Disinfolklore (7)
Disinfolklore (7)
Provocation Logic Cycle (a) - Disinfolklore is a new analytical method to parse disinformation.
This Provocation Logic Cycle troll trope dominates Russian Disinfolklore. Russia practises this troll constantly. Practically every time we hear Nordic Russian troll king Putin speak, he practises Provocation Logic Cycle trolling:
“They [the West] have one goal - to scatter the former Soviet Union and its main part, the Russian Federation… I don't even know if such ethnos as the Russian people can be preserved as it is today. There will be Muscovites there, Uralians and so on. It was all planned, after all. These plans are set out on paper. We just tried not to talk about it in the context of building relations for partnership reasons… Of course. we are forced to react to it.”
Note how the starting point is Russia characterised as a noble bear child who is generous, ethically disciplined, patient, and joyously persevering. Russia here is the innocent cub against whom the evil forces in the dark forest (The West) conspire, until eventually the bear cub becomes a monster. The bear cub is not to blame for any of its transgressions, as a result of the alleged treachery.
According to the “logic” of its argument, this bear-child is the victim; it is simply forced to act. It was the forces of the dark forest, according to Putin’s attempt to entrench a new historical memory in the minds of those who should know better, which broke up a passive Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, according to the Putin’s troll, has no agency in this story. They are like a child who just has history served up to them.
The fact of the matter is the Communist Party heads of the Ukrainian, Moscovy and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved the Soviet Union at Belovezhskaya Pushcha in today’s Belarus on 7th December 1991:
According to Putin’s Disinfolklore, passive U.S.S.R., like a damsel needing a hero to save her, collapsed because of an attack by the Great American wolf. This is nonsense: U.S.S.R. was always an agent of its own destiny. There were no Americans anywhere near the room when Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and Shushkevich signed the U.S.S.R.’s death warrant on 8th December, 1991.
The three men had gathered there to discuss, among other matters, how to solve the problem of the U.S.S.R. refusing to enter into winter gas supply contracts with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. The only solution they could conjure up to the urgent problem was to assert their own state’s legal personalities. Then with legal personality, they could solve the problem by entering into agreements among themselves. The Soviet authorities had overplayed their hand. That’s right: the U.S.S.R. was dissolved because of an attempt by those in charge of the U.S.S.R. to use energy to blackmail Belorussia by freezing it during the bitter cold winter. The U.S.S.R. died because of a botched negotiation by the U.S.S.R. which thought it could hold millions of its own people hostage by freezing them.
Thirty-three-years later the successor state to the Soviet Union would use the same blackmail strategy on Ukraine, on the customer for 86% of its gas sales (the European Union), and on those living in Africa and Asia who are reliant on Ukraine and Russia-grown crops to avoid starvation.
Yet, in the Disinfolklore the dictator Putin promotes in March 2023 Russia became a giant ogre, solely as a result of being provoked. If it hadn’t been for the bogey (the West), the sweet honey bear cub would still live in the paradise of the U.S.S.R. In this Disinfolklore, the West is the snake or the woman who corrupts the Garden of Eden.
“We just tried not to talk about it in the context of building relations for partnership reasons.”
Yet, we see that in 2022/2023, according to the Russian state’s chief propagandist as an economic forum in St. Petersburg, while sitting on stage with the head of the Russian State, all Russia’s “hope [for succeeding in conquering Ukraine] is pinned on famine [in Africa].”
Sitting beside the Russian dictator Putin, the chief propagandist is communicating clearly what Russia’s strategy is. The “they” Russia wants to convince to lift the sanctions imposed after the occupation of Ukraine are the West. The instrument is the starvation of those in Asia and Africa who are reliant on Ukrainian grain.
The primary provocation - and remember always that when Russia speaks of provocation, “attack” is the synonym and meaning for the term “provocation” - is starving the people reliant on Ukrainian grain. The secondary provocation is to attack the West - the “they” in the propagandist’s description of the strategy - through the medium of these starving people. As a response to this “provocation,” Russia then expects the sanctions to be lifted. Never for one second do they consider withdrawing from their illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Yet, the ever increasing circles in the provocation logic cycle provoke further circles until the entire future prosperity of the Russian state is dependent on a whirly-gig of unlikely contingencies - “Asia and Africa will starve” → “Refugees will flow to the West” —> The West will decide to respond to this refugee flow by appeasing Russia. Even within its own diabolical logic, the plan is nonsense: why would the West think that appeasing Russia in Ukraine would stimulate Russia not to continue the blackmail. And yet, this is how they think. So know this and understand it.
Despite all of the interpersonal contact since the demise of the Soviet Union and Russia’s leadership, they seem to have no idea how western policy works. Their view of the westerner - the west’s political leadership will emotionally cave into this plan, even after Russia has spoken about it publicly - is almost comically absurd. Apart from everything else, after Russia broke every international legal commitment to the world community, somehow the world community will accept the idea that if it caves into blackmail, Russia will miraculously stop starving Africa and Asia.
It puts all the agency on the West, with one sole purpose: in order to disown its own agency and responsible for the activity and consequences of genocide in Ukraine. The is the Provocation Cycle Logic routine which is at the root of Russia’s leaderships interpersonal relationships (the micro) and at the heart of its philosophy on how to succeed in geo politics (the macro).
If the plan sounds bonkers, don’t blame me. This is how actual Russian state policy is communicated to the world. The point here though is that this resort to blackmail and intimidation is a continuation of exactly the same policy that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Yet, Putin blames the West on conspiring against the Soviet Union and Russia. This is how I summed up the essence of the Provocation Logic Cycle routine in July 2022 to my millions of readers on Twitter:
@DecodingTrolls • Jul 21, 2022
1/ Hostage-taking, ultimatum-manufacturing, grievance-forging, victim-blaming & provocations - a
tl;dr Terrorists, Muscovy & its agents of death NEVER blame themselves for their own funks. Yet, ironically, Muscovy is ALWAYS to blame.
Understand structure of these trolls!
“Understand the structure of these trolls” is indeed the purpose of Disinfolklore! To inoculate us against the power of the Provocation Logic Cycle mental routine, it’s best to learn to recognise it. Many of us use emotional blackmail in our own lives. Our pet cats, for example, are very fluent in ways to provoke guilt and exercise control over how much food we give to them, or when we wake up in the morning. Yet, when it comes to geopolitics and the tens-of-millions of lives which Russia upended in Ukraine, it’s crucial we learn to understand in real time, how their thinking works. So we can guard against being manipulated by it.
We’ll see again and again through Disinfolklore, how, as in folk-tales, characters have no memory of previous goings on. Stereotypical characters often serve a one dimensional function and, unlike in great novels, poems or films, there are few contradictions in the character that serve to provoke in its audience the idea that the fictional actor is like a real person. Here both Russia and the character Putin seem to have no memory of how the U.S.S.R. actually ended. They have no memory of how the failure of their blackmail led to the collapse of what they say they hold most dear. Like any simple criminal they will try the same failed strategy again and again, on the off-chance that just once it will succeed and they’ll score the jackpot.
In Russian Disinfolklore and in actual Russian geo-politics the same morally and legally outrageous policies are practised in every generation. The idea of starving Ukrainians into submission was implemented in the 1930s - it failed. Ukrainian culture survived. Freezing Belarussia, then one of its constituent parts, into submission failed so badly in 1991 it provoked the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Now, in 2022 / 2023 a similarly madcap plan is hatched and in it, rather than felicity on the battlefield, resides “All” Russia’s hope of winning.
There is absolutely no learning here from mistakes. The character Putin and Russia portray does not evolve, as in, say, a bildungsroman - a more rarefied version of the perennial folkloric tale in which the village dunce goes forth on lots of episodic adventures before coming into a state of at least a modicum of wisdom. Instead of this kind of character development, in Russian Disinfolklore, we have a stubborn commitment to trying the same failed strategy again and again.
Starvation, genocide, freezing, madcap plans, and at the end of each episode Russia has lost. It's more miserable than it was at the beginning. Russia embodies a morality tale that's so unbelievable if it didn't exist it would be impossible for any artist with integrity to invent. Yet, Russia, Putin and those who represent it, stubbornly invest all their nihilistic “hope” in each successive episode into the same failed strategies. Like the folkloric dunce or Parzival in the first Grail tale, Putin sets off each morning with no lessons learned from the previous day's failures.
But, this is not the only reason why Putin’s Grievance Mining / whinging / moaning “we were provoked to commit genocide in Ukraine” is wrong.
Ukraine’s first president (the same man who signed the U.S.S.R.’s death warrant above) attests here in an interview in 2020. The Russian Federation’s first president (and former head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic) Boris Yeltsin explained the Russian Federation’s perspective on Ukraine to Kravchuk in the 1990s:
"As the president of independent Ukraine, I have met with Boris Yeltsin more than once. In one of the conversations he told me: "Leonid Makarovich, I want to show you a draft of one document." This project - as I remember now - was called "Fundamentals of Russian Foreign Policy." And there, in one of the starting points, it was listed: Ukraine was, is and will be in the system of Russia's strategic interests. The document was submitted to a vote in the State Duma and adopted as the basis of Russian policy. This means that Russia does not see Ukraine in any other role than as its own province. The alternative is the destruction of Ukraine as a state...”
Yet, the Provocation Logic Cycle troll doesn't work on the level of facts. It trolls emotions. It is an emotionally resonant sequence of cognitive moves that disconcerts. It confuses. Some personality inventories among the self-identifying “left” are anti-American, “anti-imperialist” (who isn’t?!) and “anti-war” (again, who isn’t?!). This combination of campaign priorities makes what sometimes called “Tankies” susceptible to targeted Russian Disinfolklore-communicated meanings, like when troll king Putin says: “America provoked the collapse of the Soviet Union. America provoked the Russian Federation’s genocide of Ukrainians.”
We know rationally (and legally) that the crime of genocide, like crimes passionelles, is inexcusable. The right to life is inalienable. The UN Charter guarantees territorial integrity. Ukraine as a state signed the UN Charter in 1945:
Putin himself signed a treaty with Ukraine in 2003 agreeing the borders between the two states in granular detail:
That even if Ukraine was more corrupt than, say, America or Germany or Russia or England, that would still not be a valid excuse for Russia to kill one-hundred-thousand native Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Mariupol over the space of six weeks after February 24th, 2022.
We get that killing the very Ukrainians you claim to be protecting makes no rational sense according to the reasons Putin gives for doing it. Yet, we hear again and again how even extremely bright, honourable and highly educated international lawyers fall for the Provocation Cycle Logic troll.
Amnesty International ruined its brand with the following false statement (and its incapacity as an institution to quickly recognise that it had been trolled by Russian Disinfolklore and its Provocation Logic Cycle troll trope):
Amnesty International
Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm's way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas.
As I point out below, in accusing Ukraine of purposely trying to “provoke” Russia to fire at “populated residential areas” Ukraine’s forces are supposedly occupying in order to provoke Russia to kill civilians, Amnesty compounds the nonsense by implying Ukraine is to blame if Russia reacts genocidally to this provocation.
Amnesty’s position mirrors Russia’s own bogus Provocation Cycle “Accusation in a Mirror” Disinfolklore logic.
If Ukraine can’t defend “populated residential areas” as Amnesty’s misrepresentation of the laws of war suggests, then how can it exercise its UN Charter guaranteed “inherent right to self-defence”?! The position in international law does not support the assertion in Amnesty’s brand-destroying accusation: Ukraine is entitled to exercise its UN Charter guaranteed right to defend itself, within the Laws of War, in urban areas or in non-urban areas.
Once you learn to identify the Provocation Logic Cycle troll, it won’t be necessary to understand anything about the underlying issue. You will feel your emotions being purposefully engaged in pursuit of an untenable position (in Amnesty’s case, it should have noticed that it was blaming Ukraine for Russia’s own sovereign decision to bomb Ukrainian schools).
That said, in the case of Russia’s approach to Ukraine schools, I have gathered together at least thirty examples of lore from the first year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that ought to have given Amnesty pause for thought:
It's worth noting too that after the unfortunate Amnesty Tweet that blamed Ukraine for its own genocide, I and many others wrote in detail to Amnesty. I pointed out that it had fallen into a Russian Provocation Logic Cycle troll in the wrong position in the cycle. The proper position to take is the beginning, where Russia unlawfully occupies Ukraine in early 2014: this is the primary “attack” or provocation. That sets off the UN Charter guaranteed right of Ukraine to defend itself. Any accusation that Ukraine is “provoking” Russia after that moment time is a manifestation of that accuser falling for Russia’s Provocation Logic Cycle trolling. I suggested how, as an organisation with certain governance arrangements, Amnesty might escape from the fall out, and fall into the correct point in the Provocation Logic Cycle - the point consistent with the position in international law whereby Ukraine has an inherent right to defend itself, within the constraints of the laws of war. And the Laws of War do not preclude Ukraine from defending urban areas in which civilians live. In fact, defending areas in which civilians live is precisely the nature of self-defence.
As far as I am aware Amnesty never recanted. And the only Amnesty employees who left their jobs were its Ukrainian staff members who, like me, had pointed out the error.
The wider point here for all Counter-Disinfolklorists is do your best to understand and politely enlighten victims of malign Disinfolklore operations.
Yet, as the old saw goes, it’s easier to troll someone’s emotions, than it is to convince someone they’ve been manipulated. As I have discovered with my online advocacy for human rights, there is a huge market of people who want to understand better when they are being trolled. Focus on helping them, and leave the Amnesty’s of the world behind, after you have tried and decide no more can be done to elucidate their ignorance.
The second wider point of general importance to all Disinfolklore and Counter Disinfolklore Operations is that anyone at any time can be trolled. It’s remarkable that Amnesty, an organisation that has been working on genocide cases and is replete with international lawyers, should make such a fundamental error in law, in fact, and in terms of brand destruction. It’s unfortunate that after this was pointed out to Amnesty its deficient governance structures prevented its many national committees dealing with those responsible for the mistake over Ukraine.
However, the lesson here is that no matter how fluent we are in Disinfolklore and Counter Disinfolklore, we will often be trolled successfully. By keeping alert, erecting incoming troll radars and relishing opportunities to improve our real-time capabilities to detect and deal with emotionally-resonant manipulations, we can always improve. It’s a life-times work. And any moment you hear yourself (or someone else) describe how they are impossible to troll, watch closely as soon they will will fall for a troll. Pride comes before a fall, and all that.
Accusation in a Mirror is common to virtually all genocides: the perpetrator (Russia, or Amnesty on behalf of Russia) blames the victim for bringing the genocide upon them by blaming the victim for the very crimes the perpetrator is planning / executing against them.
Genocide is the logical conclusion of lazily, uncritically accepting the Provocation Logic Cycle trolling trope in any area of our lives.
Getting our heads around the Provocation Logic Cycle in all of its guises will be a key weapon we will use in Disinfolklore. So we’ll come back to it again.
For now, though, let’s set it out in its two simplest forms - the “Blame the Victim” logic, and the “Neutralise the Bystander” logic. Both work on the micro (interpersonal) and the macro (geopolitical) scale:
“Blame the Victim” Provocation Troll
A accuses B of provoking A (by, say, using a school as a military barracks).
A then surrenders to the supposed provocation. A bombs the school.
A is NOT to blame. B is to blame, because B provoked A.
And yet, often, the only evidence we have that B provoked A is A’s testimony. And, nothing in the world - no amount of (real or alleged) provocation is a moral of legal justification for aggression, genocide, or transgressing the laws of war. Here’s another form of the same routine:
“Neutralise the Bystander” Provocation Troll
A says B is a Nazi (B is NOT a Nazi. A’s accusation is a troll to provoke bystanders into paralysis, confusion, and effective neutrality. A is Clearing The Decks.)
A attacks B while telling C: “I’m attacking B because B is a Nazi.”
C stands by and does not intervene.
In Putin’s case, he alleges a plan “on paper” to destroy the Russian Federation and to eliminate the “Russian ethnos” (sic).
Russian Federation reacts to this provocation by killing hundreds-of-thousands of native Russian-language speaking Ukrainians and self-demilitarising. Again, aside from the facts of the matter which do not support Putin’s assertions (which are employed to troll and stoke the emotions (fears) of Russians), the idea that such a plan justifies the reaction of killing hundreds-of-thousands of Ukrainians is ridiculous.
It’s even more bizarre when you consider that Putin accuses the West of plotting the demise of the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union reacts to this provocation by dissolving itself.
Now, Putin is accusing the West of plotting the demise of the USSR’s successor state - the Russian Federation. And despite recognising this as a trolling provocation, Putin the genius expert Nordic Russian troll, with all three eyes wide open, walks into the bear trap.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde:
'To lose one empire [the Soviet Union], Mr. Putin, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both [Russian Federation] looks like carelessness.'
Even within the bounds of his own Provocation Cycle Logic Putin is to blame here. Imagine allowing oneself to be baited into invading Ukraine with a substandard army that Ukraine is destroying.
