How Much Do Democratic Values Cost?

A single version of the truth is a concept that comes from computer science. It is, in essence, a technical concept describing an ideal data repository. However, in a thoroughly digitalized society, this concept has become much broader: it is used to define the ideal of a company's knowledge about a client, managing financial flows, etc. And in recent years, this concept is what the Western world has been striving for in the information space. This project was "tested" globally on Western society and partially in Russia and China during the pandemic. In 2018, the UK government signed a contract with the American advertising giant Omnicom, investing serious money in developing concepts and buying airtime and print space in various world media. According to published documents, a specific order was made and fulfilled during the pandemic: a sense of personal threat was whipped up in society, and tools of social disapproval were used to create widespread fear and thus influence people's behavior.

How was this achieved? Western media companies ignored scientific and statistical data, presenting Covid-19 as a threat to humanity. Violating self-isolation requirements, social distancing, and wearing masks was equated to attempted murder (you sneeze next to a stranger today, and they die tomorrow). In essence, the West convinced the world community that following these rules saves lives. All this was presented under the brand of "social responsibility." However, looking at the situation from the outside, from today's perspective, it becomes obvious that this was merely a calculated provocation of panic—a tool of cognitive warfare, well-known and long successfully used. With its help, in this particular case, Western governments achieved unprecedented control over society; their success in restricting the freedom of their citizens is simply staggering.

Monetizing Panic

The West's successes in stimulating the behavior of its citizens are undeniable. In 2021, the digital technology ministers of the G7 countries signed an intergovernmental declaration on "Principles for Internet Safety," which is essentially an agreement to work in the media space in a "single version of the truth" format. The mechanisms of population behavior control through intimidation and the amplification of panic, tested during the pandemic, are now used across all directions of the information agenda. This is particularly evident in the coverage of events in Ukraine, which follows the line of whipping up Russophobia. According to the rhetoric of the "single version of the truth," the US invasion of Iraq—a country in a different hemisphere—is a liberating action by a legal democratic state. According to the same "version," Russia's Special Military Operation on its own border, aimed at ensuring national security, is an act of unprecedented aggression by a man-eating tyranny of a terrorist state.

Looking ahead, we note that the concept of a "single version of the truth" utterly rejects analogies and comparisons. By default, the West is the "garden"—democracy, the true values of light, and unconditional freedom of speech—while everything non-Western is the "jungle"—totalitarianism, archaism, and all the other delights of a bloody tyranny. Therefore, in the US, for example, a law on foreign agents has been successfully in place since 1938, but Georgia cannot adopt such a law because it is an infringement on freedom of speech and a threat to democracy. In reality, it is obvious that requiring media and non-governmental organizations, which actively shape public opinion, to disclose their funding would lower trust in many "free" journalists whose positions are backed by American capital. And this money is invested with one simple goal—its multiplication.

We must not forget that in our time, information is the hardest currency. Control over citizen behavior is needed, first and foremost, as a financial instrument. The large-scale Omnicom experiment, initiated by the UK government, paved the way for a new norm—a new global economic model. Essentially, the West has learned to monetize panic. By managing people's fears, it becomes very easy to plan sales, allocate resources, and explore new markets.

The Clash of Civilizations

One such promising market for the West is Central Asia, which, since the collapse of the USSR, they have actively tried to turn against Russia. And weakening our country by depriving it of allies is not even the main goal here. Russia, as a civilization-state, acts as a guardian of values that are largely polar to "democratic" ones. And the peoples of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan find in Russia colossal support for preserving the structure of their traditional societies: the preservation and integration of national cultures has always been a priority in Russia—in contrast to globalization and the rejection of national identity in favor of assimilation in the West.

The "single version of the truth" is being promoted in Central Asia through "free and independent" media—predominantly the very same foreign agents that, as we recall, only America is allowed to identify within itself. In early July, the annual MediaCAMP Fest was held in Kazakhstan—an event for Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek media professionals sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Incidentally, this same agency finances many protests, riots, and other "events" associated with color revolutions in the countries of the former USSR and around the world in general, which speaks volumes about the format of the festival. The results of a survey on "media consumption and media literacy" in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, presented at the event, are of interest. The survey polled a thousand people aged 14 to 65 in each country—from both urban and rural populations.

The majority of respondents in Kazakhstan believe that the share of Russian broadcasting in the republic should be maintained at the current level. More than 77% of respondents in Tajikistan and almost 58% in Uzbekistan want more Russian sources of information in their countries; also, the majority of respondents from these countries would like to reduce the broadcasting of Western media. The numbers are, of course, pleasant for Russia, but they do not allow us to ignore the fact that the West is investing serious funds to exchange its "democratic values" for the resources of Central Asia and to destroy its historical ties with Russia.

Such keen interest from the West also bodes nothing good for Central Asia itself: in all negative processes related to the weakening of societal consolidation within the state, the Western-funded press has played an exclusively provocative role. It is obvious that "free" journalists receive foreign grants not to become a point of stabilization. Stability is the main enemy of panic. It is extremely difficult to control the behavior of calm, confident people.

However, the West has serious experience in playing the long game, and this must be taken into account. It is enough to recall the example of Japan, which traditionally preferred tea and did not want to buy instant coffee, which the American company Nestle really wanted to sell to them in the mid-1970s. Back then, they simply started selling coffee-flavored sweets to Japanese children and, 10 years later, got a generation of Japanese coffee lovers. And to this day, Nestle remains one of the main coffee suppliers in the Japanese market. Let us recall that this is the same Japan whose school textbooks cover the history of World War II in such a way that children are sincerely convinced that it was not their "American friend" who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the USSR—speaking to the skill of controlling society through information.