Propaganda paradox: Putin’s and Russia’s popularity grows in US
Vladimir Putin’s approval rating among Americans has grown, the famous public survey center Gallup has announced. According to their recent survey, 22% of Americans have a positive attitude towards the Russian President. In 2015, only 13% of Americans felt such.
Moreover, the Russian President’s popularity has grown among Republicans, only 12% of whom in 2015 had a good attitude towards the head of the Russian state. Now 32% of them do. Among independent Americans, Putin’s rating has grown from 12% to 23%. Putin’s rating has fallen only among Democrats, dropping from 15% in 2015 to 10% today.
At the same time, positive views of Russia have grown a bit. If two years ago only 24% of Americans had a positive view of our country, then now 28% of Americans do.
Of course, the vast majority of Americans still negatively relate to Russia and Putin. The rating has changed, but only slightly. Nevertheless, there is an increase. Where did it come from? It seems like Americans are facing the paradoxical effect of their own propaganda.
Over the past year, leading American media have “proven” to voters that Russia is to blame for everything. European media are not far behind them. During the campaign leading up to the referendum on Britain exiting the EU, English newspapers were flooded with articles in the likes of “Putin would love Brexit.” Such statements were obviously used to scare British voters into voting for continued EU membership. The end result, however, was the opposite.
The British voted in favor of exiting the EU. It immediately turned out that an influential part of the island’s elite had been for rejecting unified Europe, while yellow newspapers wrote that even the Queen herself had spoken in favor of Brexit, but there were no confirmations of this. But mass sentiment was clear in lower ranking publications: “let the Prime Minister be against us and the Queen secretly for us.
In the end, according to British propaganda, none other than Putin and Russia secured Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
The Americans picked up the British baton. During the US elections, Donald Trump was accuse of having secret ties with Russia. It came to the point that Hillary Clinton officially, during debates, told the future US President to his face: “You are Putin’s puppet.” Trump himself preferred to be more modest, and said that he will be known as Mr. Brexit, thus hinting at his unexpected electoral victory. And then he really did win despite the skepticism of the elites and expert communities.
Yet Trump’s administration continues to be accused of having secret ties to Russia. Recently, such accusations became the reason behind the resignation of General Flynn, the president’s assistant on national security. He was charged with committing the terrible crime of talking with the Russian ambassador. Even though there is nothing criminal in such a conversation, the general was forced to leave his post.
The search for a Russian conspiracy has now spread to Europe. The leading candidate in the French presidential elections, Macron, has asserted that Russia might interfere in the elections to be held in April. Politicians in Germany have also spoken of “Russian interference” in elections in Germany, where a key vote will take place in September 2017. The new Bundestag will be elected and the balance of forces therein will determine whether Angela Merkel will keep the office of Federal Chancellor.
But let us return to the rise of Russia’s popularity in America. Let’s imagine the American voter being told that Russia is behind all events in the world. Then it is only logical that Russia and Putin must be all-powerful. After all, they’ve been purported to have achieved (1) Brexit, (2) Trump’s election, and are about to achieve (3) the victory of a pro-Russian candidate in France and (4) the ascent to power of pro-Russian forces in Germany.
If we assume that this is all true (after all, the biggest European and American politicians and media insist on this), then it has to be recognized that the Russian global conspiracy is a powerful thing. If so, then some American voters will come to the conclusion that it would be good to be friends with this Russia – a country that secretly chooses your president is cool, Republicans and independents conclude. And Putin’s rating among them is rising.
The Western elites have played this conspiracy so much that smeared-in-black Russia is now demonstrating growing popularity. This is no surprise. Mathematics teaches us that a minus and a minus make a plus. Over the past year, Russia has been attributed so many minuses that American voters have begun to think about whether this country which is so smeared is actually bad.
Perhaps the very emergence of this thought means a serious pivot in Western public opinion. Sure, this turn is only being hinted at now, but this is only the beginning. The wrath of the “Russian world conspiracy” is gradually dissipating and Western elites are beginning to understand that they will have to answer to their constituents without citing Kremlin conspiracies.
This change in public consciousness promises political changes in its wake.
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America is a land where a corporation called “The United States of America” has fraudulently taken power. The people of America don’t believe what the corporate news media tells you they believe. Please use the correct terminology. The government is called USA, the people live in America. USA makes certain that American people never have the opportunity to express their opinion in the public media. Your comments about “America” are actually comments about the giant foreign spy congolmerate called The Mainstream Media.
“Even though there is nothing criminal in such a conversation, the general was forced to leave his post.” Apparently that is not the case. A government employee cannot represent the President to a foreign government without the approval of the President.
In regard to polls and the popularity, or lack of, of leaders, I’m personally more interested in seeing the people become more educated and critical in their thinking, period. It isn’t a case of good or evil Putin only. I never thought Putin (Boris Yeltsin’s former hit man) was a good man. I only note that in relation to much that has happened in Russian-US relations since Putin became President of Russia, Putin has the high moral ground. Basically, If you wanted to know what’s going on (and you trusted me to tell you) in Russia-US relations, I would tell you to view as fact the opposite of all that the US government propaganda organs, namely the US major media, tell people.
What is going on here is a Pogrom. A banishment of all things Russian from the West. It is pure racism and HRC should be sent to prison, with thousands of other US Establishment racists, for this racist rubbish about Russia.
The same should happen in the UK, France and Germany.
The biggest rubbish is you can only be racist agsinst people with dark skin.
Being racist against Russia is just the same as being racist against African-Americans.
But the PC brigade hot on racism are too bigoted to understand that.
Indeed, the PC brigade are happy to refer to Russians as primitives but make the same accusations against muslims and you are a racist. The center left has usurped the progressive movement and as the young appear to see progressive thinking rather more as a lifestyle choice these days in their superficiality they are unable to recognise their own manipulation, and thus do not challenge the narrative presented as fact by comprimised older (ex) progressives.
I’m sure those sailing to the colonies 200 years ago to convert the locals to christianity were also full of idealism and certain of the goodness of their mission, history sees them differently though, and the neo colonialism of our age is no different. A thin shroud of phoney humanitarianism (aided by the naive and the vainglorious) masking a crusade of land and resource grabbing .
Its sad to see how progressives have become regressives and in order to bury the self deception they simply resort to yelling at a higher pitch.
I rather suspect that the Putin approval rating will start to diminish once McMasters gets into his stride. You do realise that Trump has ceded Foreign policy to a military nutter who seem to be lauded by all sides.
What great satire
The USA is really a contradiction
Hopefully all the internal strife will mean less focus on the wider world!!
An important issue totally ignored above is that it tends to be the right in the US that respects Putin’s Russia. I suspect that this applies too here in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
I say ‘the right’ because increasingly in the west the left seems more fixated on special pleading for minority causes and that such special pleading often drives away those who might support left wing causes had not the left turned its back on the great majority of people who have no desire to change the world but simply to provide for their families.
Russia is socially conservative too. It has re-established The Russian Orthodox Church long banished by Communism. Whilst homosexuality isn’t illegal in Russia, its public expression isn’t welcomed. Contrast that position with the western media’s obsessions and its focus in Russian reporting on matters such as the pussy riot protests.
One growing thread in national and international debate is a growing disdain for social and economic liberalism and values that benefitted the rich whilst seeing increasing numbers having to rely upon food banks. It is unsurprising that that growing numbers feel let down in their aims of providing for their families and that many might feel disdain for those special pleaders who also criticise Putin’s Russia.
Sadly this is true. The twin shibboleths of the Armed Forces and the Church soak up every spare kopek in the state budget. Meantime, outside every metro station here in Moscow you’ll see pitiful grandmothers holding photographs of children for whom the beardy nutters of the Russian Orthodox Church can’t find a penny for a life-saving operation. These are the “Christian” values behind the money-making racket that is the reality of the ROC.
In Sochi, the government is banging the drum for the World Millitary Winter Games this week. The what? Which “world” nations have sent teams to his cash-gobbling fiasco? But needless to say – with no-one else in the running, the chances of Russia winning in every event remain excellent.
And if there are distraught parents and poverty-stricken grannies in Moscow… what the hell is going on in Barnaul or Norilsk? Where wages are one-quarter of Moscow’s… but food prices are exactly the same.
What a world. Every day brings a new ‘this can’t really be happening’ happening.
I believe it is incorrect to say ‘Mathematics teaches us that a minus and a minus make a plus.’
A minus added to another minus will create a greater minus value.
However, a minus multiplied by a minus does yield a positive value.
Is that not correct?
Another way of putting it is if propagandists insist on ramping-up (multiplying) multiple negative stories to the point of utter ludicrousness, this may end up creating positive ratings for the target of their propaganda.
This was classically seen in the UK during the Brexit campaign when the Remainers deployed a “campaign of fear”, trotting out one hideously negative projection or forecast after another up to polling day.
At one point, their forecasts (mostly disproved subsequently) became so dire as to become literally laughably ridiculous (literally worthy of ridicule) – something along the lines of famine, pestilence and death!
The end result of all their negativity was that they wholly undermined their own credibility – and lost the vote (which some construe positively).
In the Brexit case, a series of minuses (in propaganda terms) each designed to multiply their overall effects, eventually ratcheted-up to achieve a possibly positive outcome (depending on your perspective).
Maybe the propagandists would do well to remember Abe Lincoln’s “You can fool all of the people some of the time; some of the people all of the time; but never all of the people all of the time.”
This is especially true now that the mass media has lost its monopoly over knowledge and expertise.
Yes. I can think of few things more ludicrous than claiming that Trump could be blackmailed by videos of a sexual escapade. This is a man who can grab p*ssy and nobody would say a think. He’s going to be blackmailed over a golden shower? I think not.
The only thing approaching this level of ridiculousness was the recent Amnesty International “report” claiming that the Grand Mufti (a member of what the media says is the oppressed Sunni majority in Syria) would be signing off on the death warrants of Assad’s Alawite government.
Love the subtle satire! It just points out the lack of rationality in today’s US political scene! Only utter fools would believe one tenth of the nonsense that is being bandied about concerning Russia and President Putin! That doesn’t say much, does it about the ability to think exhibited by Americans generally?