A deeper dive into the ways Russia is prosecuting its propaganda war against Ukraine reveals startling similarities with how former President Donald Trump waged his propaganda campaign regarding U.S. election integrity. Trump made no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, so it should come as no surprise that the two share the same level of contempt for facts when it comes to advancing their political goals.
Both started by introducing a lie as if it were an indisputable fact. Both leaders repeated their baseless assertions so often, joined by complicit aides and political allies, that the assertions wound up as regular topics of discussion on social media and in news broadcasts. Trump’s principal propaganda-circulation outlet was Fox News. Among his loudest cheerleaders was, and is, commentator Tucker Carlson. Putin, who has annihilated independent news coverage in his country, also relies on Carlson to advance his propaganda.
After the 2016 election, Trump established the myth that the U.S. election system was tainted with fraud — all because he couldn’t accept the fact that Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump. Even after becoming president, Trump persisted and formed a commission to investigate vote fraud. The commission disbanded after turning up nothing to substantiate Trump’s claims, but Republican state legislatures passed laws to root out fraud that didn’t exist. Before the 2020 election, Trump revived his fraud claims. His followers were so fooled that they stormed the Capitol to halt Congress’ confirmation of Joe Biden’s election.
For Putin, back in 2014, the myth was that Ukrainians were crying out to be unified with Russia. On that basis, he ordered his military to back separatists in eastern Ukraine. He seized control of Crimea, then annexed it. Now Putin is using his propaganda machine to advance the myth that Ukraine is overrun by Nazis, and that only a Russian “special operation” (invasion) can save the Ukrainian people.
Film star and Republican former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has recorded a nine-minute video, with Russian subtitles, specifically designed to debunk Putin’s propaganda. In the video, he scoffs at the de-Nazification pretext, noting that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. “A Jewish president, I might add, whose father and three brothers were all murdered by the Nazis,” Schwarzenegger says. It’s doubtful Putin’s government will allow the video to be viewed in his country.
But Carlson’s commentaries are cheered by Russian state television. In fact, Russia went so far as to hire a voice-over actor who mimics Carlson’s delivery style in a dubbed Russian version of his pro-Putin Ukraine commentaries.
Just as Carlson advanced Trump’s election-fraud propaganda, he is now helping Russia by advancing a Putin assertion that the United States helped Ukraine develop biological weapons. It’s a truly sad day when some Americans prove no better than Russians in realizing that they’re being played for fools.
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