The Belarusian state-run TV-channel, ONT, has aired a TV spot where they were speaking of threat coming from Neo-Nazist organizations from Russia that were allegedly active in Belarus. They also said that military patriotic camps establish by the Cossacks pose a threat. Belarusian political analyst Artur Grigoryev has commented on the situation to EADaily.
The governmental propaganda machine has always worked with special services, and special services are not used to doing anything for nothing. That is why it was not a coincidence that the video about the “Russian Fascism” was aired on the state television in prime time.
Propaganda has always been used as a tool to deflect common people’s attention from more significant problems in the economy, social life, domestic and foreign policy. The current stovepiping is to fulfil the same task.
The problem of Belarus is in fact in the irreplaceable, corrupt and incompetent old elites who think too much of themselves and see no other sense in their lives than power. Their illness is sadomasochism. Their like being humiliated on the basis of ranks. They find it normal when their boss humiliates them only because he is the boss. They dislike when someone who stands apart on the grey background. Unfortunately, disappearance of the Communist Party censors’ dictatorship did not result in taking freethinking as normal; Belarusian society has not used to democracy. It had been taught for so long that the authoritarian regime is good, that without authoritarianism in “the finest sense of the word” they would face death, that tyranny is the only way-out, so that it resulted in serious mutations of public consciousness.
Common people do not comprehend who Fascists are. Whom the boss tells to call a Fascist will be a Fascist. This time they showed at the Russian National Unity that after assassination of the Belarusian regional branch Gleb Samoylov and some internal problems stopped being noticeable. But they need to distract attention of common people from failures in the governmental policy, from the sinking GDP, high inflation rate, collapsing exports, shrinking real incomes, poverty and corruption. They are in a crying need for an image of enemy. So, they are pulling it out, blowing it up and crying out loud about it.
They cannot quarrel with Poland allegedly having claims to Western Belarus, as there is thaw in relations with the EU coming. They cannot quarrel with Ukraine and the Baltics, as they play a significant role in transit and diversification of exports and improving the relations with the West. There is only Russia left that has always forgiven everything and even gave money. Not everybody has forgotten allegations that those who threw Molotov cocktails into the Russian embassy in Minsk were connected with Russia. What followed those allegations? Financial aid, warm words of support and other pleasant things. Undoubtedly, this time too the Belarusian television and initiators of the new anti-Russian opus will get away with it.
