So, about building the propaganda machine I spoke about at the rally.
First, an epigraph from a recent post by Mitrich: Norbert Wiener once observed that the human brain works according to a principle formulated by Lewis Carroll: "Whatever is said three times becomes true". The crooks who seized power do have such a machine, and it is the main tool they use to keep that power. It is the zombie box (above all Channel One) and a small number of high-circulation print outlets kept afloat by the state. Let’s call all of this together the Evil Propaganda Machine (EPM). You can say all you like that television is losing viewers and the internet is king, but so far reality suggests otherwise. In this election, the crooks’ propaganda machine quite successfully planted three seemingly absurd ideas in the public mind: If not Putin, then war and ruin. What war? With whom? Why? Putin is against the “cursed ’90s.” A basic look at the man’s biography shows that he was part of those “cursed ’90s”: he worked as an activist for Chernomyrdin’s party, joined Yeltsin’s administration in 1996, and in the FSB he protected and covered for Yeltsin-era top corrupt officials. All the villains of the ’90s, people like Chubais, are doing just fine under Putin. Millionaires and billionaires. Putin is fighting the Americans, and the Americans are fighting Putin. Sure, the struggle is in full swing—except all our oil and gas money is invested in U.S. bonds, while Putin’s friends successfully launder and invest the money stolen from us all over the world, including in the United States, without the slightest risk to themselves. A raw-materials appendage with ministers who are thieves, satellites falling into the sea, and the bosses of those satellites punching each other in the face over a secretary, — that’s Putin’s Russia, the embodiment of the wildest dreams of the crazier wing of the American establishment. It’s complete nonsense, but it worked. That has to be acknowledged. We don’t have anything even remotely like that. For example. Here is the task: Tell the whole country two important things: a) it has been proven that most state contracts go to Putin’s crook friends, who are already choking on their billions. b) in Kazan, two days ago, a man left his home, was taken to the police station, beaten there, and raped with a champagne bottle, after which he died. In other words, he was killed in police custody by sadists and monsters. And yet nothing happens. No one is arrested, no one is removed from office, no crowds of inspectors are sent to Kazan, no buses of OMON riot police are brought in from neighboring regions. Nurgaliyev, the re-certified police chief, does not apologize to the nation. The President, who recently carried out this “Interior Ministry reform,” makes no address. On television, this is not the lead story. Six people were suspended from work only after people online started expressing outrage. And the head of the Kazan police department apologized to the relatives. What will we do: write about it in blogs and on Twitter. Reposts and so on. online media will write about it. Lenta, Gazeta. some newspapers and radio stations will pick it up. Echo of Moscow, Vedomosti, Kommersant. a bit of regional press. Kazan will be easier (people hate the police and instinctively imagine themselves in the victim’s place); state contracts will be harder (it’s a complicated topic, and not everyone can explain it). The result will be fairly significant: around seven million people living in the biggest cities will hear what we want them to hear. That is not enough. Those seven million already understand everything. They already know almost all of it, or will learn it within a week. For the purposes of an effective political struggle against the rule of crooks and thieves, we need to build a system capable of effectively delivering information to 50 million people. When I say “effectively delivering,” I mean telling them about one specific thing (a piece of news, an event, a fact) within the space of a month. Where do our 50 million people live? Let’s immediately discard the popular utopian idea that we have to reach every grandmother and go village to village, settlement to settlement. That is impossible—or rather, so expensive that it is practically impossible. Here are our 50 million:
These are people living in apartment blocks in the country’s largest cities. The voting results for the Party of Crooks and Thieves (the 4th column) show that these people view what is happening with a fair degree of skepticism (where United Russia’s results are above 35–38%, the numbers are falsified—that is fairly obvious), which means that in each of these cities we have supporters numbering at least in the thousands. 3. What resources do we have for building the Good Propaganda Machine (GPM)? TV stations, printing presses, radio stations, frequencies, and other physical resources? None. financial resources, meaning money? Together we can raise several million rubles a year. Up to 10–12 million, I think. human resources. Oh yes. People are all we have. The Good Propaganda Machine is people—its participants, who voluntarily commit themselves to spreading truthful information. In whatever amount and in whatever format they are comfortable with. Some can give one hour a week, some seven. How many people could the GPM consist of? It’s unclear. This little blog gets just over a million visitors a month.
(Google Analytics)
Of course, not all of them are ready to be part of the GPM. There are villains among the readers too (Hello, villains!)
Let’s assume that 1% of readers are active enough to spend 1 hour a week, and civic-minded enough to follow the principle, “If not me, then who?”
13,000 people.
More than 100,000 people came out to rallies in Moscow. They are already active enough, since they showed up.
We can assume that up to 10% of participants could be part of the GPM.
10,000 people in Moscow.
A couple of weeks ago in Yekaterinburg, 4,000 people came out for an unauthorized march.
20% of them.
And so on.
I think we can safely assume that, on average, across the board we can find 1,000 to 1,500 people in each of the 50 largest cities.
Yes, in Moscow it may be 10,000, in Makhachkala 100, but the task of involving 65,000 to 100,000 people across the country in systematic work looks entirely realistic.
4. What audience can the GPM reach?
Write down on a piece of paper the people you could call once a month and tell the bitter truth about what is happening—with examples—without them thinking you are crazy or a political crank.
Including your mom, dad, and grandmother.
Grandma, in any case, will be glad to get a call and will listen about Putin too.
If you are a grandmother yourself, things are more complicated, but your adult granddaughter will survive a political briefing once a month.
Even the most antisocial person can find ten people.
10 x 100,000 = a million. Subtract overlap, and that’s half a million.
Half a million with a single phone call. Not bad already.
The first task of GPM participants is to take stock of every available way of spreading information.
LiveJournal posts
Twitter
emails
forums
local networks
stickers
graffiti
paper letters
paper postcards
car stickers
leaflets on the street
leaflets in mailboxes
videos
burn something onto a disc (it costs 5 rubles apiece) and scatter them in mailboxes
put up signs near the house like in America
newspapers
homemade radio transmitters
hijacking a local TV signal
building some kind of crazy contraption
If you really think about it, the list could go on for a long time.
Each member of the GPM can choose the methods they are comfortable with and get to work.
I have a corner entrance and only two apartments per floor. But if I simply hang one leaflet a week in the elevator, then I know for sure that my part of the GPM will be drilling into the brains of at least 60 adults on a constant basis.
They won’t be able to escape my leaflet.
It will catch up with them more inevitably than Channel One.
And on it will be written: in Kazan, police officers raped a man with a champagne bottle and killed him. And no one has borne either political or criminal responsibility. And this happened because the only thing Putin needs from the police is their help in covering up election fraud. That is what 61% for United Russia in the city of Kazan costs us.
That is the plain truth. After reading it three times (see the epigraph), a resident of my building will never forget it.
Simple actions requiring no effort or expense will allow each GPM participant to reach an audience of at least 100 people.
If 20% of the GPM is active enough to work 2–3 hours a week, then the reach will be 1,000 people per person.
And there are our 50 million.
And from them, the information will spread further to everyone else.
Why didn’t this work before? What, you think you’re the smartest one?
Simply because no one had tried it before.
I can recall only two attempts in this area:
distributing a million copies of the brochure "Putin. Results". Even though the brochure was confiscated, people were detained, and so on, the effort was, on the whole, quite successful. Polls showed that many people had heard of such a booklet.
And distributing a booklet is only one form of campaigning—the most expensive one, and not the most effective.
our campaign “United Russia is the party of crooks and thieves.” Clumsy and disorganized as it was, it still made a substantial contribution to the drubbing of the Party of Crooks and Thieves.
No one really worked on RosAgit except a couple of enthusiasts. Even so, there were tens of thousands of leaflet downloads, thousands of ribbons, badges, stickers, and so on distributed.
I’m not the smartest one. It’s just that the time has come. Technologically speaking.
Members of the GPM can communicate with each other on the internet, which exists in abundance in every one of the 50 largest cities. Traffic costs have fallen.
Printers have become cheaper. Paper, cartridges. Mobile communication. Printing services. Discs. SMS.
The technology has become widely accessible. We need to use that.
Who runs the GPM?
No one. Decentralization is everything.
If the machine has an off switch, it will be pressed. If they can jail one person, they will.
We need to unite in groups and divisions based on shared interests, but without a coordinating center.
There is a political logic here too:
a) this cannot be Navalny’s GPM.
Some people like Navalny, some do not.
But everyone dislikes the Party of Crooks and Thieves, and those are the people we need to attract; I (or anyone else) should not scare off GPM members.
b) the topics differ. Some want to denounce Putin because he is a German spy and opened a NATO base in Russia, others because he is ruining relations with the West. Some care about Kazan, others about state contracts.
Let everyone form groups based on their interests and talk about exactly what they like and believe in.
What this looks like in practice.
I don’t know yet. We have organized several meetings on the subject and are working it out.
For now, at the most primitive level, I imagine it roughly like this.
A GPM member receives something like a checklist.
It is on their smartphone, on their computer, on Facebook and VKontakte. Or printed out on paper.
It contains a task list of what needs to be done that week, taking into account that member’s own preferences.
If they have decided they are ready to put up a poster in their building entrance and send ten emails a week, then that is what they mark in the checklist. Existing creative groups send them the content (what to print and put up).
The checklist is laid out for six months, and a participant who sets themselves the goal of persuading, say, 230 people over that time adds check marks as they achieve results.
If a person is ready to put up posters, post on their LiveJournal, send 100 text messages, and do one piece of graffiti, then their checklist will reflect that. After completing it, they become a level-80 fighter against the Party of Crooks and Thieves.
And so on.
You can add all kinds of game elements: color in covered buildings on a map, hold competitions among campaigners, and so on.
The only limit is our own level of creativity.
And one last thing for now (I’ve thought of plenty more, but I’m tired of writing).
Without the GPM, we won’t achieve anything.
That is, we will anyway—but much later.
Of course time is on our side, and this regime will fall apart and collapse, because it is in fact thieving and pointless; it will just take longer.
Everyone will learn eventually that the reformed police rape people with bottles—but in a year, when someone is raped in their own city.
Everyone will understand eventually that all state contracts go to the crook Rotenberg, from roads that are broken despite costing 30 times more than in Europe. But by then Rotenberg will have stolen twice as much again.
Building the GPM is, in my view, the best kind of political activity possible right now.
It is aimed at strategic victory.
It is entirely in the interests of the country and of Russia’s citizens.
Let’s build it quickly and crush the power of the crooks and thieves.
Write your brilliant ideas and feedback in the comments. We will study everything carefully.
I will keep you informed about practical steps.