The propaganda machine is in overdrive in the run-up to elections in March, and the war is being fought with videos.
The Russian Presidential elections are being fought on Youtube and Vimeo.
This week, a fake news report of Vladimir Putin in the dock has had nearly 4 million hits.
If the images look familiar, that’s because they are. The 50 second video is a digitally altered version of footage of Mikail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon who challenged Mr Putin and who was gaoled in 2003.
“Only three hours ago we received information about the former Prime Minister who has been taken under escort to Hamovmichesky Court,” says a supposed news reader over pictures of Putin in a cage. Among the “charges” are: “large-scale theft of property, financial fraud and abuse of power.” Much of the footage was edited from a German documentary about Khodorkhovsy’s trial. On his website, director Cyril Tuschi wrote: “Someone did some re-editing on our Khodorkovsky film and for the first time I am not upset about not being asked beforehand. Creative Russia!”
The creators of the video are anonymous, as are those of a rival video entitled “Russia Without Putin – Russia Without a Future”. It portrays a national apocalypse, in which the new generation of activists who have staged demonstrations against the government destroy the Motherland with the aid of jackbooted Nazis, imperialistic Americans and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
Запрещенный на Youtube ролик Россия без Путина? Welcome to hell! from barabanshikkris on Vimeo.
Among the disasters predicted, intoned over pictures of thunder and fire over Red Square, starving children and Hillary Clinton are: political violence on the streets, Russia’s nuclear arsenal transferred to the US, the stock exchange closed, the price of bread rising to £20, and clashes between nationalist storm troopers and ethnic crime groups resulting in an influx of refugees. And all this before the end of 2012! By 2013, the opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, a particular hate-figure for the Putin administration, has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize and Georgia has invaded southern Russia so that – and this, surely is the worst of all possibilities – the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi are now in Georgia not Russia. (Oh, and China has taken over the far east of the country and Japanese peacekeepers have arrived – cue pictures of Japanese tanks.)
Not much at stake then, in Presidential elections to be held on March 4th…
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