Disinfolklore (2)
Stealth Genocide (a) - Disinfolklore is a new analytical method to parse disinformation.
Working in Occupied Ukraine as a diplomat from 2015 onwards, I often thought: it will be impossible for the Russian Federation to teach Ukrainians in Russia occupied Ukraine to hate Ukrainians on the other side of the Donets. Russia will never succeed in making its propaganda line that “Ukraine is the new Bosnia” true.
For one thing, I and my colleagues donned flak jackets and kevlar helmets each day specifically in order to keep the flow of ten thousand civilians between Russia’s Otherworld occupied Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine across the Donets river. Provided there was a constant exchange of people, surely it would be impossible for Russian Disinfolklore to convince Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine that the other (Ukrainians living across the bridge in free Ukraine) hated them?!
At the time I didn’t understand the power of Disinfolklore to alter how we perceive reality. So even if Ukrainians living under occupation visited non-Russia occupied Ukraine, they would perceive the reality over there through Disinfolklore tinted spectacles.
I studied carefully the daily diet of what I now call Disinfolklore being fed to the Ukrainians stuck in Russia-occupied Luhansk. I will use a number of case studies based on these data - for example, the Cut Into Tiny Pieces episode in Disinfolklore. Russian Disinfolklore in occupied Ukraine was crude, othering, hypnotic, repetitive, and mystifying propaganda. Their Disinfolklore was like War Magic. It changed its consumers' perceptions of their own identities. It provoked fear and horror, and submission to genocide.
At the time I was first reading the media in Russia-occupied Ukraine, I presumed that everyone would see through it. Yet, again and again, my colleagues who were senior military, security and human rights professionals from forty-one countries fell for it. I didn’t understand then that Russia was executing its genocide in plain sight. I now call this phenomenon Stealth Genocide.
The term “genocide” is governed by the 1949 Genocide Convention. “Genocide” as a new crime was first conceptualised by a Belorussian International Lawyer who had been educated at L’viv University in western Ukraine.
The Genocide Convention sets out the meaning of genocide.
“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group; and
Direct and public incitement to commit genocide.
While the International Court of Justice is currently hearing Ukraine’s genocide case against Russia, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that I was trained as an international lawyer at the Lauterpacht Centre in the University of Cambridge. I do not use terms like “Genocide” lightly.
It is for each of us to decide and judge whether or not we believe, on the evidence, that Russia’s crimes in Ukraine amount to genocide.
I am a campaigner on behalf of upholding the rules based order introduced in the wake of World War Two (of which the Genocide Convention is an ineluctable part). It is clear to me, on the facts, that Russia has violated the Genocide Convention which has been ratified by over one-hundred-and-fifty-two countries. As I set out in the Was Ist Disinfolklore? episode, there are six evaluative dimensions we can use to distinguish Disinfolklore from Counter Disinfolklore.
Counter Disinfolklore is always ethically disciplined, for example. While I don’t need to rise to the standard of proof that Ukraine needs to convince the International Court of Justice to classify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as genocide, I can’t just throw the term “genocide” around without evidence. This is partly why as part of my Counter Disinfolklore project, I have collected @DecodingTrolls on Twitter reports of genocidal acts by Russia.
The Russian media space tries to dilute the power of the term genocide by referring to unevidenced and trivial activities dishonestly as “genocide.” Here the unelected Russian dictator states that:
“An anti-Russian enclave threatening Russia itself is being created on the territory of Ukraine, its elimination is the goal of a special military operation.”
In almost ten-thousand time-stamped Tweets since February 24th 2022, I have documented evidence of these violations of international law in real time.
I will feature this body of Counter Disinfolklore extensively in this publication. It has been viewed over twenty-six-million times online, retweeted over twenty-six-thousand times and “liked” by over one-hundred-and-thirty-seven thousand Twitter users. Part of my aim is to provide reshareable content to counter Disinfolklore published by Russia. Another part of my motivation is to record in real time evidence, like the following testimony from the mayor of Bucha, of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, breaches of international human rights law and violations of Ukraine’s criminal code by Russian invaders:
Such Counter Disinfolklore constitutes one of the narrative vectors in this Disinfolklore publication, and illustrates one of the ways in which all of us as ordinary citizens can work against Russian (and other forms of) Disinfolklore:
My first mention of “Genocide” in my counter Disinfolklore occurred within days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Between then and the end of April, I had referred to the occupation as a genocide in over fifty tweets. By that time, the prime minister of Poland and the president of Ukraine also were referring regularly to Russia’s occupation as genocide.
In May 2022 New Lines Institute published an exhaustive and persuasive legal analysis of Russia’s activities in Ukraine after February 24th, 2022. It found that Russia was committing genocide.
Apart from my Counter Disinfolklore work since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the second main narrative vector in this publication looks retrospectively at the dataset of Russia’s Disinfolklore that I possess - the media inside occupied Ukraine from 2014 to February 2022, in combination with my first-hand witness of the situation on the ground in eastern Ukraine. The only foreigners allowed by Russia in Russia-occupied Ukraine (apart from collaborators) were diplomats from my organisation. I travelled to and from Russia occupied Ukraine almost every working day between 2015 and 2018. And between 2015 and 2022, I read in the greatest detail Russian Disinfolklore published inside Russia-occupied Ukraine.
In hindsight, the aggregate effect of the many thousands of Disinfolklore stories I have studied as part of my work as a diplomat in Ukraine (and as part of this Disinfolklore project) was to prepare Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine to participate in genocide against their fellow Ukrainians on behalf of Russia.
At first I was complacent about the power of Russian Disinfolklore in Russia-occupied Ukraine to turn Ukrainian against Ukrainian. Now I understand that such complacency helps Russia implement Stealth Genocide.
Russian Disinfolklore inside Occupied Ukraine was expertly embedding a sense of Otherness in Ukrainians in Luhansk. It created of occupied Ukraine a mental Inner Realm which it said belonged to Russia. Ukrainians in occupied Luhansk were forcibly passportised. They were told that they were Russian. Russian Disinfolklore also created an Outer Realm - the rest of Ukraine.
In creating and enforcing these entirely mental divisions in the minds of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation, Russian Disinfolklore created an Othering entity against which Inner Realm Russia-occupied Luhansk residents could define a new Disinfolkloric identity. Russian Disinfolklore was able through a number of Disinfolkloric methods - including the firehose of falsehood, constant repetition and mirroring - to conjure into being a completely new identity which Ukrainians in Russia occupied Ukraine internalised. This new identity was coercively enforced and Ukrainians who could not or would not adopt it were jailed, exiled, imprisoned or self-exiled. One-and-a-half million Ukrainians had left their homes in Russia-occupied Ukraine soon after the occupations had begun in April 2014 to avoid being brainwashed and assimilated into what they understood would be a brutal occupation.
In case we think we are immune to this kind of media-borne division: recall how in the immediate aftermath of the June 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, newspapers began to Other those who were in favour of remaining in the European Union. Soon afterwards, polling began to pick up identities of English voters that were characterised along side these wholly invented division based on othering Remainers. This othering process has not led to anything close to genocide in England. It is an example of how any society is susceptible to othering.
From the standpoint of Russian Disinfolklore, the group from the Outer Realm (the rest of Ukraine) was repetitively portrayed as wanting to kill the Ukrainians living in Russia occupied Ukraine. Entirely fictional shellings which never happened (I know. I was there on the bridge when they were supposed to have happened) convinced Ukrainians in Russia-occupied Ukraine and Russians in actual Russia that Ukraine was trying to kill their own citizens living under occupation. The organisation which I worked for never recorded a sole instance of Ukraine shelling its residents in Russia-occupied Ukraine. Yet, every single news broadcast and media outlet in Russia-occupied Ukraine and in Russia itself for eight years carried reports of these entirely made-up events.
Russia created of Ukrainians in non-Russia-occupied territory an other which would Poison Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied Ukraine. Russian Disinfolklore constantly portrayed Ukrainians as outsiders coming in to the Inner Realm to destroy the sense of peace there.
“Russia will protect you” was the sonorous Sirens’ drum beat. Just surrender to our sense of reality, you will become Russian, and you will be saved.”
The truth of course was that by law and in fact Russia was occupying (in the legal sense of the term as defined by international law) the part of Ukraine across the Donets.
The judgment of the court in the Netherlands tribunal of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight by Russia in July 2014 also found:
“In this case, the question is specifically whether the Russian Federation had overall control over the DPR [Russia-occupied Donetsk] in 2014. The court finds that this was the case for several reasons… [including]… Organisations such as the OSCE and Human Rights Watch reported the supply, arming and financing of separatists by the Russian Federation. These reports mention convoys of military weapons being transported across the border…A number of organisations mention artillery fire on Ukrainian territory, which from the start of July 2014 were said to originate from the Russian Federation… From mid-May 2014 onwards, the Russian Federation furthermore had a decisive influence on appointments in senior positions within the DPR and was involved in coordinating military actions as well as in performing military actions on Ukrainian territory… These factors, which are described in more detail in the judgment, lead the court to conclude that the situation from mid-May 2014 onwards was one in which the Russian Federation exercised overall control over the DPR.
Ukrainians in occupied Luhansk (and in occupied Donetsk and occupied Crimea) were being incited directly and publicly by Russian Disinfolklore to execute genocide against their fellow Ukrainians. After eight years of this Othering Disinfolklore, Ukrainians living in Occupied Luhansk would be conscripted by the Russian occupiers to execute genocide against their fellow Ukrainians after February 24th 2022. This only became clear to me after the full-scale invasion began. In retrospect, what I was witnessing from 2015 onwards in eastern Ukraine, was the grooming of an army of conscripts in Russia-occupied Ukraine to kill their fellow Ukrainians. Russian Disinfolklore turned these Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine into cannon fodder for the superior Ukrainian forces exercising Ukraine’s inherent right to self-defence after (and indeed before) February 24th 2022. This is what I mean by Stealth Genocide. Russia uses Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine to kill other Ukrainians.
There are further aspects to Russia’s policy of what I term Stealth Genocide which I shall mention in passing here, but which will be referred to throughout Disinfolklore. Here are the dimensions of Russia’s genocide in Ukraine:
Russia’s stated aim is to eliminate a fluid and non-existent category of Ukrainians which it terms “Nazis.” As the US Ambassador to my former employer the OSCE put it in an address on 13th October 2022:
“One of Russia’s proxy officials in the so-called “DNR,” Pavel Gubarev, has articulated this aim rather succinctly. Addressing the people of Ukraine in a video posted this week, he said “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”
Russia forcibly (and unlawfully) coerces, through various means, Ukrainians living under Russian occupation in Ukraine to participate in fighting the Ukrainian army.
A disproportionate number of the two-hundred-thousand casualties (including at the time of writing one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dead Russian soldiers) come from what the Russian constitution refers to as "Small-numbered native peoples" (коренные малочисленные народы). Today’s Russia is made up of 82 Federal Units, many of which the entity know until 1721 as “Muscovy” occupied militarily in previous centuries:
@DecodingTrolls 16/08/2022: “1/ "Central Asia fell under Russian imperial control in two stages. The first stage commenced around the year 1730, & saw Russian influence gradually extended into the Kazakh Steppe. This phase essentially concluded by 1848…” and “Just got word that my entry for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History was just published: doi.org/10.1093/acrefo...This one took a lot of effort to write, and I'm not totally happy with it. But my kind reviewers helped make it a better piece in the end.” It is Russia’s policy, as set out in legal documents, to conscript as a priority “citizens” from parts of Russia where native small-numbered people predominant:
21st September 2022 decree from the Russian “president” announcing a “partial mobilisation” stating among other things: “First of all, the military, security and control bodies of the Russian Federation must ensure the conscription of citizens for military service by mobilising into the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from the Khabarovsk Territory, the republics of Karelia, Dagestan, Sakha and other subjects of the Russian Federation with a high level of protest potential…” This is the third aspect of Stealth Genocide: Russia (or more properly its European Muscovite core) uses its subject peoples as cannon fodder in Ukraine.
So to summarise: Russia sets out to genocide Ukrainians. It outsources, partly, the genocide of Ukrainians to Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied Ukraine. From the standpoint of fulfilling Russia’s intention to genocide Ukrainians, it doesn’t matter to Russia who kills Ukrainians: if Ukrainian armed forces soldiers kill Ukrainians fighting from Russia-occupied Ukraine, then, according to Russia, so be it.
Additionally, Russia is submitting its own people to what some refer to as a “meat grinder” in Ukraine.
A disproportionate number of Russian citizens fighting and being killed in Ukraine are from small-numbered native peoples. So Russia is also genociding its own citizens. In this respect, Russia is outsourcing the genocide of its own citizens to Ukraine. Russia is even sending its soldiers to die carrying only sticks:
Russias’ war of aggression in Ukraine is a perfect closed loop of genocide.
Part of the value of Disinfolklore as a method and as a project is in its parsing of the Disinfolklore that Russia used to troll one set of victims (Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied Ukraine) into wanting to murder another set of victims (Ukrainians living in the rest of Ukraine). Cultivating divisive hatred inside the minds of Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied Ukraine was the purpose of the entirety of Russian Disinfolklore from 2014 onwards. And the goal was to mobilise this hatred to achieve Russia’s goal of geocoding Ukrainians in areas under occupation and in the rest of Ukraine.
In 2015 I met a woman in a village near Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine. She told me that her sister in St Petersburg, Russia wouldn't believe her when she told her that Ukraine was a free country whose government was not committing Genocide.
She and her sister no longer spoke. This was a foreshadowing of how arguments over politics stoked by hyper-modern communications methods like Facebook would divide Britons over Brexit and Americans over Trump. When she told me that anecdote in eastern Ukraine in early 2015, I never imagined that this was our unevenly distributed future. Nor did I imagine that this mystifying phenomenon I had never encountered before - that the news would trump familial ties. Until Brexit, Trump and my experience researching Disinfolklore over seven years in eastern Ukraine, I would never have believed attitudes instilled by the news would be strong enough to divide families.
When I hear Russia’s othering nuclear threats against the West, EU, Ukraine, US,… against all of us, I think of these years in occupied Luhansk. I think of how public and direct incitement to genocide was concealed in dehumanising, normalising and othering media content - Disinfolklore.
Part of Russia’s invasion plan for Ukraine involved occupying Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. The purpose, according to a leaked blueprint, was to hold Europe ransom. In return for not sending a radioactive nuclear cloud westwards, Russia would require European states to accept its occupation of Ukraine. Note that sending radioactive clouds towards Europe amounts to killing Europeans as members of a group, which violates the genocide convention.
Here the Russian commander of its armed forces occupying Europe’s largest nuclear power station threatens all Europeans thus:
“As you know, we have mined all the important facilities of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. And we do not hide it from the enemy. We warned them. The enemy knows that the station will be either Russian or no one's. We are ready for the consequences of this step. And you, warrior-liberators, must understand that we have no other way. And if there is the toughest order, we must fulfil it with honour!”
Almost daily the Russian state’s leaders threaten to genocide all Europeans and incorrectly state that Europeans want to genocide Russians. Recently the former president of Russia and the current deputy head of Russia’s national security council Medvedyev threatened to end humanity.
When I hear this rhetoric, I meditate on how confused and complacent I was when I would hear the same words in 2015 repeated ad nauseam in the media in occupied Ukraine. The only difference then was that instead of threatening the West with genocide, Russian localised Disinfolklore was telling Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine, incorrectly, that Ukraine was threatening them. We now know where this genocidal grooming led. There is a good reason why the Genocide Convention outlaws “direct and public incitement to genocide.” Mesmerising propaganda is a precursor to all genocides. Counter Disinfolklore helps us get genocidal rhetoric against all Europeans.
These Russian Othering stories (which I call Disinfolklore) are propagated through ultra-modern media channels alleging, on the part of Ukraine against those living under Russia’s occupation of Luhansk ancient theme: Intrusion, Deception, Kidnapping, Ransom, Poisoning of the food supply, Violence,… These were the staples of Russian Disinfolklore in occupied Ukraine from 2015 onwards. Just as they have been the staples of Indo-European mythology, epic, history and folklore since before 2,500 BCE.
The most attested story across the entirety of the Indo-European cultural zone between Ireland and India is what experts today call the Trito Myth:
“After the world was made, the sky-god [*Dyēus pətḗr in ancient Ukraine, and later Dyāuḥ pitā (India), Zeus Pater / Ζεύς πατήρ (Greece), and Iuppiter / Jupiter in Ancient Rome] gave cattle to "Third man" ('Trito). But the cattle were treacherously stolen by a three-headed, six-eyed serpent (*Ngʷhi, the Proto-Indo-European root for negation). Third man entreated the storm god to help get the cattle back. Together they went to the cave (or mountain) of the monster, killed it (or the storm god killed it alone), and freed the cattle. 'Trito became the first warrior. He recovered the wealth of the people, and his gift of cattle to the priests ensured that the sky gods received their share in the rising smoke of sacrificial fires. This ensured that the cycle of giving between gods and humans continued.” 1
Bruce Lincoln found the same basic story of the hero who recovered primordial lost cattle from a three-headed monster in Indic, Iranian, Hittite, Norse, Roman and Greek myths. Generally speaking, if you find the same story (or linguistic) elements in at least one attested Indo-European culture / language east of Ukraine (particularly in ancient Persian or Indian lore), and one west of Ukraine (Celtic, Germanic (Scandinavian), Latin, Greek, etc.) then you have a candidate for potential inclusion among Proto-Indo-European cultural traits. Proto-Indo-European aspects in our language and culture today must have been present before 2,500 BCE. So the Trito Myth being so widely attested is clearly a story which was present before the split and migrations of the core Proto-Indo-European culture in eastern Ukraine before 2,500 BCE.
In Russia’s self-mythologising Disinfolklore, Russia and its dictator is Trito. In their Disinfolklore, Ukraine and the West is the three-headed, six-eyed serpent who negates Russia and steals Russia’s security. The non-existent Nazi in Ukraine is merely a container in Russian Disinfolklore for what is originally and deeply encoded in our psyches as a “three-headed, six-eyed serpent.” In Indian theology the Naga serpent figures (*Ngʷhi is the Proto-Indo-European root for negation), if not properly worshipped, can bring about disaster. In Irish theology, christianity began when St Patrick chased the serpents from the island of Ireland. Russia invokes the sceptre of a holy war to defeat “Ukrainian nationalism” and “global satanism” in Ukraine.
In its holy war Disinfolklore Russia is accessing Indo-Europeans’ deep psyche as attested by the persistent popularity for over four-and-a-half millennia in the main Indo-European cultures of the Trito Myth. I have written about how Russia sacrifices its own people and Ukrainians as a contract with its god to secure more power, healthiness for its leadership:
In the Trito Myth we can see the essential frame that is contained within all the folklore that it inspires since 2,500 BCE (the latest date by which the last Indo-European language speakers from the core ancient Ukrainian group must have migrated eastwards and westwards from what is today Ukraine to found the Celtic, Germanic, Hittite, Indic, Iranian, Italic and Greek cultures), as well as in all Russian Disinfolklore.
Ukraine and the West of course also sees itself in Trito’s position. Ukraine’s national symbol is even the trident 🔱! Russia, like the three-headed and six-eyed serpent, has stolen Ukraine’s prosperity and security. Ukraine in appealing to the international community for assistance is committed to slaying the “three-headed, six-eyed” serpent of negation that is Russia’s occupying forces in Ukraine. In Disinfolklore and Counter Disinfolklore, we will return again and again to manifestations of this essential myth in the clothes Russian Disinfolklore.
Up until 24th February 2022 for a variety of reasons - none of which are acceptable - many in the international community hesitated over deciding who was Trito - Ukraine or Russia?
Yet, the answer here is established by international law. Trito is Ukraine. Ukraine’s borders (and the boundaries of where Trito has a right to expect immunity from having its land, people, and prosperity treacherously stolen) are set out in a treaty with Russia. The current head of the Russian state even signed this treaty himself in 2003. It is registered in the United Nations treaty depositary. In our civilisation, the inviolability of borders, our right to life, and freedom from genocide are sacrosanct.
So Ukraine’s borders are objectively defined. Ukrainians as a group are objectively defined - citizens of Ukraine as determined by international law. No amount of Russian Disinfolklore can alter this objective reality. Russia can claim it is Trito. But the law clearly puts Ukraine in the position of the raided. The United Nations Charter which Ukraine signed as a state in 1945 establishes Ukraine’s right to inherent self-defence and to ask any other countries (or sky-gods) to work for its victory. Let’s keep this in mind as we parse Russian Disinfolklore. It’s very easy, as we have seen, to become decoupled from reality by Russian Disinfolklore. The purpose of Counter Disinfolklore includes reinstalling awareness of what is real and what is baseless in all of us. And Russia’s claims to be Trito are baseless. Once we keep that fixed in our minds, we can’t go far wrong, even when we’re immersed in Russian Disinfolklorists’ nonsense.
I’ll finish this chapter with the most important myth of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May 2022 a hapless Russian ambassador accidentally set off the most important Counter Disinfolklore movement of the twenty-first century when a Twitter user summarised Russia’s casus belli thus:
You: "we have to bomb all of Ukraine's civilians because Ukraine was fighting an internal war and some civilians got shelled"
The Ambassador’s response, which launched the entire North Atlantic Fella (NAFO / OFAN) movement of Counter Disinfolklorists is now legend:
You pronounced this nonsense. Not me.
So, now we have it from the horse’s mouth. A Russian ambassador in an unguarded moment pronounced as nonsense the core elements of the Disinfolklore of the state he represents. Counter Disinfolklorists have no hesitation to do likewise: Nonsense is nonsense. And Disinfolklore gives us one more tool to judge what is nonsense, and what is right. Ukraine is Trito.
Trito House, Ternopil, Ukraine.
Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2010.