Thread by @PaulusWagner

There has been speculation what the "Z" letter on Russian tanks invading Ukraine stands for:
taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russi…
Whatever tactical purpose, during the last days, a massive propaganda campaign has started using the #Z for a "rally behind the army" effect. An analytical🧵...

The disinformation channel Russia Today may have started it (or kicked it off?) one week ago by selling merchandise with the symbol of the invasion. Meanwhile, Russian social media is flooded with paroles using the symbol.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

When there is one word I dislike in Russian, a language I have studied for 10 years and that I love, it is "naš" (наш), meaning "our". In everyday language use, anything Russian will be called "наш". I have spent years explaining this was banal nationalism, and here we go:

"ZA naših", in current propaganda written with a Latin Z instead of the cyrillic з (zey), means "for ours".
"Our" soldiers? "Our" compatriots? Right. All of these. But this is only the beginning, it becomes more explicit:

Gone viral this week on Russian social networks (or been pushed by bots, I can't hold them apart), this hashtag says "We don't leave our people behind". Little brainer: it applies to ethnically Russian Donbass residents! And aims to justify invasion (of whole Ukraine), of course.

The third hashtag that is currently more viral than Covid in the country with the world's second highest 2020-2021 excess death toll* reads #ZаПобеду or #ZаНашуПобеду : For Our Victory. Is this the point were we go full Goebbels? (*themoscowtimes.com/2021/12/30/rus…)

Yet the central phrase prepared by state propaganda relies on finer NLP: "Zащита" (usually Защита) means "protection". Thank you for saving us!

Evidently, the #ZA (за ... for) can be applied to lots of stuff such as #ZaPutina, #ZaPresidenta, #ZaRossiyu. So - the next presidential campaign is made ?#Movement-based campaigning has a new meaning!

Rightfully, critical voices on Western social media have started likening the Russian war propaganga icon #Z to the swastika ...
... and to the Q in QAnon.
And this, the exposing of plain and simple facts, may just be the right way to react to it.

Fact is: Russian propaganda, just like any #Populist-Radical-Right-Wing prop... ah, communication, uses basic psychological and neurolinguistic mechanisms to turn arguments (and facts) around. Let's analyse this with 2 more trending nationalist hashtags: #ягоржусь & #мненестыдно.

"I am proud" & "I am not ashamed": hurt pride is the potato of the populist potato soup. Shame, pride's opposite, has been felt for decades for being "backwards" towards the West. Now, ("again",) the world is pointing its finger on Russia, saying "be ashame!" ...

... for aggressively invading a sovereign state. So why not cognitively merging the one with the other and shouting out, in a motion of emancipation from decades of perceived subordination: "I am not ashamed!" (of invading my neighbor state). Perfect.

How one can counter this it is by putting the facts into the affects. This counter-meme showing "Z" reads: "I am proud to wear the swastika". While catching critical audience's positive attention by taking up the affect of pride, the symbol and catchphrase ... #affacts

...it brings to the point that an army covered with a symbol that contextually, functionally, and formally resembles the swastika is aggressively invading its neighbor, claiming the neighbor was governed by "neonazis" (below:"behind us the truth, with us God", "Z" on sleeve).

#Information warfare is one of the classical things a democrat cannot do and cannot not do. The way out of the dilemma is: propagate #differentiated facts.

Illustrating the need to act, Duma since yesterday calls deviations from state positions "fake news" (f.ex. calling the "Special operation in Donbass" a "War"), punishable with ≤ 15 yrs of prison.
Sarcastic commenters have renamed #Tolstoi's novel "Special operation and Peace".

Many have called for increased (private) efforts to reach ordinary Russians, most of whom do not support a war but also don't know how much of a war there really is going on. E.g.: "#SkipPutin. Talk to the Russians"
pen-deutschland.de/de/2022/03/04/…

As the "#Z" propaganda campaign marks the necessity of Russian govt. to break to its people that there indeed is war and why;& as by March 4, 2022, critical & foreign media have been fully forced out of Russia, any channel of differentiated information may be even more important.

While the critical & more educated crowd the trains to Helsinki & planes to Dubai, who stays back in a shrinking economy with no alternative sources of information are those who do not have the economic or cultural resources to leave. This is a toxic mix.
bbc.com/news/world-606…

Saying this, I am referring less to the phenomenon of "#Z" car stickers...

... or flash mobs ...

... many of which are staged by Edinaya Rossiya (the governing party).

More concerning is that when you stagnate, the past becomes more interesting than the future. The decisive element of Russian past "#Z" propaganda alludes to is: World War II. The 20th century in a nutshell, Soviet population didn't have much to laugh about, but they had ...

...one thing to be proud of: that the Red Army had freed Europe from Fascism. Right, not the USA, but the USSR won WWII. "Eternal glory to the heroes of the Red Army, who fell in battle with the German fascist invaders for the freedom and independence of the peoples of Europe",

says the #RedArmy monument in Vienna, still built in Stalin's time. "We are freeing Europe from "Nazism" (again)" says the #Z campaign today. Perfect historical resonance.
Just that today it is a lie - and the wall behind the monument has been painted in 🇺🇦 last week.

This is the #fact that may break the spell: Russian leadership currently is, bluntly, #lying to its people and to its soldiers. Let's target this archilles heel.