How Russia and China are ridiculing America

Propaganda is as old as time. But it has a new Russian twist today, with even House Republicans complaining about it — suggesting it could be affecting their political party.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) warned last week that Russian disinformation has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base” — a thought echoed by House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who agreed that Russian propaganda had reached the floor of the U.S. Congress.

Moscow has reportedly used disinformation to sow dissent in the United States about Ukraine, prompting calls from prominent Republicans like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to fund assistance to Ukraine at an important moment when legislation hangs in the balance.

The latest propaganda out of Russia is their reaction to a terrorist attack outside Moscow. Despite reports that the U.S. warned Russia through intelligence channels of an impending terrorist attack prior to the outbreak of violence in a Russian concert hall that killed 143 people on March 22 — and that ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack — disinformation continues to circulate on Russian media blaming Ukraine and the West for the attack.

Why? History provides some clues.

At the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, each side deployed propaganda to ridicule the other.

In the 1950s, the Americans used film to portray Soviet Communists as lost souls in, for example “The Red Menace,” about Russian treachery and corruption. Soviet films like “Silvery Dust” presented Americans as racist, violent, drug-abusing people in a capitalist world of greed.

As relations between Washington and Moscow improved over time, the overt discrediting of one another’s societies faded. But with the arrival of Vladimir Putin in 2000, Russia’s propaganda machine went into high gear, especially with the arrival of social media, algorithms, bots and other tools that enabled Moscow to unleash a Russian “firehose of falsehood” aimed at the U.S. and Europe, according to a major 2016 report by the research organization RAND.

China has now followed Russia’s lead on propaganda — especially when it comes to portraying America as the land of evil. If anything, Beijing is outpacing Moscow in its interest in U.S. affairs and its overseas social media propaganda reach.

Chinese state-run media has a new series called “A Fractured America,” with video segments showing the ills of the United States: drug addiction, wealth inequality, high rates of imprisonment — a dark, gloomy New York City clearly in dystopian decline. The new twist is the video uses AI-generated video and computer-generated audio, and it is shown widely on social media.

China uses a vast global labyrinth of channels that feed off state media and perpetuate stories that emphasize negative developments in the U.S., such as covering the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that released toxic chemical into the air in February 2023 — a story that trended on Weibo and TikTok.

Whereas Russia was active in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, now China is taking the lead. Unidentifiable Chinese online accounts using AI and fake video target American candidates and parties, pretending to be Trump followers or just promoting conspiracy theories to sow division in the U.S. and dissuade voters from voting.

Like Russia, China uses bots, algorithms and search engines to spread propaganda about America and Europe — while heavily censoring any criticism of its own government.

Chinese comedians are heavily fined for jokes that appear to criticize the government or military, as was the case recently with a famous stand-up comedian known as “House” who dared to tell a joke that that landed him under investigation and fined two million dollars.

So, what can be done?

The State Department is working hard to raise awareness of Russian and Chinese propaganda, with a major effort by the “Global Engagement Center” to track lies and distortions — especially about American policy. Its mission is “to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”

We, as citizens, need to stay vigilant about propaganda overseas and our own battle with disinformation at home. We must examine our own ills — but not through the eyes of China and Russia. We live in a chaotic information space today, with diverse audiences, curators and generators of content, in an increasingly decentralized world where there really is no “black and white,” like in the old Soviet and American propaganda films.

Tara D. Sonenshine is a former U.S. under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. She is a fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University