The most terrible thing in the current story of the seizure of Crimea is the murderous, completely schizophrenic rhetoric in the style of "a deer is a horse." It would seem, why not simply say: after the revolution, Ukraine weakened. A revolution is always chaos, Russia took advantage of the chaos and grabbed Crimea from Ukraine – Crimea, conquered by the Russian Empire, populated (thanks to the deportation of the Tatars) predominantly by Russians, and which became part of the state of Ukraine 23 years ago as a result of fairly random circumstances?
But why then say, as Putin did at a press conference, that "self-defense forces" are operating in Crimea, and that they bought their military uniforms at the nearest store? And in response to a bewildered question, report that "the people who operated in Kiev" were also well-prepared because they were "trained by instructors over a long period" "in adjacent territories"?
Why tell that a deer is a horse?
Official Russian propaganda has already offered us a similar picture of the world – during the Russo-Georgian war. Then too, specially trained people talked about "two thousand killed" and genocide by the Georgians. Time passed, it turned out that there were no two thousand corpses, but instead Ossetian militias destroyed all Georgian enclaves. As then President of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity said, "we leveled everything there." And the truth is not in the middle. It is that "two thousand corpses" was Goebbels-style propaganda, intended to carry out ethnic cleansing through the hands of hot-headed thugs.
The same thing now. We are seriously being asked to believe that the Ukrainian revolution is a coup carried out by "fascist thugs" trained in "adjacent territories," and that Russian troops in Crimea are self-defense forces.
The obvious answer is that this is a lie. A deer is not a horse. A revolution took place in Ukraine, not a "seizure of power by Western-trained fascists." All the stories from Belgorod governors about "one hundred forty thousand refugees" are from the same series as "two thousand killed Ossetians." No Russians were massacred in Crimea, there were no fascist Banderites there, and no "self-defense forces" seized buildings. They were seized by Russian troops stationed in Crimea.
Why is this being done?
Alas, any destructive meme is essentially built on the principle of "A deer is a horse." Repeat it a million times and repress dissenters.
The fact is that a person who calls a deer a deer gains nothing for themselves. But if you have a group of people who live by explaining that a deer is a horse, then they become the ruling class, whose entire legitimacy is based on forcing others to believe that a deer is a horse. This is vitally important to them. Those who do not think so are their enemies. They encroach on the source of their power.
It is very important to understand that in such a case, truth is not in the middle. It's like with the Holocaust. Anti-Semites will tell you that Jews drank the blood of Christian infants, and Jews will tell about the Holocaust. So – truth is not in the middle. It is that there were no infants, and the Holocaust did happen.
Moreover, this kind of propaganda does not require plausibility. It demands loyalty. When Gao Zhao showed a deer and said, "This is a horse," he had no intention of deceiving people in a clever way. He did not saw off the deer's antlers or put plaster on its snout. He wanted to find out who was loyal to him. He wanted to cement his power base.
When Putin says about the soldiers in Crimea: "these are self-defense forces," nobody even wants to deceive anyone. Nobody even removes the license plates of Russian units from the trucks they are driving. But at the same time, all official Russian figures speak of "self-defense forces," and anyone who dares to doubt, even if they are official diplomats, is immediately accused of "escalating tension" and "aiding fascists."
And this is perhaps the most terrible outcome of the annexation of Crimea. I don't know whether Russia will come under sanctions from the weak-willed West after Crimea, or how serious they will be. But I see that after Crimea, we will face a fundamentally different level of internal unfreedom in the country. A catastrophic collapse of mental space. The cocooning of the regime.
We live more and more in a country where a great Siberian crane saves great Russia from fascists from the West. Where a deer is a horse. And anyone who disagrees is a hireling of the West.
How long can such a regime last? The answer is quite a long time, because the lumpenized majority will always be in favor. They know that a deer is a horse. After all, it was shown on TV yesterday.
Yulia LATYNINA,
«Новая газета».