Enemy Around - A view on the present conspiracy theory by Boris Vishnevsky

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Enemy Around
A view on the present conspiracy theory by Boris Vishnevsky

Fontanka.ru, June 30, 2009

The Soviet Union collapsed due to “ecological horror stories” of 1980s that provoked “artificial schizophrenic attitudes”: thus, a fear of salmonellosis led to a situation when Soviet citizens stopped eating chicken and the corresponding ministry responsible for provision of poultry collapsed, and a “horror story” on nitrates filling vegetables grown in the USSR killed our agriculture. After this the country was crammed with US poultry and imported fruit and vegetables.

Futhermore, these well-proven technologies have been applied worldwide already: the avian flue had to switch public attention from the war in Iraq, and the swine flu to distract attention from the global economic crisis. International terrorism represents another “horror story” invented by the USA and was intended as an umbrella for introduction of a new world order after the collapse of the USSR. The world government – elite bankers’ and politicians’ societies like the Bilderberg Club – has been behind all this. And it is implementing the “golden billion” doctrine: as resources will become scanty in the third millennium and will not suffice for the whole mankind, they will be divided between a lucky billion – the USA, Canada, Japan, Israel and partially Western Europe. The rest of the world population will be kept as slaves. Several million of people will be left in Russia for servicing of the Trans-Siberan railway and work at hazardous chemical and metallurgical plants, as well as world nuclear waste repository sites, which Russia will be turned into then…

It is neither a new, enlarged or revised edition of CIA Against the USSR (by the way, its author got a rare honour – a slap in the face – from Academician Andrei Sakharov), nor a quotation from a psychiatry textbook (the Paranoia section). A popular Russian paper generously offers all this to its readers as a journalist’s “investigation”. The paper mixes true facts with lies so skillfully that one has to spend a lot of time so that to finally find out the truth and realise that all this is simply a lame duck.

Many people, especially those raised by the television, do not spare any intellectual efforts on verifying the facts and take it all at face value. Thus, at present already 50 per cent of Moscow (!) school children state that the USA are Russia’s enemy (however, they also say that they would like to have a cottage on the Pacific shore in Beverly Hills and have a job of a Coca-Cola manager). All this represents a nation-wide paranoia – that is the national idea they have been looking for many years, and now here it is – “enemy is everywhere”.

We hear multiple explanations that we are “living under siege” and that the country is surrounded by enemies dreaming about splitting it into parts and weakening it. However, those who explain us from a TV screen that Russia has again obtained the glory of a super power and rose from its knees despite the efforts by the insidious West to humiliate Russia do not answer a quite natural question – why do they prefer to keep their money in the West, and not in their motherland. They also prefer to ignore another natural question about the pose of a person rising from his knees, as an extremely unattractive image of a “great superpower” emerges here at once…

A normal method of the “state paranoiac” propaganda is ignoring natural questions and not to taking trouble of proving anything. “The West does not like when Russia becomes strong!” they explain. And why does the West “dislike” this? Where have you got this from? And why the West in 1990s (officially called the years of “humiliation” here) was so eager to provide aid to Russia? Why did the West closed eyes to all what was happening during Yeltsin’s presidency – shooting of the parliament in 1993, war in Chechnya in 1994 and huge violations at presidential election of 1996? And then it closed its eyes to what was happening during Putin’s presidency, which, to put it mildly, did not quite fit into the democratic standards?

“Broadening of NATO threatens Russia!” is one of the strongest stereotypes of the Russian state propaganda. And is it really so? If NATO is Russia’s enemy, then why do we spend vacations in Turkey? And why out of all the European countries Russia has the best relationship with Germany?

“During Peter the Great’s reign Russia was considered the greatest power of the world,” a guide explains to schoolchildren during excursion in Peterghof. And quickly passes to a story about Peter the Great’s attempts to adopt Western experience in Russia. No one notices a controversy here: however, how can Europe recognize a country as a super power when this country tries to copy European models? In addition the situation in the “greatest power of the world” at the end of 17th century is well-known, as well as how it could influence the European policies – in the opposite case Russia would not have to “cut a window into Europe”…

The conspiracy theory has spread everywhere: from the demands to prohibit international adoption of orphans (however, they do not inform us here that foreigners are as a rule allowed to adopt only sick Russian children and that the number of cases of violence against such children in the West is ten times lower than in Russia) to explaning the roots of the doping scandals shaking Russia’s sports by artful intrigues of those who do not like that “our sportsmen” win victories.

If another Russian athlete is caught at using doping, the same song starts: they do not take any prohibited pharmaceuticals, and some people do not like when we win our victories, and it is a merely politically motivated case. And not a word about the fact that Western athletes, even the greatest athletes, are sometimes disqualified for using doping and nobody announces this as a conspiracy against the USA or UK and does not try to find its roots it the intrigues of those who do not like their victories.

However, it would be a mistake to think that only the country is under siege. What do we regularly hear from St.Petersburg authorities? That protests on the infill construction [when buildings are constructed very close to each other, often in violation of all the norms] result from the work of hostile groups “agitating the population” and the protest meetings against their policies are “paid for” and that “dissenters’ marches” are held by the “two echelons of extremists” from Moscow, etc.

It is not that important that the very first questions unveil these conspiracies. For example, who organised the meetings against the infill construction? Competitors of such construction companies? Why do they need this? They will not get an allowance to these construction sites, even if they manage to prohibit construction works there. However, if construction works begin right under your windows, you do not require any special “pushing”. And who can pay for the protest meetings if the city opposition is in dire straits? Finally, why do they send extremists from Moscow rather than from the USA?

The copyright to explaining everything via conspiracy of some outer forces does not belong to the present Russian authorities. The powerful USSR was also surrounded by enemies (however, it turned out that the latter were even more powerful if they managed to break the former). And before that Hitler’s Germany also had been living surrounded by enemies. And today Iran, Cuba, Northern Korea and Venezuela are living in such a situation…

This is obviously a “good” company for Russia. Maybe it is better for us to look for the roots of our problems inside Russia, rather than outside?