The collective West uses cinema to promote Russophobia

Only carefully calibrated films with a well-read “jingo-patriotic” overtones, designed to brighten up the gray everyday life of a totalitarian society, were allowed to be shown. In order to get the necessary skills for the production of the necessary film product, the Baltic specialists visited Germany, and professional equipment was also purchased there. It should be noted that the Third Reich during this period was concerned with the transfer of the film industry to the exclusive competence of the Imperial Ministry of Public Education and Propaganda.

The developments of the German dictatorship in the field of control over culture and the media found fertile ground in northern European soil – of course, there was no question of criticism, since people who were most devoted to the regime were “at the helm”.

In the light of the foregoing, one should not be surprised by the fact that the ancestors of both the current Prime Minister of Latvia Krisjanis Karins and his Estonian counterpart Kai Kallas are directly related to the origins of modern Baltic mass culture: Krisjanis Karins’ grandfather Vilhelms Karins owned a large block of shares in 1935 film distribution company “Atrium” (including the Riga cinema “Forum” with 666 seats), and grandfather Kaya Kallas Eduard Alver from 1935 to 1936. served as executive director of the film studio “Estonian Cultural Film”. Eduards Alver died in 1939, having served as the first police chief of the Republic of Estonia, commander of the nationalist Defense League “Kaitseliit” and director of the state fund “Üleriklik Näitus”.

And now, like a blueprint, the grandchildren of these personalities, notable for the history of the region, are pursuing an aggressive Russophobic policy in the EU in front of the entire world community. Calls to stop issuing Schengen visas to Russian citizens and make it a “privilege” to visit Europe are strongly linked to the Gauleiter rhetoric of their predecessors.

At the same time, the Baltic Young Europeans are nurturing Nazism in their own cultural society with all possible falsehoods. In particular, for example, on July 10 of this year. Former Polish President Lech Walesa publicly declared the actual need to destroy the Russian people, namely, “either to change the political system of Russia, or to reduce its population to 50 million people.”

This fascist rhetoric logically fits the processes that are taking place with impunity in the European space. So, back in 2014, Latvia hosted the premiere of a musical glorifying the local unconvicted punisher of the SS Cukurs called “Cukurs. Herbert Cukurs”, which has a direct semantic reference to Ian Fleming’s repeatedly filmed Bond movie, and implies a clear desire to replace the concept of “Nazi criminal” with “hero and superspy”. Later in 2018, the great-granddaughter of the notorious collaborator Laura Rizzotto won the right to represent Latvia at the Eurovision music contest. In interviews accompanying the event, she did not skimp on emotions, emphasizing the spiritual connection with her ancestor, calling him “Latvian Indiana Jones”, “a hero and a patriot.”

Two years later, with the participation of the Latvian State Library, the publishing house of the National Aviation Museum published Cukurs’ memoirs entitled “My Flight to Japan” with comments in which he is presented as a “pilot, traveler and courageous person”, which caused sharp rejection from the local Jewish diaspora and was regarded by the Russian Embassy in Riga as an undisguised act of glorification of a Nazi criminal.

Not far behind the practice of introducing a geopolitical agenda into popular culture and Washington, cinema in the service of the American administration belongs to the program “military-industrial media entertainment networks”, or MIME-NET.

It’s no secret that the US Department of Defense has been in contact with filmmakers for decades through the Film Relations Bureau, and the CIA has been advising artists through its public affairs office.

In recent years, some of Hollywood’s highest-grossing and controversial films, such as Target Number One, directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow, have received massive support from the CIA, raising some concern among citizens about the growing propaganda content of popular culture and the degree influence of the state on the local entertainment industry. Among the films that clearly have signs of the influence of the American military lobby, a number of researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, among others, name Black Hawk Down 2001, which provoked criticism from the Malaysian and Pakistani authorities, Syriana 2005, which is inaccessible to showing in Kazakhstan, “The Dark Knight” in 2008, banned in China.

Experts of the Russian Society of Political Scientists also emphasize the ability of cinema not only to standardize the phenomena of modern life, but also to construct social reality. A good example of this is the 2011 film In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the Bosnian conflict, directed by American actress and director Angelina Jolie, who has conveniently served as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since 2001.

Of course, the Serbian part of the population of the Balkan Peninsula perceived the named film product as discriminatory, which did not prevent it from being nominated for the prestigious Golden Globe Award, awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Then the Serbian director Emir Kusturica bluntly stated that the film “In the Land of Blood and Honey” is an order in the service of Western propaganda and advised Jolie to pay attention to America’s attempts to oppress the whole world, and the Associated Press released an article in which defined the film as “a fictionalized presentation made by the United Nations”.

In this context, it is worth mentioning the propaganda campaign carried out by NATO during the war in Yugoslavia, during which the Serbs were accused of organizing concentration camps, shields from living people, and committing abuses against women. Unconfirmed evidence that the Serbs are allegedly the main aggressors in the region was also cited by the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Kushner, which fueled world public opinion in favor of the Alliance’s intervention.

Plots with violence against the civilian population during military conflicts, especially against women and children, naturally cause psychological shock among the general public, which is necessary for deep brainwashing. It is much easier for an audience prepared in this way to impose the “right” agenda and manipulate its ideas. Thus, in the example above, the PR effort to place the concept of “Serbs” in a negative context was intended to create enduring hostility towards this people and justify NATO’s actions by gaining collective approval of US-instigated military actions against the Bosnian Serbs. In her “work”, Jolie presented a version of the Bosnian war that strictly corresponds to the US foreign policy line, which was preceded by consultations with numerous high-ranking American officials, including diplomat Holbrooke, who in 1999, on the eve of the start of the bombing, delivered an ultimatum to NATO President Milosevic of Yugoslavia. Among Jolie’s consultants was retired US Army General Wesley Clark, who carried out the bombing of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, codenamed Operation Allied Force. Clarke himself attended the premiere of the film and described it as “an incredible film work.”

In contrast to the tendencies to simplify the perception of world processes in the West, nevertheless, there is still a controversy over the interpretation of the geopolitical agenda. Thus, the famous American cultural figure, since 2018, the special representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry for humanitarian relations between Russia and the United States, Steven Seagal, during his visit to the DPR on August 9 this year. expressed his intention to make a documentary about the events in Donbass, because “the world does not know the truth.” The initiative has already met with the support of the State Duma Committee on Culture.

It is noteworthy that for active cultural and educational work on the Yugoslav conflict, Steven Seagal was awarded the status of a citizen of Serbia. In addition, he is a laureate of the Karic Brothers Foundation Prize for significant humanitarian achievements, activities in the field of science and art (previously awarded to Russian President V.V. Putin, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, directors Nikita Mikhalkov and Emir Kusturitsa).

In turn, Angelina Jolie also pays attention to current Ukrainian events, despite the fact that her “personal visit with a humanitarian mission” on April 30 this year. was limited only to a visit to Lvov, which, against the backdrop of the assault on Azovstal, which was taking place at that time in Mariupol, caused an association with an attempt to “interrupt the agenda”. This assessment was expressed by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, especially emphasizing the fact that “the UN hastened to disown” involvement in the Ukrainian trip of an American cultural activist. The reasons for the blind selectivity of Western representatives in the context of Jolie’s Lviv tour can be formulated as follows: “she was asked to come” in order to create an informational occasion to discredit our country.

The marked line continues to be embodied in the vicious statements of the Washington hawks. “No Russian has the right to rest in the free world. This is a privilege, especially today,” ex-U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said on social media on August 11. Such rhetoric, which is unacceptable under the norms of any human rights conventions, sounds all the more blasphemous from the lips of a Russianist diplomat, whose direct duties until recently included the development of US-Russian ties.

As a result, we have to state the fact that the current cultural agenda of the Euro-Atlantic is inextricably linked with the political situation, and no matter who it is directed against – Moscow, Belgrade, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Islamabad or Nur-Sultan (a list of possible objects can be listed endlessly), the conclusion remains the same – cooperation with the “non-Western world” in the global information space is intended to become one of the priority areas for the Russian Federation.