Zizek on Ukraine

Slavoj Žižek, "The magic tricks behind Russia’s propaganda machine"

Russia’s propaganda mimics magic tricks, using deception and misdirection to justify its war as self-defense.

I must admit that I occasionally enjoy podcasts explaining the secrets behind well-known magic tricks (the three-shell game, mentalism, levitation, etc.). After reading recent news from Russia, I’ve come to the conclusion that these tricks offer a clue to how Russian propaganda has achieved what seems impossible to common sense: claiming that the Russian attack on Ukraine is an act of self-defense. The standard explanation for magic tricks is that they usually rely on at least two different strategies, combining them to produce the desired effects — and Russia is doing exactly the same.

The Russian government approved a list of 48 foreign states and territories accused of implementing policies that promote destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes, which contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. This list was approved under a decree signed by Putin on Aug. 19, aimed at providing humanitarian support to those "sharing traditional Russian spiritual and moral values."

States on this list are now officially designated as “enemy states” simply because they don’t share these values — there’s no mention of a multi-polar world; you are an enemy of Russia just for not sharing its values. Oddly, North Korea and Afghanistan are included on this list, but Russia isn’t being deceptive: its respect for “traditional values” aligns with North Korean and Taliban ideology in rejecting the European Enlightenment as the ultimate evil in history.

The conflict is thus elevated to a metaphysical-religious level: beneath all the talk of a new multi-polar world lies the vision of a total war to the extinction of two opposites. When religion directly enters politics, the threat of deadly violence is never far behind.

Putin recently declared a new nuclear doctrine, announcing that “a number of clarifications ... defining the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons” were being made to Russia’s nuclear doctrine. He added that proposed amendments would expand “the category of states and military alliances in relation to which nuclear deterrence is carried out.”

In a pointed warning to the West, Putin announced that any attack on Russia by a non-nuclear state, supported by a nuclear-armed nation, would be considered a “joint attack.” He also stated that Moscow reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of an attack on Belarus, as it is part of the “Union State” with Russia, a special partnership between the two nations. This includes cases when the enemy, using conventional weapons, “creates critical danger to our sovereignty,” Putin said.

Such statements make us nostalgic for the Cold War era, when both sides wisely avoided direct nuclear threats and announced they would use nuclear arms only in response to a nuclear strike. The threat of a direct nuclear strike was unmentionable back then. Russia has now asserted the right to a first strike and even expanded the conditions for its use. Of course, an actual Russian first strike remains unlikely, but words in the military domain are never just words — they often lead to action.

After thousands of pagers exploded in Lebanon, Iran’s UN delegate said Israel had “crossed a red line” again. But today, crossing red lines happens regularly, making the situation even more dangerous because each side thinks it can do so without consequence. The catch is that you can’t do this indefinitely: there is a real red line, though it may not be publicly acknowledged, and the only way to learn where it is is to cross it. Our response to Russia should be that Russia itself has crossed the red line by issuing nuclear threats.

Those who see the Russia-Ukraine war as a proxy war between NATO and Russia would claim that Russia is under attack by NATO. In some sense, this is true, but in what sense? In the same sense that Israel claims to act in self-defense in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. The catch lies in how we define the "self" in self-defense. If I occupy land that isn’t mine and declare it mine (like the West Bank or parts of Ukraine), and if the land or people there resist, I can claim that my actions to crush them are in self-defense.

The two basic strategies Russian state propaganda relies on are these: accuse the opponent of doing what you are doing yourself, in a much more open and brutal way. This distracts the public’s attention and makes them accept your basic claim that what you took from the opponent was originally yours. Russia is just defending itself — if we accept that Crimea and Donetsk (and perhaps other regions, from the Baltic to Moldova) belong to it, and that Ukraine as a nation doesn’t truly exist, but emerged from the minds of Lenin and the Nazis.

"The two basic strategies Russian state propaganda relies on are these: accuse the opponent of doing what you are doing yourself, in a much more open and brutal way. "

The second strategy is to accuse the opponent of dangerously approaching a red line after you’ve blatantly crossed the only true red line — the use of nuclear weapons. This combination of strategies makes rational peace negotiations nearly impossible, because the very terms of negotiation are falsified from the outset. As Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič rightly wrote: “Peace is all too precious to be left to peaceniks.”

Add to this the third strategy of deception: presenting a brutal war of conquest as a defense of spiritual values. This combination is nearly unbeatable. All our hope lies in the “nearly.”