I have the displeasure of living in SSpain :spain-cool:, and in Europe we’re submerged in Russophobic propaganda that even permeates the language, so much so that in Spain the idiom for drinking a lot of alcohol is “beber como un Cosaco” (to drink like a Kossack). A lot of this stems from anticommunism, from the Jewish-Bolshevism conspiracy of fascist propaganda, from cold-war era bullshit, and now from western imperialism against Russia. This Russophobia and hatred of everything Russian is a powerful weapon of propaganda of western imperialism, and it should be denied and fought against without a doubt.
At the same time, the historical roots of Russian nationalism are those of a repressive form of nationalism (Russian Empire). Lenin himself called the Russian Empire the prison of peoples, meaning the oppressed nations under the Russian centralist yoke, and Russian being the majority ethnicity in Russia leads to modern capitalist Russia to engage in Russocentric policies that harm minority ethnicities in the country. Within Russia, Russian nationalism is definitely used by right wing nationalists and by the state as a cudgel against progressiveness, ethnic and cultural minorities, and is linked to the traditional “family” to socially oppress LGBTQ and women.
The Russophobia of the west funnily enough empowers this, because Russians see their culture and their history denigrated mostly through racism and propagandistic and revisionism, and this only gives arguments to the Russian nationalists. Additionally, the contributions of all other ethnicities of the former USSR are erased by both sides, such as the millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Maris, Tajiks and a myriad of other ethnicities who fought and won against the Nazi monster and furthered the creation of a fairer and more moral society. All of those get lumped under the label “Russian” when anticommunism rears its head.
So the question is: how do we simultaneously criticise the pervasive Russophobia in the west without defaulting to Russian Nationalism? What form should our arguments and propaganda take, and how do we go about this?
You’re right that it doesn’t default to this and I phrased incorrectly. My point is more about the propaganda angle and how to maintain a revolutionary defeatist stance and anti Russophobia without being perceived as being pro-Putin with regards to Russian internal politics.
You’re going to get perceived as “pro-Putin” no matter what you do, especially when criticizing NATO and US imperialism. There’s no point in trying to gain the acceptance of the liberal centre
There’s no point trying to refine propaganda?
You said
There’s not going to be such a “propaganda angle”, even american nationalists/realists such as Mearsheimer that are critical of NATO expansion and US military adventures are constantly slammed as sino-russian propagandists. Do you think the political establishment will be gentle enough to extend acceptability to actual, radical communists?
I don’t have a problem with refining arguments and propaganda itself, but your assumption that you can just not be perceived as pro-Putin is just wrong
you cannot refine propaganda in a way that it wont be labelled pro-russia / pro-putin / communist. our opponents dont operate on logic or nuance.
that is not up to you how you are perceived. (eg. you will be labelled communist for supporting even the most socdem policies). on propaganda, i think in the imperial core we should focus on criticizing our own structures (EU, NATO etc.) and how these impede national sovereignty for the global majority. it was western capitalism that robbed russia+former USSR in the 1990s, and modern Russian policy is a social/political reaction to that. it is a country that is trying to preserve what little industry/resources/population it has. does it mean that it is doing a great job at it? perhaps not. but do we have the right to judge from the imperial core couch? definitely no. i have a similar stance to Iranian policies. (advocating for Iran’s right to sovereignty is not automatically pro every single anti communist, pro veiling law that they have, right?)
Don’t let Liberal “perceptions” of you and optics arguments enter your thinking at all, it’s self-hedging and self-defeating. Stand up for your principles. Be clear and straightforward with your logic. Mealy-mouthed half answers convince nobody, people smell the stink of loser.
You can see I didn’t flinch in my arguments against western imperialism or Russophobia. I’m not arguing for changing our ideology, propaganda is important though.
If you soft peddle rhetoric to protect the feelings of social chauvinists you’re going to get a social chauvinist movement. To adulterate your messaging in order to appeal to current public opinion instead of the principled and correct position is tailism, and despite being morally repugnant and a rot upon socialism, it also has never worked and is a strategic dead end. The masses don’t need more ideological confusion and incoherency and hedging, they need simple, straightfoward principles that appeal to their sense of justice and their underlying class interests. They need to reach towards the true consciousness, not towards another false one.
You can have different strategies on what aspects to emphasize and de-emphasize in your propaganda, but that does not mean adulterating or changing your underlying positions, being dishonest or hiding your views.