How Lukashenko’s mouthpiece lies: what Belarusian propaganda hides

Propaganda is actively working in Belarus/Illustrative collage 24 Channel

Propaganda is such a funny thing that tries to teach you to ignore the beam in your own eye and notice (and often invent) the speck in someone else’s. For Belarusian propaganda, such a log is complete dependence on Russian narratives.

Both in Belarus and in the neighboring aggressor country, state media and pro-government bloggers unanimously assert how independent Europe is in making any decisions. They say that the European Union depends on the United States and cannot take a step without their approval. The Belarusian publication “Zerkalo” and24 Channellooked at how propagandists are trying to confirm this thesis, and tell how they lie.

Headlines of propagandists designed to sow fear

“The Brzezinski formula has driven Europe into a dead end,” “The European Union has been accused of impotence due to complete dependence on the United States,” “Europe is a colony of the United States”… If you are a vulnerable person, then it is better not to read the headlines of Belarusian and Russian pro-government publications. You can, after all, believe it by chance, which is what propaganda is counting on. We looked through it for you.

How Lukashenko’s mouthpiece lies: see the propaganda analysis

And to begin with, an important disclaimer. All such texts – in letters on the screen, or in words from the announcers’ mouths – are united by the desire to show that everyone there has already understood and recognized this truth and is trying to fight. The authors of the opusestry to name as many experts as possibleand the more Western they are in origin, the better! Experts must definitely analyze any report prepared by an organization with a difficult-to-remember acronym in its name.

The authors should draw their conclusions from a publication with as Western a title as possible, although it is enough even if it is simply not written in Cyrillic. It is very advisable to refer at least several times to European and American diplomats, political forces from those regions, and it is also very good if the text is overloaded with not always clear terms and complex polysyllabic sentences. Do you know what everything is for?To look respectable!Yes, in the era of neural networks and electric vehicles, for many this is still a significant factor of trust. Indeed, who will go Google what kind of people, organizations, media, etc. they are?

Here's an example. “SB. Belarus Today” – a newspaper of the administration of Alexander Lukashenko – published the text “How the US keeps the EU on a leash.” The reason was an investigation by journalist Seymour Hersh about the Nord Stream explosion that occurred in September last year. Like, this is all the work of the United States. Seymour Hersh is a famous journalist, he received a Pulitzer in 1970, so it is not surprising that propaganda willingly adopted his version. But only it was based on data from a single anonymous source, and other investigations by Hershmuch criticized for unreliabilityIn addition, the text about the Nord Stream explosion contains a number of factual inconsistencies, but does propagandists really care about this?

SB writes that the Russian gas pipeline was actually blown up by the States – and thereby spat in the face of Europe, but she remained silent. What this means is thatwithout “Flows” Europe will be left without gas before the cold weather– this was one of the most beloved propaganda narratives. But it is true that the European Union was practically ready for winter even without Russian gas – the storage facilities were 88% full, Norway became the main supplier of the resource.

The Russians are coming up with the “enslavement of Europe” “

Furtherthe propagandists declared that the “enslavement of Europe”began by pumping its economy with American loans during the First World War, so that they would buy equipment, wheat, etc. from the States. And then there was the Second World War, from which, according to the author, the United States earned even more, and even later – the Marshall Plan, a program for restoring Europe after the war.

The task, according to propagandists, was not so much to help the allies how much to make them comfortable. But for some reason they miss the point that the standard of living of the population has increased in all countries that received assistance under this program. And thanks to it, the European middle class was restored, without which political stability and sustainable development are impossible.

Of course, NATO also suffered in the same text. European countries willingly joined this military-political bloc in the second half of the 20th century, and propagandists saw this as a sign of the loss of their military sovereignty. True, nothing was said there about the fact that all its member states have an equal right to vote in the Alliance, regardless of the size of the economy or army.

NATO considers freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law– everything that has become too optional in modern Belarus and Russia. Moreover, this bloc remains attractive; Finland joined it in 2023. Now NATO has 31 countries. The formal opponent – the CSTO – has only six.

To develop the topic – the war in Ukraine:the supply of weapons to it, write SB propagandists, “causes justifiable indignation of ordinary taxpayers in the EU” , “and the European sycophants seem to be ready to shoot themselves at something, to get involved in any adventure, just to please their masters in Washington.”

At the same time, in Europe, where, unlike Belarus, there is an independent sociology, the vast majority of residents blame Russia for starting the war, have a negative attitude towards its president Vladimir Putin and hope for a victory for Ukraine. According to summer polls,64% support funding and arms supplies for Ukraineand just as many approve of the fact that Ukraine has become a candidate for joining the European Union. 88% support the provision of humanitarian aid to those affected by the war and 86% approve of asylum in the EU for Ukrainians who have fled abroad because of what is happening.

No one will argue that the war has affected living standards and attitudes residents of the European Union. But most of them are fine with cause-and-effect relationships.

And here’s another fascinating story. Look, this is the Parliamentary Newspaper, a publication of the Russian Federation Council. She cites a comment by Nikolai Topornin, director of the Center for European Information, that the foreign policy of the European Union depends on the States for two reasons.

• The first isan artificially imposed fear of Russia.Supposedly, many in the EU believe that Russia will take over European countries if the United States suddenly stops supporting them. Well, fear is not fear, and after Dmitry Medvedev’s posts on telegram, I want to stay as far away from it as possible.
• And the second isEurope’s fear of losing the American market. The United States, propaganda writes, is showing that disagreement with their position will be followed by immediate punishment – sanctions, fines, restriction of the rights of states on world platforms and excommunication from the American market. Let's imagine for a second that this suddenly happened. The US share in EU imports is no more than 18 percent, and exports – 11.

Of course, losing the American market would not be very pleasant. But, as the ability of European countries to reorient themselves in the conditions of a much narrower gas market has already shown, this would hardly be a fatal blow for the European Union. Watch the full video with the analysis of Belarusian propaganda above!