The Global Internet War for Mentality

The West, led by the United States, has unleashed a new type of war against Russia — a mental war aimed at destroying self-consciousness. This was stated by the adviser to the Minister of Defense, Andrei Ilnitsky in an interview with the magazine.

In his opinion, Western countries avoid direct military confrontation with Russia — instead, they are waging an information-hybrid war.

"All this leads to the emergence of a new type of war. If in classical wars the goal is the destruction of the enemy's manpower, in modern cyber wars-the destruction of the enemy's infrastructure, then the goal of the new war is the destruction of self — consciousness, changing the mental — civilizational-basis of the enemy's society. I would call this type of war mental, " - said the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Defense.

He noted that if the manpower and infrastructure can be restored, then "it is impossible to reverse the course of the evolution of consciousness, especially since the consequences of this "mental" war do not manifest themselves immediately, but only after at least a generation, when it will be simply impossible to do anything."

The primary measures to counter the mental war are the sovereignization of the Internet, the training of personnel in information counteraction, the reset of youth policy and the resumption of an active dialogue with the conservative majority — the main electorate of the current government, Ilnitsky believes.

Here are my thoughts on this matter:

1. They came to their senses late. China has been doing this for almost 15 years. That is why the Chinese, in particular, have long had their own powerful independent Internet encyclopedia, Hudung, competing with Wikipedia. But this is all naive, since the era of postmodernism and information Internet globalization, fueled by the Internet democracy of the world's social networks, cannot be curbed. The Internet has become a social environment, similar to the air atmosphere, which can not be blocked. Few people think that they breathe oxygen that has come to us from the world's oceans.

2. Why did this anxiety just start now? Because the Russian government has recently really felt that it is losing its leverage with the help of traditional television, in the face of its federal TV channels. The latest statistics show that social media use by pensioners and the conservative population has increased significantly. TV channels are losing their rating among the conservative population. Manipulating public opinion is now becoming more and more difficult.
The conservative Russian population is supported only by the shaky lure and regular payments of "pyatnashko-pyaterochka" Russia ( I got a war pyatnashka and went to Pyaterochka), although I objectively understand the state of power and the political and economic situation.

3. The conservative population is gradually aging and passing away, and therefore the mentality of Russians will change, most likely, not because of the artificial influence of Western information policy and the notorious mental war, but because of the generational change, which is a new formation of people. These are objective processes and they are stronger than artificial projects of changing the mentality of Russians.

4.I did not find any scientific novelty in the adviser to the Minister of Defense. My research papers ("The Concept of Russian psychological Security", 2000), as well as the work of my colleagues 20 years ago raised this issue. At that time, the Internet was not yet developed, but the era of postmodernism, with its globalization and perversions that change the mentality of people, was already flourishing and is still flourishing today. These are objective processes and there is no artificiality or someone else's projects in them. The people of the world are gorging on the products of information technology and it is impossible to stop them! This element and it is impossible to curb it!

5. The adviser to the Ministry of Defense uses the concept of "self-awareness". This is not quite correct. It seems to be more about the self-identification of Russians.

6. In essence, the anxiety of the authorities is not related to the change in Russian identity, but to its development, which for some time will no longer allow manipulating the infantile electorate. We are not talking about the transformation of the mentality, but about reducing the infantile nature of Russians, thanks to the development of Internet democracy and raising the level of objective perception of everything that is happening in the world on this basis.

Associate Professor of the Institute of Psychology and Education of KFU, Candidate of Psychological Sciences Ramil Garifullin