The Agency: An army of well-paid “trolls” in St. Petersburg
My dad claims that the level of brainwashing in Russia far far exceeds that of the Soviet regime, and the propaganda is by far worse (and worse than WWII Germany he says).<p>Of course statements like that evoke Godwin's law and a hard to swallow. However, my dad grew up in Soviet Russia and trained troops on the use of artillery equipment during the Soviet Afghanistan conflict. He's been around the block and has seen firsthand the Soviet propaganda in multiple Soviet republics.<p>If you think about the insidiousness of troll-style, FUD propaganda, it's way way more psychologically insidious than the overt Soviet propaganda. You can't cut off access to facts and appear "fair"--instead you make people question the truth.<p>Russia just raised a whole young generation that's a socially-backwards by a generation. Homophobic, racist, blame-the-west feelings are rampant.<p>During the early days of the Ukranian conflict, I was surprised to hear a close relative in Russia tell me how she has seen videos on Youtube of "blacks from Africa" killing innocent Russian youths ("gouging their eyes out" she said) in Eastern Ukraine.<p>This shit is real.