What political action do the narratives prescribe to the readers, directly and indirectly?
In order to understand what political action could be prescribed by the narratives, we must not be blind to the source of the narrative. As these articles are published in Russian and pro-Russian media, as identified by the experts of East StratCom, a certain political action which is line with Kremlin’s agenda was suggested directly or indirectly. We should also have in mind the fact that these articles are published for different audiences, as Table 11.1 shows. Different messages are sent depending on the audience that will likely receive it.
The very reason for the dissemination of these conspiracy narratives in EU member states and (prospective) candidate countries is in their goal of undermining the legitimacy of the EU institutions and building an identity-based coalition with Russia. In turn, if the articles are published in Russian, the conspiracy narratives serve to form the picture of the enemy, the EU or generally the West, as an anti-Christian force. Russia is found to be the last bastion of Christianity and fight against globalisation that the EU is propagating.
The political action propagated by articles published outside of Russia is a change of direction of these countries’ foreign and domestic policies. As Russia is as an anti-homosexual and Christian value-based society, the true European identity can only persevere if Europe turns its back on the ‘liberal’ elites and faces towards Russia. The ultimate goals of the narratives are completely in line with the foreign policy goals of the Kremlin - expanding its sphere of influence and diminishing the role of the EU. For the articles published in Russia, the goal is the de-legitimisation of possible criticisms of Kremlin’s policies as anti-Christian, as well as the presentation of the Russian Government as equal to the people on an identity level. They are together in their fight against another, powerful, global and anti-Christian elite.
Conclusions
This chapter showed how the EEAS Stratcom’s Disinformation review provides a useful dataset for analysing conspiracy narratives about the EU present in the pro-Kremlin media. This is one of the reasons why such wide debunking efforts matter. East Stratcom continues to collect disinformation stories and more quantitative and qualitative research could be done with the data they collected in their Disinformation Review Newsletter over the years. This research focused on the period between October 2015 and January 2017, in which news stories identified as conspiracy theories about the EU flow through four distinct narratives and connect into a master narrative which presents the Russian government as a saviour of the true European identity. The four narratives are:
- (1) the EU institutions want to destroy the ‘true’ European identity.
- (2) the refugee crisis was planned out by the EU authorities.
- (3) the EU is a totalitarian regime.
- (4) the EU is a vassal of the US.
The narratives are built on emotive appeals and they perpetuate an active political behaviour of the reader. They portrayed groups such as homosexuals and refugees as passive objects of the conspirators, who were using them to undermine Europe’s Christian values. Finally, the EU institutions as part of a global elite network are clearly delegitimised in the narratives, presented as conspirators against the people, and an anti-thesis of the true European identity. The political actions that the readers are encouraged to take up are either support for Russian government, or support for anti-European, pro-Kremlin forces.
