continuing human rights abuses in the parts of Ukraine it already occupies…targeted killings, kidnappings/forced disappearances, unjust detentions, and the use of torture, would likely target …journalists and anti-corruption activists, and vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons. Specifically, we have credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.”

So we return to this archetype from Mariupol. According to Russian Disinfolklore on the 20th of March 2022 we have an Inner Realm native Russian language speaking Ukrainian in need of liberation by Russia. She is hurrying with her daughter to Drama Theatre in Mariupol to shelter from Russian shelling. Drama Theatre has been a central character in Mariupol’s community life for generations - it is more than a mere theatre. Perhaps our native Russian language speaking Ukrainian had met her partner at Drama?! She will have certainly brought her daughter to performances of Swan Lake and other folklore-themed theatrical performances in the theatre. Generations of Mariupol dwellers met at Drama for tea, dates, just to hang out, and to be entertained.

On the morning of 20th March 2022, as she was sheltering with her small daughter in Drama’s basement, a two hundred pound bomb was dropped from a Russian airforce aeroplane.

@DecodingTrolls • March 28th, 2023: "SOS The number one killer of Mariupol residents has been identified. The one who ordered and supervised the bombing of the Drama Theater, Maternity Hospital and the Children's Hospital…Since the first weeks, we have established that the planes bombing Mariupol took off.." and “@DecodingTrolls • Mar 25, 2022: "Mariupol City Council: Unfortunately, we start this day with bad news. Eyewitnesses reported that about 300 people died in the Mariupol Drama Theater as a result of the bombing by a Russian plane. I do not want to believe in this horror to the…”

@DecodingTrolls • Mar 25, 2022: "Until the last I want to believe that everyone managed to escape. But the words of those who were inside the building at the time of this terrorist act say the opposite. Drama theatre in the heart of Mariupol has always been the city's calling card.. A place of meetings, dates, a point of reference. ‘Where are you? I'm on Drama.’ How many times have we heard or said this phrase: ‘On the Drama’ … Now there is no more Drama. In its place appeared a new point of pain for the people of Mariupol…”

@DecodingTrolls • Mar 25th, 2022: "the ruins that became the last refuge for hundreds of innocent people. The Drama Theater was cynically destroyed by the newspapers of the ‘Russian world.’ These fascists of the 21st century were not stopped by the huge inscription CHILDREN, or the statements of the people...themselves that there are only peaceful - women, children, the elderly. The occupier knew where he was going. He knew what the consequences might be, and yet the bombs fell on a place that had become a refuge for hundreds of Mariupol residents...There can be no explanation for this inhuman cruelty. There will never be forgiveness for those who brought destruction, pain and suffering to our home. We will be able to restore the buildings, but we will never get back friends, neighbors, family and loved ones...Bright memory to all the innocent victims of the insane war waged against Ukraine by the country-arpeccop, the terrorist country Russia." Mariupol City Council, March 25th 2022.”

This bomb annihilated our Russian language speaking Ukrainian, her daughter and around five-hundred-and-ninety-eight other native Russian language speaking Ukrainians who thought they were safe there. The Russian language word for children was painted in bright letters in front of the shelter:

The ruins of Mariupol Drama Theatre, with the word “Children” written in the Russian language in front of it.

The moment the bomb dropped, Russian Disinfolklore banished our archetype from the Inner Realm. Suddenly, she was among the Nazis deserving of extermination. Russian Disinfolklore which before the bomb dropped used such people as their casus belli, now having annihilated them physically, expelled them also from the Russian Inner Realm.

Now it is common to read of ordinary Russians under the spell of Russian Disinfolklore speak of how Ukrainians should be killed. Here is an interesting example from an Associated Press analysis of thousands of phone calls from Russian occupiers in Bucha from March 2022. In one of the calls a Russian occupier Ivan is speaking to his mother:

Mother: "Are those bastards getting cleaned up?… F***ing, F***ing, F***ing kill them all. You have my blessing.

Russian Disinfolklore legends legislate by their mere pronouncement who remains in the Inner Realm and who once pronounced upon by story or bomb, belongs rightly, according to Disinfolkloric logic, in the Outer Realm.

By claiming certain Ukrainians are “Nazis” Russian Disinfolklore magically and forcibly transfers the “Nazi” who, like President Zelenskyy, may well be a Jewish native Russian speaking Ukrainian, from the Inner to the Outer Realm. Russian Disinfolklore resolves the apparent contradiction of forcibly transferring the epitome of an anti-Nazi in the historical sense - a Jewish Community member like President Zelenskyy - and the epitome of an anti-Nazi in the Russian contemporary Disinfolklore sense - a native Russian language speaking ethnic Russian Ukrainian - from the Inner native Russian language speaking Realm into the Outer Realm thus:

@DecodingTrolls 5th April, 2022: "This,[ex President of Russia and current deputy head of Russia’s national security council] Medvedev continued, meant Ukraine's head of state resembled a Sonderkommando, a reference to those incarcerated forced on pain of death to dispose of gas chamber victims during Holocaust.”

Note how the Disinfolklorist - here Russia’s former president and its current deputy head of its national security council - Nazifies the double- un-Nazifiable president of Ukraine by comparing him to a Jewish community member forced on pain of death by actual Nazis in a concentration camp to clear up the remains of Jews exterminated in the gas chambers.

This is the evil magic of Russian Disinfolklore. On one level, it is complete nonsense. Yet, on another level, for those afflicted by it, it transforms the identities of its victims - those it says are in the Outer Realm (Nazis, Ukrainians, the native Russian speaking Ukrainians Russia kills, or native Russian language ethnic Russian Ukrainians, like President Zelenskyy, who resist being annihilated by Russian Disinfolklore).

Russian Disinfolklore feeds the psychological neediness of its avid Russian consumers to belong to their own fictional and wholly artificial Inner Realm of Russian language speakers.

Russian Disinfolklore with its Inner (anti-Nazi) Realm / Outer (Nazi) Realm is, like all infectious ideologies, extremely agile, simple and poisonous. Your participation in the Inner Realm (Russian language speaking Ukrainian) can flow you directly into the Outer Realm with the mere explosion of a bomb, or the pronouncement in social media of the ex president of Russia. Those Inner Realm Russians who, at one moment, support your salvation through military occupation, a second later after the bomb or Tweet drops will celebrate your having been “cleaned up” as a “pest.” Or, worse, they will deny they even bombed Drama, Or that no-one but Nazis was sheltering inside. One moment in Russian Disinfolklore, you’re worth saving, at the next they exterminate you (Literally they deMana you. They take out your Mina. Your power.)

You can't compromise with Ruschian Disinfolklore. You cannot make a deal with it. It's a shape-shifting beast. A troll. A bogey. A ghost. It's an agile designation meaning this in Disinfolklore today, but that in Disinfolklore tomorrow. People make the mistake of thinking they're dealing with something solid. That they can negotiate with an elf. Yet, in Disinfolklore everything that’s apparently made of solid copper, melts into air.

There is one weapon you can use against Russian Disinfolklore: War Magic. President Zelenskyy has mastered the art of enspelling his enemies and the enemy of all Ukrainians. We will refer again and again in future Disinfolklore episodes to President Zelenskyy’s mastery of magic (trolling and emotionally resonant manipulation is a form of magic). But, for now, I shall leave you with this taster. It’s from a video released by President Zelenskyy in May 2022. President is referring to Putin, but he doesn’t use his name:

"The one who is repeating the horrific crimes of Hitler's regime today following Nazi philosophy, copying everything they did. He is doomed. Because he was cursed by millions of ancestors when he began to imitate their killer. And therefore he will lose everything."

Disinfolklore (11)