The Potemkin Facade of the Autocracy
Before 1991, the Soviet Union for decades sold a narrative through its intelligence channels to those who would listen in the west. It was directed at the hippie and liberal movements of that time. The narrative was something along the lines of; ”We are a peaceful, socialist egalitarian society oppressed and cornered by the tyrannic war mongerers that rule your societies.”
Its a laughable suggestion especially in retrospect, but this narrative and effort was a complete intelligence success given how many it managed to persuade.
Today this narrative has changed form. Russia no longer appeals to the left in the west, the audience is now different. This time, the message spoken is ”we are a traditionalist christian society of values that puts our own people first”, and the target audience is the right wing elements of the west.
The actual facts is however, equally laughable today. Less than ten percent attend church and the divorces are off the charts even by western standards. Their religious head, Patriarch, is an oligarch that wears $30.000 dollar watches and uses church tax deductions to profit from tobacco and alcohol - while urging mothers to send their sons to die in Ukraine and who spiritually sanctions the bombing of cities.
Its a society, with a narcotics and HIV epidemic that the government does not care to track or tackle, even after it wipes out whole communities.
Its a society that sends murderers and rapists straight from prison to invade its so-called ”sibling people”.
Its a society led by people who spent half their life oppressing religious people, sending them to labor camps. People who, now, conveniently call themselves christian while stacking their own wealth while their people is increasingly impoverished by a war they - and only they - could end overnight. A war where they choose to list soldiers as Missing In Action rather than Killed In Action, so they don’t have to pay wives and mothers of dead soldiers their due compensation.
A lot of these things, the indoctrinated are well aware of. It gnaws on their mind while praising Russia as a spiritual beacon. Though invited by the rulers of the autocracy, they never move there. Its more comfortable to rant about the decadent west, enjoying the liberty of the decadent west to do so.
Deep down even the useful idiot knows hes an idiot. Fantasy land gets him excited, and Putin says cool things. Hope he rides bare chested soon again.