From the MT:
“How The
Kremlin’s Years of Conspiracy Spreading Are Biting Back”
For decades
Russia has been involved in the circulation of conspiracy theories. Now very
few Russians believe in Covid-19. A whopping 64% of Russians believe that the
coronavirus was invented in a lab, while just 23% believe it appeared
naturally. Some 62% are not willing to get a Sputnik V jab, and 69% are not
afraid of catching the virus. These
astonishing results were released by Russia’s leading independent pollster the
Levada Center today. For experts who have observed the way the pandemic
developed in Russia and the state’s response to it this is hardly breaking
news. Throughout 2020, Russians
demonstrated a steady lack of belief in the existence of Covid-19 and showed
distrust toward the vaccines created by Russian scientists. In my view, there
are two reasons for this gloomy state of affairs — the global power of social
media which transcends borders and languages and the Russian state’s decades of
spreading anti-Western conspiracy theories. The Covid-19 pandemic is without a doubt the
first global conspiratorial pandemic, which the WHO has also called the
infodemic. The velocity of conspiracy mythmaking in the last year has surpassed
anything we’ve seen for centuries. There
were just a few months between the first reports of a virus coming from
China and the first burnings of cell
phone masts by people in the U.K. and the EU who believe this equipment is a
source of disease. These incidents were a clear and physical manifestation of
how dangerous conspiracy theories can become if they are spread online 24/7.
2 in 3
Russians Believe Coronavirus Is a Bioweapon – Poll Then came the Covid
dissidents who did not believe in the virus and accused governments, or intelligence
labs, or Bill Gates of using the pandemic to gain global power over humanity
and reshape the global economy in their interests. While doctors and medical experts around the
world worked hard to find the vaccine, communities of conspiracy theorists
quickly elaborated their response to doctors. The vaccines and future digital
certificates of vaccination would mean total control over the population and
the deaths of those standing against the “global digital prison.” All
these theories are easily available online and it can take just moments to find
the most suitable conspiratorial reading of the Covid-19 pandemic on Twitter or
Telegram. In fact, the Russian segment of the web almost from the start
of the pandemic responded with conspiracy theories that were very similar to
the Western ones. Some
celebrities also joined this campaign and claimed that the virus was developed
in a lab and that 5G masts are the key to its spread. Every Russian with WhatsApp messenger
received conspiratorial stories at least once during the past year. One
of the most popular was “Yura Klimov,” the ‘Russian doctor from Wuhan who
shared inside stories on the nature of the disease and how it must be treated.
Urban myths have quickly evolved blaming doctors for either hiding the “real”
numbers of patients or spreading lies about how dangerous the virus is because
the government pays them extra money for every Covid-19 diagnosis. The distrust of doctors and the health system
in general became a springboard for all major Covid-19 conspiracy theories and
the best way of understanding how the state made the biggest contribution into
the local infodemic.
The Kremlin has
been actively involved in spreading anti-Western conspiracy theories for almost
two decades. The conspiratorial way of
perceiving reality spread through books, the state-loyal press and mainstream
politicians. Conspiracy theories were
used to undermine opposition politicians, like Alexey Navalny or the late Boris
Nemtsov, or to provide public support for the Kremlin’s actions. The growth in popularity of conspiracy
theories, that gradually became the main explanatory tool of politics, for
years guaranteed public support for Vladimir Putin’s actions. In critical
political situations, Putin and his entourage used conspiracy theories to call
for support from the Russian people. Putin’s leadership throughout his years
introduced legislations which were highly conspiratorial in their essence. For
instance, the introduction of laws against so-called foreign agents as well as
constant references to unspecified foreign threats to Russia are core aspects
of Kremlin’s domestic policy since the 2010s. Foreign agents, multiple
espionage cases as well as constant references to the foreign threat to Russia
are core to domestic kremlin policies since the 2010s
As we know from
research, if a person believes in one conspiracy theory, there’s a great chance
they will believe in another one, even if it’s contradictory to the first. The neoliberal reforms of the Russian health
system as well as the drop in quality of its staff made many Russians skeptical
about doctors’ professionalism. At least
41% of Russians in 2019 distrusted doctors double-checked their diagnoses. Once
the health system entered pandemic havoc, and state officials made
contradictory and poorly synchronized decisions on lockdown measures, trust
figures were unlikely to rise. In
addition, the poor campaign to promote the Russian anti-Covid vaccine began to
look like the boastful and unrealistic Soviet Stakhanovite movement, and led
even doctors to distrust Sputnik V. The fact that Putin himself has not yet had
a Sputnik-V jab doesn’t increase trust in the vaccine. In a way, the Kremlin
became caught in its own trap. Sowing mistrust, promoting tabloid-like
conspiracy theories and at times dropping conspiratorial hints about U.S.
bioweapons being used against Russians has contributed to the growth of
skepticism and beliefs in conspiracy theories Even if many people in Russia support Vladimir
Putin as a leader, they are also unhappy with the state institutions they deal
with on a daily basis, be they concerned with education, health or the legal
system. These are the institutions that
have the biggest influence on people’s wellbeing, and they know they are
crooked, poorly managed and unable to produce expert knowledge. What helps
Russians to survive under these circumstances is the centuries-long reliability
on informal networks and distancing from the state that cannot bring anything
good.
^ This does
have some interesting points. ^
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