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I took a LIBERAL, ANTI WAR Protester to see the truth in Donbass, and THIS Happened!
(H/T to Der in Lifeboat News)
cimarrón
thank you for sharing this video.
I’ve no doubt this girl Maria is sincere and she is quite open. She described her feelings in detail and it’s exactly what I myself was feeling. She even said about a magic cover to save these people, in my case I was imagining an angel may come down and spread the wings over Donbas.
I shared this link on my social media. If I’m allowed to translate some comments under the video on YouTube. I hope that translating public comments does not violate any rules.HoperRoys
I am German and I use a translator. I am ashamed of my German government. I am ashamed of the coverage and lies that our media and government are spreading about Russia. Germany vowed never to take part in a war again. All politicians broke their word. All politicians are dragging Germany into the war. Something that no citizen of this country wants.zolotaya arishka
I live in Donetsk, thank you Maria!!! I watch and cry. We ourselves almost believed that we deserve to be destroyed just because we are Russians!!! Lord, please let as many people as possible know the truth. In Europe, they are worried that they have high inflation, but for us it is simply ridiculous. We have been without water for a very long time and partly without electricity, not all houses are heated, our children are dying every day. NATO weapons have killed thousands of civilians. Please take all the Nazis of Ukraine home to Europe and you will understand that these are terrible people who are ready to eat people (in the literal sense), shoot children in the back, burn people alive … You raised a monster in the form of Nazism, so pray that the Russians will destroy them on our land, otherwise they will come to you!!!Alexander Ruskovski
Masha, I am Bulgarian. What they did to the Russians in Ukraine was rehearsed in the Balkans. Bulgaria has Macedonia, Russia has Ukraine. Well, in Macedonia it has already been done. Two generations have passed. Now for the Macedonians – the Bulgarians are some kind of ancestors of the Tatars, although they are true Slavs. We have common grandparents. Russians simply must not allow the same.Igor Shamatrin
I, as a resident of Crimea, do not need explanations on what’s happening, for many years I have seen how Ukraine is degrading. And Russia, no matter what, still helps Ukraine. I have seen multiple NATO landings on the Crimean coast. For some reason, this was not discussed in Russia, or very little was said about it. Therefore, it is not surprising that this woman believed the West, and not Russia. Crimeans don’t need any explanation, everything passed right before their eyes.Olga Vinogradova
It’s funny. A foreign journalist opens the eyes of a Russian liberal. This world has gone crazy!An A
When I visited Instagram on February 24, I was horrified by the hysteria that arose there with all these slogans “no war” and “I’m ashamed to be Russian.” I entered into a dialogue with some authors, and as it turned out, many of them not only don’t know about the events of 2014, but don’t know about the existence of Donbass in principle. They were just worried about their well-being, but the war: they would not be able to buy clothes, go abroad to rest, etc. These are unlikely to ask questions like the girl in the video. I hope they still dumped abroad and forever.
I believe that the West must pay a heavy price for lies and propaganda.Eugenia Varban
Thanks to John and Maria for the interview) Of course, it’s hard to read the credits – although I already know everything without words! I myself am from the Donetsk Republic, but I had to leave for Russia back in 2014. At first, I could not get used to the fact that the Russians were not very worried about what was happening in our Donbass. And often there were those who said – “Why did you come here in large numbers, we ourselves do not have enough work,” although it was more difficult to find work with an average salary of 25-30 thousand, with a higher one, but it is possible! It was insulting to tears – and most importantly, I could not explain to people why this happened with us, and that the same thing could happen in Russia – God forbid! That they should pray to V, V, Putin – he did not allow the country to fall apart, and on all fronts he defends the interests of our Great Russia! Any country has its own history – it has both good and bad pages, but for some reason they demand repentance from our country! Russia did not start a single war – it only ended them !!! May God give us the strength to end this war!!! AmenOxana Oxy
I lost two of my friends this way. They also told me that Russia should not interfere in the conflict of another country. They told me – they kill in the Donbass and Odessa, they kill the Russian-speaking population – these are their problems, let them kill. “This should not concern us”, “my hut is on the ourskirts”* is a well-known saying. These people are most worried that because of the sanctions they cannot buy new Adidas sneakers and pay with Apple watches in the store. I no longer communicate with these people and do not regret it.—
* my hut is on the outskirts – is the Russian idiom, referring to a person living somwhere in the distance from supposed events, so they can give no evidence. Relevant English idiom may be ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’
Tatyana,
Yes, Maria communicates well, doesn’t she. I had thought about linking to this post from the current main thread, seeing that there are some hard-nosed commenters there who think they know it all; but I do not enjoy contact with them and, in any case, I think they prefer to keep their minds closed.This was very eye-opening. I didn’t realize how much pro Western propaganda was disseminated within Russia.
‘Maria’ presents well. But who is she? Who produced this video?
Establishing the credibility and bios of the participants is crucial to placing a value on the integrity of what we have been presented with.I watched the video through twice, I and am not overwhelmed by what I have been presented with.
Despite it ticking nearly all of my ‘confirmation bias’ boxes, I cannot remove it from the pile of ‘possibly sexed up documents’.The Russian flag on the flack jacket of a person unloading the van of food near the end of the movie caught my attention…_
“Who produced this video?” John Mark Dougan who has a channel on YT. I’d not come across him before this video was posted here. He has a video posted detailing a trip to Svyetagorsk to deliver some food and supplies from which the footage of the guy unloading food is taken. In it all these people are introduced it would seem as security escort, a representative from Donetsk people’s republic and a priest.. John Mark Dougan has some interesting history.
ET,
OK, a name,”John Mark Dougan” who he?Your link has this gem… “During the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, Dougan falsely claimed to have played a role in the leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign” ……ever heard of Roger Stone?
Sorry, I see nothing so far that passes the smell test…_
DiggerUK, I am just sharing what I found, I’m not giving the guy a character reference.
ET,
I think it would be akin to giving Christopher Steele a character reference. Thanks…_Digger UK
The EverybodysWiki link says
“falsely claimed to have played a role in the leak of emails”
and it has a source link #8 which goes to the Daily Beast article by Kevin Poulsen, Senior National Security Correspondent.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fugitive-cop-says-hes-behind-the-dnc-leaks-its-his-latest-hoaxThe article says:
“In the early morning of March 14, 2016, the hunt for a Russian hacker brought FBI agents to a condominium complex in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida…
“…In truth, there was no Russian hacker—and there were no hacks. Instead, The Daily Beast has learned exactly how Dougan used public information and sophisticated data analytics to blow holes in Florida’s address confidentiality system without cracking a single network.”I thinks the word ‘false’ refers to the word ‘hack’, which allows to call Mr. Dougan maybe a boaster, but doesn’t allow to call him a liar.
That Daily Beast article is an engrossing read. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but already some interesting passages stand out:
Dougan mastered the dark art of fake news
There are rules to making good fake news, Dougan learned. Rule one: Keep the domain names short and official-looking; nobody trusts a website with a long, silly address. Rule two: Set up an RSS aggregator to continuously pull and post stories from authentic news outlets. “A fake-news site is nothing without real news,” he wrote recently. “There must be real news with real photos on the front of the site so the fake story blends in and becomes believable.”
Hmmmm
Her full name is Maria (Masha) Lelyanova. She just happens to be Dougan’s translator and girlfriend. Make of that what you will.
Dawg
No doubt you’ve read the paragraph which goes before the one you quote
“He kept going, slathering layers of disinformation over his citizen journalism. PBSOtalk hosted countless false accusations about Bradshaw and other PBSO brass, some of them vile, and at one point a fake pedophilia confession appeared under the fraudulent byline of a top department official”🙂 reminds me of Hunter Biden’s laptop story.
I wondered what does pedophilia stands for?
“Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who faced withering criticism for granting the pervy financier the privileges…
… During his 13-month stay at the jail, Epstein’s driver would pick him and a guard up in the morning and he would spend the day working and meeting with visitors, before returning to the jail for the night.
Epstein also was allowed to visit his Palm Beach mansion, despite restrictions on home visits.”
https://nypost.com/2019/12/17/florida-sheriff-ends-work-release-program-that-let-jeffrey-epstein-visit-office-during-prison-lockup/By the way, anybody knows what was the position of the Daily Beast on Hunter Biden’s laptop story? Did they do some investigative journalism, or just dismissed it as fake news and Russian disinformation? I mean, is the Daily Beast a trusted source, or another government-sponsored media?
tatyana, the Daily Beast is pure government anti Russia propaganda. it’s one of the worst sites. they dismissed the laptop story as Russian disinfo.
Pretzelattack
Thank you. I recall I had a close look at that media, when they attacked Gonzalo Lira. Guys of Daily Beast called up Ukrainian security service and literary said “do you know a guy is living in Kharkiv, filming the war, posting his videos on YouTube? You may be interested to get him”
To me it’s the bottom of hypocrisy, to call them journalists. A bunch of bad greedy folks ready to sell for money literally all of ideals they were supposed to keep toNice deflection, Tatyana! Let’s talk about the beastly laptop story (and the popular misconception about it) on another thread created especially for that purpose. Your Socratic questioning (and feigned ignorance) about an unrelated story brings to mind the “poisoning the well” fallacy.
For now, let’s return to the topic of this thread: i.e. Dougan’s dubious reportage, covering up his relationship to the woman he interviewed, as well as his long (self-confessed) history of publishing disinformation.
Masha’s heartfelt testimony in the video was that (a) that her preconceptions were formed by a predominant narrative within Russia that Putin’s war is brutal and unjustified (which she suggests is why so many thousands of Russian fighting-age men fled the country to avoid the draft), and (b) that what she observed at those sites she was driven to is not consistent with that anti-Russian narrative.
I didn’t know that the Russian media is telling the Russian public that the war is brutal and unjustified. I certainly didn’t get that impression from Russian or Western media, and I seem to recall you suggesting that popular opinion was firmly in support of the war. I’ve witnessed examples of highly distorted Russian propaganda, some of which has been discussed here over the last year. Dougan even disputes her claim in a different video, arguing that the men leaving the country are just cowards. So what’s the truth of the matter? Is the media in Russia mostly arguing against the war, or not? It would useful to know.
Masha emotes that she bore witness to scenes that she believes are inconsistent with the anti-Russian narrative. Maybe so. If we take it on face value that she was driven to those sites to see the evidence for herself, there is still an obvious weakness: the selection of sites was deliberately biased towards the counter-narrative. So in essence, her interview is equivalent to a Patrick Lancaster propaganda video (except with a prettier face and nicer tits – for people who like that sort of thing). Are such scenes representative of the frontline throughout Eastern Ukraine? Well, that stretch of evidence has to be taken on trust. For the moment, I’m reserving judgement.
Dawg
Thank you for your opinion. I respect your right to express it, but exactly until the moment when you assume that I am lying and deliberately distorting the facts. This is not true and greatly spoils my desire to continue reading your comments.
I find your inserts about tits and about the alleged relationship between Masha and Dugan nasty. I find your words about the deliberate choice of sites to visit silly – it’s obvious that there is a war going on and people on opposite sides of the line have opposite opinions. This stupidity is at odds with the image you are trying to create by referring to the ‘poisoning of the well’ sophism that it paints you as an unpleasant person, arguing for the sake of arguing.
Yes, I’m curious to know what you call a popular misconception about Hunter Biden’s laptop? If you need a separate branch for this, create it.Tatyana
Oh dear. You seem to have taken offence, which is sad and disappointing. I’m sorry about the unnecessarily crude reference to female anatomy. (I understand you’re a very strong character who can normally withstand such banter, but we all have our triggers.) Anyway, the underlying point is that presentational impact tends to be magnified by pretty females. That’s why beautiful models are used ubiquitously in marketing, after all. Imho, Maria is even prettier than Yulia Skripal (2.0). She’s certainly a more attractive sight than Patrick Lancaster! Of course she can’t be any different – she is as she is – but she makes a good choice of interview subject to maximise appeal. It’s a common unconscious bias on the part of the viewer, and drawing attention to it helps to mitigate any potential distortion to rationality.
Why did you raise the issue about Hunter Biden’s laptop? You’re already well familiar with the Daily Beast from its coverage of Gonzalo Lira, so it’s a safe bet you already knew their position on that unrelated story – otherwise, why would you drag that specific issue into the discussion? If you can cast doubt on one issue – which every almost other mainstream outlet was equally wrong about, due to datestamp anomalies detected in the metadata – then you can smear the Daily Beast’s reporting about John Mark Dougan by insinuation. It’s a clear example of the “poisoning the well” fallacy. That’s the only conceivable purpose for introducing it to this discussion.
By the way, the Daily Beast was right about Gonzalo Lira’s shady past as “Coach Red Pill”. And what harm came of his encounter with the Ukrainian security services? These allegedly immoral murderous Nazi scum took him away and returned him completely unscathed a few days later; he was just “a little rattled” by the experience, as anyone would be. His gentle treatment would suggest that his captors weren’t actually murderous scum after all.
It’s worth pointing out that the sites Dougan chose to visit were selected deliberately for a counternarrative purpose, because there is no attempt in that video to acknowledge any other reality on the ground. If people perceive it as representative – as many commentators have done on sites like the Lifeboat News – then they’re likely to form a skewed impression of the war in general. This can be balanced by acknowledging the validity of reports from the Ukrainian side – of which there have been many in the mainstream news. But anti-Westerners don’t like acknowledging that. Bringing it to attention is not “silly”; it’s crucial to evaluating the meaning of the video in context.
Now, is John Mark Dougan a reliable source? On the face of it, no, because he has already admitted to indulging in disinformation. But it pays to dig a little deeper to understand how and why that happened. He appears to have been a genuine whistleblower against US police brutality, and he was seemingly persecuted for it. Persecution tends to fuel paranoia (partly justifiably) and tempts people to employ deceptive tactics to level the playing field. It’s worth being mindful of his motives and skills in deception when evaluating any points he’s trying to convey, but they aren’t necessarily invalidated. The key point is that Dougan’s output shouldn’t be regarded as unbiased or trustworthy. That point may be so obvious to you that it’s silly to mention it, but plenty of viewers of that video have neglected it. I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to examine it here.
[ Mod: Off topic. If you want to pursue the Daily Beast issue, then kindly start a new thread on that topic or wait until someone else does so. ]
Dawg, the premise of the interview story is that Maria changed her opinion on the war and it’s justifications (in her mind) during the course of her work as translator for Dougan. The interview is her story of this change in opinion over time because of what she encountered on her travels with Dougan. The topic of the interview is HER story. To say “but she makes a good choice of interview subject to maximise appeal” is a little disingenuous given that the entire interview is about Maria undergoing a change in opinion.
I don’t disagree with your statement that “that presentational impact tends to be magnified by pretty females” and that that fact is used in marketing etc. However, in my opinion of this interview there is no sexualisation of the content. She is sitting on a chair telling her story. Also, remember 50% of the world’s population are, in fact, female. Are we to subconsciously undermine any testimony from a female as being somewhat suspect because they are pretty? Surely it’s the substance of the subject matter that is important. Reflecting on the prettiness or otherwise of any female giving testimony on any subject matter rather than the substance of said testimony surely denotes a flaw in the person making that reflection.
The problem with acknowledging the validity of reports in the corporatocratic (CRAP) media is that they have been consistently shown to have lied about all sorts of things. Some of these lies have been pointed out by this very blog’s author and many other lies have been exposed by other independent sites. That is presumably why you and I and Tatyana read this blog in the first place. I think it is fairly clear that the CRAP MSM media are working to their own agenda in relation to the war in Ukraine and many other topics.
Nonetheless, that being said, it doesn’t mean that Dougan output and this interview in particular are necessarily unbiased. I suspect, like you, that the places he did visit were somewhat curated either by design or necessity. You make the point yourself: “It’s worth being mindful of his motives and skills in deception when evaluating any points he’s trying to convey,” and I would emphasise “but they aren’t necessarily invalidated.” You also point out that “The key point is that Dougan’s output shouldn’t be regarded as unbiased or trustworthy.” I would add the corollary that it shouldn’t be automatically regarded as necessarily biased or untrustworthy either.
Thanks for your reply, ET.
The first bit is an exercise in missing the point – and zooming way past it to hit another, larger, target. To be clear, the selective “choice” that is relevant here is not a choice by Lelyanova or Dougan, but by cimarrón who posted the video at the beginning of this thread. That particular video has been doing the rounds of certain off-piste websites for many months now. Most people find it very persuasive. My point is that we have to be alert to subliminal effects – and the one I highlighted is very well known in advertising and in psychology: it’s known as the “halo effect”. If you’ve done any unconscious bias training, then you’ll know it’s now considered important to be alert to such subliminal biases and take special care to counteract them. The extent varies from person to person of course, but anyone who discounts the possibility of bias on a priori grounds is most likely to manifest it unknowingly. I noticed myself warming to Maria when I was watching it, so I took that into consideration and focused on the content and verifiability of what she was claiming. That isn’t to discount her emotional expressions: those are part of the relevant information too. But it needs to be noticed and evaluated on an objective basis. Does that kind of self-monitoring constitute a personality flaw? No. Your cynicism is misplaced.
I agree with your “corollary that it shouldn’t be automatically regarded as necessarily biased or untrustworthy either” – provided the same allowance is made for testimony from other parties. The main thrust of what at least three contributors are saying or implying here – using the Maria Lelyanova video and a reference to the Daily Beast as evidence – is that information from Russian sources is significantly more trustworthy than information from Western sources. That’s a point I can’t agree with, I’m afraid.
“It’s propaganda Jim….”…_
“I hate war. I’m not religious, but my philosophy in many ways shares the values of christianity, about love and peace and other very good principles of peaceful co-existence. I’m deeply ashamed and horrified to find myself on the side who hit. No support and no justification will ever work. It’s the core of my soul maybe; it will forever stay inside me. I hope I will find sometime the way to fix what has happened. So far, it is only pain.
I feel responsibility for the whole world, and I’m helpless to make them talk to each other.”Do you find it propaganda? Female with tits emotes?
Propaganda? Yes, certainly, when quoted out of context to give a misleading impression – as in this particular case.
Bear in mind that it’s a before-and-after video documenting her conversion experiences. The remarks you cite – whether they appear in this video or not – faithfully represent Maria’s previous pacifist views before her tour of the Donbass region. In the interview she explains at length how she revised her opinions during the tour, eventually concluding that her pacifist stance was wrong and the Russian invasion is actually justified and justifiable.
The whole point of publishing and disseminating the video online is to encourage viewers to make the same transition. That’s exactly what Russian propaganda is designed to do.
In the video, Dougan helpfully explains how propaganda works: [3:43]
“But that’s the problem really, that the Western propaganda is emotional. […] And that’s how emotions work and that’s how the Western propaganda works. They show emotional pictures, tell emotional stories, and this switches off the analytic thinking and that’s what’s happening.”
However, doesn’t that also describe the technique being used in the video? i.e. showing scenes of devastation, with distraught people cursing the Ukrainians, while Maria narrates the harrowing tale of how she was compelled to change her views, accompanied by pained expressions of regret. Encouraging emotional identification with people in distress is designed to evoke sympathy, to switch off the analytic thinking, in order to drive viewers along the path – which Maria is so carefully laying out – from anti-war pacificism towards patriotic support of the Russian military invasion. The implication is that Russians are justified in bombing the hell out of Ukraine to (paradoxically) stop the people suffering.
Maria is careful to point out that the Ukrainians are essentially the same people as the Russians – ” It’s inseparable,” she says, “we are the same people. We grew up on the same movies, on the same music, on the same literature. We like the same food. We have the same cultural references.” In that case, they’ve notched up a heck of a body count of their own people! Which would kind of defeat the justification being offered.
Propaganda, indeed.
This particular case, Dawg, are my own words, printed with my own fingers, on March 2, 2024. I’m 100% guarantee it is said sincerely, opening my heart, describing what I feel. That is why I know it is definitely not propaganda.
You trust Western media more. And you make sure that pretty females with tits don’t make you be more supportive of their words. Well, I think I’ve got something for you. Filmed by CNN. I’m not sure about this female’s tits, but she’s definitely missing a leg and arm, so decide for yourself if she’s pretty.
At 7:50 in this video
Jimmy Dore: Eurppean leaders ADMIT Ukraine peace deal was a sham (YouTube)
The female appeals in Ukrainian to her Ukrainian president with a plea to stop the bombings. Do you find it propaganda?No, Tatyana, the pacifist quote is not propaganda – it’s the video, which starts with pacifist sentiments and ends with supporting the illegal Russian military invasion, that is the propaganda piece. Remember what I said about context.
Now we have another video to watch, presumably directly relevant. If it tugs the emotional heartstrings it could well be used as propaganda – depending on the context of course.
I didn’t neglect, Dawg, we’re still in the process determining your real criteria for detecting propaganda.
I described my feelings, that you call a pacifist quote, I posted it an hour AFTER this one:“You ask why I’m not going to protest this war…
People may underestimate the blessing of propaganda ? Actually, prepared people with the set of quick answers are indeed blessed. Unlike me. I have no TV antenna and only get my news on Internet, picking myself interesting topics. This site is my main place to get updates on politics. I find the community very informative and I appreciate the diversity of opinions.Back in December I commented asking Mr. Murray of his opinion on NATO-Russia proposed treaties. It felt dangerous already at that moment. Everyone realised that NATO will refuse talking and I expected I’ll be running somewhere with my family and my cats. This didn’t attract Mr. Murray, so I decided it’s not worth attention.
Better I watched TV!
Unfortunately, we mocked the very idea and didn’t expect Russia to attack Ukraine. The news pored on me like a storm and filled me with panic, pain and shame. I wish you never ever feel what I feel. I wake up of tachycardia and all day through I deal with nausea. It lasts all these days and I don’t know if it stop sometime.
It was always like “ours are doing something to stop the conflict, while I mind my own life”. I spend my time watching jewelry lessons on YouTube, instead of following the events in Ukraine. So, apalled, I had to catch up, learning what’s going on and what is said from both sides, and how it is possible on Earth that Russia hits Ukraine.
For me, going to protest this war is impossible, Andrew. I live very near the Ukrainian border. I myself have Ukrainian ancestry. I watched A LOT of evidence of what they were doing to Russians in Ukraine and I myself tracked a case of utter hypocrisy – a person pretending to gather money for charity, sending it to kill Russians, a Ukrainian in London. No doubt she was also advocating among her London friends and colleagues, spreading the image of Ukrainian victim.
A girl from Donetsk who fled from there long ago sits in the next workshop. I asked why she did’t tell me. You know, the answer was they don’t want to be a burden, or make more inconvenience, or bring negativity. They are happy already to flee the war.
I haven’t seen girls in London or Kiev protesting the war in Donbass. They all believed they were doing the right thing staying home and funding the war. Now, I believe I do the right thing staying home.— SNIP —
[ Mod: You reproduced an entire article from Craig, including BTL comments with corrupted HTML, which amounted to over 2,500 words. It has been pruned to tidy the thread. You are welcome to link to the article instead. ]Thanks, moderator, for the correction. it was an accident, sorry.
Dawg, for me, Maria’s thoughts clearly matched my own experience, so I find it true.
While you started talking about propaganda. I see a commentator throws in the thesis that Maria is the blogger’s girlfriend, and you pick it up and develop it, saying that the blogger hides this connection. You don’t give us proof. Let’s leave the veracity of this assumption to your conscience. Abstract from your personality, someone enters a discussion with the suggestion of a romantic connection, along with “pretty female with tits emotes”. Could it be the poisoning of the well?The woman in the CNN video is definitely not the blogger’s girlfriend. Also, the video is not produced by pro-Russian bloggers. Do you have another logical trick to declare this as propaganda?
While you have a good understanding of how propaganda affects people, your assessment is irrelevant here. You are showing undeserved cruelty towards sincere expression of feelings and honest reporting of events.
One more thing, Daug, about the logic we use to evaluate information:
Critical thinking can be “strong,” that is, unbiased and truth-seeking. But it also happens to be “weak”. This classification was proposed by Richard Paul, and he defined the weak type as follows:
this is the thinking of a pseudo-intellectual who does not seriously think about the ethical consequences of his actions. The bearer of this mindset is often highly educated, but uses his knowledge to pursue unjust and selfish goals.
So if you want to have a proper understanding of what is going on around you, knowledge of logic is necessary but not sufficient. You also need to be able to question your own beliefs, and this can be excruciatingly painful. You need to think about the consequences of your expressed thoughts, which means taking responsibility.When were you in Donbass Tatyana?
Dougan is a pro-Russian blogger. You’ve only got to look at the rest of the content of his Youtube channel to realise that. Maria is Dougan’s girlfriend and has been working for him as a translator for some years.
“Aug 18, 2022 3:00 p.m
John Marc Dugan is a very fascinating character. He is American and has lived in Moscow for six years. I met him on journalist trips to the Donbass and we became friends. [ … ]John has a girlfriend who is an outspoken opponent of what she has called “Russia’s war of aggression against sovereign Ukraine.” She took part in unauthorized demonstrations against the Russian military invasion in Moscow, for which she was taken away by the police and fined.
I met them both in Rostov-on-Don, when I was just coming from Donetsk, on their way to Donetsk.”
Anyway the whole story is a joke. Dougan clearly controlled what she would’ve seen. I’m reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1931 in response to claims of widespread starvation and oppression. Stalin fooled him into thinking that everything was perfect in the workers’ paradise, that people had freedoms they didn’t and that everyone was well fed.
Mission creep goes further down the rabbit hole in Ukraine. Leopard2 tanks seem to be on the way…..who knows if this is a prelude to EU/NATO boots on the ground?
With all the nuclear powers involved in this conflict, owning 95% of the world’s nuclear capacity between them, it’s time for an immediate ceasefire as a prelude to peace talks.Now we have some serious looking allegations of corruption in Ukraine, or is it just power politicking?
https://sonar21.com/if-you-cant-win-on-the-battlefield-get-the-media-to-publish-fantasy/
OK, Tatyana, here’s the reply I wrote on 18 January, but didn’t post. I wasn’t going to return to it because I thought you’d already reduced your own argument to absurdity, and you were contradicted by Pears Morgaine, but since you made a specific request under the Intolerance article, here it is:
==========
Tatyana> I see a commentator throws in the thesis that Maria is the blogger’s girlfriend, and you pick it up and develop it, saying that the blogger hides this connection.
No, what I actually said was that Dougan “covered up his relationship” to Lelyanova. I didn’t specify the nature of that relationship. If he only employs her as a translator, that’s a significant relationship because it means he’s paying her wages. (As Pears Morgaine has shown, someone who knew them very well described her as his “girlfriend”, so the claim has some corroboration. In any case, Lelyanova and Dougan certainly have a very close working relationship.)
My point was that Masha has great media appeal, which works on a subliminal level and thus is ideal for propaganda purposes (according to Dougan’s own description). In another video, with Dougan taking questions in a live stream, he voices his frustration that the online chat is filling up with comments and questions about Masha – how beautiful she is, what age she is, and so on. The halo effect is so strong that it dazzles the audience, even in a studio-based chat. That’s an example of speaking directly to the positive emotions while obscuring the logic. Patrick Lancaster just doesn’t have that same kind of appeal. The lovely Masha is much more effective at delivering a powerful reinforcement via non-verbal channels – at least, for people who aren’t alert to it. And that’s ultimately why this discussion thread is based on a video of her, rather than a more objective documentary-style news report of which there are thousands available on the internet.
Propaganda
Remember what I said about the importance of *context* in propaganda. You claimed to acknowledge that point, but you’ve shown no comprehension of it in practice.As an example of non-propaganda, you provided a link to … the Jimmy Dore Show!? Now, that’s comedy!! The transparent purpose of that show (which is rated on the Media Bias Chart as “most extreme left”, and “unreliable, problematic”) is to pump up the emotions of the audience on whatever issue Dore or his pseudo-lefty libertarian cronies have taken objection to that week: covid vaccines, anti-gun laws, Biden’s liberalism, etc. Dore’s schtick is to read a few sentences out of context then continually reinterpret them, progressively distorting their intended meaning until he finally throws his hands up in exasperation at the outrageous and ridiculous things he’s just said. He’s been riding the faux-left populist bandwagon all the way to the bank.
Aaron Maté (the guest host in that episode) uses the same method, albeit with less melodrama. He paraphrases and reworks statements into a form that the person who made the original statement would obviously not consent to. That’s not a legitimate analytical method. All it does is extract and amplify the analyst’s own preconceptions, stuffing them into someone else’s mouth.
That’s the *context* of the video you find so deeply emotionally affecting (which, as you say, hasn’t been produced by pro-Kremlin sources). There are many such examples of atrocities on each side, but of course you won’t see images or clips of any cases that might contradict the message that the show is trying to reinforce. (The same is true of the mainstream Western media.) Picking a vivid example and manipulating the context to reinforce a point, while obscuring potential doubts and contrary evidence, is how propaganda works. So, yes, the show itself uses the video as propaganda.
Putin has his own peculiar idea of what propaganda is. Consider the law he approved last month to criminalise “information advocating a denial of traditional family values” (the first version of the law – “protecting minors” – was introduced in 2013, before the Donbass conflict even started). What this means in effect is that anything that “raises interest in” non-traditional sexual relationships, portraying LGBT lifestyles in a positive way, is outlawed. That includes TV and movies about gay people, exhibitions with homosexual themes, and drag queen acts. The penalties are severe. Accordingly, there has been a mass shutdown of LGBT-friendly activities in Russia. (The BBC even claimed that the purpose of the law is to deflect attention from the military failures in Ukraine, but that sounds suspiciously like anti-Russian propaganda because they offer no evidence of a logical connection to the invasion.) I won’t even mention the media restrictions that apply in Russia regarding information about the Ukraine war (or “special military operation”, for Kremlin eyes). Both sides may be guilty of pushing propaganda, but only Russia has introduced legal penalties for anyone who dissents from it.
ok, Dawg, now I’ll tell you what I see.
You commented on Maria:Masha emotes /// her interview is equivalent to a Patrick Lancaster propaganda video (except with a prettier face and nicer tits ///
I’ve presented you with two pieces I’ve written by myself. The first you described as pacifist, the second – I hope you enjoyed my performance of over-dramatic emoting in the Intolerance topic. I made a conclusion on your ability to read emotions.
Then, you said
///the sites Dougan chose to visit were selected deliberately for a counternarrative purpose, because there is no attempt in that video to acknowledge any other reality on the ground///
I’ve linked a video by CNN, embedded in the Jimmy Dore’s show, but all you have to say is “it’s comedy”
Do a final test, Dawg.
Instead of Masha in Donbas, imagine a person, a Holokaust denier, who visited Auschwitz memorial and changed their mind. If you’re able to comment on such a person as an emoting propagandist with tits nicier than of other propagandists, you know who you are. And if your description of such a person would be made in a more polite manner and you would not label it propaganda, then I’ve got bad news for you too.
Anyway, don’t let me know of the result, I know it already.Tatyana, you’re still neglecting the key element of propaganda – *context* – as well as indulging in flagrant whataboutery.
“The woman in the CNN video is definitely not the blogger’s girlfriend. Also, the video is not produced by pro-Russian bloggers. Do you have another logical trick to declare this as propaganda?”
You’re referring to a 9-year-old CNN news report, produced by an accredited press organisation that was reporting both sides of the conflict. The report is embedded in (the context of) a podcast chiefly known for satirical comedy, where it is presented as apparent evidence for a political inference it really can’t support.
Why are you so keen to deflect from the topic of this discussion? We could play a game of “Is this propaganda? Is that propaganda?” endlessly, with no bearing on the video posted at the top. John Dougan’s video interview with (his close *ahem* friend and associate) Maria Lelyanova is obviously aimed at persuading pacifists and doubters to support the Russian army’s military invasion. Dougan uses the same kind of emotional button-pressing techniques that he himself attributed to Western propaganda:
“But that’s the problem really, that the Western propaganda is emotional. So, and you know this yourself, when you are afraid, when you are hating somebody, when you love somebody, you’re not ready for emotions. If we know this from many stories just in private life, when somebody is betraying you but you love the person, you are not able to listen to arguments. And that’s how emotions work and that’s how the Western propaganda works. They show emotional pictures, tell emotional stories, and this switches off the analytic thinking and that’s what’s happening.”
Dougan’s own output uses the same persuasive methods and so should be tarred with the same brush. And remember he admitted to being well versed in the manipulation of opinion via fake news: “There must be real news with real photos on the front of the site so the fake story blends in and becomes believable.” Those are important points that I think any viewer of the video should consider.
That’s the core topic of discussion here. (If you want to point to other things, you should first explain their implications for the argument.)
I appreciate and commend the sentiments expressed in the unattributed quotation that you later claimed authorship of. As I noted, it seems well aligned with Maria’s initial pacifist views. Have you, like her, changed your opinion on justifications for the invasion since you wrote it? If so, why?
Masha Lelyanova talks to George Galloway about her experience –
INTERVIEW: The Donbas war zone visit changed her life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LojWboQ6cEU&ab_channel=GeorgeGalloway
