Why "Russia" Experts Missed The Chef's Imminent Coup.
Why "Russia" Experts Missed The Chef's Imminent Coup.
Russia "experts" are fed vast amounts of Disinfolklore by the Ruschist state Disinfolklore apparatus.
"Kremlinology" is an industry which is fed raw materials that are constructed inside the Russian power vertical to bamboozle, fool, confuse, and distract Western "experts."
I shared the "conventional wisdom" that the Chef was a "mercenary leader" whom the "nomenclature" would never accept.
Yet, at a certain point (25th May 2023) that "spin" (promoted to and by Kremlinologists) did not fit the data.
So I changed my mind. Russia experts even today still perceive the Chef as the image the Chef's own Disinfolklore troll production factories want them to see: A man from no-where. A mere mercenary. Yesterday's man. An outsider. A truth-teller. Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. Bernard Shaw's Unreasonable Man. A mere Turbulent Priest. etc. (instead he's the Apprentice Magi Chef of Disinfolklore who the Ozero Collective anointed as Putin's successor years ago.)
Similarly, the myth of an all powerful Putin who controls all the levers of power did (and does) not correspond to the actuality of what the data tells us about the Putin authoritarian mystique.
Kremlin "experts" weave fables constructed from this myth, yet again the data does not match the Disinfolklore's catechism / orthodoxy about a "strong man" quick to anger who's a master strategist etc .
A man who:
🔴 So scared of elections, he had to kill 1m Russian Chechens and also fake election results to get his "right" to rule is a complete coward, not a "hard man;"
⚪️ Hides behind long tables and Covid, while portraying himself (and being portrayed by "experts" as not to be provoked, at any cost) is OBVIOUSLY a paper tiger.
🔵 Whose war in Ukraine, from the first moment, has been a complete shambles is not some kind of invulnerable mountain of stability.
⚫️ Whose army is so rubbish that an 1854 Economist article detailing Russia's perennial weaknesses could have been written yesterday: corruption, lying, lack of qualifications, paper soldiers.
⚪️ Whose security apparatus arrests people holding blank sheets of paper.
🔴 Who needs to imprison thousands of people for denigrating the rubbish army.
🔵 Who needs an army of body-doubles...
etc. etc
These ☝🏾 are the data.
Yet, Russia experts quoted in every media outlet who have missed EVERYTHING about Russia (and indeed Ukraine), continue to earn profits at the cost of our understanding from selling "expert" Disinfolklore about Russia.
There's another reason why such experts (and many others) don't understand that all the data they're using to guide their conclusions (mostly from internal Russia analysts) is faulty - Russian commentators inside Russia (and even the exiled ones) are totally brainwashed themselves. They're stewed in nonsense. Garbage into their brains. Garbage outta the brains of those who take their judgements as gospel.
They fall for the totems and symbols (Putin bare-chested on a horse; pomp and circumstance of the Kremlin; a folkloric Chef character who disguises his power with a moniker like "Putin's Chef" or "Mercenary";...)
They fall for the shadows cast by the Disinfolklore promoted by the Chef of Disinfolklore himself - the Chef.
A Russia "expert" who knows the Chef runs a global influencing operation that got Brexit and Trump done, falls for the Chef troll and the grainy iPhone footage supposedly filmed in Bakhmut. 🙄
As Ukraine's (civil society and political) leadership, as well as Ukraine-experts like @steven_seegel are trying to teach:
Look Beyond What Is Immediately Given. Listen to Ukraine.
Don't fall for every Russian "oppositionist" just because they "oppose" Putin.
Putin (and those whose puppet he is) are scared of their own shadows.
That's the story the data portrays, not what Disinfolklore, or our own biases want us to believe.
When you find a Russia expert who predicted USSR collapse or disaster in Ukraine: trust 'em.
