Countries where everyone agrees with vast lies, like the US and now the entire West, do not think they are being lied to. They swear by the media/state lies about foreign policy which these entities have told them are the truth. So they think they believe in the truth. They get upset if you tell them they are being lied to because to believe that makes you feel like a mark, a tool, and idiot, a fool.
People are correct in a sense that no one likes being lied to. But the West is very hostile to the belief that the state and media are lying to them about foreign policy. They don’t believe it’s true.
In Russia, by contrast, the notion that the state and media are lying to you is easily accepted as obvious in many cases. This is perhaps a legacy of their Soviet past and its propaganda. They are naturally suspicious of anything the state or media tells them, and the reflexively want to check it out to see if it is true or not. At least that’s the case on Russian Telegram and Twitter sites.
There was some controversy over this. Some Twitter people said, “Hey, let’s not talk about these unpleasant truths!” Other said it is good we are talking about failures in mobilization or on the field because this means that we now have a “civil society” where people can protest conditions. And indeed a lot of people protested mobilization problems and they typically were resolved quite quickly instead of buried and covered up. The same with military failures. Users were saying we need to talk about this so we don’t do the same mistakes in the future.
A very pleasant attitude, I must say!
The fact that so many people openly protested to the various government agencies gives the lie to the notion that in Russia you cannot protest against the state. Of course you can protest. People do it all the time. And local governments protest against the national government.
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