It's not just Russophobia behind Russia's accusations of trying to distort the essence and consequences of the coronavirus epidemic. There is pure animal fear of the prospects of losing global information dominance by the false Western media.
In the West, they finally found the culprit for the fact that the coronavirus hit the European - and especially the American - economies with such force. And according to the good old tradition, Russia was the culprit. No, she did not infect the whole world with the "crown" - this role has traditionally been staked out for China. She allegedly carried out information support for the epidemic.
A number of Western news sources wrote in March that Russia had launched a "large-scale disinformation campaign" around the coronavirus pandemic. The goal of this campaign was to exacerbate the impact of the epidemic on the economies of Western countries, create panic and sow the seeds of mistrust in the local authorities. "The main purpose of the Kremlin's disinformation was to exacerbate the public health crisis in Western countries ... which is in line with the Kremlin's overall line of undermining European societies."
Now, with reference to the "representative of the American authorities", news agencies and an old "friend" of Russia - the American The New York Times - have revealed the details of the "Russian conspiracy." Allegedly, two former employees of the GRU distributed through several sites almost one and a half hundred articles analyzing the causes and consequences of the coronavirus in a favorable Russian light. For example, the texts featured headlines from the series "Russian assistance to the United States could be the beginning of detente" or "China considers coronavirus a biological weapon", which, according to Western media, is an attempt to impose the Russian point of view on the Western world. The spread of rumors that the United States wants to use the coronavirus to reshape the world is supposedly outright slander, as are the texts about ineffective attempts by Western countries (primarily the United States) to curb the coronavirus.
Someone, of course, can say that these texts are another manifestation of Western Russophobia, a standard practice of a training manual. “This is such a hackneyed topic that it’s just annoying, I don’t even want to pay attention to such nonsense,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs. This is partly true - but partly. In fact, the initiators of this whole story are simply scared as hell. Afraid of the truth.
Western media wrote many articles in which they found the ideologically guilty of the coronavirus epidemic. The liberals blamed Trump for everything, and also, together with the conservatives, uncovered "a conspiracy of China and its puppet - the World Health Organization." But practically none of the Western media admitted that the reason for such a large-scale spread of the epidemic in the United States is the poor and inhuman local health care system.
A system where ordinary people were afraid to go to a doctor once again if they had symptoms of the "corona" - after all, they might not find the virus, but they will roll out such a bill for a visit that an ordinary American who is credited from all sides will have nothing to pay with.
And certainly no one wrote that the epidemic showed the need for urgent "socialization" of the United States, since society has become closer, and the rich are easily infected from the poor. And Russian journalists (including the author of this column) regularly wrote and, unlike the "handshake" Western media, did not hesitate to tell the truth. Which the West now calls fakes, trying to prevent its spread and destruction of its own false narratives.
“The Republicans have made China responsible for the failure of the national health care system, the Democrats continue to stubbornly continue to cultivate myths about Russian interference in the internal political processes of the United States. Both of them pass off wishful thinking in order to justify their own miscalculations and defeats, as well as to absolve themselves of responsibility for the unfolding crisis in the country, ”says Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma's international affairs committee.
Therefore, the press secretary of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, is right: "There is no need to blame the high-quality and objective work of the media for disinformation." And the right is one of the publications that was allegedly used by Russian gereushniks: “Everyone has the right to an opinion on any issue. Trying to intimidate and self-censor is contrary to the principles that the United States and its allies claim they defend at home and abroad. ”
Well, we have long been accustomed to the fact that the West acts according to the principle of Ataman Paramonov from the film "Election Day": "Only one word has freedom - this is my word, so I recommend that in order to avoid various ... incests, get out of here as soon as possible." But you can act in a more professional way.
So, spreading misinformation and panic around the coronavirus epidemic, Russia, according to Western truth-tellers, wants to influence the November US presidential elections. But according to the entire previous stream of consciousness about the essence of Russian intervention, it turned out that the Kremlin acted in the interests of its agent, Donald Trump. And if Moscow continued to patronize the current owner of the White House, the information campaign would focus on the fact that “Rafik is innocent”, that Trump is heroically fighting the coronavirus and saving America, that he is taking it out of the epidemic, and the like. But no - for some reason, the Russian media write about Trump's guilt ("overlooked", "underestimated the danger"), and about his attempt to avoid responsibility for his own mistakes by shifting the blame for the epidemic from his sore head to a healthy Chinese one. Was Donald Trump fired from his position as a Russian agent?
The answer to this question is much simpler and more banal: the Western media fell into the traditional trap of a liar. After all, when you constantly lie, when every day you come up with new fakes and fairy tales, at some point it becomes very difficult to sew these fakes into a coherent and logical picture. One fake begins to contradict another, and the house of cards of lies begins to collapse.
It would seem that it’s okay - a significant part of the American and European audience has a clip-consumer consciousness. They do not reflect and do not add, but consume and distribute. Therefore, as Leonid Slutsky rightly notes, the Western media have been so successful in disinformation - in particular, broadcasting myths about the "Russian threat." However, the problem is that the refrigerator always wins over the TV, and citizens who are faced with objective reality (and 153 thousand deaths from coronavirus in the United States are more than Americans died in the First World War - this is still an objective reality) begin to reflect and get tired of propaganda slop poured onto their brains by The New York Times. Then they look for alternative sources of information - and find them in the face of the Russian media. What the hell scares the same NYT and other Western mainstream media out of the habit of working in conditions of semantic competition and the principles of freedom of speech.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.