Putin’s Goebbelism: World-made, home-used

Russians are destined to wake up to facts as shocking as those that led to the collapse of the Soviet empire in the eighties of the past century. The Soviet media machine and propaganda were not as sophisticated as they are today in Putin’s Russia; yet they projected the Soviet Union and its communist leadership as God’s kingdom and His Angels on earth. That kingdom collapsed like a cardboard box, and did not find a person to regret it, when the Soviets realized how fake, corrupt and fragile that building was. Today’s Putin’s Russia does not seem to be different other than in contextualization and media machine sophistication. Media wise, it is the embodiment of Goebbelism in projecting Putin simply as the NEW Tsar.

Putin’s media is telling Russians that he is fighting terrorists in Syria. So far, they have turned a deaf ear to the fact that Putin is killing children and bombarding hospitals in Syrian cities to protect a brutal regime that has been killing its people for five years. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians bought their leadership’s story that it was rescuing nations economically from the brutality of capitalism. The Russians found out later that they were leading a life of need and greed locally and their leadership was so corrupt.

Putin is being projected today as achieving victory and success internationally. His media is sending an implicit message that this is the revival and resurrection of superpowerhood with the West−in particular the USA−retreating before the Tsar’s march. They unfortunately have not yet realized that the West is intentionally making this space for a power-thirsty illusioned little dictator.

Today the little Tsar is being projected by his media−of course with the help of some cunning Western media outlets−as the man who has brought Erdogan to his knees, who is stealing Turkey from the US and NATO, who is fracturing any American-Iranian rapprochement and getting the Mullahs to his side. The new partners are sure to sell him at the first corner.

In Syria, Mr. Tsar’s only way to have domination is by committing war crimes. Aleppo is a case in point. And Putin’s media have not realized that Aleppo is no Grozny; there is a world out there counting the Tzar’s breaths.

Again, history is repeating itself, but in a very tragic way. The end of the Soviet Empire may sound like a joke in comparison. If the eighties witnessed ailing in the Union, our times may witness a real ailing in the heart of the Union. Firing a chief of staff and changing mayors may not solve Mr. Putin’s problem; stopping Goebbelism may.