O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!
This is a picture of Joseph Goebbels one of Adolf Hitler’s close associates and the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.
He was also was known for his skills in public speaking and his virulent antisemitism. He fomented the anti-Semitism, that forced Jewish artists, musicians, actors, directors and newspaper and magazine editors into unemployment, and staged a public burning of books considered ”un-German”. Because of Gobbels’ antisemitic propaganda, otherwise decent German people were blinded to what became the “Holocaust
This morning Ukrainian security officials said they faked the death of dissident Russian journalist, Arkady Babchenko, in an effort to catch people they say were involved in a Russian plot to kill him.
This is video of what we are told is Babchenko describing the ruse and thanking Ukrainian officials for “saving his life”.
While we can all agree the rationale for Goebbel’s lies and those of the the Security Services of Ukraine (a.k.a. Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service ) and Babchenko are not even comparable, the fact remains their technique is fundamentally no different. They’re both lies told by the government to advance what the government views as a righteous cause.
What the Ukrainians may not understand is that their lie may have severely damaged their credibility with news services, not to mention their own public for years to come. For that matter how is anyone to believe there was even a real threat to Mr Babchenko. Why should news services and the public not conclude that Ukrainian security services made up the story of a threat to Babchenko simply to discredit the Russians whom they despise for forcibly annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
The tenuous nature of Ukraine’s credibility was immediately on display when a journalist asked about the inquiry into the murder of Pavel Sheremet, an investigative journalist killed in a car bombing in 2016. Journalists have accused Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service of stymieing the investigation. “Please, we have a different topic today,” the government official responded.
There will be no “please” about it when it comes to announcements from Ukraine’s government. The lack of pleasantries will come from news agencies around the world. This is CNN’s original report on the killing of Babchenko
which CNN has since been forced to correct. The is the BBC’s report on the killing of Babchenko
I suspect neither CNN or the BBC will be able to give the government of Ukraine or it’s security services much trust the next time they have an announcement to make.
It’s been a long road for Ukraine to travel from a Soviet satellite to today’s representative government made-up of 450 electoral districts, each one of which sends one member to Ukraine’s Parliament.
Parliamentary forms of government, like Ukraine’s, depend on free and open elections which depend on a free press that can provide information to a public that must choose among candidates for membership to parliament. In contrast autocratic forms of government like Russia’s, China’s and the former Soviet Union’s rely on control of the press so that information made available to the public can be filtered to favor the autocrats. That information can be used to describe fake industrial production statistics like Soviet regimes thought they needed to reinforce the communist ideology, ( e.g. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” ) . It can also be used to maintain a cult worship like that created by Mao Zedong and the cult Donald Trump is trying to create.
No one is suggesting that Ukraine Security Services are becoming a Goebbels propaganda machine but without knowing it, Ukraine Security Services may have completely dislocated the type of press that will be covering Ukraine political events from now on. They will no longer be a trusting press, comfortable reporting what they are told. They’ll now need to assume much more of an adversarial role and question everything they’re told by the government even individual members of Parliament. That would be a tragic outcome for an event that was ostensibly intended to save a human life.
