Disinfolklore (4)
Disinfolklore (4)
"Cut into Tiny Pieces" (a) - Disinfolklore is a new analytical method to parse disinformation.
Russia’s intelligence service in occupied Luhansk had sent to my manager’s manager a hand-written letter from a supposed walk-in that told the following tale:
“I address You as a guarantor of security for Donbass population.
On 15.04.2016 I received a phone call from a phone of my dear people, namely my common law spouse [X], who lives with her under aged daughter at the address:
[Address]. Military men of Pravy Sektor of Ukraine phoned me, and demanded from me to have to come to Stanitsa Luhanska settlement on 16.04.2016, otherwise (their exact wording) they will cut my common law spouse into pieces. Taking into consideration illegal and not adequate activity of Ukrainian Armed Forces military men and law-enforcement agencies of Ukraine my family is facing constant fear, and is not unreasonably under apprehension of our lives.
16.04.2016
[Y] signed”
Note how this plea trolls and portrays the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (O.S.C.E.)(my then employer in Ukraine) as the “guarantor of security for the Donbas population.” This is to compliment my employer and my more gullible colleagues into thinking of itself as the protective ogre without whom the “Donbas population” would suffer. The truth of course was the reverse: the Russians were the invading ogres who constantly threatened, murdered and tortured the “Donbas population.” This was a very subtle but careful attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty, as in law and in fact Ukraine was the protector of the “Donbas population.”
A plethora of articles in the Russia-controlled print and Internet media in occupied Luhansk also appeared around that time (I’ve pasted the headline of one of them above). They referred to this Walk-In’s plea for help to assist the Damsel-in-Distress. The articles in the Russian-occupier controlled media added in quite a few details that were not in the actual written note.
For example, the Russian-controlled media had been briefed that the Walk-In was an emotionally resonant “Ambulance Worker.” To put it into folkloric terms, the Walk-In was a “healer.” The articles also added in layers of editorialising detail. Here’s a flavour of how a Russian media outlet in occupied Luhansk framed the above hand-written note:
“A doctor from the LPR asks the OSCE to protect his relatives in Stanitsa from the fighting of the "Right Sector"
The Lugansk doctor asks representatives of the OSCE to ensure the safety of his relatives living in Stanitsa Luganskaya, who are threatened by militants of the Ukrainian extremist organization "Right Sector". This was reported in the LPR MGB.
"The LPR MGB was made a statement by a paramedic of the Lugansk ambulance, whose family is threatened with death by the Ukrainian radical extremist organization Right Sector," the message reads.
"As the applicant explained, he received a call from relatives living in the territory of the Luhansk region temporarily occupied by Ukrainian security forces, but at the other end of the wire there was an unfamiliar voice. The man introduced himself as a fighter of the radical structure "Right Sector," the department said.
The MGB reported that the extremist "require a medical worker of the LPR to come to Stanitsa Luganskaya within 24 hours, where he will be worked out the task of collecting intelligence on military, political and socio-economic issues." Otherwise, the "Pravy Sector" member threatened to use physical violence against the relatives of the Luhansk citizen.
"In connection with the creation of a real threat to the life and health of loved ones, an ambulance worker appealed to the OSCE monitoring mission to assist in ensuring their safety, as well as to influence the Ukrainian side, whose security forces regularly blackmail civilians through threats and intimidation," the Ministry of State Security of the Republic [the Russian occupier’s called their occupied rebel troll kingdom a “republic”] noted.
"I ask the OSCE mission, which advocates respect for human rights and freedoms in Donbass, to assist in providing security to my family and friends who remained in the territory controlled by Ukrainian security forces," asked an employee of the capital's ambulance.”
One of the things to note is that while one part of the Russian-occupier’s intelligence service was promoting the idea of the O.S.C.E. as an all powerful giant who could help the Damsel-in-Distress, another arm of the same force was organising anti-O.S.C.E. rallies outside our offices in Occupied Luhansk.
Another point to note is that the media article tries to blacken the name of Ukraine’s security forces by imputing to it activities for which no evidence exists. The media article represents as fact the untruth Ukraine’s security forces “blackmail” civilians through threats and intimidation. This is a perfect example of Accusation in a Mirror,” which is common to virtually all genocides. The perpetrator of the genocide accuses the other side of the very crimes they are guilty of. This accusation is used as an excuse to perform genocidal acts against the victim - in this case Ukraine. This article would be read by the population in occupied Ukraine. Content and accusations such as this against the lawful security services in Ukraine when repeated hundreds-of-thousands of times in Russian and Russian occupier media entrenches the idea that Russia is the saviour, rather than the perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
My manager instructed me to check in on the woman who had supposedly been threatened. From the non-plussed way my manager gave me the order to call at her house, it was clear that he wasn’t questioning the veracity of the text or the method by which it had reached us. My manager had clearly fallen for the troll.
It’s worth emphasising the unusual complexity of the short text supposedly handwritten by the “Ambulance Worker.” The Ambulance Worker’s plea is addressed to an international organisation (my then employer the O.S.C.E.), yet it is delivered to that organisation by the Russian occupiers’ intelligence service in occupied Ukraine. Folklore does not care about plausibility or consistency of character. So in the case of Russian Disinfolklore. The very idea that an ambulance worker would respond to an imminent physical threat to their “common law wife” who, remember, is in a house with someone threatening to cut her into tiny pieces by ambling into the Russian occupier’s intelligence service and then writing out in neat handwriting such a plea to the O.S.C.E. does not ring true. In that, it’s perfectly folkloric.
The mesmerising web spun by such a short text which hits so many different notes is the mark of a professional Disinfolklore operation by the Russians. Note that this spiral of complications is accentuated by micro details that immediately rang untrue to me (“under age daughter”, “Right Sector,”). Russian disinformation uses ‘big bad wolves” to move the emotions of its victims - Right Sector, a civil society organisation formed in February 2014 to resist Russia’s impending invasion of Ukraine, is a perennial character, like Azov, in Russian Disinfolklore. Another aspect was the use of the “under age daughter” to hint at how Russia’s folkloric enemy - the big bad wolf from Pravy Sector - would affect the fertility of the tribe.
Then, aside from the text itself, two further interpretative layers were audible:
The editorialising of the Russian journalist writing about it (who calls Pravy Sector a “radical structure” whose members are “extremist” as if these were objective facts); and
The reporting of the Russian intelligence service’s knowledge whose source is no where stated about the purpose of the Privy Sektor’s hostage scheme - to persuade the Ambulance Worker to collect intelligence).
Clearly, the entire set-up was ridiculous. The internal coherence of the stories motivating my manager’s tasking of me was highly questionable. Ukraine was not known for hostage taking as a strategy to force normal civilians to cooperate with its security services. By contrast, there were multiple stories then, and thousands of cases since, in which Russian occupiers apply physical pressure on Ukrainians to cooperate.
As in folklore, stereotypical characters are the norm in Russian Disinfolklore. When parsing Russian (or any form of Disinfolklore), it’s important to ask: What does this stereotyping tell us? In the current case, the stereotype of the systematic torturing Russian occupier is applied to the Other - the Ukrainian “whose security forces regularly blackmail civilians through threats and intimidation.” That was simply untrue. It is a clear case of mirroring which, again, the Russian occupier stereotype and their Disinfolklore is famous for doing. Additionally, the portrayal of the Russian occupier’s security service as a passive supplicant reliant on the O.S.C.E. didn’t ring true either, especially when they were organising protests and rallies outside our offices in occupied Luhansk.
There were further aspects which made me suspicious, even then years before I would invent the Disinfolklore analytical method for parsing Russian disinformation. According to the scheme outlined would the Pravy Sector “extremist” live permanently in the house of the common law wife of the Ambulance Worker? What kind of useful intelligence could an Ambulance Worker provide that justified this threat of extreme violence? Then, from my perspective: my boss was casually asking me to knock off the door of a house where a woman was about to be chopped into tiny pieces. What was I supposed to do?
The sum of all of these elements added up to my certainty that the entire troll was an attempt to provoke my organisation into calling at the house in question. It was also an operation to embed further in the minds of the consumers of Russian occupier media inside Ukraine and Russia the idea of Ukraine as the Big Bad Wolf. Having tried to wake up my manager to my doubts, and failed, the next question was: how on earth to stop this operation which my manager is tasking me with, while not annoying my manager, or transgressing the taboo inside our organisation of stepping out of the chain of command?
TBC
