Russia: intellectuals for the coronana propaganda

– You understand that it is not a natural virus. There are thousands of viruses, but humans only sting 20 to 30. And the Americans themselves have admitted that they created a coronavirus in 2014, Igor Nikulin says by phone from a suburb outside Moscow.

Give a permanent interview when I call. Igor Nikulin is a microbiologist, educated at the Lomonosov Institute of Chemical Technologies. More recently, it has gained a prominent role in the Russian and foreign media. The vast majority of international scientists dismiss the theory that it launches as a myth: that the coronavirus that leads to covid-19 is an American creation, not a virus that occurs naturally in animals.

Russia is the promised land of conspiracy theories. The international movement that claims that HIV does not exist has received the main name of HIV dissidents in Russia. Vaccination resistance is growing. That crown would be an artificial virus is a theory that many Russians, if they do not literally believe, still think possible.

Is there People like Nikulin come in. Those who are spreading rumors and unconfirmed theories at the moment are not primarily a net role for the streamlined and paid army, but independent academics and intellectuals. They emphasize alleged relationships that provide logical frameworks. But above all, they express suspicions that the Russian public usually hears, especially from the Kremlin. These suspicions are often about “someone,” almost always the United States and global capital, benefiting from various disasters.

Zachar Prilepin, one of Russia’s best-known and critically acclaimed contemporary writers, is a skeptic of the crown. He is a national Bolshevik who previously criticized the Putin regime, but became his ally after the Crimean invasion. In Komsomolskaya Pravda, Prilepin says that the pandemic “is clearly the result of certain forces that want it.”

– Perhaps they want to try certain countries and their economies, perhaps entire continents and great powers. Maybe they just want to ruin the Chinese economy. And not only the Chinese, says Zachar Prilepin.

It is expressed in a typically cryptic way. These kinds of propagandists never really say what “forces” they mean. The point is that everyone should understand anyway.

The thing is that when it comes to the corona virus, neither Putin nor any other high-ranking person has released any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, Putin’s elite have for years endorsed such theories in other contexts, for example, regarding the downed MH17 aircraft in Ukraine.

When you have heard suspicion enough times, it becomes so familiar that, unless fully accepted, it is perceived as general knowledge. That is why people in Russia often do not respond to claims that they are more baroque in our societies. Instead, they shrug. Why not Who knows When everything is possible, conspiracy theories become part of the mainstream, as you can see in my WhatsApp threads, where Russian friends happily share jokes that it is the same “forces” that Oil prices have dropped and the coronavirus has spread.

microbiologist Igor Nikulin is now retired, but says he is still lecturing “for closed circles.” He has previously represented Russia on the UN Commission on Biological Weapons. In addition, he joined a working group to verify the biological weapons convention between Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1998-2003.

Nikulin’s most important argument is a 2015 article in the respected American magazine Nature. The article is still available online, but Nature has added a footnote at the end that is aware of how the article is being used to confirm unverified theories. The text reports on a coronavirus that American research developed after the SARS epidemic. Not surprisingly, American scientists delve into these viruses after SARS and MERS. But Nikulin’s tactics are based on balancing the burden of proof: since the United States has manufactured such a virus, it is now required to demonstrate that it is not its crown that caused today’s pandemic.

The majority Russian scientists disagree with Nikulin. In an interview with Rossija 24 state television channel, Sergei Netiosov, professor of virology at the University of Novosibirsk, says that Nikulin’s theories are not correct.

– I myself participated in the creation of different viruses during the Soviet era. And I can say with certainty that if you create a virus artificially, it always leaves traces. These clues are not in the current corona virus. Go to any biologist, says Sergei Netiosov.

In the same program, Igor Nikulin is interviewed as a “military expert”. While Netiosov rejects speculation, Nikulin calls them “completely realistic.”

There are Also a conservative and antiglobalist national current in the Russian debate welcoming the crown virus. Aleksandr Dugin is a professor of pan-Slavic sociology and a national Bolshevik who wants to spread worldwide Russian influence. On his blog, he writes that the corona virus should be considered a salvation.

– This epidemic means the end of globalization. The only way to survive is to quit smoking. To close the borders, close the economy and stop imports. The corona virus is the end of liberalism.