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| A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine | |
| (about 7 hours later) | |
| LONDON — NORMALLY a boisterous sort, Peter Pomerantsev says he kept quiet when he found himself, at the age of 24, in a Moscow meeting room listening to 20 of the country’s top media executives discussing the news agenda for the week. | |
| Not what the news was, but what they would make it, said Mr. Pomerantsev, the author of a recent book chronicling the moral and financial corruption of modern-day Moscow and the manipulation of a Russian television industry that he later joined. | Not what the news was, but what they would make it, said Mr. Pomerantsev, the author of a recent book chronicling the moral and financial corruption of modern-day Moscow and the manipulation of a Russian television industry that he later joined. |
| He listened in amazement, he says, as a prominent news anchor reviewed the coming events as if they were part of a film script, musing on how best to entertain the audience and questioning who that week’s enemy should be. | He listened in amazement, he says, as a prominent news anchor reviewed the coming events as if they were part of a film script, musing on how best to entertain the audience and questioning who that week’s enemy should be. |
| “It was shocking,” said Mr. Pomerantsev, speaking over coffee in London last month. “They really saw television and news as a movie, and talked about it as a movie.” | “It was shocking,” said Mr. Pomerantsev, speaking over coffee in London last month. “They really saw television and news as a movie, and talked about it as a movie.” |
| That was in 2002. With the conflict in Ukraine now part of an information war, as well as a physical one, Mr. Pomerantsev’s book, “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” has particular resonance, describing a world where laws change at the whim of the powerful and where television provides an ever-present, entertaining and emotionally charged distortion of reality. | That was in 2002. With the conflict in Ukraine now part of an information war, as well as a physical one, Mr. Pomerantsev’s book, “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” has particular resonance, describing a world where laws change at the whim of the powerful and where television provides an ever-present, entertaining and emotionally charged distortion of reality. |
| Kadri Liik, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research institute, described Mr. Pomerantsev’s work as “a very valuable insider’s view” and said his reputation as an expert was growing. His account of “how crudely it is done, and the mentality of these people, confirms things you have suspected,” she added, but perhaps could not quite believe. | |
| Mr. Pomerantsev’s area of study is propaganda, and he believes he saw many classic techniques at work in Moscow. He says one favorite trick was to put a credible expert next to a neo-Nazi, juxtaposing fact with fiction so as to encourage so much cynicism that viewers believed very little. Another was to give credence to conspiracy theories — by definition difficult to rebut because their proponents are immune to reasoned debate. | Mr. Pomerantsev’s area of study is propaganda, and he believes he saw many classic techniques at work in Moscow. He says one favorite trick was to put a credible expert next to a neo-Nazi, juxtaposing fact with fiction so as to encourage so much cynicism that viewers believed very little. Another was to give credence to conspiracy theories — by definition difficult to rebut because their proponents are immune to reasoned debate. |
| “What they are basically trying to undermine is the idea of a reality-based conversation,” Mr. Pomerantsev said, “and to use the idea of a plurality of truths to feed disinformation, which in the end looks to trash the information space.” | “What they are basically trying to undermine is the idea of a reality-based conversation,” Mr. Pomerantsev said, “and to use the idea of a plurality of truths to feed disinformation, which in the end looks to trash the information space.” |
| From that perspective, Mr. Pomerantsev is not optimistic about Russia’s immediate future, which includes limping along with a ruble that has lost more than half its value and a budget that will come under increasing pressure from the collapse in oil prices. | From that perspective, Mr. Pomerantsev is not optimistic about Russia’s immediate future, which includes limping along with a ruble that has lost more than half its value and a budget that will come under increasing pressure from the collapse in oil prices. |
| He believes that the priority of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is to “keep Ukraine bubbling,” no matter the financial costs. Mr. Pomerantsev fears that the financial pressures and Western sanctions, instead of compelling Mr. Putin to change course, are likely to make Russia more closed and dictatorial. | |
| “What matters in a dictatorship is control of the security services and control of propaganda,” Mr. Pomerantsev said, predicting that there would be more arrests to compensate for the lack of economic progress. | “What matters in a dictatorship is control of the security services and control of propaganda,” Mr. Pomerantsev said, predicting that there would be more arrests to compensate for the lack of economic progress. |
| “There is nothing good about the ruble crashing,” he said. “It’s just making stuff worse in Russia.” | “There is nothing good about the ruble crashing,” he said. “It’s just making stuff worse in Russia.” |
| CURLY-HAIRED, with glasses, and wearing a vest, Mr. Pomerantsev looked at home in the Legatum Institute, a liberal, free-market research institute in London that is equipped with a basement cafe for convivial debate and a book-lined library for study. | |
| Though he grew up in West London, Mr. Pomerantsev was born in 1977 in Kiev, then part of the Soviet Union. His father, Igor Pomerantsev, is a writer, poet and broadcaster who fell afoul of the Soviet secret police, the K.G.B., for distributing works by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Nabokov. Encouraged to take the exit visas that were then sometimes available to Soviet Jews, the family left in 1978 for Vienna, later crossing into West Germany, where they claimed asylum. A couple of years later, Igor Pomerantsev was offered a job in the Russian service of the BBC World Service. | |
| Apart from a brief period in Munich, when his father moved to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Peter Pomerantsev grew up as what he calls an “accidental Brit” in London. He attended one of the country’s most prestigious fee-paying schools, Westminster (the alma mater of the current deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg), but says he has still never visited large parts of his adopted country, where he lives with his Russian-born wife and three children. | Apart from a brief period in Munich, when his father moved to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Peter Pomerantsev grew up as what he calls an “accidental Brit” in London. He attended one of the country’s most prestigious fee-paying schools, Westminster (the alma mater of the current deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg), but says he has still never visited large parts of his adopted country, where he lives with his Russian-born wife and three children. |
| At Westminster, where there was some low-grade teasing about being a Russian spy, his background generally gave him an exotic air. Though he is no Garry Kasparov, Mr. Pomerantsev’s Soviet origins were used by the school chess team to intimidate opponents. He studied English and German at Edinburgh University before being drawn by Moscow. | At Westminster, where there was some low-grade teasing about being a Russian spy, his background generally gave him an exotic air. Though he is no Garry Kasparov, Mr. Pomerantsev’s Soviet origins were used by the school chess team to intimidate opponents. He studied English and German at Edinburgh University before being drawn by Moscow. |
| At the beginning of the century the city was, he said, “full of vitality and madness and incredibly exciting” and “the place to be.” There was optimism, he said, because Russia appeared to be heading in the direction of European democracy. | At the beginning of the century the city was, he said, “full of vitality and madness and incredibly exciting” and “the place to be.” There was optimism, he said, because Russia appeared to be heading in the direction of European democracy. |
| Though he may gesticulate more than the average Briton, Mr. Pomerantsev seems and sounds English but, then again, when he speaks on the phone, he sounds Russian, too. It was not always so, he says. | Though he may gesticulate more than the average Briton, Mr. Pomerantsev seems and sounds English but, then again, when he speaks on the phone, he sounds Russian, too. It was not always so, he says. |
| When he arrived in Moscow in 2001, he had an English accent which he soon shed enough for people to think he was Estonian. With a little more time in Moscow, he says, he sounded Russian but just a little dim. “I couldn’t get the jokes and I couldn’t get all the cultural associations.” | When he arrived in Moscow in 2001, he had an English accent which he soon shed enough for people to think he was Estonian. With a little more time in Moscow, he says, he sounded Russian but just a little dim. “I couldn’t get the jokes and I couldn’t get all the cultural associations.” |
| FOR a time, at least, Mr. Pomerantsev, now 37, seems also to have been at home in the raucous world of middlebrow Russian television, making films about gold-digging women (hunting men known as “Forbeses” — as in the Forbes list of the wealthy), ruthless gangsters and sinister cults. His book is in part, he says, about the Faustian bargain made by an ambitious youngster working in Russia’s medialand of opportunity. | |
| He says his book is written in different genres, a sort of intellectual docudrama. Mr. Pomerantsev concedes that some of the dialogue he quotes is from memory, though those based around his TV films are taken from transcripts. | |
| In any event, he says his experience in Russia underlines the extent to which any new Cold War would be different from the last one, in the information arena at least. The breezy documentaries Mr. Pomerantsev worked on could hardly be more different from the dreary television output served up by the Soviet Union. | In any event, he says his experience in Russia underlines the extent to which any new Cold War would be different from the last one, in the information arena at least. The breezy documentaries Mr. Pomerantsev worked on could hardly be more different from the dreary television output served up by the Soviet Union. |
| During Mr. Putin’s first stint in the presidency, slick techniques imported from the West helped engineer a spectacular rise in his approval ratings. They are now being deployed, not just against Western policies, but against basic Western values, Mr. Pomerantsev argues. | |
| “It’s not so much an information war, but a war on information,” he said. | “It’s not so much an information war, but a war on information,” he said. |