Historian: State Propagandists in Belarus Are Influenced by Anti-Semitic Stereotypes

Lukashenka's propaganda paints a "Zionist conspiracy" in Belarus.

The historian from Dusseldorf, Alexander Friedman, has been monitoring official propaganda in Belarus for several months. He concluded that pro-government Telegram channels and employees of state-owned media are cultivating neo-Soviet anti-Semitism.

Friedman spoke about the result of his research on Jewish views on protests in Belarus, which was published in the Russian magazine Ab Imperio, during a round table of historians on the air of Radio Svaboda.

Who is Alexander Friedman:

• graduate of the Faculty of History, BSU, Doctor (PhD)

• employee of the project "Memory of the Jewish heritage in Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland after 1945" (Center for Anthropological Research of Museums and Heritage at the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University (Berlin)

• lecturer at the Saarland University (Saarbrücken) and the Heinrich Heine University (Düsseldorf)

• among the areas of his scientific activity are the history of anti-Semitism in the USSR and the post-Soviet area, as well as propaganda in authoritarian states

"If they were allowed, they would say much more than they say today."

"In October, I started working on the article "Jewish views on Belarusian events." In this article, I observe the anti-Semitic component of state propaganda. In November, I had to rewrite this article as there were more and more examples. If I were writing today, I would have to add 2 or 3 additional pages. If you read Yellow Plums, Mukavozchyk, or watch Azarenka, this theme is present, and they are trying to hold on somehow. If they were allowed, they would say much more than they say today."

The historian draws attention to the expansion by pro-government channels of information about the alleged involvement in the protests in Belarus of the American philanthropist of Jewish origin George Soros, the French philosopher with Jewish roots Bernaro-Henri Levy, and the Jewish origin or Israeli citizenship of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Viktar Babarika, and Valery Tsapkala.

"Where did this come from? It came from the so-called DPR-LPR. It was there that this fake was invented. As for Soros and Bernard-Henri Levy, this is also not an invention of Belarusian propagandists. This was invented by the Russian journalist of Ukrainian origin Vladimir Kornilov. He has been working as one of the experts on Belarusian television for quite a long time. And this story with Soros and Levy must have been planted by him. If you look at his publications, you can see Levy's image as a bloody philosopher from France. And it is especially emphasized that he is Levy so that everyone understands what his origin is."

"The people who make this channel, from my point of view, are definitely antisemites."

According to Friedman, pro-government propagandists had already turned to the narrative that is known from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the student movement in Poland, and then the events in Czechoslovakia, were presented as the result of a Zionist conspiracy.

"And that is why all these things that are now being published about the Jewish origin of Belarusian journalists or the hints that Mr. Mukavozchyk makes about the names a la Shraibman or Katz, which appear in a protest context, are such a code of these people," says Friedman.

He gave an example when, during the campaign around the White Coats Telegram channel, the Yellow Plums Telegram channel published a screen with a comment from a user from Israel, marking it with the red Star of David. The channels of the Belarusian Television News Agency and the official agency BelTA reposted this message. After a while, the official Telegram channels removed the post, but it remained on the Yellow Plums channel.

"The people who make this channel, from my point of view, are definitely antisemites. It is very interesting to see how the Holocaust and the accusations of it come from people who are anti-Semitic. The anti-Semitism cultivated by this Telegram channel is neo-Soviet anti-Semitism. This can be nicely compared to the Soviet tradition of anti-Israel propaganda. On the one hand, there are accusations against the Zionists, and on the other, the role of the USSR in the fight against Nazism and the salvation of Jews is emphasized. The topic is there, and it will be used since people engaged in state propaganda are under the significant influence of anti-Semitic stereotypes."

"The goal is one - to convey to the people who support Lukashenka that all these protests are inspired from the outside"

When asked about the target audience of anti-Semitic messages, the historian replied:

"Probably, this propaganda is made for themselves and for those who think in the same way. Messrs. Mukavozchyk and Benko probably believe that the overwhelming majority of Belarusian society consists of antisemites who need this anti-Semitic narrative to be thrown. I do not think that propaganda seeks to drag someone out of the protest camp. This is a narrative made for their people. And there is only one goal - to convey to the people who support Lukashenka that all these protests were inspired from outside. The Polish communists did the same when the students launched a democratic protest. The communists declared that all of them were Jewish intelligentsia and Zionists and that the Poles had nothing to do with this protest. They are trying to do the same today."