This Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Americans were on the streets to protest against the policy led by Donald Trump. More than 1,200 rallies across the country, responding to the call of associations and collectives for the defense of individual rights.
But for Russian propaganda, it’s a whole different story … Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin special envoy to the United States in charge of economic issues, went around the American sets this start of the week to explain that this mobilization was “too good” organized to be simply popular. In a post on X, he even evokes the notion of color revolution, a classic of Russian conspiratorial propaganda.
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Originally, the term “color revolution” referred to several important social movements in the 2000s in the countries of the former USSR such as Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003) or Ukraine (2004). For Thomas Huchon, specialist in disinformation and author of Resist Fake Newsthis term was then reused by Russian propaganda in order to discredit these democratic impulses. “The implying was that all these movements were funded and piloted by the CIA to weaken Russia. »»
A conspiratorial rhetoric worthy of the Cold War that the habit of observing Vera Grantsva, teacher at Sciences Po Paris and specialist in Russian propaganda. Obsessed with the original color revolutions, which led to the fall of many post-Soviet authoritarian regimes, “Vladimir Putin made this term the idea that any popular revolt would be controlled by the Western powers”.
A concept that exports to the United States?
But then why does Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev evokes this term for demonstrations that take place in the United States, even though the CIA is under the control of Donald Trump? Do not panic, explains Thomas Huchon, Russian propaganda has an answer to everything and reuses the theory of the Deep State (or deep state) which affirms “that there would be hidden power structures which decide everything”. A paranoia specific to all dictators according to the journalist, and who does not spare Vladimir Putin.
But who would be behind these demonstrations? “For the Trumpists it will be the Democratic Party, for the anti -Semites it will be the Jews …” Everyone finds their enemy where they are looking for it, that is it, “the magic of conspiracy”.
Russian propaganda, whose conspiracy is one of the pillars, does not hesitate to disseminate its own conspiracy theories according to Vera Grantsva. Collapse of the USSR, expansion of NATO, all these theories making the West the enemy deeply influence society. “Many Russians did not believe in Covid for example” which was seen, according to her, as yet another plot against Russia.
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Here, this conspiracy serves above all the interests of Donald Trump, in difficulty on the international scene, whether on the issue of customs tariffs or support for Ukraine. While the Kremlin was limited to discreet support during its first mandate, propaganda fully supports the actions of the American president today. For the political scientist, Vladimir Putin especially understood that Donald Trump is the only one who can get him out of this war, and is ready to do anything to put it in the right conditions.
