Vladimir Putin's Entire Persona is Based on a Fictional USSR Spy Character
(substack.com)https://substack.com/home/post/p-150037538Most of what I talk about on this blog is not even a secret, really. I paywall the actual conspiracy stuff and the free stuff is all just basic translations of what Russians in Russia are saying. Today though, we are going to continue exploring what the media was saying about Putin and what Putin said about himself from the early years of his rule. Back then there was also a lot more candid talk about who Putin was and what role he played allowed in the media, both in the East and the West. Upon coming to power, Putin had favorable coverage in Western media as a reformer who could set Russian Democracy back on track and prove to the world that Liberalism and friendship with America really does work economic and social wonders.
The narrative then soured bit by bit until we got to the “Putin is Literally Hitler” position that we have now.
Putin also once enthusiastically supported Bush’s “Terror War” against the Muslims abroad and the civil liberties at home. Putin copied the same model and rhetoric and even helped America fight its terror war in Afghanistan by providing logistical support, and helping the Americans renew the “Northern Alliance” of non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan that the USSR had once relied on. Being a KGB man, it strikes me as very unlikely that Putin actually believed the standard Washington narrative about Afghanistan. The reality of what Afghanistan was could not be more different than what was presented to the public. But Putin played along anyway.
There really isn’t anything deeper to the Putinophilia than this “I’ll just believe the opposite of what the Western media says on everything” impulse for some people. Sure, the lying media lies because they are liars. Sadly though, people seem unable to conceptualize of the possibility that the media (and their handlers) know that many people knee-jerk reject their narratives. Thus, it isn’t hard to manipulate people’s knee-jerk reactions by playing up the opposite position. In fact, this tactic was pioneered for use on children and teens and entered popular parlance as “reverse psychology”.
But, clearly, this tactic works just as well on man-children and women of all ages who simply don’t want to put in the time learning to think for themselves
The second part is the “secret patriot” narrative that Putin’s PR team came out with and which they crafted the entire persona of Putin around. This is a broad topic, but thankfully we have already covered the mastermind behind the Putin PR strategy which tried to portray him as a secret patriot mastermind checkmating the globalists before:
The model for this “secret patriot Putin” narrative was actually just a modern retelling of the escapades of the >famous fictional Soviet spy patriot Max Otto von Stierlitz.
The glorification of the spook state had been ongoing in the West for decades prior to the USSR rolling out its own “super-spook moralityman” competitor. You had the James Bond novels and movies, and the Harry Palmer novels and movies, just to list the two most famous examples that come to mind. Since then, we’ve also had Jason Bourne and that Alias show on ABC. On the more domestic side of things, we also have the dozens of shows glorifying the cops and the FBI shown on daytime TV to suburban house moms.
keep reading.... hope it makes you think