Thread by @irgarner

Big 🧵: We constantly hear that Putin is a master media strategist, but here’s a thread on WW2, national heroes, myth, and why he cannot win the media war at home.

In short, enthusiasm for the war is going to crater because Putin's propagandists have an impossible task.

The key way in which Soviet writers - I've written an entire book on this - created a hugely popular myth of national self-sacrifice in WW2 was by focusing on people, not events. The papers were filled with stories of ordinary people laying down their lives for the greater good.

This was a hugely effective approach even as the country was in the depths of torment.

In short, readers connect with humans, not with tactics, strategy, or even which towns and cities are under attack.

It takes a lot to make people *really* care about cities in the way they care about people (and, in my book, I explain how one of the ways this was done with Stalingrad was by personifying the city...but that's a digression...).

The problem Putin has today is twofold. One relates to internal media. The Russian media is under strict instructions to call the invasion a "special operation." This bland term sounds like something out of a Soviet bureaucrat's dictionary. It has no emotional resonance.

State outlets aren't reporting on casualties or heroic incidents. Look @ the front page of Argumenty i fakty, one of Russia's largest papers, today. Dark, black pictures. A handful of balaclava-covered faces. Some historical nonsense about imperialism/the west.

The few remaining independent media outlets have been threatened with reprisals for calling the invasion what it is. But the problem is that, if you don't call the war a "war," and you can't cover the troops fighting it, how can you create national heroes?

How can you create enduring and appealing myths? The answer is that you can't.

That leads us to the second problem Putin has: Ukraine is absolutely nailing the propaganda war. I don't need to reiterate the point, because you ALL know it by now.

Heroic, brave Zelensky defending his city against an overwhelming invader vs. crazy grandpa Putin in his bunker; "Russian ship, go fuck yourself"; cheery Ukrainians welcoming Russians to hell; citizens singing the national anthem on the streets of Kyiv.

But that's not just a media war Ukraine is winning in the West and on Twitter: that stuff is going to seep through into the Russian infospace too. Why do you think Putin is moving to shut down access to FB, Twitter, etc. in Russia? Because they're screwed.

Putin's propagandists can't win if they can't make heroes. And this is just the beginning. Wait til the bodies start arriving home, for the videos of Russian grandmothers wailing in the streets over lost boys conscripted & sent to die for a war of nothing, a war without purpose.

@jeff_hawn as promised.