16.06.2022 13:35

How did russia prepare for the genocide of Ukrainians?

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With Iryna Syedova, a researcher at a Crimean human rights group, we discussed hate speech, control over personal thoughts, and the genocide of Ukrainians.

Iryna Syedova: We study the issue of the spread of hate speech from the beginning of the armed conflict, specifically from 2014. We analyze the war through the spread of information. All hateful incitements and the preparation put in for the physical destruction of Ukrainians began in the information space.

The first step is control over human thoughts, then a kind of zombification and hate towards other nationalities, and then what we currently have, which is destruction.

Unfortunately, our predictions came true. Now we can say that all these instances of hate speech have contributed to the destruction of people known as “Ukrainian.” This applies not only to nationals and people who were born in Ukraine, but also to those who hold pro-Ukrainian positions.

The Research

Iryna Syedova: We conducted some research on hate speech towards Ukrainians. The last of it we concluded on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These findings show that a lot of what is going on is based on hate speech, which is systematically organized and takes place in Russophone media. We also understand that there is no independent media in Russia and all of it, in some way, is dependent on the Russian government.

The methodology of our research is built on content and psycholinguistic analysis. A programmed bot selected material with hate speech based on dictionaries compiled by human rights activists. The search for content was carried out with the help of keywords that express hate towards Ukrainians: Banderites, small Russians, pig-speaking, Ukrainian fascists, “Khokhly”, “Ukropia”, “Khokhlostan” and others.

Researchers found 1,284 publications, 560 of which were considered hate speech.

We worked with psycholinguistic manipulations within our research. A lot of hate is based on manipulations, which you can’t see at first glance. A basic narrative used by the Russian Federation to instigate hate toward Ukrainians in the minds of its citizens are archetypes of the Second World War. When Ukrainians are compared to the “Nazi punishers” a lot of us laugh at this. However, this is not funny but scary, because these archetypes are rooted through generations. Russians were told from the time of the Second World War, that the “Banderites” were something scary. Hatred spread for many years. This allowed them to kill us more easily because they subconsciously compare us to the enemy of the Second World War.

In their affected minds, the Second World War continues and Ukrainians, in their imaginations, are the fascists. This is a scary psycholinguistic manipulation.