Divide and Weaken
The strategy behind Russian disinformation
"Disinformation" by nidhug is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The origins of the Sharpen Your Axe project lie halfway through the decade of the 2010s when social media was taking over the world. At the time, the platforms were barely moderated and their algorithms often amplified extremist views. As a professional news reporter with fact-checking skills, I was horrified to see some of the material my friends were sharing. As a result, I got into many sterile social media debates, which didn’t convince anyone of anything much.
My friend Luke told me about cognitive dissonance and helped me see why arguing with people on social media was so pointless. I decided to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new approach. I ended up putting my head down for several years while writing the beta version of a book in my spare time. The theme was how to develop a personal methodology for reading the news. You can read the book for free here. Chapters 6 and 7 take a deep look at Russian disinformation techniques, while chapter 13 is also pertinent.
During my research, I came to see that the best way to understand Vladimir Putin’s approach to disinformation and propaganda is to zoom out and look at the big picture. Putin has two main goals. The first is to create a Mafia state; and the second is to improve Russia’s position compared to the West.
It is important to realize that both goals are contradictory. There is a principal-agent problem at the core of the strategy. The best way of improving Russia’s position compared to the West would be to implement institutionalism, take the brakes off permissionless innovation and grow the economy as fast as possible. By insisting on a gangster state, with an extractive economy, Russia will never be able to overtake tech-based economies operating under democratic rules in Europe and North America.
Putin has found a patch in neo-Euroasianism, an eccentric and expansionist form of Russian nationalism. One of the core ideas is to measure Russia’s relative position to the West as a whole. The trick consists in finding fringe voices that threaten or question Western unity and then amplifying them through state-controlled media channels like RT, with the support of an army of bots on social media.
For example, Russian channels appear to have openly supported Brexit in 2016, although the UK failed to hold a full enquiry afterwards. The idea from Putin’s perspective is simple: Both the European Union (EU) and the UK would be weakened by a British exit from the European political and economic union. This would improve Russia’s relative position to both a smaller EU and a more provincial UK.
Russian channels have then supported the breakup of the UK, which would further weaken the former member of the EU. For example, Scottish nationalist Alex Salmond hosted a talk show on RT until the invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, US reality TV star Donald Trump began describing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “obsolete” as far back as March 2016 (a message that no doubt resonated with Putin) and continued to slam NATO throughout his unconventional presidential campain. Of course, Trump won a surprise Electoral College victory eight months later. Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation later concluded that there had been “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference in the campaign on his behalf.
I have already mentioned my experience battling an army of Russian-funded bots in 2017 when I fact-checked some of the narratives spread by separatists in Catalonia, where I live. It is interesting to note that shrill but weak accusations of fascism were a core part of the separatist attempt to break up Spain, which Putin no doubt saw as a way of further weakening the EU. Putin later deployed the same weak narrative about fascism to justify his invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s propaganda channels haven’t just promoted right-wing tribalized politics in the West. They have also amplified fringe voices on the left who have questioned tough anti-Russian policies. Democrat Tulsi Gabbard is one prominent example. Russian-American national Elena Branson was indicted recently for lobbying for pro-Kremlin policies without registering as a foreign agent. She had donated money to Gabbard’s dark-horse presidential campaign.
Looking at the big-picture strategy reveals it to be fairly basic and unsophisticated. Even so, it can be surprisingly convincing to some. RT and other channels cultivate an audience by feeding people in the West anti-globalist narratives and conspiracy theories. The key element that makes everything hold together is spreading distrust about the news media. Of course, when people stop trusting fact-checkers you can sell them anything you like, as long as it resonates with their emotions and intuitions about the world.
Russian propaganda has very little commitment to consistency. The channels throw a lot of narratives out there and sees which ones gain traction. They then amplify the successful narratives as much as possible, even if they contradict other successful narratives. The central idea is to promote a distrustful attitude that disdains expertise and is uninterested in any connection between our opinions and the world outside our heads.
In launching a shocking and brutal invasion of Ukraine, it appears that Putin has miscalculated. He appears to have over-estimated the power of his propaganda channels; or the influence of the fringe voices he has promoted. The West has reacted with a rare show of unity in promoting extremely tough sanctions, arming the Ukrainians and cracking down on Russian propaganda - a result he appears not to have expected. See you next week!
Further reading
The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model, by Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, by Peter Pomerantsev
Donate to the the International Federation of Journalists’ Safety Fund for Journalists in Ukraine
Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the first-anniversary post, which includes links to a free book.
Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.