Propaganda, the polished flip side of censorship: Russia, the external enemy (Episode 2)
It is not mainly censorship that we will be discussing in this series, because censorship, in this case and in general, is too blatant, vulgar and crude. So much so that it is sometimes difficult to talk about it, so obvious is its illegitimacy. That is also why many censors reject it out of hand and are the first to deny its existence. No, what we will be talking about is the polished flip side of the coin: propaganda, which is much more sophisticated and insidious. It first involves constructing an external enemy. Its target of choice? Russia.
The EU’s not-so-diplomatic diplomatic service
As we learned from the remarks of High Representative Josep Borrell [1], there is a European “strategic communication” programme, the ESTF. It came into being, in the context of the war in the Donbass, following an initiative of the European Council [2] in March 2015 (a few months after the failure of Minsk I and just one month after the Minsk II agreement [3]) for a “communication team” specifically to “combat Russian disinformation”.
The ESTF is part of the European External Action Service (EEAS) [4], the EU’s diplomatic service provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon [5] and created in 2011, chaired by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR), currently J. Borrell, and advised by a multitude of national diplomatic services and European military and security institutions under his direction [6] and whose employees and “experts” often seem to have a background in the military, defence or the arms industry [7]. The ESTF works with NATO on the issue of disinformation [8].
As its name already says, the EEAS focuses on EU action outside EU territory. Yet we will show that what it presents as “the fight against propaganda abroad” is, in fact, a fight waged inside the EU against its own population.
The aim of the EEAS is to support the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP [9]) so that it fulfils its “role as an actor in global security” and“assumes its responsibilities in crisis management” [10]. The CSDP (see in particular Articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Lisbon) includes “military means” and interventions by “combat forces”, restricted (on paper) to “humanitarian principles” and those of “the UN Charter”.
However, given the abuse of the concept of “humanitarian interventions” and the proliferation of scenarios for resorting to military means, themselves formulated in very vague terms, we can be sure that this implies war, while avoiding the word. From the structure of the EEAS and this genteel description of its competences, we can deduce that the EU’s role is that of a faction – many of whose advisers come from a military background – involved in wars, armed conflicts and crises abroad, which are defined as dangers to the EU’s internal security.
Action Plan against Disinformation: you have the right to say it – not really
It is in this sense that the European Commission and the High Representative presented, at the end of 2018, the Action Plan against Disinformation [11] (APD, from the French Plan d’action contre la désinformation), which legitimises itself by referring, in its introduction, directly to the aforementioned European Council initiative. The APD gives the EU’s official definition of disinformation: demonstrably “false or misleading information that is created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public, and that may cause public harm”. Inadvertent errors as well as certain forms of expression (e.g. satire, commentary, partisan news) are excluded.
What sounds like a reasonable definition is in fact nothing of the sort. For every part of the definition is problematic and deliberately vague. Firstly, who will decide whether a piece of information has been shown to be false or not? Secondly, the “intention to deceive” in the definition is not a necessary condition but merely a sufficient one, since it is preceded by “disseminated for economic gain or”. This makes the mention of inadvertent errors superfluous, since deliberateness is no longer a necessary condition. It is therefore enough to redefine an alternative media outlet with a business model as having a profit motive, and as soon as it relays (even unwittingly) a piece of false information – which could even be the product of entryism and subversion –, it could be accused of disinformation and suffer the consequences.
Thirdly, the nature of the “harm” caused to the public applies to very broadly defined areas (health, environment, security), and its scope is made all the vaguer by the fact that the harm in question is harm that “may” be caused. The harm therefore no longer has to be proven, but may be purely hypothetical.
Fourthly, this definition clearly states that it applies to “lawful” content, i.e. what should be able to be expressed without any problem. It is therefore in no way aimed at content already prohibited by law. This serves to broaden the spectrum of what would be perceived as unsayable and thus to restrict the space for free expression inside people’s minds, without ever having to resort to censorship stricto sensu.
The APD is also introduced by specifically stressing the dangers of “persistent Russian disinformation”. Several examples are cited to this effect, including the Salisbury chemical attack, also known as the Skripal affair [12], as well as the chemical gas bombing of Douma, in Syria [13], behind which the European institutions unquestionably see the Kremlin. However, independent media have demonstrated the manipulation and exploitation of these affairs by European and Western governments and media [14], [15].
Russia, the EU’s only enemy?
That said, the definition used in the APD itself originates from another EC communication dated 26 April 2018 [16]: “Lutter contre la désinformation en ligne : une approche européenne”. This communication explains precisely, with reference to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, that freedom of expression requires the authorities to refrain from any censorship and from intervening in public debate. This applies to all lawful content, whether or not it causes harm. Yet the Commission circumvents this clause by justifying its fight against disinformation with the example of Russian military doctrine, which allegedly openly supports the use of “information warfare” [17]. It is striking that here again Russia is the Commission’s target of choice, all the more so as it is the only one identified by name! For apart from the EU or Europe and Russia, no other State, geographical territory or geopolitical entity is mentioned.
One would think that, in the eyes of senior European officials, the geopolitical dangers to the EU boiled down to a kind of bête noire consisting of Russia alone. However, we will see in the next episode that their vision does not stop there. On the contrary, when talking about dangers, the Commission had already, in 2018 precisely, identified in its aforementioned communication “vaccine hesitancy as one of these dangers”, internal ones this time, said to be aggravated by online disinformation.
By Colin Meier, citizen journalist and Germany correspondent for BAM!
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_22_1463
[2] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/21888/european-council-conclusions-19-20-march-2015-en.pdf: The European Council is the EU institution bringing together the heads of State and government of the EU Member States. Not to be confused with the Council of Ministers/Council of the European Union, the EU institution bringing together the national ministers for a specific policy area from the EU member countries, nor with the Council of Europe, which is not an EU institution but an international intergovernmental institution responsible for upholding human rights in its 46 member states.
[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11408266/Minsk-agreement-on-Ukraine-crisis-text-in-full.html
[4] https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/82/about-european-external-action-service-eeas_en
[5] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:2007:306:FULL&from=EN: see Article 13a paragraph 3, now Article 27 paragraph 3 of the 2016 consolidated version: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:2016:202:FULL&from=EN
[6] https://eeas.europa.eu/topics/common-security-and-defence-policy-csdp/5392/csdp-structure-instruments-and-agencies_en
[7] Insofar as can be deduced from the lack of transparency regarding them on the websites of these various institutions.
[8] https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/2116/-questions-and-answers-about-the-east-
[9] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:2016:202:FULL&from=EN: see Chapter 2, Articles 23 to 46.
[10] https://eeas.europa.eu/topics/common-security-and-defence-policy-csdp/5392/csdp-structure-instruments-and-agencies_en
[11] https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/action_plan_against_disinformation.pdf
[12] Sergej Skripal is a Russian double agent allegedly poisoned with Novichok in early March 2018. The governments of the United Kingdom (under Theresa May and Boris Johnson), of Germany and many other Western countries, as well as many Western media “of record” declared the Kremlin responsible, which to this day has never been proven and has been rejected by the Russian authorities. The affair served to legitimise a round of diplomatic sanctions against Russia as well as media attacks on RT. Despite criticism of the official version, which contains numerous flaws, the German government has never backtracked.
[13] On 7 April 2018, a few months before the publication of the APD, the Syrian town of Douma was allegedly the target of a chemical gas attack by the Syrian army, supported by the Russian armed forces. This alleged attack served as a pretext for the bombing of Syria by the United States. However, as early as the end of May 2019, a first leaked report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) suggested that no gas attack had taken place and that the impact site had been manipulated. This initial report differs from the final report, which serves as the basis for the official version. Yet whistleblowers within the OPCW accused the OPCW leadership, under pressure from the United States, of manipulating and censoring the initial report. The OPCW’s lead investigator in charge of investigating the incident on site reiterated these accusations before the UN Security Council. Internal documents revealed a conversation between OPCW officials discussing the manipulation and censorship of the initial report. Confirmed by some of the officials, one of them knowingly kept quiet to avoid any confirmation of the “Russian narrative” regarding the OPCW’s non-existent independence. However, other officials of the OPCW joined in the accusations, which independent investigative journalist Aaron Maté (The Grayzone) restated before the UN Security Council. He also shows how the opinions of independent experts were redacted and the OPCW inspector was persecuted by his own organisation. Of course, none of this is mentioned by EUvsDisinfo, the EU’s propaganda organ, which prefers to refer to the official version to confirm it.
[14] https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=42924
[15] https://thegrayzone.com/?s=opcw
[16] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52018DC0236&from=EN
[17] This quotation, from the website of the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom, is indeed to be found there. However, the interpretation implied here by the Commission seems, perhaps deliberately, to distort the intention, or at least to over-interpret this policy in the sense of a permanent offensive strategy. Indeed, it is not clear whether “information warfare” is used there in the sense of “cyber warfare” or in the original sense as described by the RAND Corporation as early as 1996, well before most households in the world had a PC, let alone the Internet. In its report, commissioned by the US government and drafted with the help of high-ranking members of the US military and security services, the RAND Corporation defined “strategic information warfare” as encompassing the domains of cyberspace, infrastructure and culture for the purposes of military and security strategies. RAND described it as follows: “[…] a more penetrating kind of conflict that reaches the center of the U.S. homeland. […] IW [information warfare, Ed.] threatens the United States as sanctuary.” In an era of the world’s growing computer connectivity, it seems only logical for the Russians to want to equip themselves with the same tools that other countries have long used and abused, such as the United States, which, as early as January 1995, had set up an Information Warfare Executive Board (cf. RAND). Considering this, is it therefore proof of an exclusively Russian offensive policy? Nothing could be less certain.
Photo source:
© Colin Meier
We would like to thank Free21 for republishing this article on their website. Read all their articles in French using the translation tool built directly into their site.
