© The NationalUkrainians call unidentified fighter pilot 'Ghost of Kiev'
The vast technical improvements in the tools of its dissemination mean that propaganda need not be subtle at all now.
In the 21st century, the fog of war looks crystal clear. Every advance in communication technology — from the telegraph to telephone to radio to television, and now on to the digital world of social media and livestream —
has added verisimilitude and detail to what remains an illusion. We have only pictures of wars, landscapes of battlefields and portraits of soldiers; we do not actually see the thing itself. No man does, though the great military geniuses of history got closest.
Napoleon and Caesar knew what was being done, what needed being done, what motivated men, and some of what it would mean. War remains, as Heraclitus said in the 5th century B.C.:
"father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free."
Remember this, then, as you play spectator to the Ukraine conflict.
The tools of propaganda in mass society
have only grown with the tools of mass communication. You cannot see the war in its entirety — where it comes from and where it will go and what may come of it, and most of all what is happening now, on the ground —
but you can be made to think you see, told that you are a part of a great and noble effort, even from the sterile security of your office or the comfort of your home.
There are two wars, which are in the end still really one war: that between
Russia and Ukraine, and that waged in the information sphere by parties both known and unknown, state and non-state actors alike, around the world. Since history is written by the victors, the thinking goes, if you write away now you might just win.
Comment: The global supply chain is already suffering backlogs and shortages from almost 2 years of lockdown and now with the feeble attempts to attack Russia through more sanctions is threatening to cause devastating shortages of everything from wheat and fertilizer to gas and oil; and, as it is, the US has yet to find its allies and vassals any viable alternative: Russia's main gas pipeline to Europe stops supplies
Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Truth About The Russia-Ukraine War