Opinion piece published in Le Monde on October 15, 2022

Since February 24, 2022—a now historic date, though one could go back many years before—Russian war propaganda has been using the old tactics of tyranny: denial, lies, and the substitution of a fabricated, narratively reconstructed crime scene for the reality of the event—in order to force the truth, to transfigure it through "fiction." These linguistic operations, sometimes crude, sometimes sophisticated, aim to erase reality and replace it with its counterfeits.

In the statements of Putin and his cronies – Lavrov, Peskov, Prigozhin and others, whom we would have to quote at length – we can easily find some examples of this counterfeiting of reality:

– Ukraine is governed by Nazis, in power since Maidan, who oppress and persecute, like their predecessors, the brave and defenseless Russian-speaking minorities.

– There is no war between Russia and Ukraine, but a special law enforcement operation, like in the colonial era of the “events” in Algeria, against bandits who threaten the safety of brave and peaceful citizens.

– Russia has never attacked anyone, it is a power of peace harassed, threatened and finally attacked by NATO, that is to say by the Americans seconded by their regional vassals, Balts, Poles, who hate a Russia which is nevertheless benevolent – which is therefore only defending its soil and homeland against brutal and cynical aggressors.

– The West is driven by an immemorial and almost racist hatred of Russia; it wants purely and simply to exterminate it, to wipe it off the map.

A pinnacle of the art of counterfeiting

The purpose and function of the referendums held in the four eastern Ukrainian regions represent a pinnacle of this art of deception: since Ukraine is not attacking Russia, but Russia is attacking Ukraine (the reality), it suffices to transform a part of Ukraine into Russia (the fiction). Of course, reality inevitably resurfaces, even in official propaganda, sometimes taking on comical forms.

The forgery is sometimes pushed to the point of absurdity, reaching a stage where it reveals itself as such. When it is pointed out to him that Zelinsky can hardly be both "Nazi" and "Jewish" at this moment, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, explains that after all, Hitler himself was Jewish – before retracting his statement because it so blatantly contradicts reality, so to speak.

To counter Putin's propaganda, it is necessary, and sufficient, to tirelessly repeat a simple, obvious, and absolutely undeniable fact—which Russia continually attempts to erase or shroud in a more or less opaque veil of oblivion—: It is indeed Russia that occupies Ukraine in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. There is not a single Ukrainian soldier in Russia, but an occupying army waging war on Ukraine on its own soil, against its people.

A nihilistic staging of history

Historical denialism has always existed; it reached its ultimate form with the denial of the Holocaust, the second death of the Jews. Inextricably linked to conspiracy theories, of which it is the most acute "critical" form, it continues before our very eyes in the context of the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the Tutsi, and the persecution of the Uyghurs.

Russia has often been the fertile ground and effective catalyst for these theories. Almost all contemporary conspiracy theories feed on them. This is because there has never been in Russia a truly authentic and profound reflective and memorial reckoning with the crimes of Stalinism, the Gulag, the Holodomor—something that the NGO Memorial, banned by Putin, attempted to initiate, and which Germany has done in an exemplary fashion with regard to its own past.

The Russian case, and even more so today in times of war, is an excellent subject for observing denialism. Lies, denial, and (self-)fiction are its integral elements. They reinforce each other and contribute to the production of a pseudo-reality, a backdrop covering and masking the desolation of truth, like Potemkin villages, a nihilistic dramatization or staging of history.

Reconstructing events and remaking reality

The total of a mobilization is only "partial," the military defeat a victory, the corpses mere actors. This denialism also consists of a retrojection of events, of the guilty onto the victims. It reconstructs events, it remakes reality—something Russia shamelessly practices regarding everything that has happened since at least 2014.

Retrospective denialism projects its own vices onto the enemy (Ukraine as an aggressive, invading, occupying power), vices which it has previously transfigured into virtues (the good mother Russia, eternal victim of a Western conspiracy). This is what is happening with the Nord Stream 1 and 2 sabotage: while it is probably a deliberate act by Russia, Russia immediately attributes criminal responsibility to the Americans.

A tired old recipe, but one that, in the eyes of Putin and his clan, can still be useful - that of Brecht's play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo (1941), the one clinically described by Freud as "cauldron logic": "What are you talking about! You never lent me a cauldron! Besides, it had a hole in it!"

Gérard Bensussan, philosopher, founding member of "For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours".