this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which criticizes Putin and is reputed to be the best independent pollster in Russia, just did a poll in Germany & France. It asked: who's responsible for starting the Ukraine war?

Here's Germany's result:

Here are the polling numbers from France:

It appears that both in Germany and France, more people believe that the US is responsible for starting the war in Ukraine than believe that Putin is responsible.

Leonid Volkov of the Anti-Corruption Foundation claims that these numbers show how effective Putin's propaganda is in Germany & France.

This is a laughable explanation of the numbers given that populations of Germany and France are exposed to US propaganda to a far greater degree than they are exposed to Russian propaganda. In fact, much of Russian media is even banned in EU at this point.

One can only imagine what these numbers would look like if the populations of Germany and France were not being bombarded with US government propaganda about the origins of the Ukraine war.

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[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 66 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Who the hell wrote those questions, why is Putin even separate from Russia and why Russians are singled out as a nation here.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we all know the answer is liberals

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 30 points 1 year ago

Because some especially enlightened liberals see past Putler and realize that the orcs are the real threat at a genetic level. galaxy-brain

[–] Fuckass@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago

Need a poll asking who caused 9/11 and the choices are

  • Osama bin Laden
  • George Bush
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Americans
  • the USA
  • The Soviet Union
  • Iraqis
  • Afghans
  • Muslims
  • Islam
[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

the answer being "Vladimir Putin" instead of "Russia" or "the Russian government" is just peak liberalism

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 55 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I noticed that as well, I love how they keep trying to pretend that Putin just rules by decree. You even see it in articles about the military news as if Putin personally commands all the forces, like he's playing an RTS there or something. It's absolutely incredible framing. I guess it's necessary to keep the whole if we only got rid of Putin everything would be great narrative going.

[–] GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

they do it for all enemy countries (Xi, Kim, Assad, Maduro, etc.), and to shift blame domestically onto individuals rather than the system

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[–] American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml 50 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I feel like people vastly overestimate the scale of russian influence over the internet. I can't wait until the CIA and FBI start blaming all of the shit they do on the russians.

[–] Fuckass@hexbear.net 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's clearly nowhere close to US influence, and it's interesting that people seem to be far less worried about that.

[–] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because USA good. USA make entertainment that me like. I want to move to LA like on Netflix show. So USA good and Russia evil because USA show tell me so.

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[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That was the point of Russiagate. The picture of Russia as weak and pitiful failed state was already ingrained since 90's, but since you can hardly fearmonger your population with a weak and pitiful failed state, a new narration was added. So now it is a weak and pitiful failed state with inhuman propganda and corrupting power (sounds kida like... projection? or soon will be). The enemy must be at the same time weak and strong, as per usual fascism.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Anti-Corruption Foundation

Asks "Please select who is responsible for the war? Is it:
A) A country (USA)
B) A person (Putin)
C) A transnational nuclear military (NATO)
D) A continent (European Countries)
E) A country and its people (Russia and The Russians)
F) This question is hard to answer "

Not the USA and it's people. Not Joe Biden. Not European people. Not Ukraine and The Ukrainians.

It's laughably corrupt

[–] ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I remember taking English classes and learning about how to avoid biasing polls and such. But these professional journalists don't even try to have the same level of integrity as school children. Western media is truly incredible. Incredibly shit.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 22 points 1 year ago

Western media loves to jerk itself off about its O B J E C T I V I T Y too. morshupls

[–] Fuckass@hexbear.net 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is a laughable explanation of the numbers given that populations of Germany and France are exposed to US propaganda to a far greater degree than they are exposed to Russian propaganda. In fact, much of Russian media is even banned in EU at this point

Putin can rig American elections, change star alignments, and resurrect extinct animals with his Slavic brainpan

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My fav part is that the whole Russiagate has been debunked at this point, but liberals are still running around parroting it. These are the people who pride themselves on rational thinking, but in practice they're no different from qanon nuts.

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[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

germans are probably still pissed the US took out the nord stream 2. if you want to overcome a 12% spike in energy costs, you gotta spend way more on the propaganda. like yank burgerbrain levels. we're talking multiple $100 million budget blockbuster summer movies, children's toy tie-ins, video games. smoke machines, laser lights, 100 meter tall robots breathing fire, all you can eat fried meat, monster trucks crashing into each other, music so loud even the young people think the world is coming to an end.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago

yank burgerbrain levels. we're talking multiple $100 million budget blockbuster summer movies, children's toy tie-ins, video games. smoke machines, laser lights, 100 meter tall robots breathing fire, all you can eat fried meat, monster trucks crashing into each other, music so loud even the young people think the world is coming to an end.

You can get that full experience with about an hour of uncurated TikTok. yea

[–] luchuan@lemmygrad.ml 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What having to pay for the electric bill will do to an mf

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

turns out that no amount of propaganda can compete with the material conditions people experience

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't entirely discount propaganda here; even on that poll, there's people that clearly experienced the same material conditions but bought into the "dae Putler dae Russians are orcs" propaganda.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 1 year ago

For sure, world class propaganda machine is basically what allowed this war to go on for as long as it did.

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[–] Life2Space@lemmygrad.ml 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's to hoping that Europe can separate from the US and integrate with Eurasia 🥳

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's basically the process that US was aiming to prevent from developing with the war. If Europe continued economic integration with Russia and China then US would necessarily start losing political influence over it. Now, Europe is stuck with US unless there's a massive political upheaval, which may yet happen.

[–] Trudge@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I wonder how many demands the US can make to Europe before the camel's back breaks. No gas, no chips, no huawei, no 5G... they're not seriously going to let themselves get strangled to death slowly right?

[–] Saint_Seiya91@lemmygrad.ml 22 points 1 year ago

As long as European capitalists keep making money with the US, they’ll keep going as long as they like and they keep the people under control with western media. It will take a significant downturn even greater than this one for the people to unite and either overthrow their government or force it to break away from the US sphere of influence.

Slow strangling is exactly what is happening though. Problem of Europe is not even that they have compradors in power, problem is that basically every forseeable alternative are also compradors, or open fascist (who are also usually compradors).

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[–] Drstrange2love@lemmygrad.ml 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yet they pretend that the EU countries were not the instigators of this conflict as well.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 47 points 1 year ago

To be fair, it's not like EU has any sovereignty at this point. It's a vassal of the US and the bureaucrats do what the empire tells them to.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's funny isn't it. That's how you know it's an anti-Putin pollster: it's split the vote against Putin in Germany by separating US/NATO/Europe (with or without Ukraine) – 53% or 62% to Putin/Russia's 27%/29%. That's a damning indictment of the pro-war machine. Who knew that if you turn off the gas tap you piss off enough people that they start asking questions like, 'Which scheiß put the price up?'

In France it was multiple choice so people could pick more than one option and it's closer to the combined German results although there are more answers for every category. That makes sense; the real answer is 'all of the above' except 'and the Russians' and, although it's not on there 'and the Ukrainians'. A better question would be who is most responsible, which seems to be how most people have interpreted it.

One question is why change the methodology? Did they think the French would give even more damning answers than the Germans? Or did the pollsters see the German answers and say, 'Quick, how do we make Putin look worse?'

The real nugget of gold from this is that it reveals 62% of Germans and 43% of the French are lemmygrad lurkers: guten tag / bonjour comrades!

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[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In fact, much of Russian media is even banned in EU at this point.

Yes but the truth can't be hidden from investigative Europeans, with all their freedom of expression and thought. They will search out the truth wherever it may be and recognise it when they see it. Hang on, no, wait, that doesn't work, either. They aren't allowed to see that propaganda because they're too gullible and believe everything they hear. What? They're only allowed to hear anti-Russian propaganda? Well, no, I didn't mean it like that.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 30 points 1 year ago

it's really getting hard for the propagandists to keep the narrative straight

[–] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 33 points 1 year ago

They could spend all the money in the world on propaganda, but it won't change people's material conditions.

The crazy thing is that they'd rather try that than just...give concessions to the working class and prevent a revolution.

[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's because Germany and France are experiencing direct economic consequences from the invasion, with the US strategy being to use this war to screw over Europe.

Material conditions will always trump propaganda.

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