Prigozhin & The Fog of War.
On Friday and Saturday catering empire boss and reported leader of the Wagner group of Russian provisional soldiers organised an armed march on Moscow. On Saturday he reversed and is reported to be in Belarus.
It is reasonable to deduce that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its inability to progress its aims is creating tensions in the Russian ruling class. (there are also tensions in the US ruling class around funding of the war in Ukraine and whether they should focus more on China but an immediate repeat of January 6th appears unlikely).
Beyond this the reasons for Prigozhin’s march, its timing and reversal remain unknown. This has of course not stopped an alternative army of armchair generals, warmongers and neo-liberalists from pontificating. They write and talk not from knowledge of what happened but what they would like to have happened and might happen in future.
It’s the fog of war.
Arthur Ponsonby was a Liberal who opposed the First World War and investigated the truth, or usually otherwise, of anti-German atrocity stories promoted by its opponents in the war. In 1928 he published a book looking at wartime propaganda. The key points were later summarised and are shown below.
Truth is regarded as the first casualty of war and the current conflict between Russia and the Ukraine is no exception. Russia as the aggressor obviously promotes its own perspective, but Ukraine has to counter that by promoting its own. Hence BBC reporting is valued in both countries but of course itself is subject to pro-NATO and US stories which to be fair are mostly checked out by BBC journalists in so far as they can be. The selection of lead news stories remains a key area of potential bias.
Newspaper reporting is rarely worth bothering with, certainly in the mainstream, where narratives are promoted with little or no space for critical and alternative views. These do appear but are exceptions to the general drift of news and opinion.
Approaching all reporting of the current conflict with a critical and analytical perspective is essential.
1.We do not want war.
2.The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3.The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4.We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.(Just war theory)
5.The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
6.The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7.We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8.Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9.Our cause is sacred.
10.All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.
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